Odd fact

SLAM: debunk creationism, pseudoscience, and superstitions. Discuss logic and morality.

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Mr Bean
Lord of Irony
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Joined: 2002-07-04 08:36am

Post by Mr Bean »

All don't forget the side rule


The Mear act of Measuring anything changes it.

"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe
Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
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Zoink
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Joined: 2002-07-04 03:15pm
Location: Fluidic Space

Post by Zoink »

Cpt. Marko Ramius wrote:It's not possible to predict the future... and you could never build a computer good enough to even give you a rough guess. Too many variables to calculate.
I know what you mean, but just want to add:

What about the weather, eclypses, lunar phases, interceptor missiles, knowing your friend will go ballistic if told certain information, etc, etc....

You can "predict" the future by taking measurements of the present. The accuracy of these predictions is limited be the number of measurements, but predicting the future is possible. The heisenburg uncertainty principle limits the number of usefull measurements, but doesn't make predictions impossible, especially with macroscopic processes.

Knowing 100% what would happen in the universe is obviously impossible.. ignoring heisenburg, the computer would have to be as big as the universe (ie you'd need to be in another universe, which is a carbon copy of our universe, but in the future).

FYI: The amount of information in a given volume of the universe is equal to 4 bits per unit of surface area in plank units. Have fun calculating the RAM needed for an earth predicting computer...
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