It should be noted that the EP gates do not appear to be wormholes as we know them. But then again, the QE communication is not obeying quantum mechanics as we know it either (as I have been arguing in various threads). In EP, I would simply say that there has been a lot more physics discovered between now and 10 AF, not to mention what the various superbeings know. To a TITAN an ordinary wormhole likely looks like a steam-powered spaceship - quaint and unworkable, but fortunately there are better ways of doing the same thing. In reality I think what we should be looking for is mid-scale corrections to gravity due to folded dimensions and brane embeddings. While I have not seen any paper showing they help us make wormholes, the debate about getting low-energy black holes in particle accelerators seems to suggest that if such effects exist then it might be possible to make wormholes using "small" amounts of energy.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

(In other words, functionally equivalent to magic.)

Yep. Of course, magic cannot do *everything*, there are various limitations. The Lord of the Rings did not end with Gandalf teleporting the ring into Mount Doom, Faust couldn't turn Mephistopheles into a frog, the wizards of Harry Potter had a lot of constraints. While a lot of these are just contrivances to make a good story it seems clear that any conceivable kind of magic will have some form of structure and constraints, just like all other kinds of actions within a domain - it is not possible to move arbitrarily, it is not possible to think arbitrarily, it is not possible to engineer arbitrarily. Even religions are surprisingly non-arbitrary, for example there are no gods who are non-agents. But if you do not know anything about a domain, then you cannot tell what is possible there or not. The chemist mixes stuff together and makes new stuff - crystals, metals, poisons, explosives and medicines. But he shakes his head when you ask him to make gold out of non-gold stuff, or when you ask him to make flammable water (then he of course burns a bit of water in fluorine). I think the TITANs and other superintelligences are very much like this. They are constrained by a lot of things we have no clue about, yet easily do other things that seem very hard. Maybe the real reason for the Pandora gates is that they have to act like counterweights for the real gates on Earth. The reason the nasties of the TQZ keep to the zone has to do with the threat of acausal blackmail from future or possible-world supercivilizations. The Factors are just acting as a chaos control sensor/actuator placed there by another agency, their actions in themselves unimportant beyond nudging our civilization around a separatrix in some highdimensional state space. Predicting the future is trivial, but doing it has negative "economic" implications so it is not done. In practice this of course boils down to keeping the magic from taking over completely. But I think that if we meet superintelligences we will find that they have constraints. They are also likely to have (to us) strange goals and make (amazingly smart) mistakes in pursuing them, although we will be hard pressed to tell what is really going on.

Getting back to the Pandora gates, what really irritates me (that they are clearly not wormholes) also makes them pretty fascinating. Wormholes go from point A to B, you don't dial up where they should go, and they have pretty hefty gravitational effects (the curvature is equivalent to a black hole of the same size. For a truck-sized gate, that would correspond to a Jupiter-mass hole). Yet the gates are not just very good matter disassemblers that transmits the blueprint over interstellar distances, since they don't scramble qubits or trigger antimatter. If they really are spacetime distortions they are a kind we have no clue about (essentially topology changes without metric changes), and if they are disassemblers they have to act on a level *below* the quantum level. Both possibilities are pretty outrageous. Most likely they are something completely different. Gate researchers are likely going mad left and right. Especially about boring gatekeepers preventing them from doing that particular little physics experiment they think would reveal the true nature of the gate. Adventure idea: "OK, Pathfinder doesn't allow us to try the Hamilton-Shaodang experiment on the gate here. And I kind of see their point, given that if it works we will see macroscale coherence effects that could turn the neighbourhood into an EBC. But there are *other* gates, run by scum Pathfinder doesn't like at all and in locations where a little condensate is unlikely to hurt many people. So I suggest we set up a work package to run the experiment and get some of the nastier Hertzog people interested in delivering it to the competition." A short while later Firewall becomes concerned for some reason that if somebody were to try a certain experiment on the Vulcanoid gate, then a fraction of the sun could get turned into an unstable Einstein-Bose condensate and implode...

root wrote:

root@String Theory [hr] There are a number of assumptions being used here that I am uncomfortable with. As much as I like Vernor Vinge, the idea of a Singularity is flawed. The limitations come down to, once again, the second law of thermodynamics. It takes work to move information, and there are power limits to how quickly, how many bits per period, can be transported. If there is a limit on information movement rate, there are limitations on information processing rate. With limited processing capability, there are limits on intelligence. Therefore, any being working within the framework of our universe is of finite intelligence. I'm comfortable with the handwavium of a 12 dimension to allow for time symmetry. Infinite processing is then available through time loops. You add a variable to an NP-hard problem and try every single combo, then loop back and insert that as your systems first guess. Now we can play Singularity games, but need to respect that we've cracked time, and that has game effects.

One thing that I think should be brought up: we have already found systems (albeit on the microscopic level) which violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, mainly the concept of irreversibility. This implies, at the very least, that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is incomplete, even if correct. Science always marches on, and it may potentially mean throwing away entire theories and foundations for how we perceive the world to work... such as when we completely scrapped Newton's laws of physics for general relativity. Plus, you have to remember that we are dealing with a singularity. Our understanding of math, and even quantum mechanics tends to break down once you bring up singularities. Black holes, for example, break the laws of thermodynamics in half. According to all basic models, they should have negative entropy. Thus, Hawking came up with his "Hawking radiation" theory, not because he had proof of it, but because [i]it has to exist for current physics models to make sense[/i]. Many other unfinished theories have similar "patch concepts" that are unproven but designed to complete the theory... like dark matter and tachyons.

A better way of restating the second law is "Systems *very* likely move towards more likely configurations". In many ways thermodynamics is on a more solid footing than nearly any other physical theory.

Decivre wrote:

Plus, you have to remember that we are dealing with a singularity. Our understanding of math, and even quantum mechanics tends to break down once you bring up singularities.

Sorry, but that is not true. At least math handles singularities just fine, it is only that most people never get taught the relevant parts (usually the full treatment comes up in complex analysis, although there are some topological extensions that end up in graduate school). In physics, when something goes to infinity, it is usually a sign that the theory has reached its limit of applicability. But even there singularities can be tame: the standard quantum mechanical model of a hydrogen atom found in every textbook uses a potential that has a singularity, and the electron wave-function blithely remains finite even at the centre of the atom. That said, there are a lot of more or less odd things in physics that patch things up. Dark matter is not too bad since it actually has several different kinds of observable effects (rotation curves, gravitational lensing, cosmic structure, expansion rates) but personally I am mildly sceptical to most of the things particle physicists come up with. Sure, they were right about positrons, neutrinos and quarks, but that doesn't mean I have to buy every new possible particle thrown in to get a nice symmetry group. From an EP perspective I think we should think the advanced civilizations are a bit like explaining the modern world to Aristotle: planes and satellites can fly because he were plain wrong about his theory of gravity, all the electrical and nuclear stuff is from a domain he simply didn't know was there, but the mechanism of an elevator, crane or car is in principle understandable from his physics perspective. Similarly I expect TITANs and ETI to obey the laws of thermodynamics, but they may have access to sectors of physics we have no clue about. Maybe general relativity or quantum field theory are indeed completely wrong, but the mechanism of an supertech alien device might still be recognizable as nanotechnology - we just get completely stumped by how it is powered or does its information processing. But it will not get energy from nothing or erase information without an entropy cost (but maybe we can't observe where the energy and entropy end up).

root wrote:

root@String Theory [hr]The laws of thermodynamics are meant to describe macrosystems, and deals with averages. When you get to statistical mechanics, you learn that the 2nd law has an extension at the quantum level dealt with by Fluctuation Theory. The gist is that the ratio between the probabilities of a system following the 2nd laws predictions and the chances of it doing the opposite are an exponential e[sup]At[/sup]. Black holes are one of the reasons that String Theory exists, because gravity and quantum mechanics have to play nice with each other in a black hole singularity. String theory descriptions of black hole are odd. I wish we had someone here that works on string physics, as I have no more hope of describing it correctly than my 8-year old neighbor does of explaining differential equations. Anyway, the point is that we don't scrap laws of physics, we just discover that they are incomplete. Newton's laws of motion weren't invalidated by general or special relativity, they were just recognized to be an approximation based on the limitations of scale we were working at before. Thermodynamics doesn't change. It is the first method of dismissal for any theory or invention someone comes up with. If it violates the laws of thermodynamics, they need to go back to the drawing board, because they will be wrong. An informal definition of the Laws of Thermodynamics: You can't win You can't break even You can't stop playing

The first and third laws hold true on all levels, macro- and microscopic. Only the second functions solely at a macroscopic level, and even then only on closed systems. Closed systems do not exist in anything but physical models (unless we count the universe itself, making it the only observable model, that we do not have the means to fully observe). The core component of the second law of thermodynamics holds true largely because it is a restatement of the first: thermal energy always travels from hot to cold without work, because the reverse process without energy input would be the creation of energy potential... and energy cannot be created (or destroyed). The primary problem with the second law is that most versions focus on closed systems. The other problem is that it is still at odds with time reversal symmetry. Also, the second law doesn't really say that you "can't break even". In fact, it implies that your only options are "break even" or "lose". You can't decrease entropy, but a closed system can be created which does not gain entropy. The second law simply states that "perpetual motion machines cannot have a net positive amount of energy". We very well can produce "perpetual motion" devices that move forever without doing anything productive (so long as you do so with a frictionless machine, such as two object caught within each others gravity field and moving in a perfect orbit). They simply cycle through phases of kinetic and potential energy, reusing it ad infinitum. Little more than a physical screen saver, but a possibility nonetheless. Hell, most cyclic models of the universe imply that the universe itself is a perpetual machine with an total entropic value of 0. Ironically, this would simplify the second law immensely, as it could be reduced to "the total entropy of the universe can never be more or less than 0".

Arenamontanus wrote:

A better way of restating the second law is "Systems *very* likely move towards more likely configurations". In many ways thermodynamics is on a more solid footing than nearly any other physical theory.

At it's heart, the first law is the most important, and I don't think there's any possible way we can argue with that. The second law reinforces the first, with the added factor that "a closed system can never lose entropy, but may or may not gain it", none of which I'm arguing about either. However, added elements of the second law involving irreversibility are arguable, at least until we solve Loschmidt's paradox.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Sorry, but that is not true. At least math handles singularities just fine, it is only that most people never get taught the relevant parts (usually the full treatment comes up in complex analysis, although there are some topological extensions that end up in graduate school). In physics, when something goes to infinity, it is usually a sign that the theory has reached its limit of applicability. But even there singularities can be tame: the standard quantum mechanical model of a hydrogen atom found in every textbook uses a potential that has a singularity, and the electron wave-function blithely remains finite even at the centre of the atom. That said, there are a lot of more or less odd things in physics that patch things up. Dark matter is not too bad since it actually has several different kinds of observable effects (rotation curves, gravitational lensing, cosmic structure, expansion rates) but personally I am mildly sceptical to most of the things particle physicists come up with. Sure, they were right about positrons, neutrinos and quarks, but that doesn't mean I have to buy every new possible particle thrown in to get a nice symmetry group. From an EP perspective I think we should think the advanced civilizations are a bit like explaining the modern world to Aristotle: planes and satellites can fly because he were plain wrong about his theory of gravity, all the electrical and nuclear stuff is from a domain he simply didn't know was there, but the mechanism of an elevator, crane or car is in principle understandable from his physics perspective. Similarly I expect TITANs and ETI to obey the laws of thermodynamics, but they may have access to sectors of physics we have no clue about. Maybe general relativity or quantum field theory are indeed completely wrong, but the mechanism of an supertech alien device might still be recognizable as nanotechnology - we just get completely stumped by how it is powered or does its information processing. But it will not get energy from nothing or erase information without an entropy cost (but maybe we can't observe where the energy and entropy end up).

Math sort of handles singularities. Mathematical singularities are not handled, they are simply avoided, because they functionally do nothing. Dividing by 0, for instance, creates an unquantifiable number, so mathematics handles it by stating that it is an impossibility to do. Graphing y = 1/x is a bit confusing because of this, since it basically stops existing right at the point of 0, and exists everywhere else as two mirrored parabolas. It's not really handling the concept so much as it is a cop-out, like imaginary numbers (and both are annoying as hell when you're a programmer like me). That said, I agree. It's also possible that the ETI have harnessed energy forms of the universe that we have yet to discover (and I'm damn tempted to make it energon). They may have even found a way to fabricate artificial matter, something that doesn't naturally exist within the universe and plays by unusual rules. The possibilities are truly endless when you are dealing with something that is intended to be so far beyond us.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Actually, it is when you extend the reals with the imaginary numbers it becomes completely obvious what is going on. If you look at the Riemann sphere (the complex number plane with an extra point corresponding to infinity at the top and zero at the bottom) 1/z simply mirrors it across the equator! The lack of a well-defined infinity point among the real numbers explains why there is no 1/0 number (there is some algebraic reason I can't recall right now why it is not as easy to extend the reals with a "point at infinity"). In complex analysis poles (singularities like 1/z^k) are surprisingly tame; the only troublesome singularities are the essential ones (like sin(1/z)) As a programmer, you know what to do about things like this: make sure functions only act on stuff within their proper domain, and trigger an exception when this is not true. Physical theories do come with domains too but often they are not explicitly mentioned. Which means we often make mistakes when applying them outside their range, and the only warning we get is when the result is obviously wrong. Hmm,maybe the ETI are doing physics hacking. Man-in-the-middle attacks on quantum states, gravitational collapse buffer overflows. They have a rootkit installed in the electroweak interaction and are escalating their privileges to the strong nuclear force.

Even if you could define an infinity point, 1/0 still would fail largely because it would equally suit both the positive and negative infinity. Things get even more funny when working in 3 or more dimensions with vector calculations and geometric shapes... I've seen singularities which have generated fractal hyper objects (occasionally crashing a server in the process... hilarity ensues so long as we don't get caught). So much cooler than your feeble sin(1/z) fractal! Since computronium as already been brought up, I'd imagine that matter programming is already a possibility for the ETI. Hell, since the TITANs have access to computronium, the ETI might have access to "computrons"... programmable subatomic particles. Worse off, they might have "computons" (programmable gauge bosons), and be capable of editing their own physical properties as necessary at the elementary level, or even altering the fundamental forces of nature. A swarm of those would be more horrific than a nanoswarm could ever be.

The point about the thermodynamic limits to computation is good, but in practice it probably doesn't come up much. The minimum amount of energy expended per bit erased is quite small, which means that a highly efficient computer really can perform wonders in spite of the fact that it's still a finite computer. If a computer of conventional size in EP can simulate a mind, then a maximally efficient computer of the same size can simulate a civilization. The goals and motivations of an intelligence with that level of power will probably be unfathomable. It probably won't bother to talk; it could have billions of companions just as intelligent as you to talk to at any given time.

Decivre wrote:

Actually, the one interesting thing about thermodynamic limits is that a closed system can have a true entropy of 0, if built efficiently enough. Theoretically, superconductive materials make this a possibility in computers. You could potentially have a computer system which contains a closed virtual world with a multitude of simulmorphs... so long as it never needs to make any input or output (and it's universal memory/ RAM and storage memory are as efficient as a superconductor), and it is never affected by an outside influence, it would run perpetually with no further need for power.

No, this isn't correct. Erasing a bit's worth of information releases a small but finite amount of energy as heat, no matter how efficient your computer is. Because you've erased information, your computation is not reversible and so must increase the local entropy. Superconductors don't help, handwavium doesn't help; there is always a minute amount of energy spent per erasure. Your average cpu today many orders of magnitude away from being efficient enough for this to matter, of course, but the cost is there nevertheless. Of course, you can build computers that are entirely reversible and never destroy any of their intermediate results. However, the amount of computation they can do has a fixed upper limit before they run out of 'storage' for those intermediate results and must be reset.

db48x wrote:

No, this isn't correct. Erasing a bit's worth of information releases a small but finite amount of energy as heat, no matter how efficient your computer is. Because you've erased information, your computation is not reversible and so must increase the local entropy. Superconductors don't help, handwavium doesn't help; there is always a minute amount of energy spent per erasure. Your average cpu today many orders of magnitude away from being efficient enough for this to matter, of course, but the cost is there nevertheless. Of course, you can build computers that are entirely reversible and never destroy any of their intermediate results. However, the amount of computation they can do has a fixed upper limit before they run out of 'storage' for those intermediate results and must be reset.

An erased bit isn't "erased": a 0 becomes a 1, or a 1 becomes a 0. Landauer's principle is based around the unproven concept that logical processes are identical to physical ones, and an irreversible logical process (an erasure) is the same as an irreversible physical process. However, some "irreversible" logical processes in fact utilize reversible physical processes, and magnetic storage drives are in fact an example of this. This is further compounded by the fact that an individual bit switching from 1 to 0 or vice versa is a perfectly reversible process as well. There have been two papers [url=http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000115/](1)[/url] [url=http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001729/](2)[/url] that deal with this discrepancy written in just the last decade. Of course, until we have the means of producing superconductive processors (or at least a closed system), Landauer's principle is untestable, and the claim can stand. Considering that we have yet to find a superconductor that operates above 35 Kelvin, the means to sustain that temperature reasonably, or even how to produce a superconductive processor, we have a long way to go before we get there.