Our notion of an instantaneous state of space arises from our processing speed relative to distances, so concepts like space and time depend on observer scale.
If observers were planetary-scale, light-speed delays force describing space as reference-frame dependent rather than a single instant state.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Interplanetary Example Shows Scale Effects
Wolfram illustrates the point with interplanetary travel and astronomy where light-speed delays make a single state of space invalid.
He uses practical examples to show observer scale altering scientific descriptions.
insights INSIGHT
Heat Death Is Perspective Not Erasure
What we call heat death (random thermal motion) reflects our limited observational capacities, not loss of encoded information.
Future observers who can inspect individual molecules would find rich, encrypted correlations rather than mere randomness.
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Do different observers think differently? Or does the principle of computational equivalence mean that all observers think the same way?
Stephen Wolfram takes this question and runs with it.
If we had brains the size of planets, he suggests, the finite speed of light would force us to think of space and time differently, and abandon the fiction of an instantaneous state of space.
If we had brains the size of molecules, he says, we’d no longer think of the motion of molecules as random, and we’d find the heat death of the universe a far more interesting prospect.
And if we were able to hold multiple paths through the multiway graph in our minds at the same time, we’d have multiple threads of experience... and some complicated conversations!
We think the way we think because we are the way we are... if we were much larger-scale, much smaller-scale or if we had multiway minds, then we’d think very differently.
And this has some serious consequences, Stephen suggests, in fields as diverse as molecular biology and parallel computing.
