November 17, 2008
#505: A Bunch of Rocks
[[Man is walking, alone in desert. Man is narrating his own situation]]
Narrator: So I’m stuck in this desert for eternity.
Narrator: I don’t know why. I just woke up here one day.
Narrator: I never feel hungry or thirsty.
Narrator: I just walk.
Narrator: Sand and rocks…
Narrator: …stretch to infinity.
Narrator: As best as I can tell.
[[Man is sitting in the desert, in a contemplative position]]
Narrator: There’s plenty of time for thinking out here.
Narrator: An eternity really.
[[Man is sketching stuff in the sand]]
Narrator: I’ve rederived modern math in the sand
Narrator: and then some.
[[Different graph types are depicted]]
Narrator: Physics too. I worked out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity.
Narrator: Took a lot of thinking, but this place has fewer distractions than a Swiss patent office.
[[Man is walking along the desert, laying out rocks]]
Narrator: One day I started laying down rows of rocks.
[[Man continues to deploy rocks]]
Narrator: Each new row followed from the last in a simple pattern.
[[Image continues to zoom out showing laid out rocks]]
Narrator: With the right set of rules and enough space,
Narrator: I was able to build a computer.
Narrator: Each new row of stones is the next iteration of the computation.
Narrator: Sure it’s rocks instead of electricity, but it’s the same* thing.
Narrator: Just slower.
Notation: *Turing-complete
[[Man in contemplative pose]]
Narrator: After a while, I programmed it to be a physics simulator.
[[Image of binary encoding depicted in rocks]]
Narrator: Every piece of information about a particle was encoded as a string of bits written in the stones.
[[Representations of two particles interacting]]
Narrator: With enough time and space, I could fully simulate two particles interacting.
[[Man standing before the vastness of the desert]]
Narrator: But I have infinite time and space.
[[Depiction of a universe]]
Narrator: So I decided to simulate a universe.
[[Man is walking about his rocks, changing placement]]
Narrator: The eons blur past as I walk down a single row.
[[Zoom out of the rows of rocks]]
Narrator: The rows blur past to compute a single step.
[[Shows placement of two rocks]]
Narrator: And in the simulation…
[[The two rocks have moved; an after-image of their previous placement is present]]
Narrator: …another instant ticks by.
[[Man #2 observes a mote of dust vanish]]
Narrator: So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something
[[Man is rearranging rocks]]
Narrator: I’m sorry. I must have misplaced a rock…
Narrator: …sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia.
[[Man in front of the vastness of his infinite desert]]
Narrator: Oh and…
[[Man is in a classroom setting, girl and professor are present]]
Narrator: if you think the minutes in your morning lecture are taking a long time for YOU…