A physicist argues that information is at the root of everything

Re:A physicist argues that information is at the root of eve... by jamesbritt on Sunday April 25, 2010 @04:15PM (#1293435)

"It's a book review -- doesn't really explain what the physicist is arguing in any meaningful sense."

Indeed, the review ends with this:

"Mr Vedral makes a persuasive argument for a third option: information can be created out of nothing."

That's a remarkable claim, and the review says zip about how it is presented. It seems that it would also be the key concept of the book, making this a pretty lame review.

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Re:A physicist argues that information is at the root of eve... by Avshalom on Sunday April 25, 2010 @05:00PM (#1293526)

Well it's not really remarkable at all, the argument is basically that information and entropy are mathematically equivalent and so information like entropy spontaneously increases.

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Re:A physicist argues that information is at the root of eve... by frisco on Sunday April 25, 2010 @06:54PM (#1293683)

Information and entropy are absolutely not equivalent; entropy describes the upper bound on information content, but says little about the actual information contained in a coding. The statement that information is spontaeously created isn't based in any physics I know of.

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Re:A physicist argues that information is at the root of eve... by Qz on Sunday April 25, 2010 @08:49PM (#1293839)

How does the (conventional) big bang theory fit into that? At first glance it seems like valid evidence for spontaneous creation of information.

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