Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept

Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by sdevonoes on Friday July 10, 2026 @04:31PM (#48864844)

From my naive pov: Related to computation is the concept of state (I know, functional languages can get away without it, sort of). I always wondered how the universe “knows” the mass of the sun. If there are some underlying functions/computations “running” in the background to keep planets moving and so on, and if the mass of planets is a key element in such computations… then either: the mass is calculated “on the fly” every time (seems expensive) or it’s a variable (how is it updated? Where is it “stored”?)

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by amwet on Friday July 10, 2026 @05:00PM (#48865201)

I think it’s easier to conceive of it like this: Each point in spacetime IS storage. Storage can be queried by interacting with it (in a variety of ways), though the process of querying affects the value not only of the querier, but also the queried, which may have side-effects as well. The interaction itself is the computation.

A simple example for the computation: It’s like placing boxes next to each other. Yes I could say 1 box + 3 boxes = 4 boxes, via explicit calculation. I could also simply place 1 box next to three boxes, and without having to explicitly calculate, by nature of the interaction, the result (4 boxes) has been produced

There is no background computation or storage. The universe IS computation and storage. Each spacetime quanta IS storage, and each interaction IS computation.

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by ianburrell on Friday July 10, 2026 @09:44PM (#48867725)

Spacetime isn't quantized as far as we know. We don't know since we don't have quantum gravity or ability to probe Planck scale. Quantum fields are continuous, it is excitations in the field, particles, that are quantized.

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by amwet on Saturday July 11, 2026 @12:19AM (#48868706)

Ah, I thought we didn’t have strong evidence either way. Regardless, I shouldn’t have stated spacetime quanta so matter-of-factly. I just have an easier time conceptualizing if I treat everything like hypervoxels and that leaked in.

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by lmpdev on Sunday July 12, 2026 @03:08AM (#48879031)

The answer is we don’t know for certain

There are even some philosophers/mathematicians who attest to finitism (they’re not mainstream, though), but if correct would undermine our idea of fields and continuous structures more broadly

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by khalic on Friday July 10, 2026 @04:59PM (#48865194)

Functional programming very much has states. But you’re describing the transitions instead of the states directly. What it does is removing the hidden states and effects and makes them typed, explicit and contained

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by dleeftink on Friday July 10, 2026 @04:58PM (#48865166)

As far as I understand it, the storage is the space, or rather, spacetime emerges from a system's informational capacity and the degrees of freedom along which information can spread. On the balance all information is retained but undergoes various phase transitions (the 'computations').

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by AlotOfReading on Friday July 10, 2026 @04:52PM (#48865096)

The somewhat abbreviated answer is that the "state" is formalized into the concept of fields. All the physical properties we can observe are from coupling with the relevant fields. The speed at which changes can propagate in fields is C, hence the speed of light being the same value.

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Re:Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept by peter_m1 on Saturday July 11, 2026 @10:05AM (#48872185)

The theory of general relativity answers this exact question. It has been tested experimentally and has been found to be correct in the classical regime. By correct I mean that the experimental data agrees with theoretical prediction.

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