At the rate we create information today, one physicist computes that in 350 years, the energy will outweigh the atoms of Earth. Eric Holloway responds:
Is Vopson’s theory justified? I am a bit skeptical, but the reversing of Landauer’s Principle appears sound. If we assume the opposite, that creating information does not increase the energy and mass in the system, then we end up with a situation where we create infinite negative energy and mass by constantly creating and destroying information.
Let’s take one more little step off Vopson’s idea. Let’s accept that creation of information can indeed increase the amount of energy and mass in a system. But, according to the conservation of energy, the energy in a closed system remains constant. So, if Vopson is correct we now have a mystery because his theory is in tension with the conservation of energy. The only solution is that the system is not closed. So where is the opening in the system? If the system is physically closed, then the influx of information must come from outside the physical realm.
Eric Holloway, “Does information weigh something after all? What if it does?” at Mind Matters News (April 11, 2022)
The paper is open access.
Takehome: Vopson’s idea that creating information also creates mass and energy is fascinating — and it promises even bigger mysteries than the ones we address now.
You may also wish to read: Is GPT-3 the “reborn doll” of artificial intelligence? Unlike the reality doll collectors, GPT-3 engineers truly believe that scaling up the model size will suddenly cause GPT-3 to think and talk like a real human. If we doubt that the reborn dolls will ever become real babies, why should we expect a different outcome with the GPT-3 language model? (Eric Holloway)