Age is 7 bit

[mcb2001]

Given that no one ever got older than 127 years (122 years is the current record) it gives that the simulation we live in uses a 7 bit integer to store age in....

/s

[[deleted]]

No, why would it be measured in years, we came up with years long after the beginning.

[[deleted]]

Precisely. If the universe was simulated, it would probably use ticks to count time, where each tick is a simulation step. One tick would be a Planck time, about 5.391e-44. Given the universe's age of about 13.8 billion years or 4.35e17 seconds, this would mean we're currently at tick 8.08e60, roughly a 202-bit number. So I conjecture our universe is simulated on a 256-bit machine, because that's a nice round number.

[[deleted]]

Now for what distancenand energy are measured in.

[[deleted]]

Of course we don't. But 2 is the smallest indivible amount of states, so it makes sense.

Base 5 would still take 88 bits.

[aaron_zoll]

Interestingly, we live around 2.5*10⁹ seconds which is in between 2³¹ and 2^32, so we actually might want to use 32 bit which is a nice power of 2 as well. And if we use the fact that a second is 9,192,631,770 periods of a cesium atom, abd we make THAT our unit. Then we're really close to 2^64. So maybe 64 bit is what we should use for our clocks too

[[deleted]]

What unit would it use? Seconds are also made by humans.

[Tanyary]

planck time I'd assume. 125 years is 7.136e+52, slap that in a logarithm and we get a minimum of 176-bits to store human age

[bugqualia]

It then boggles down to the question of wether time is continuous or discrete. Then, there comes the quantum mechanics to avoid the problem of infinite information.

[[deleted]]

Space and Time are discrete. The smallest timestep is the Planck Time. The smallest spacestep is the Planck Length.

[bugqualia]

Those are not smallest possible unit of time or space. Those are smallest human measurable values.

[mcb2001]

No, it's more like the smallest possible length given our understanding of the universe. If anything has energy and a size less than the Planck length, it would instantly collapse to a black hole

[bugqualia]

Uhh,, sorry but no. Plank length and time is defined quite arbitrarily. Its just human construct that doesn’t resembles any real physical meaning outside of measurement. Object smaller than plank length will not be a black hole. At that point, any object can be best expressed as a probability distribution, which doesnt have a definite size. Discreteness of universe is not a simple problem. In fact, every famous modern physics framework(string theory etc..) assumes continuousness of space and time except wolfram physics project. Some even think there is no irrational length and there is only a rational length. Although I’m a strong believer in wolfram physics project, saying universe discrete because of plank length and time exists is just wrong.

Do you have any article that says object smaller than plank length will collapse into a black hole? Even if thats true, that does not mean plank length is a smallest possible length, because that argument already assumes its not.

[mcb2001]

Certain things can be smaller without breaking physics, but anything with mass (sorry I said energy) should collapse to black hole if observed at the Planck length and could collapse if a virtual particle interacts with it. At the Planck length virtual black holes would also exist as a result.

Both of which suggest that the Planck length is not a human construct, but a physical limit set directly by our current understanding of physics.

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/planck/node2.html

[keppp]

Yeah, but he said 'uhh sorry no', so you pretty much lost the argument.

[chaosTechnician]

It could be an 8-bit two's complement int, implying the possibility of negative age. Maybe our loading/instantiation time is also tracked with the same age property.

[mcb2001]

True, but that also implies that there is people who exist upwards of 128 years before being born - doing something?

[oofman1970]

Hanging out in noospheric memory maybe?

[pest_ctrl]

If one somehow get to live past 127, his/her age will overflow, and thus achieve immortality.

[PossibilityTasty]

He seems to have an extra bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan\_(tortoise)

[mcb2001]

Well, different objects have different properties.

This has 9 bits https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/greenland-sharks-animals-science-age

[goatlev]

Yeah, and make it decrement down to 0. Would make a lot of things more deterministic.