Everything Science

"New hypothesis could prove our understanding of the universe completely incorrect" is the most overdone headline in history. Show me experimental evidence that we live in a simulation and I'll take the hypothesis seriously.

Shutdown -t 0

Poweroff

Sudo shutdown now

So the Melvin in the article doesn't understand the difference between a model in physics and real physics. There's more than a few bends of definitions and misrepresentations in that article but the first glaringly obvious one is:

The second law of thermodynamics holds that systems spontaneously evolve toward states of higher entropy...

That's not what the 2nd law of thermodynamics states. It says that in a closed system entropy is always increasing. Invoking the word evolutionis misleading at best and malicious at worst. The author goes on to state that you can't reduce entropy which is, again, not what the 2nd law of thermodynamics states precisely and ignores the very important CLOSED SYSTEM aspect of the definition. From our current understanding of the universe it isn't a closed system (see black holes).

He then builds on this poor understanding of thermodynamics:

Originally, Vopson had also anticipated that the entropy within information systems would similarly increase.

Why would you think that? Also there's no definition of what they mean by "information system" in this context. Why would you think that any "information system" is a closed system when it most likely is being acted upon by an outside force (ie adding data to the system or categorizing by outside forces?). At this point they are arm waving hard enough I'm surprised they didn't reach the stratosphere.

“I knew then that this revelation had far-reaching implications across various scientific disciplines,” Vopson recently said.

I promise it doesn't, at least not how he's presented it, and whenever someone makes bold claims like that with a shakey ass theory, I usually assume they're a bit of a crackpot. I think the following bit is an outright lie that Melvin came up with:

According to Vopson, “physical reality is fundamentally made up of bits of information, from which our experience of space-time emerges.”

Which is borderline a nonsense phrase, but fundamentally is information theory of the universe and was theorized by Stephen Hawking, not Melvin who doesn't understand basic physics. Hawking also pointed out that the universe isn't a closed system because of Hawking Radiation that is all around us. Meaning we can't apply the 2nd law to the universe as a whole... Melvin should really read Hawking God Plays Dice essay for comprehension.

He goes on to try to apply his misunderstanding of thermodynamics to other "rules" in physics without acknowledging that those "rules" are really just basic models. He also somehow forgets that electrons are a thing and affected by temperature. Then he drops this hilariously wrong bombshell:

My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature’s inclination towards it,” Vopson says, likening his process to how a computer undergoing routine maintenance will delete or compress excess code, allowing it to save storage space and perform more efficiently.

What? Nature is a closed system now? Not only thay but the macro ecological state of nature can be reduced to THERMODYNAMICS? You expect me to believe that:

A. "Nature" is a closed system. (As in a thermodynamics sense cause, you know, the Sun exists.)

B. "Nature" is trending toward order. (How? It's never defined or stated what they mean here and just uses a shakey, and very wrong, analogy to try to define what they mean.)

C. Routine maintenance on computer systems is deleting code and is somehow NOT an outside force in that system.

Man I hope he never works as a sysadmin cause routine maintenance shouldn't delete or compress stored code. Rather it should rearrange or remove unused information, you know the entropy of the disk or something according to Melvin. There's a big difference here that he never acknowledges because it goes against his poorly constructed theory...

At this point I quit reading. It's just so poorly thought through and dishonest I couldn't power through. Every time I read something like this I wonder how these PhDs got this far without being slapped down by a colleague.

That's a relief.