🚀 go-pugleaf

Bob wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:42:35 -0800, Immortalist wrote:
>
> > Information is real & Information is physical. The universe, at its
> > deepest levels, is made not of matter and energy but of bits. Reality, in
> > some increasingly meaningful sense, is information. Information is not
> > merely something abstract and intangible but it is physical. Bits and
> > bytes of information are the foundation of reality; in other words, "it
> > from bit." Everything in the universe, from the biology of living things
> > to the cosmology of a black hole, is constructed of nothing more
> > substantial than bits of information.
> >
>
> Interesting theory in this "age of information".
>
> A centry or two ago, in the "mechanical age" of railroads, cotton gins,
> and steam engines, the then-current theory was that the universe was
> purely mechanical. All was gears, levers and billiard balls. It ws just a
> matter of scale. No matter how closely you looked, more gears, levers and
> billiard balls.
>
> Breaking out of the mechanical mind-set was the genius of Einstein.
>
> We await our next genius.

While waiting, here are two logic problems that should
barely slow down a person good at the Gedankenexperiment
which often grows out of such problems.

1. You have two cubes.  You want to paint a single digit from 0 to 9
on each of the six faces of each cube so that the two together
display any day of the month, 1 to 31.  (For the first nine days
of the months, the display reads, "01", "02", etc.)
How do you do it?

2. If you pack 1000 small cubes into a larger cube so that all the
faces of the larger cube are flush, how many small cubes will
not be exposed to the outside, that is, have no face that
lies on a face of the larger cube?

One hint. The Wikipedia has some info on Gedankenexperiments,
quoted below:

   Ein Gedankenexperiment ist ein gedankliches Hilfsmittel,
   um bestimmte Theorien zu untermauern, zu widerlegen, zu
   veranschaulichen oder weiter zu denken. Es wird dabei
   gedanklich eine Situation konstruiert, die real so nicht oder
   nur sehr schwer herzustellen ist (zum Beispiel eine Reise mit
   annähernd Lichtgeschwindigkeit). Sodann malt man sich im
   Geiste aus, welche Folgen sich aus dieser Situation ergeben,
   wenn man die Theorie auf die Situation anwendet. Gewissermaßen
   wird also ein Experiment in Gedanken simuliert. Ein
   Gedankenexperiment ist jedoch kein Experiment im eigentlichen
   Sinne. Letzteres beleuchtet Theorien durch empirische Anschauung
   von außen, ein Gedankenexperiment ist jedoch innerhalb der Theorie
   gefangen, der empirische Aspekt fehlt.



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