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I would like to understand if any and all physical processes taking place, necessarily imply computations are also taking place.

As a motivating scenario for the question, consider the following:

Around some distant star in a some faraway godforsaken galaxy, exists a boring gas cloud. Here, two protons careen towards each other on an inevitable collision course. The protons' repel each other, and their trajectories inevitably change and off they go.

Has a computation taken place?

Qmechanic
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tamale
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    How do you define computation? – Tobias Fünke Oct 11 '21 at 18:49
  • @Jakob is the definition ambiguous? – tamale Oct 11 '21 at 18:50
  • It is not certain that computation takes place. However, if you do consider it to be a process, then gravitating bodies interrupt said processes (time dilation). It's like process interruption, in computer science. The shorter the gap, the more the processes are interrupted. – shawn_halayka Oct 11 '21 at 20:49
  • Unless you restrict what computation represents, in your mind, the question belongs to the philosophy SE… – Cosmas Zachos Oct 11 '21 at 21:52
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    Please don't delete and re-ask closed questions. – Chris Oct 11 '21 at 23:52
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    I'm closing this because it's unclear what you're asking without a clear definition of what you mean by "computation." – Chris Oct 11 '21 at 23:54
  • @Chris The old question said "make the question more objective, or delete it and ask a new one", so that's what I did. It's also unclear what you mean by "computation" being ambiguous. If the answer "depends on your definition of computation", then that's an answer and you should probably post it instead of closing a valid question. – tamale Oct 12 '21 at 00:48
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    Well, 'depends on your definition' could be an answer to almost every question... – Tobias Fünke Oct 12 '21 at 06:46

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No, not according to any definition of computation you will find in a well known dictionary. One might compute the trajectory of the two protons, but the protons themselves perform no calculation- they simply respond to forces.

Marco Ocram
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  • Are you equivocating calculation with computation? – tamale Oct 11 '21 at 20:37
  • Did you mean 'equating'? – Marco Ocram Oct 11 '21 at 21:32
  • I based my answer on the definitions of computation to be found in well-known dictionaries. Which dictionary definition did you have in mind when you posed your question? – Marco Ocram Oct 11 '21 at 21:34
  • This definition includes non-arithmetic cases. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computation). When you ask "which definition" is used, do you mean to imply there are multiple valid definitions of computation? – tamale Oct 12 '21 at 00:52
  • also: this paper (the end of it) talks about the universe simply computing by virtue of information processing solely. (https://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-1-6817-4093-5/chapter/bk978-1-6817-4093-5ch1) – tamale Oct 12 '21 at 01:54
  • There are multiple definitions of virtually every word in English- see a dictionary. The use of the word 'computation' in the sense to which you alludes an obscure one- you will not yet find any mainstream dictionary in which the definitions of computation will include one relating to the motion of particles other, possibly, than in devices used or constructed for computational purposes. – Marco Ocram Oct 12 '21 at 07:10
  • not alluding - asking. – tamale Oct 12 '21 at 14:35
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The universe is real. it contains things like rocks.

Physics exists only in the mind. It contains things like mathematics. Physics is a model of the universe. You can do calculations to predict the outcome of an experiment or something else going on in the universe. This is why calculations are useful.

The universe itself plays out without calculations. (Unless you want to count how a computer or brain plays out.) There is no calculation in the trajectory of a rock. The trajectory just happens as a response to forces.

mmesser314
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  • Are you then suggesting that there can be no computation without an agent explicitly trying to compute? – tamale Oct 11 '21 at 20:14
  • Indeed, electrons are not idiot-savants at solving Schrodinger's equations. They just do what comes naturally. – Jon Custer Oct 11 '21 at 20:15
  • @JonCuster Are you saying then that a digital computer running an algorithm without any agents involved is not computing? – tamale Oct 11 '21 at 20:17
  • I would say computation requires something doing the computing. I would say that computation is doing a series of operations whose output is a number. Electrons repelling each other is not what I think of as a computation. A simple computation might be allowing an electron to move alongside a ruler and reading the position at some time. But without reading, it is not a computation. – mmesser314 Oct 11 '21 at 20:25
  • @mmesser314 I can agree with that, but this seemingly just pushes the onus further down: What state of matter needs to be put together, such that this state of matter can now do the "reading", and hence we can now talk about a computation occurring? – tamale Oct 11 '21 at 20:34
  • Whatever state of matter you or someone else interprets as describing a number. I think we are getting farther from physics and into semantics. Concepts like number are in the mind. For more like this on a different topic, see What is Gray, from a physics POV? – mmesser314 Oct 11 '21 at 20:41