论文信息 - The Second Law, Computation, And The Temporal (a)symmetry Of Memory

The Second Law, Computation, And The Temporal (a)symmetry Of Memory

A memory is a system for transferring informationfrom one moment in time to another. Photograph-type memories work by exploiting a collapse of state space flow which “initializes” the memory. The Landauer principle tells us that regardless of whether the collapsing proceeds from the past to the future or visa-versa, entropy must be greater on the collapsed side of such aflow. Consequently, the second law means that the collapsing can onlyproceed from the past to the future. This establishes the logical necessity of the empirical observation that photograph-type memories can only tell us about the past, and not the &we. In contrast to such systems, computer-type memories do not require initialization, and therefore need

D. Wolpert

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