I Think About This A Lot

[Krocket]

Isn't this image being displayed to your screen using nothing but 1s and 0s? The basics of all code can be traced back to 1s and 0s. Even RGB color, this website, and everything my computer does, has to essentially use binary, correct? If so, that's incredible.

Makes me think more and more that we could all be just a bunch of randomly generated 1s and 0s that happened to make a universe.

[ManOfDisguise]

MIND=BLOWN

[Fred Castellum]

Yup that's something that I find pretty awesome. Yay for science! String theory anyone? 

[TheNinjaNextDor]

101010101010001010110101101010101010101010010101

 

I have made a galaxy.

[Ciccioo]

did you just watch that computerphile video?

[SirRoderick]

Well it's not random, that wouldn't really work x3

[Krocket]

did you just watch that computerphile video?

The one on binary? Yes, actually. Didn't learn much but it did bring the subject back to me.

 

Well it's not random, that wouldn't really work x3

If you randomly generate enough binary you can technically create any code right? If so then you can do it so many times you could create Windows 7

[Ciccioo]

If you randomly generate enough binary you can technically create any code right? If so then you can do it so many times you could create Windows 7

or half life 3

[ohJey]

Isn't this image being displayed to your screen using nothing but 1s and 0s? The basics of all code can be traced back to 1s and 0s. Even RGB color, this website, and everything my computer does, has to essentially use binary, correct? If so, that's incredible.

Makes me think more and more that we could all be just a bunch of randomly generated 1s and 0s that happened to make a universe.

There's actually a theory out there that says our universe is a simulation on a computer within a simulation on a computer, and so on.  So if we ever get the technology for such a simulation, there could possibly be a simulation in our simulation

[alpenwasser]

What has to do binary code with the universe?

 

Information is actually a key concept of physics.

You don't really need binary code to represent information, you can do that

with lots of other codes (say, words and letters), but binary is the minimum

base required (can't have a base 1 or base 0 code), and it's very well suited

for processing by electronic circuitry. It's pretty complicated stuff, I can't really

claim to properly understand it TBH.

Claude Shannon wrote one of the fundamental papers on the subject, evaluating

what information actually is and all that.

EDIT:

There's a BBC Documentary by Jim Al-Khalili from 2012 that explains some parts

of this in a pretty accessible manner for non-experts, it's called "Order and Disorder".

 

It's a two-parter, the second part is about Information, one of the more

interesting things in it is the Maxwell's Demon Segment, since it illustrates

the link between information and the physical world rather nicely IMHO (at

least for a non-expert such as myself):

Start at 51:41 for that segment, unfortunately the video does not embed

properly when I add a start time to the link.

http://youtu.be/Fu80iKjTjdA

(part I is about entropy IIRC)

/EDIT

 

If you randomly generate enough binary you can technically create any code right? If so then you can do it so many times you could create Windows 7

Ah yes, the infinite monkeys theorem.

One drawback in that: In order to find the useful information, you'd have to

sort through a ton of garbage data and be able to detect non-garbage patterns.

But yes, random data generated into infinity should eventually reproduce every

pattern that can possibly exist AFAIK.

Edited April 6, 2014 by alpenwasser
video added

[BrightCandle]

I highly recommend the book called CODE. It takes this idea of encoding information with binary and teaches you how to do everything from encode text, images and design and build computer hardware all using the basics of 0s and 1s. Its a really easy to read book as well, a lot of fun and at the end of it you'll have learnt a lot of stuff (which admittedly is usually in good degrees, but delivered far less well).

[LePawel]

Here's a similar thought.
Image generator.
Piece of software that creates let's say a 1024x1024 picture, with every combination of colours possible for all those pixels. Eventually, you'd end up with a library of every person on the planet, having sex with every other person on the planet, in every position imaginable.