Holographic Principle
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Do we really live inside of a Hologram?
Well, no. Or, at least, I don't think so; or not in the way we might typically think of a hologram. But mathematically speaking it suggests that the holographic principle is a solution to the information paradox.
But what does it mean that mathematically speaking there exist a holographic principle about our reality? The explanation of that question exists in the quantum realm.
Can you make a 3D object with only 2D info?
The answer, of course, is yes, and that is what is traditionally called a hologram. The 3Dness of a hologram is the result of an illusion that can preserve the 3D information that's usually lost in a 2D image.
But what does it mean that mathematically speaking there exist a holographic principle about our reality? The explanation of that question exists in the quantum realm.
Can you make a 3D object with only 2D info?
The answer, of course, is yes, and that is what is traditionally called a hologram. The 3Dness of a hologram is the result of an illusion that can preserve the 3D information that's usually lost in a 2D image.
If you were to look at the picture of this car, you could only ever see 2-dimensional slices of that car at any given angle. You would never be able to see the car from the other side. So any information about what was on the back side of the car is lost in your 2-dimensional photo. For all we know, the other side of the car that you can't see could have dents, dings, scratches and discoloration and you would have no idea because you couldn't see it.
But if you can take that 3-dimensional information and project it such that it becomes visible to the viewer of the photo, then you would have essentially created a hologram and stopped your loss of information. So does that mean all of reality is a 3-d projection of 2-dimensional information? The answer to that is... well... it's complicated.
What researchers have realized is that the 3Dness of space is mathematically equivalent to a 2D space without gravity.
This seems weird because after all isn't it gravity that causes the motion of objects in the first place? Yet, if we get rid of movement, and we just want to describe a still non-moving object, everything about that object, both its external and internal 3D details can be mapped to a 2D plane with 1 bit of information per plank space unit, meaning you can't have any bit of information stored in an area smaller than a plank space unit.
If this is true about Black holes, then why wouldn't it be true about the entire universe? And, if the entire Universe which includes me, you, how we feel, and our entire lives could theoretically be stored on a 2-dimensional surface, then why would reality actually need to be physically 3-dimesnional at all? This is true because all 3d information can be compressed to a 2D surface if it is stored highly scrambled; and, that's the secret of information compression.
The more compression we need, the more scrambling of the information that we need as well. The more scrambled the information, the higher the storage capacity that we have.
Scramble information high enough and ideally you can store near an near infinite amount of information but where does entropy play into all this? Well that is when we get to the Beckenstein Bound, a limit relating to Black Hole Entropy.
But doesn't Entropy predict that given enough time all information becomes lost in disorder and chaos? Yes, but lost does not mean destroyed. Even if something is infinitely lost, it still does not mean it is destroyed. It is still there somewhere even if it were to take a mind an infinite amount time to find it.
So, I guess you could say after we die, we are not destroyed; we just become infinitely lost. And, maybe one day, we will all find ourselves again somewhere in the depth of infinite spacetime or the infinite simulation.
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