Episode 6: Information Theory

What this episode covers

Albert and Josh take a journey through Information Theory: Shannon’s entropy, Landauer’s “information is physical,” and why black holes store “memory” on their horizons—plus a quick nod to Wheeler’s It from Bit, simulation hypothesis, and of course few tangents to keep things fun.🔗 Resources and ReferencesShannon’s A Mathematical Theory of Communication (overview)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_CommunicationShannon entropy (definition, intuition, examples)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)Original Shannon paper (archival PDF mirror)https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdfComputation, Cryptography, & “Information is Physical”Landauer’s Principle (erasing 1 bit costs kT ln 2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principleLandauer’s 1961 paper (PDF reprint)https://homepages.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~vondelft/Lehre/InformationProcessingInQMSS09/Literature/Landauer61.pdfMaxwell’s Demon (history + modern resolution)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maxwell-demon/Black Holes, Entropy, & HolographyBekenstein–Hawking entropy (area law)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein%E2%80%93Hawking_entropyBlack hole information paradox (overview)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradoxHolographic principle (overview)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principleSusskind, The World as a Hologram (classic review)https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9409089’t Hooft, The Holographic Principle (short primer)https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0003004Don Page (1994), Information Loss in Black Holes and/or Conscious Beings?https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9411193History: Shannon ↔ TuringAlan Turing (bio + the universal machine)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_TuringClaude Shannon (bio; logic circuits thesis)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon“It from Bit” & PhilosophyWheeler’s “It from Bit” (context + quotes)https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2181Bostrom’s Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (paper + hub)https://www.simulation-argument.com/Simulation hypothesis (overview)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesisDeep-Dive Reviews You MentionedBekenstein (2003), Black holes and information theoryhttps://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0311049Lowe & Thorlacius (1999), AdS/CFT and the Information Paradoxhttps://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9903237Page (1993), Average Entropy of a Subsystem (the Page curve math)https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9305007

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