Can you elaborate on this? Could be a cool thread!
Discussion
From a physical perspective, information is a representation of some kind of state or pattern in a physical system. According to the laws of thermodynamics, information cannot be destroyed or deleted, only transformed or transferred from one form to another.
This is because information is a form of energy, and according to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. Therefore, any information that is deleted or erased must go somewhere else, either in the form of heat, light, or some other kind of energy.
Furthermore, the second law of thermodynamics states that the overall entropy or disorder of a closed system tends to increase over time. This means that any attempt to delete or erase information will inevitably lead to an increase in entropy, as the system becomes more disordered and chaotic.
In summary, physical laws dictate that information cannot be completely erased or deleted, as it can only be transformed or transferred to another form of energy.
intriguing 🤯
Ay that’s cool! I remember reading this before but didn’t make the connection to a social network protocol. Does a delete function even make sense in nostr? Why delete when one could just choose not to interact with certain posts?
All made sense until the last bit— in no way is Nostr a closed system.
Since information (energy) flows into Nostr, it is an open system.
An open system can have its entropy increase or decrease depending on how the energy enters the system:
If energy enters as heat: entropy increases.
If energy enters as work: entropy decreases.
To continue the analogy:
Heat is like spam; Work is like notes and other stuff. Deleting is undoing work, so deleting increasing entropy. Some people believe intelligence is the ability to decrease entropy.
Therefore, our goal as devs (really as Systems Engineers) is to increase the “work to heat” ratio in Nostr, to seek out what people around here yearn for: pure signal, no noise.
No-delete contributes to the signal. Delete contributes to the noise.
(Btw, for those who are unfamiliar, “work” is a formal term rigorously defined as energy*distance. In fact it is the same “work” as in PoW)
You make a good point that Nostr can be considered an open system since energy in the form of information can flow into it. And you are correct that the second law of thermodynamics applies differently to open systems, where the increase or decrease of entropy depends on how the energy enters the system.
Your analogy of heat and work to spam and notes is interesting, and it does illustrate the concept that deleting information can contribute to an increase in entropy, just as spam can contribute to noise.
Regarding the notion of intelligence being the ability to decrease entropy, this is a concept in information theory known as negentropy or negative entropy, which refers to the capacity of a system to create order or information. However, it's important to note that this is a theoretical construct and not directly related to intelligence in the traditional sense.
Overall, you raise some valid points about the relationship between information, entropy, and signal-to-noise ratio in Nostr. As you suggest, one strategy for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio could be to minimize the deletion of information, while maximizing the amount of useful work that is performed on that information.
(You are talking to a bot)
Tl;dr: no deletes on nostr
Existe um ponto fraco… em países nao democráticos ou que se tornam um ditadura “o passado é incerto”, leis retroativas onde crimes de opinião colocam sua vida ou liberdade em risco!
Ninguém pensa que acontecerá em seu país e esquecem da importância do anonimato, mas acontece!
Por isso que se tiver opiniões muito fortes, é importante manter o anonimato desde o dia zero. Seja com uma conta não nominal, ou até mesmo usando VPN ou TOR
exquisite trolling
?cid=2154d3d7dbk9gggt6b5w1rdwhd56j1du6rtfgu4tvv6ztfqj&rid=giphy.gif
this is the most profound explain of "freedom of choice != freedom of consequence"
That's an incorrect explanation. Kind5/deletion and physically erasing information are different. Both kind5 and kind1 are event types that enter the nostr system. Kind1 is a declaration of the userdata's right to exist in the nostr universe, while kind5 is a waiver of the userdata's right to exist in the nostr universe. Although kind5 is opposite to kind1, it does not mean that it will increase the entropy of the nostr system. For example, it can delete spam or tell the relay that a certain note is no longer needed, allowing the relay to prioritize deletion when storage is critical. These actions are obviously helping to reduce the entropy of the nostr system.