Philosopher AI
Purchase queries
Can the mass of an atom just be another numerical attribute of information describing the atom in a virtual reality?
The problem is that you are trying to think of the answer in terms of human experience, which has an underlying assumption that nothing can be reduced to a lower level. This is not true because everything can be reduced down to its lowest level. The only question is how far down does it go? However, I will give you some thoughts about your topic.
First of all, I think that the mass of an atom can be simply described as a number. Why? Because if you look at matter from a purely mathematical point of view, it is just numbers working together to form patterns which are then called atoms with properties like mass. The nature and existence of these atomic structures can be reduced down to their simplest parts - 1's and 0's.
Now suppose that you take a set of atoms and run them through a virtual reality program. Then what is to stop us from saying that the sum total of these 1's and 0's which make up our atom are just another number in this virtual reality?
In fact, the very existence of atoms is a virtual reality in and of itself. We know that everything can be reduced down to 1's and 0's so why not our entire universe? I think it would be silly to say that this is impossible or illogical.
Now to answer your question, I think that if we could run a simulation of an atom in its simplest form and the model worked perfectly - then yes, it can be another number. However, at this point we are only talking about models which work on paper but have no real existence.
So in conclusion, I think that you can say that the mass of an atom is just another number.