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Why does "deep abstraction" lose it's usefulness in the far past and future? — LessWrong

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Why does "deep abstraction" lose it's usefulness in the far past and future?

by Garrett Baker

9th Jul 2020

1 min read

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Why does "deep abstraction" lose it's usefulness in the far past and future?

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It could be talking about:

In the far past of the universe:

Physics might have been different (look up the beginning of the universe - right after that)
I'm not sure there were stars (pretty sure there weren't planets for a long time) - big differences like that

In the far future of the universe:

Energy might cease to be usable (equilibrium), maybe some physics changes
The stars die out

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Yesterday this post mentioned the "unreasonable effectiveness of abstraction" particularly noting

in the far past or the very far future, the state of the universe may be such that deep abstraction would be unlikely to remain useful (and thus "effective").

This makes no sense to me, and I was wondering if anyone could point me towards an explanation.