The Holographic Entropy Bound

2.6.0 Here I'll briefly review some other aspects of physics that seem possibly important in supporting life and complexity, but which aren't quite as central to the main story I'm telling. This subsection is a bit of a grab bag. 2.6.1 Time, Space, Locality2.6.1.1 Some rather obvious features of our world: we live in a universe with time, space, and local interactions, i.e. when evolving in time, the state of a given region is determined by some local neighbourhood of the region. 2.6.1.2 These are features we share with the Game of Life and other cellular automata, so they don't explain why we don't live there, although they do differentiate us from other mathematical structures. 2.6.1.3 Time seems necessary for something like life to exist, period. After all, what is life if it doesn't try to change or optimize its surroundings, which definitionally implies some sort of ability to affect other things, i.e. they are a function of the life-form's decisions, i.e. they are in its future. Whereas things that a life-form perceives are in its past. • 2.6.1.3.1 There are subtleties here related to the low-entropy initial conditions and the retroactive nature of quantum branching. More on this later.2.6.1.4 As for space, we're very used to it because we live here, but it's worth appreciating how much complexity and ability to create useful structures comes "for free" from living in 3D space. Padlocks and proteins are good examples (but really, you can probably look at anything around you and see this). • 2.6.1.4.1 Sokoban puzzles are a fun way to see how even the most primitive notions of space (pushing blocks on a 2D grid) can give rise to extremely intricate and complex interactions. The Game of Life is another example, of course.Figure: Locks and proteins are examples of the complex structures that can be created in 3D space. From here and here. 2.6.1.5 Locality means that the time evolution of some bounded region is only affected by some bounded neighbouring region. Thi