1.3 The Mercy of Forgetting: If QCA Systems Do Not Perform Garbage Collection (Forgetting), Accumulated Error Correction Codes Will Exhaust All Computational Power. Death Is Complete Formatting, Allowing You to Start Light in the Next Iteration and Love Anew.
In the previous two sections, we explained inertia as attachment to the current state, and the solidification of values as topological rigidity. This seems to suggest that maintaining the status quo is life’s instinct. However, if this “maintenance” is pushed to the extreme, life will face a disaster.
This section will explore the physical necessity of Forgetting and Death from the perspective of computational science. We will prove: In a QCA universe with finite resources, eternal memory equals system crash; and death is the garbage collection that the system must execute to restart evolution.
1.3.1 The Curse of Error Correction Codes: Accumulated Entropy Debt
In QCA networks, maintaining a complex topological knot (such as consciousness) requires resisting environmental thermal fluctuations. To preserve information integrity, living systems must run Quantum Error Correction Codes.
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Mechanism: By introducing auxiliary qubits (Ancilla Qubits), detect and repair bit-flip errors in the main system.
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Cost: According to Landauer’s principle, each error correction operation (resetting auxiliary bits) generates waste heat (entropy). More seriously, over time, the system accumulates vast amounts of “error correction history” or “redundant data”.
This is like a long-running operating system. Over time, the registry becomes bloated, fragmented files accumulate, and background processes multiply.
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Computational resistance: To maintain this vast and outdated system, most of the CPU’s computational power () is used for “maintenance” and “compatibility” rather than “innovation” and “computation.”
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Rigidity: The system becomes slower and slower, increasingly unable to adapt to new environmental inputs. This is the physical essence of aging—the accumulation of Entropy Debt.
1.3.2 Death as Formatting
When entropy debt accumulates to the point where the system’s computational power cannot pay the interest (maintain steady state), system collapse is inevitable.
But from a QCA perspective, this collapse (death) is not failure, but a system-level optimization strategy.
Definition 1.3 (Computational Definition of Death):
Death is the disassembly operation of a topological knot. It releases quantum bit resources trapped in old structures and resets the internal states of these bits (memory/error correction history) to maximum entropy state (heat bath).
This is equivalent to formatting a hard drive.
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Pessimistic perspective: You lose all memories, lose the “self.”
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Optimistic perspective: You clear all “error codes,” all “psychological trauma,” all “prejudices.”
Without death, a person who has lived for a hundred million years would have their thinking clogged by countless memory fragments. They would be unable to generate any new thoughts, only cycling infinitely through old memories. Immortality (without reset) is eternal imprisonment.
1.3.3 Restart and Starting Light
Why do we need the “next generation”?
Because reproduction is a process of “Code Refactoring”.
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Parents extract the most core, most essential parts of their respective code (DNA).
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Discard all redundantly accumulated data (epigenetic noise, personal memories).
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Recompile and run on a brand new, clean hardware (fertilized egg).
This new life (Next Iteration) has extremely low initial entropy and extremely high plasticity. It has no historical baggage, no old-era prejudices. It can freely explore, learn, and love anew.
Conclusion:
Forgetting is not a defect, but a mercy.
It not only protects your CPU from overload, but also protects your soul from being devoured by the past.
Death is not the end; it is cache clearing.
It is precisely because of death that the universe can maintain the wonder of first sight in every new life’s eyes.
(Chapter 1 Complete)
(Author’s Note: Here we complete Chapter 1 of “The Physics of Nostalgia.” We have explained inertia, stubbornness, and death in physical language. Next, we will enter Chapter 2 “Entropy and the Sorrow of Time,” exploring the aesthetic experience brought by the irreversibility of time’s passage—regret and wabi-sabi.)