Lance Fortnow asked a question, What is the Volume of Information?, which Ross Snider criticised on two grounds:
- Off topic: I downvoted because I don't find this question relevant to the site (despite how infinitely interesting it is). It really doesn't meet the qualifications in the FAQ so far as I can tell, and
- Not advanced as a TCS question: the question (while legitimate and interesting) isn't really a TCS question (and so is not appropriate), and also doesn't meet the qualification here (meta.cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/225/…)
I'm generally of the opinion that the physical basis of computation is fundamental to computer science —slogan: computer science is ultimately a physical science, one that involves a lot of formal science— and is perfectly amenable to formal treatment. Indeed, quantum computation could hardly be treated rigorously if that were not so.
I'm guessing that Ross' objection is not on those grounds, but rather he finds Lance's question to be the kind of question that has too much physics in it to be good for this site.
Are we worried about this? Should we resist questions whose TCS to physics quotient gets too low?
Related: Scope of questions?