Seth Lloyd Quotes.
I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it’s capable of performing universal computation, but it’s plausible that it is.
It’s also a reasonable scientific program to look at the dynamics of the standard model and to try to prove from that dynamics that it is computationally capable.
Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.
Of course, not everybody’s willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, – if the experiments don’t work, then it means it’s not science.
In order to figure out how to make atoms compute, you have to learn how to speak their language and to understand how they process information under normal circumstances.
Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.
Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.
One of the things that I’ve been doing recently in my scientific research is to ask this question: Is the universe actually capable of performing things like digital computations?
Merely by existing and evolving in time – by existing – any physical system registers information, and by evolving in time it transforms or processes that information.
Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.
Bits of ignorance are like viruses that are copied and spread by interaction.
Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.
According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we’re sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here.
We have a picture for how complexity arises, because if the universe is computationally capable, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that things are so entirely out of control.
What’s happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.
Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics.
Another feature that everybody notices about the universe is that it’s complex.
Something else has happened with computers.
Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that’s what sex is about; that’s what history is about.
If you wanted to build the most powerful computer you could, you can’t do better than including everything in the universe that’s potentially available.
Quantum mechanics is weird. I don’t understand it. Just live with it. You don’t have to understand the nature of things in order to build cool devices.
At some point, Moore’s law will break down.
