Related papers: The World is Either Algorithmic or Mostly Random
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
A non-relativistic quantum mechanical theory is proposed that describes the universe as a continuum of worlds whose mutual interference gives rise to quantum phenomena. A logical framework is introduced to properly deal with propositions…
It is often thought that the existence of other worlds cannot be scientifically verified and therefore should be treated as philosophical speculation. In this article, I describe several methods for determining if other worlds exist, even…
Algorithms have been fundamental to recent global technological advances and, in particular, they have been the cornerstone of technical advances in one field rapidly being applied to another. We argue that algorithms possess fundamentally…
As observers of the universe we are quantum physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
Dennis Sciama argued that the existence of life depended on many quantities, the fundamental constants, so in a random universe life should be highly unlikely. However, without full knowledge of these constants, his argument implies a…
Algorithmic approach is based on the assumption that any quantum evolution of many particle system can be simulated on a classical computer with the polynomial time and memory cost. Algorithms play the central role here but not the…
This pseudo-paper consists of excerpts drawn from two of my quantum-email samizdats. Section 1 draws a picture of a physical world whose essence is ``Darwinism all the way down.'' Section 2 outlines how quantum theory should be viewed in…
Randomness is an invaluable resource in today's life with a broad use reaching from numerical simulations through randomized algorithms to cryptography. However, on the classical level no true randomness is available and even the use of…
In order to relate the probabilistic predictions of quantum theory uniquely to measurement results, one has to conceive of an ensemble of identically prepared copies of the quantum system under study. Since the universe is the total domain…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
A long sequence of tosses of a classical coin produces an apparently random bit string, but classical randomness is an illusion: the algorithmic information content of a classically-generated bit string lies almost entirely in the…
We describe the universe as a single entangled ensemble of quantum particles. The total entropy of this world ensemble, which can be expressed as a sum of information, thermodynamic and entanglement components, is assumed to be always zero.…
We define a universe as the contents of a spacetime box with comoving walls, large enough to contain essentially all phenomena that can be conceivably measured. The initial time is taken as the epoch when the lowest CMB modes undergo…
There is much to learn from what Turing hastily dismissed as Lady Lovelace s objection. Digital computers can indeed surprise us. Just like a piece of art, algorithms can be designed in such a way as to lead us to question our understanding…
This article is a brief personal account of the past, present, and future of algorithmic randomness, emphasizing its role in inductive inference and artificial intelligence. It is written for a general audience interested in science and…
At first sight, an accurate description of the state of the universe appears to require a mind-bogglingly large and perhaps even infinite amount of information, even if we restrict our attention to a small subsystem such as a rabbit. In…
The cosmological principle posits that the universe does not exhibit any specific preference for position or direction. However, it remains unclear whether the universe has a distinct preference for parity: whether certain properties are…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…