Related papers: The World is Either Algorithmic or Mostly Random
The author's opinion on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is further elucidated. Not only may quantum mechanics be a description of the sub-microscopic world that is profoundly different from what is often asserted, particularly…
Algorithmic decision-making (ADM) increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by…
The concept of random dynamical system is a comparatively recent development combining ideas and methods from the well developed areas of probability theory and dynamical systems. Due to our inaccurate knowledge of the particular physical…
The past century has seen a steady increase in the need of estimating and predicting complex systems and making (possibly critical) decisions with limited information. Although computers have made possible the numerical evaluation of…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
Artificial intelligence is reshaping science, society, and power. Yet many debates over its likely impact remain fixated on extremes: utopian visions of universal benefit and dystopian fears of existential doom, or an arms race between the…
It is shown that under reasonable assumptions a Drake-style equation can be obtained for the probability that our universe is the result of a deliberate simulation. Evaluating loose bounds for certain terms in the equation shows that the…
To better understand the deep significance of our best physical theories it could be interesting to compare our Universe with its models. It may happen that the differences between the model and reality can be made indistinguishable, to the…
The spectacular successes of quantum physics have made it a commonplace to assert that we live in a quantum world. This idea seems to imply a kind of "quantum fundamentalism" according to which everything in the universe (if not the…
The interpretation of the squared norm as probability and the apparent stochastic nature of observation in quantum mechanics are derived from the strong law of large numbers and the algebraic properties of infinite sequences of simultaneous…
An intense effort is being made today to build a quantum computer. Instead of presenting what has been achieved, I invoke here analogies from the history of science in an attempt to glimpse what the future might hold. Quantum computing is…
Algorithms wield increasing power over our lives. They can and often do wield that power unfairly, and much has been said about algorithmic fairness. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has been largely neglected. I investigate algorithmic…
Algocracy is the rule by algorithms. This paper summarises technologies useful to create algocratic social machines and presents idealistic examples of their application. In particular, it describes smart contracts and their…
In the {\em Many Worlds Interpretation} of quantum mechanics, the range of possible worlds (or histories) provides variation, and the Anthropic Principle is a selective principle analogous to natural selection. When looked on in this way,…
This is intended to be a serious paper, in spite of the title. The idea is that quantum mechanics is about probabilistic correlations, i.e., about the structure of information, since a theory of information is essentially a theory of…
Our understanding of the Universe breaks down for very small spacetime intervals, corresponding to an extremely high level of granularity (and energy), commonly referred to as the ``Planck scale''. At this fundamental level, there are…
In the field of algorithmic fairness, many fairness criteria have been proposed. Oftentimes, their proposal is only accompanied by a loose link to ideas from moral philosophy -- which makes it difficult to understand when the proposed…
A quantum theory of the universe consists of a theory of its quantum dynamics and a theory of its quantum state The theory predicts quantum multiverses in the form of decoherent sets of alternative histories describing the evolution of the…