Related papers: Is the Universe roughly-tuned for computing?
In the simplest cosmological models consistent with General Relativity, the total volume of the Universe is either finite or infinite, depending on whether or not the spatial curvature is positive. Current data suggest that the curvature is…
In this paper we work out a multiverse scenario whose physical characteristics enable us to advance the following the conjecture that whereas the physics of particles and fields is confined to live in the realm of the whole multiverse…
Are some cosmologists trying to return human beings to the centre of the cosmos? In the view of some critics, the so-called "anthropic principle" is a desperate attempt to salvage a scrap of dignity for our species after a few centuries of…
In the absence of a fundamental theory that precisely predicts values for observable parameters, anthropic reasoning attempts to constrain probability distributions over those parameters in order to facilitate the extraction of testable…
In the model where the Universe is considered as a thin shell expanding in 5-dimensional hyper-space there is a possibility to have just one scale for a particle theory corresponding to the Universe thickness. From a realistic model the…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
We discuss an apparent information paradox that arises in a materialist's description of the Universe if we assume that the Universe is 100% quantum. We discuss possible ways out of the paradox, including that Laws of Nature are not purely…
``The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words…
The effective coupling `constants' of physics, especially the cosmological constant, are observed to have highly biophilic values. If this is not a hugely improbable accident, or a consequence of some mysterious logical necessity or of some…
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…
Some principles underpinning the running of the Universe are discussed. The most important, the machine principle, states that the Universe is a fully autonomous, self-organizing and self-testing quantum automaton. Continuous space and…
We show that the quantum computational speedup of quantum algorithms is due to their teleological character, their being evolutions toward a goal (the solution of the problem) with an attractor in the very goal they will produce in the…
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,…
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
We propose a new approach for multiverse analysis based on computational complexity, which leads to a new family of "computational" measure factors. By defining a cosmology as a space-time containing a vacuum with specified properties (for…
There has been on-going philosophical debate on whether artificial life models, also known as digital organisms, are truly alive. The main difficulty appears to be finding an encompassing and definite definition of life. By examining…
This is a brief review of the experimental and theoretical quantum computing. The hopes for eventually building a useful quantum computer rely entirely on the so-called "threshold theorem". In turn, this theorem is based on a number of…
What is computable with limited resources? How can we verify the correctness of computations? How to measure computational power with precision? Despite the immense scientific and engineering progress in computing, we still have only…
A general cosmological principle -- Aleph -- is proposed as a substitute to the Anthropic principle. Furthermore, the universe, conceived as a world ensemble, is characterized by many (possibly infinite) X-Life world principles. The only…
If the results of the first LHC run are not betraying us, many decades of particle physics are culminating in a complete and consistent theory for all non-gravitational physics: the Standard Model. But despite this monumental achievement…