Related papers: Computational universes
Human societies continuously transform scattered information into collective judgments and coordinated action, whether through markets discovering prices, governments allocating resources, communities enforcing norms, or science converging…
The idea that the Universe is a program in a giant quantum computer is both fascinating and suffers from various problems. Nonetheless, it can provide a unified picture of physics and this can be very useful for the problem of Quantum…
This paper examines whether unitary evolution alone is sufficient to explain emergence of the classical world from the perspective of computability theory. Specifically, it looks at the problem of how the choice related to the measurement…
It is argued that a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible and useful. Current interpretations, from Copenhagen to many worlds are critically revisited. The difficulties for intuitive models of quantum physics are pointed…
This piece plays with the idea of the Computocene: an era defined not merely by the ubiquity of computers, but by their deepening role in how we observe, interpret, and make sense of the world. Rather than emphasizing automation, speed,…
The success of the abstract model of computation, in terms of bits, logical operations, programming language constructs, and the like, makes it easy to forget that computation is a physical process. Our cherished notions of computation and…
Quantum computing is a good way to justify difficult physics experiments. But until quantum computers are built, do computer scientists need to know anything about quantum information? In fact, quantum computing is not merely a recipe for…
According to the Church-Turing Thesis (CTT), effective formal behaviours can be simulated by Turing machines; this has naturally led to speculation that physical systems can also be simulated computationally. But is this wider claim true,…
We argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically…
This paper links the conjecture that the physical world is a virtual reality to the findings of modern physics. What is usually the subject of science fiction is here proposed as a scientific theory open to empirical evaluation. We know…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
I am most honoured to have the privilege to present the Foreword to this fascinating and wonderfully varied collection of contributions, concerning the nature of computation and of its deep connection with the operation of those basic laws,…
Quantum gravity is known to be mostly a kind of metaphysical speculation. In this brief essay, we try to argue that, although still extremely difficult to reach, observational signatures can in fact be expected. The early universe is an…
When can a model of a physical system be regarded as computable? We provide the definition of a computable physical model to answer this question. The connection between our definition and Kreisel's notion of a mechanistic theory is…
Scientific discovery is mediated by ideas that, after being formulated in hypotheses, can be tested, validated, and quantified before they eventually lead to accepted concepts. Computer-mediated discovery in astrophysics is no exception,…
Quantum computing exposes the brilliance of quantum mechanics through computer science and, as such, gives oneself a marvelous and exhilarating journey to go through. This article leads along that journey with a historical and current…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
There are inherent limits in classical computation for it to serve as an adequate model of human cognition. In particular, non-commutativity, while ubiquitous in physics and psychology, cannot be sufficiently handled. We propose that we…
Physical processes are computations only when we use them to externalize thought. Computation is the performance of one or more fixed processes within a contingent environment. We reformulate the Church-Turing thesis so that it applies to…
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…