74 • Is the Whole Universe a Computer™?
2025-01-04
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“Is the whole universe a computer?”, ask Jack Copeland, Mark Sprevak, and Oron Shagrir in chapter 41 of the book The Turing Guide. They split this question in two, first asking whether the universe itself is a computer, then whether the universe could even be computed. These are lofty, unanswerable questions, sure, but they encroach on our territory — philosophy, automata, nonsense. So, in our usual reverent style and with attentive pacing, the three of us explore the paper, the questions, the answers they choose to highlight, and even share a few perfectly reasonable answers of our own.
Links
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In no particular order:
- Carl Sagan
- What it means to be open was Lu’s talk at Heart of Clojure
- Rudy Rucker
- Is the brain a digital computer? by John Searle
- The Plankth of time.
- C is Not a Low-Level Language by David Chisnall
- The Connection Machine!!
- Komgloverav… Komolgorov…
- Outer Worlds?
- Outer Wilds?
- The Witness
Music featured in this episode:
- No! That’s a spoiler. No way I’m telling you.
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