Digital physics, baby.

[novapsyche]

God Is the Machine

An ultimate simulation needs an ultimate computer, and the new science of digitalism says that the universe itself is the ultimate computer — actually the only computer. Further, it says, all the computation of the human world, especially our puny little PCs, merely piggybacks on cycles of the great computer. Weaving together the esoteric teachings of quantum physics with the latest theories in computer science, pioneering digital thinkers are outlining a way of understanding all of physics as a form of computation.

From this perspective, computation seems almost a theological process. It takes as its fodder the primeval choice between yes or no, the fundamental state of 1 or 0. After stripping away all externalities, all material embellishments, what remains is the purest state of existence: here/not here. Am/not am. In the Old Testament, when Moses asks the Creator, "Who are you?" the being says, in effect, "Am." One bit. One almighty bit. Yes. One. Exist. It is the simplest statement possible.

All creation, from this perch, is made from this irreducible foundation. Every mountain, every star, the smallest salamander or woodland tick, each thought in our mind, each flight of a ball is but a web of elemental yes/nos woven together. If the theory of digital physics holds up, movement (f = ma), energy (E = mc²), gravity, dark matter, and antimatter can all be explained by elaborate programs of 1/0 decisions. Bits can be seen as a digital version of the "atoms" of classical Greece: the tiniest constituent of existence. But these new digital atoms are the basis not only of matter, as the Greeks thought, but of energy, motion, mind, and life.

Again, I reiterate: The theory of relativity is a spiritual equation.