Computational Universe

tags
Metaphysics Digital Sublime

Hayles, interpreting Wolfram: "the claim that the universe is generated through computational processes running on a vast computational mechanism underlying all of physical reality."

Almost pantheistic take: God is a big computer and we're the bits or whatever

cf The Church–Turing–Deutsch principle, which states that every physical process can be simulated by a Turing machine. That is, the universe may or may not be computational, but if it isn't it might as well be. There is AFAICT no basis for suggesting this other than it feels like it could be true. See The Church-Turing Thesis / Misunderstandings of the Thesis (SEP)

cf Nick Bostrom's variant of the simulation hypothesis, which goes even farther and says that our universe is probably only a simulation run by our posthuman descendants. A startling number of Silicon Valley types genuinely believe this.