Universe Computability Debate
The cluster centers on debates about whether the universe is fundamentally computable, simulable by Turing machines, or itself a massive computation, drawing from physics, philosophy, and computer science perspectives like Scott Aaronson and Constructor Theory.
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It depends if the universe is capable of computation.
No, it could be that the universe actually cannot be modeled computationally, that it exceeds the constraints of a Turing machine. This is an open question.
The Universe is computational per Scott Aaronson.
The laws of physics are computable; why would a sufficiently large computer not be capable of simulating a universe?
How do you know reality is not computational?
If you say "the universe is/isn't computable", then you might get somewhere exploring the idea.If you say "the universe is/isn't a computer", you're in the terrain of metaphysics again.
Is everything really just computation? Gravity is (or can be) the result of a Turing machine churning away somewhere?
ELI5 is: If the universe is computable, might we be in the simplest computable universe or the fastest computable universe? Can computer science and math help us figure out the reasons for the physics that run our world?
Are machines all computation? Are all the processes of the physical universe computation?
more to the point, the universe is computational in nature, and humans are, at best, subroutines with a shitty ABI