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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics


Sunday, January 5, 2014

Nature's Computation Needs Imply a Programmed Material Universe

Fasten your seat belt, because in this long blog post we will be blasting off to a bold new theory of the universe. Here is a visual preview:

programmed material universe

Not wishing to build a castle floating in the air without any foundation, it will first be necessary to lay a solid foundation for this new theory. We can build that foundation by probing one of the most neglected and overlooked questions relating to nature. The question is: what, if any, are the computation requirements of nature? By this I mean: is it necessary that nature does some type of computation? If so, how much computation does nature need to do, and what elements of computation would nature need to satisfy such requirements?

The CRON Problem

Let's create an acronym to describe this problem. Let's call the problem the CRON problem. CRON stands for Computation Requirements of the Operations of Nature. We can define it like this:

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CRON Problem: Are there computation requirements in nature's operations -- things such as math that needs to be done, algorithms that need to be followed, or information that needs to be stored, retrieved or transferred? If so, roughly what is the level of computation that nature needs to do, and what elements of computation do we need to postulate to satisfy the computation requirements of nature?
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In the definition above (and throughout this post) I use computation very broadly to mean any phenomenon such as any operation involving calculation, the execution of rules or instructions, or the manipulation or transfer of information (as well as other additional actions that may be or seem to be goal-oriented, rule-based, or algorithmic, or which seem to methodically derive particular outputs from particular inputs, or which seem to involve the use or storage of data). According to this broad definition, your computer is doing computation when it is calculating some number, and it is also doing computation when you are doing a Google search or downloading a film.

The Biological Answer: There Definitely Are Computation Requirements, Which We Largely Understand

Let us first examine this CRON problem as it relates to biology. Imagine if you raised this CRON question to a biologist around 1930, asking him: are there computation requirements that nature must meet in order to perform the operations of biology?

I can easily imagine the answer the biologist might have given: “Don't be ridiculous. Computation is something done on pencil or paper, or by big bulky calculation machines. None of that goes on in the operations of biology.”

But we now know that this answer is false. Biology does require a large degree of computation, in the sense of information storage and information transfer. The main information storage medium is DNA. DNA uses a genetic code, which is a kind of tiny programming language. Every time a new organism is conceived and born, there's a transfer of information comparable to a huge data dump done by the IT division of a corporation. A gene is quite a bit like the complex variable known as a class in object-oriented languages, and each time a gene is used by an organism to create a protein, it is like the data processing operation known as instantiation.

This is a quite interesting example, because it shows a case of two things:
  1. There was actually a huge computation requirement associated with a particular branch of nature (biology).
  2. This computation requirement was overlooked and ignored by scientists in the field, who basically just failed to consider what the computation requirements were in the processes they were studying.
Now let us consider whether the same type of mistake is being made by modern physicists. Let us ask the fascinating question: are there computation requirements associated with nature's physics operations? By this I mean something like computation that must be performed by nature in order for the laws of physics to operate as we observe them operating.

Does Nature Need to Compute to Handle Relativistic Particle Collisions?

First let's look at a case that may seem quite simple at first: the case of two high-speed highly energetic protons colliding together, at a speed that is a good fraction of the speed of light (such a collision is called a relativistic collision). This is the kind of thing that happened very frequently in the early universe shortly after the Big Bang. It can also happen in a huge particle accelerator such as the Large Hadron Collider, where protons are collided together at very high speeds.

You might think that what happens in such a case is that the particles simply bounce off each other, as would happen if two fastball pitchers pitched fastballs at each other, and the balls collided. But if the two protons collide at a very high speed, a good fraction of the speed of light, something very different happens. The two protons are converted to other particles, perhaps many different particles. An example of this is shown below.

particle collision

Now in regard to computation requirements, one might think at first that such a collision does not require any computation, since the end result is just a completely random mess. But actually nature follows an exact set of rules whenever such collisions occur.
  1. The equation e = mc2 is followed to compute the available mass-energy that can be used to create the output particles. (The actual “available energy” equation, involving a square root, is a little more complicated, but it is based on the e = mc2 equation.)
  2. Rules are followed in regard to the mass of the created particles. The created particles are always one of less than about 200 types (most short-lived), and each type of particle has some particular mass and some particular charge. It is as if nature has only a short list of allowed particles (each with a particular mass and charge), and nature only creates particles using that list, rather than just allowing particles of any old mass to be created (rather like a mother who only makes cookies by using a small set of cookie cutters). For example, we may see the creation of a particle with the mass of the electron, but never see a particle created with two or three or four times the mass of the electron. The stable particles that result from the collision (not counting antiparticles) are always either protons, neutrons, electrons, or neutrinos (or nuclei made from protons and neutrons).
  3. The collision follows a law called the law of the conservation of charge, which means that the total ratio of positive electric charge to negative electric charge is always precisely the same before and after the collision. This means, for example, that it is forbidden for you to have a collision of two protons (with a total of two positive electric charges) resulting in the creation of any set of particles that don't have a net total of two positive electric charges.
  4. The collision follows a law called the law of the conservation of baryon number, which means that the total baryon number of the incoming particles is the same as the total baryon number of the particles that result from the collision.
  5. The collision follows a law called the law of the conservation of lepton number, which puts further restrictions on the set of output particles that can appear as the result of the collision. This law is actually three laws in one, each relating to a particular type of lepton.
It seems that a nontrivial amount of computation is required for all of this to occur. If you doubt this, consider what would need to be done if you were a computer programmer trying to write a program that would simulate the results nature produces when two high-speed relativistic protons collide at a large fraction of the speed of light. You would need for your program to have some kind of list of the allowed particles that could appear as output particles, a list of less than about 200 possibilities, that would include the proton, the electron, the neutron, mesons, the muon, a few other particles, and their antiparticles (along with the masses and charges of each). Your program would have to compute the available energy for output particles, using an equation that would make use of a constant you had declared in your program representing the speed of light. Your program would also have to include some elaborate computation designed to calculate a set of output particles (derived using the list of particles) that satisfy the available energy limits and also the requirements of the law of the conservation of baryon number, the law of the conservation of charge, and the law of the conservation of lepton number. This would require quite a bit of programming to accomplish. It would probably take the average skilled programmer several days of programming to produce the required code to compute such a thing. It could easily take the programmer weeks to produce code that would perform these computations more or less instantaneously, without using a loop that uses a trial-and-error iteration.

So we seem to have come to a very interesting result here. It would seem that significant computation is indeed required by nature to handle events such as relativistic proton collisions. 
 
One can imagine a simpler universe in which high-speed protons always simply bounce off each other when they collide, like two baseballs which collide after being pitched by two fastball pitchers aiming at each other. That simple behavior might not require any computation by nature, but the very different type of behavior that happens in our universe when relativistic protons collide (involving a whole series of complicated rules that must be rigidly followed) does seem to require computation.

The creation of particles that occurs in a relativistic particle collision is actually strikingly similar to the instantiation of objects (using a class) that occurs in object-oriented software programming. Explaining this point would take several paragraphs, and I don't want this lengthy post to get too long; so I will leave this explanation for a separate future blog post on this topic.

Does Nature Need to Compute to Handle the Strong Force, the Weak Force, or Gravitation?

The preceding case may disturb someone who doesn't want to believe that nature needs to compute. But such a person may at least comfort himself by thinking: that's just a freak case; nowadays those relativistic particle collisions only occur in a few particle accelerators.

But now let us look at more general operations of nature, those involving the four fundamental forces of nature. Let us ask the question: does nature need to do computation in order to handle the fundamental forces that allow us and our planet to exist from day to day?

The four fundamental forces in nature are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.

The strong nuclear force is the glue-like force that holds together the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom. The range of this force is extremely small, so we don't seem to have a very obvious case here that a large amount of computation needs to be done for the force to work (although once we got into all the very complex calculations needed to compute the strong nuclear force, we might think differently).

The weak nuclear force is the fundamental force driving radioactivity. An interesting aspect of radioactivity is its random nature. It would seem that if you were to write a computer program simulating the behavior of radioactive particles, you would need to make use of a piece of software functionality called a random number generator. So it could be that nature does need to do some type of computation for the weak nuclear force to occur, but this is not at all the most compelling case where natural operations seem to require programming.

When we come to the gravitational force, we have a very different situation. It seems that for nature to handle gravitation as we understand it, insanely high amounts of computation are required.

This may seem surprising to someone familiar with the famous formula for gravitation, which is quite a simple formula. The formula is shown below:

 
In this formula, F is the gravitational force, G is the gravitational constant, m1 is the first mass, m2 is the second mass, and d is the distance between the masses.

Now looking at this formula, you may think: it looks like nature has to do a little calculation to compute gravity, but it's not much, so we can just ignore it.

But the fact is that the formula above is perhaps the greatest oversimplification in the history of science. The reason is that the formula is not the formula for computing the total gravitational forces acting on any single object in the universe. Instead, it is merely the formula for computing the gravitational force acting between one particle in the universe and any other particle in the universe.

To actually fully compute the gravitational forces acting on any one object or particle in the universe, we must do an almost infinitely more expensive calculation-- a calculation that must involve the mass of all other objects in the universe. This is because gravitation is an inverse square law with an infinite range. Every single massive object in the universe is exerting a gravitational force on you, and every other massive object.

I may note the very interesting fact that not one physicist in the history of science has ever done one billionth of the work needed to completely compute the complete gravitational forces attacking on any single particle or object.

To illustrate the computation requirement to calculate the gravitational forces acting on a single object, I can write a little function in the C# programming language:

void ComputeGravitationalForcesOnParticle (particle oParticleX)
{
   foreach (particle oParticleY in Universe)
   {
     double dForce = 0.0;
     double dTemp = 0.0;
     dTemp = (oParticleX.Mass * oParticleY.Mass) /
     ComputeDistanceBetweenParticles(oParticleX, oParticleY);
     dForce = GravitationalConstant * dTemp;
     ApplyForce(dForce, oParticleX);
   }
}

This is a function that takes one particular particle in the universe as an input, and computes the complete gravitational forces acting on that particle. It requires a loop, but the loop must run for a total of Z iterations, where Z is the total number of particles in the universe. So the loop must run for approximately 1080 iterations (which is about the total number of particles in the observable universe). This means the loop must run about ten thousand billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion times.

Now that's quite a bit of computation required. But for nature to do all the work needed to compute the gravitational forces on all particles in the universe during any given instant, it needs to do vastly more work than to just do the equivalent of running this function that is so expensive from a computational standpoint. Nature has to do the equivalent of a double loop, in which this loop is just the inner loop. To represent this in the C# language, we would need code something like this:

foreach (particle oParticleX in Universe)
{
  foreach (particle oParticleY in Universe)
   {
    double dForce = 0.0;
       double dTemp = 0.0;
    dTemp = (oParticleX.Mass * oParticleY.Mass) /
    ComputeDistanceBetweenParticles(oParticleX, oParticleY);
       dForce = GravitationalConstant * dTemp;
       ApplyForce(dForce, oParticleX);
   }
}

This is what is called a doubly nested loop, and programers know that doubly nested loops often become incredibly expensive from a computational standpoint. In this case the outer part of the loop must be traversed about 1080 times, which is ten thousand billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion iterations. But during each such iteration the inner loop must also be run 1080 times. So the total number of times the inner part of the loop must be run is 10160 which is ten thousand billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion times greater than the total number of particles in the observable universe.

In any case in which you are calculating, say, once every second rather than a tiny fraction of a second, the calculation would have to be much more complicated, as it would have to take into account the relative motion between objects.

This makes it pretty clear that nature does indeed need to compute in order for gravitation to occur. It would seem that the computational requirements of gravitation are insanely high.

Does Nature Need to Compute to Handle the Electromagnetic Force?

The electromagnetic force is the force of attraction and repulsion between charged particles such as protons and neutrons. Like gravitation, the electromagnetic force is an inverse square law with infinite range. The basic formula for the electromagnetic force is Coulomb's law, which looks very similar to the basic formula for gravitation, except that it uses charges rather than masses, and a different constant. The formula is shown below:

In this formula F is the electromagnetic force of attraction or repulsion, k is a constant, qa is the first charge, qb is the second charge, and r is the distance between them.

The computational situation in regard to the electromagnetic force is very similar to the computational situation in regard to gravitation. Just as the formula for gravitation gives you only the tiniest fraction of the story (because it gives you a formula for calculating only the gravitational attraction between two different particles), Coulomb's law gives you only the tiniest fraction of the story (because it only gives you a formula for calculating the electromagnetic force between two particles). Since the range of electromagnetism is infinite, to fully compute the electromagnetic forces on any one particle or object requires that you take into account all other charged particles in the universe. If you were to write some C# programming code that gives the needed calculations to compute the electromagnetic forces acting on all particles in the universe, it would have to have an insanely expensive nested loop like the one previously described for gravitation. The code would be something like this:

for each (particle oParticleX in Universe)
{
   foreach (particle oParticleY in Universe)
    {
   double dForce = 0.0;
     double dTemp = 0.0;
   dTemp = (oParticleX.Charge * oParticleY.Charge) /
   ComputeDistanceBetweenParticles(oParticleX, oParticleY);
      dForce = CouplingConstant * dTemp;
     ApplyForce(dForce, oParticleX, eForceType);
   }
}

In this case the outer part of the loop must be traversed about 1080 times, which is ten thousand billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion iterations. But each such iteration requires running the inner part of the loop, which also must be run 1080 times. So the total number of iterations that must be run is 10160 which is a ten thousand billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion times greater than the total number of particles in the universe.

It seems, then, that nature's computational demands required by the electromagnetic force are incredibly high.

I may note that there is a long-standing tradition of representing the charge of the electron as negative, and the charge of the proton as positive. But because the total number of attractions involving electrons is apparently equal to the total number of repulsions involving electrons, as far we can see (something that is also true for protons), there is no physical basis for this convention. When we get rid of this “cheat” that arose for the sake of mathematical convenience, we see that nature seems to have an algorithmic rule-based logic that it uses in electromagnetism, reminiscent of “if/then” logic in a computer program; and this logic differentiates between protons, neutrons and electrons. I will explain this point more fully in a future blog post.

Do Wave Functions Require Computation?

According to quantum mechanics, every particle has what is called a wave function. The wave function determines the likelihood of the particle existing at a particular location. You can get a crude, rough analogy of the wave function if you imagine a programming function that takes a few inputs, and then produces as an output a scatter plot showing a region of space, with little dots, each representing the chance of the particle being in a particular place. The more dots there are in a particular region of space, the higher the likelihood of the particle existing in that region. (The wave function is actually a lot more complicated that this, but such an analogy will serve as a rough sketch.)


But in order to do the full complete calculation of the wave function, this “scatter plot” must be basically the size of the universe. According to quantum mechanics, the wave function is actually “spread out” across the entire universe. This means that while the wave function is computing a very high likelihood that a particular electron now exists at a location close to where it was an instant ago, the wave function is also computing a very small, infinitesimal likelihood that the same electron may next be somewhere else in the universe, perhaps far, far away. Since the Pauli Exclusion Principle says two particles can't exist in the exact same spot with the same characteristics, this wave function calculation therefore must apparently take into consideration all the other particles in the universe.

Here is a quote from Cal Tech physicist Sean Carroll:

In quantum mechanics, the wave function for a particle will generically be spread out all over the universe, not confined to a small region. In practice, the overwhelming majority of the wave function might be localized to one particular place, but in principle there’s a very tiny bit of it at almost every point in space. (At some points it might be precisely zero, but those will be relatively rare.) Consequently, when I change the electric field anywhere in the universe, in principle the wave function of every electron changes just a little bit.

Again, we have a case where the computation requirements of nature seem to be insanely high. Every second nature seems to be computing the wave function of every particle in the universe, and the complete, full computation of that wave function requires an incredibly burdensome calculation that has to take all other particles in the universe into consideration.

I may also note that the very concept of the wave function – a function that takes inputs, and produces an output-- is extremely redolent of software and computation. Computer programs are built from functions that take inputs and produce outputs.

Does the Energy Density of a Vacuum Require Computation?

The case of empty space between the middle of stars may seem at first a case that requires absolutely zero computation by nature. After all, empty space between stars is just completely simple nothingness, right? Not quite. Quantum mechanics says that there is a vacuum energy density, and that the empty space between stars is a complex sea of virtual particles that last only for a fraction of a second, popping in and out of existence.

The mathematics required to compute this vacuum energy density is extremely complicated. Strangely enough, when physicists tried to calculate the vacuum energy density, they found at first that it seems to require an infinite amount of calculation to compute the energy density of the vacuum. So they resorted to a kind of trick or cheat called renormalization, which let them reduce the needed computation to a finite amount (Richard Feynman, the pioneer of renormalization, once admitted that it is “hocus pocus.”)

Even after this cheat, the required calculation is still ridiculously laborious, as it requires calculating contributions from many different particles, fields, and forces. The calculation required to compute the energy density of one cubic centimeter is very complicated and computationally expensive. Then that amount must be multiplied by more than a billion trillion quadrillion if we are to estimate nature's total computation requirements for calculating the vacuum energy density of all of the cubic centimeters in all of the empty spaces of our vast universe. So again we find a case where the computation requirements of nature seem to be very, very high.

Quantum Jumps and the Pauli Exclusion Principle: Do They Require Computation?

A quantum jump is one of the strangest things in quantum mechanics. A quantum jump occurs when an electron jumps from one orbit in an atom to another (or more strictly, from one quantum state to another). A quantum jump is typically triggered when an energetic photon strikes the electron. The following very crude diagram illustrates the idea. It shows an electron being struck by a photon of energy, with the electron jumping to a new orbital position. (I am speaking a bit schematically here.) 

A quantum jump

However, the actual jump does not occur as a journey from one orbit to another, as shown in this crude visual The jump occurs as an instantaneous transition from one orbit to another (or more precisely, from one quantum state to another). The opposite of the process depicted above also frequently happens. An electron will jump to an orbit closer to the nucleus, causing a photon to be emitted.

Now, in physics there is a very important law saying that in an atom no two electrons can have the same quantum state. This law is known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle. What this roughly means is that no two electrons with the same spin can have the same orbital state.

Imagine an atom with many electrons having many different orbits. In such a case a photon may strike an electron, causing it to jump to a new orbital position. But if the atom already has many electrons, the jump must occur in a way that obeys the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Depending on the intensity of the photon, the electron might have to jump over numerous different orbits, finding a slot for it to jump to that is compatible with the Pauli Exclusion Principle. 

Complex atom
A complex atom

For example, a photon might hit an electron in one of the inner orbits in an atom like the one depicted above, causing it to jump to one of the outer orbits (the distance would depend on how energetic the photon was).

But in this case the electron does not “try” various orbital positions, ending up in the first one that is compatible with the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Instead the electron instantaneously jumps to the first available orbital position (consistent with the photon energy) that satisfies the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Now the question is: how does the electron know exactly the right position to instantaneously jump to in this kind of complicated situation? This is basically the same question that was asked by Rutherford, one of the great atomic physicists.

This seems to be a case where nature has to do computation, both to recall and apply the complicated law of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and also to compute the correct position (consistent with the Pauli Exclusion Principle) for the electron to relocate. The whole operation seems rule-based and programmatic, and the quantum jumps resemble the “variable assignment” operations that occur within programming code (in which a variable instantaneously has its value changed).

Does Nature Need to Compute to Handle Quantum Entanglement?

Upon looking for further cases where nature seems to be performing like software, we might look at the famous double-slit experiment (in which electrons behave in a way that may suggest they are being influenced by some mysterious semi-cognizant rule). But let us instead look at an even more dramatic example: the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

An example of quantum entanglement is shown in the illustration here. Particle C is a particle that decays into two daughter particles, A and B. Until someone measures the spin on either of these two particles, the spin of each of the daughter particles is indeterminate, which in quantum mechanics is a kind of fuzzy “not assigned yet” state (it might also be conceived as a combination of both possible spin states of Up and Down). It's rather like the same idea that one sees in a probability cloud diagram of an atom, showing an electron orbital, where rather than saying that the electron has an exact position we say that the electron's position is “spread out” throughout the probability cloud. Now, as soon as we measure the spin of either particle A or particle B, the spin becomes actualized or determined (one might may assigned, speaking as a programmer), and the other daughter particle then has its previously indeterminate spin become actualized, to a value that is the opposite of the spin value of the first particle. This effect has been found to not be limited by the speed of light, and seems to occur instantaneously.

quantum entanglement
Example of Quantum Entanglement

Does this effect seem to require computation? Indeed, it does. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement seems to require that nature has some database or data engine that links together each pair of entangled particles, so that nature can keep track of what particle or particles are associated with any particular entangled particle (rather in the same way that external databases keep track of which persons are your siblings or co-workers). Since physicists believe that quantum entanglement is not some rare phenomenon, but is instead occurring to a huge extent all over the universe, the total amount of computation that must be done seems to be immense.

This type of quantum entanglement effect bears no resemblance to anything we see in the macroscopic world, but something like this effect can be easily set up within a relational database. Using the SQL language I can easily set up a database in which particular objects can be inversely correlated. The database might be created with SQL statements something like this:

create table Particles
begin
ID1 int,
spin int,
mass decimal,
particle_type char(10)
end
go

create table Correlated_Particles
begin
ID1 int,
ID2 int
end
go

Now given such an arrangement of data, I could establish the inverse correlation by simply writing what is called an update trigger on the Particles table, which is a piece of code that is run whenever an item in that table is updated. This update trigger could have a few lines of code that checks whether a row in the Particles table has a match in the Correlated_Particles table. If such a match is found, another row in the Particles table is updated to achieve the inverse correlation. The code would look something like this:

CREATE TRIGGER Inverse_Correlation
ON Particles
AFTER UPDATE
AS
  declare @ID int
  IF ( UPDATE (spin) )
  BEGIN
   select @ID = ID2 from Correlated_Particles where
        ID1 = updated.ID1
   if (@ID is not null)
   update Particles set spin = updated.spin * -1 where ID1 = @ID
  END
GO

So we can achieve this strange effect of instantaneous inverse correlation, similar to quantum entanglement; but we need a database and we need some software, the code in the update trigger. To account for quantum entanglement in nature, we apparently need to postulate that nature has something like a data engine and some kind of software.

The Magical Infinite Free Computation Assumption (MIFCA)

Upon hearing these arguments, many will take a position along these lines: “Well, I guess nature does seem to be doing a great deal of computation, or something like computation. But we should not then conclude that the universe has any software, or any computing engine, or any data engine.” Such thinking kind of defies the observational principle that virtually all computation seems to require some kind of software, computation engine, and data engine (as suggested by the graphic below, which compares common elements of two very different types of computation, a paper and pencil math calculation and an online Amazon order). 

elements of computation
Elements Required for Complex Computation

I will give a name for the type of thinking described in the previous paragraph. I will call it the Magical Infinite Free Computation Assumption, or MIFCA. I call the assumption “magical” because all known computation involves some kind of software (or something like software) or some kind of computation engine or some type of data engine. To imagine that the universe is doing all this nearly infinite amount of computation every second without any software and without any computing engine and without any data engine is to magically imagine that nature is getting “for free” something that normally has a requirements cost (a cost in terms of the necessity of having a certain amount of software, a required computation engine, and a required data engine).

We can compare this type of MIFCA thinking to the thinking of a small child in regard to his parents' spending. A very young child may see his wealthy parents spending heavily all the time, and may generalize a rule that “My parents can buy whatever they want.” But such behavior actually has implications – it implies that perhaps one or both of the parents get a regular paycheck that gives them money, or that the parents have a bank account that stores their savings. But the small child never thinks about such implications – he just simply thinks, “My parents can buy whatever they want.” Similarly, the modern scientist may think that nature can do unlimited computation, but he fails to deduce the implications that follow: the fact that such computation implies the existence of an associated software and computation engine and data engine.

Although this type of MIFCA assumption may be extremely common, it does not make sense. To imagine that the universe does a nearly infinite amount of rule-based computation every second but without any software and without any computation engine and without any data engine is rather like imagining that somewhere there is a baseball game being continuously played but without any playing field and without any baseball and without any bases and without any baseball players.

The New Theory Forced Upon Us: A Programmed Material Universe

These examples (and many others I could give) suggest that nature does require a high degree of computation for the phenomena studied by physicists. We are led then, dramatically, to a new paradigm. In this paradigm we must assume that software is a fundamental aspect of the universe, and that in all probability the universe has some type of extremely elaborate programming, computing engine and data engine that is mostly unknown to us. (By using the term “engine” I simply some type of system, not necessarily a material one.)

I will call this theory the theory of a programmed material universe. I choose this name to distinguish such a theory from other theories which claim that the universe is just a Matrix-style illusion or that the universe is a simulation (perhaps one produced by alien programmers). I reject such theories, and argued against them in my blog post Why You Are Not Living in a Computer Simulation. The theory of a programmed material universe assumes that our universe is as real as we have always thought, but that a significant element of it is a computation layer that includes software. (I may note that the word “material” in the phrase “programmed material universe” is merely intended to mean “as real as anything else,” and does not necessarily imply any assumption about the nature of physical matter.)

We can think that software is a key element of the universe while still believing that physical matter is just as real as most people think. On our planet software controls imaginary virtual worlds such as the worlds of video games, but software also controls perfectly real physical objects such as robots and airplanes that are flying on autopilot. So if we assume that software is a key element of the universe, we can still continue to believe that the universe is every bit as real and material and physical as people thought it was in the 19th century.

The fact that we do not understand the details of such a cosmic computation layer should not at all stop us from assuming that it exists. Scientists assume that dark matter exists, but purely because they think it is needed to explain other things, not because there is any unambiguous direct observational evidence for dark matter. If there are sound reasons for assuming the universe must have software and a computation engine and a data engine, then we should assume that it does, regardless of whether we know the details of such things.

An assumption that software is a key part of the universe also does not force us to believe in the weighty assumption that the universe is self-conscious. The software we are familiar with has a certain degree of intelligence or smarts, but it is not self-conscious. I can write a program in two hours that has some small degree of intelligence or smarts, but the program is no more self-conscious than a rock. So we can believe that the universe has a certain degree of intelligence or smarts in its software, without having to believe that the universe is self-conscious.

An assumption that software is a key part of the universe also does not force us to the simplistic conclusion that “the universe is a computer.” A more appropriate statement would be along these lines: the universe, like a Boeing 747, is a complicated system going towards a destination; and in both cases software and computation are key parts of the overall system. It would be inaccurate to say that a Boeing 747 is a computer, but it would be correct to say that software and a computing system are crucial parts of a Boeing 747 (used for navigation and whenever the plane flies on autopilot). Similarly we can say that software and computation are crucial parts of the universe (but we should not say “the universe is a computer.”)

One way to visualize this theory of a programmed material universe is to imagine the universe consisting of at least two layers – a mass energy layer and a computation layer, as schematically depicted below. We should suppose the computation layer is vastly more complicated than the simple flowchart shown in this visual. We should also suppose that the two layers are intertwined, rather than one layer floating above the other layer. If you ask "Which layer am I living in?" the answer is: both.

programmed universe
 One Way to Visualize the Theory 
 
The argument presented here (involving the computational requirements of nature) is only half of the case for the theory of a programmed material universe. The other half of the case (which I will explain in my next blog post) is the explanatory need for such a theory in giving a plausible narrative of the improbable events in the history of the universe. The universe has undergone an astounding evolution from a singularity of infinite density at the time of the Big Bang, achieving improbable and fortunate milestones such as the origin of galaxies, the formation of planets with heavy elements, the origin of life, and the origin of self-conscious Mind. Such an amazing progression is very hard to credibly explain outside of a theory of a programmed material universe, but such a progression is exactly what we would expect if such a theory is true (partially because software can be goal-oriented and goal seeking). Read my next blog post for a full explanation of this point.

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