[kaashif]

I like how every time a new technology is invented and becomes big, people start to think it explains everything. Like how in the 16th/17th centuries some people thought the universe was a big clock. Or how in the 19th centuries people thought the universe was like a big steam engine. Or now we think the universe is a big computer.

Not saying this is wrong or that I've watched all of the lectures above or anything, but it's just funny to imagine that aliens might look at us the same way we could look at a monkey society saying that the universe is like a big one of those rocks they use to smash nuts open.

Computation and information really does seem universal though, so this is just a funny thought and not serious commentary.

[unknown_user_84]

It strikes me that this is a kind of an escalating pattern though I don't suppose it has to be. Clock -> Steam Engine -> Computer -> AGI -> Skynet -> Throw rocks at robots -> Judgement Day. Also very not serious commentary.

On I suppose a slightly more serious note it also strikes me that there will eventually, probably, maybe be _something_ that fits best; though we are not promised to find it. And it seems wild to say that about a model because all models are fundamentally wrong, but they are usually group-able by less-wrongness, so probably fundamentally feasible.

[peter_m1]

Yes, these are all our attempts at explaining the nature of reality. A kind of reaching into the unknown. A desire to understand the universe and our place in it.

[GoblinSlayer]

It's just Pythagoreanism.

[pilgrim0]

Couldn’t all of them be right, though? In the sense that every technology associated with the functioning of the universe had a systemic, spatiotemporal and evolutive dynamic, which appears to be the sensible facets of the universe’s behavior? In that sense computation is no different, just has more primacy. It gives me some Hofstadter vibes, meaning whatever complex thing we produce within the universe is hopelessly bound to be analogous with it.