Humanities Place in the Universal Supercomputer

Again, some of these things may seem far-fetched and crazy at first glance. But the people working on this are some of the best scientists in their field. Their work has gone far to explain many things in the universe which otherwise just don’t make sense.

Birnbaum’s work is both a compilation of those earlier scientists’ work and a big expansion on how everything fits together.

I know this last section is a lot to take in. So, what is the important takeaway? If we think of the universe as one big computer, it is getting bigger and more complex and growing. Scientists in the 20th Century generally missed this huge point –and it is huge. It is like looking at the exhaust of a car and claiming that fuel is being used up – missing the whole point that someone actually made a car, and that is totally amazing!

When you look at the universe as a supercomputer, suddenly the world is just getting bigger, more complex, and more amazing as it progresses on.

Humanities Place in the Universal Supercomputer

So, what is humanity’s place in the universe? Are we just a lucky occurrence or accident of chemistry? We’ll get into a host of 63

reasons this is not the case in a later section, but there is one reason humanity exists, which is pertinent here. Note again that Birnbaum calls the universal supercomputer “organic. ”

In fact, in moving past Lloyd’s mechanical view of the universe, Birnbaum considers life and humankind a necessary part of this great cosmic supercomputer. In Birnbaum’s own words,

“It is important to note Each of us is somehow simultaneously autonomous - and simultaneously plugged-into and integral-to the universe-computer,

i.e. the universe mega-brain

i.e. the universe quantum computer

i.e. the universe

The universe is always computing, assessing, calculating and then iterating/expanding/complexifying towards its next level of Potential.”

In support of this, consider the human mind itself. It is, by far, the most advanced computer we have ever witnessed in the universe. And there are billions of these minds, multiplying every year. In a universe that is custom designed to compute, it is beyond crazy that the cosmos would waste energy, creating such amazing computing power simply by accident and then not even using it.

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