The Quantum Computing Universe

Well after Birnbaum had laid out his metaphysical theory of Potentialism, Seth Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at MIT, wrote in 2007 Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos.

No doubt inspired by Birnbaum’s previous works on the matter, Lloyd took a critical look, from a purely quantum physics perspective on what the universe might actually be doing. What he found was proof of Birnbaum’s Q4P actively at work in the cosmos.

Instead of using the dated suppositions of randomness proponents, he instead tried to look at the universe with an eye to its actual complexity. What he found was proof that the universe was, indeed, ever growing in complexity.

Lloyd detailed that the inevitable rise of entropy and chaos actually created a universe that was continuously growing in informational complexity. Lloyds contends that as systems go through their natural stages of entropy, what they leave in their wake is ever more information.

Thinking of atomic and quantum structures as purely information – that is bits, like in a computer – shows that the

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number of bits in the universe is ever increasing. Now Lloyd provided an important puzzle piece to the universe in his work. He said the universe should be considered as one giant computer, ever computing, and storing information as it does.

The only thing he lacked was one piece of the puzzle (unfortunately, the most important one): That the universe was computing something meaningful and was driven with purpose to do so. This later part can be somewhat forgiven as Lloyd is more a physicist than a metaphysicist and, thus, is trapped suing only the tools of physics. As a famous proverb goes: If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

However, Birnbaum’s SuperFormula provides the missing piece to Lloyd’s mysterious universal quantum computer. What Lloyd missed was the organic nature of this supercomputer. It seems a trivial thing to mention its organic nature – unless your Birnbaum.

To Birnbaum, it was clear that the universe was a part of the natural evolution of existence. As such, it was inseparably linked to Potential itself. The universe is computing and recording as Lloyd hypothesized, but it is doing so in the service of creating Complexity.

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