2 ms·

I think this a caricature or at least a shallow view of computationalism. Nobody is claiming that the universe is a computer of the same kind as the ones we hav

I think this a caricature or at least a shallow view of computationalism. Nobody is claiming that the universe is a computer of the same kind as the ones we have. Instead, I think, it claims that the universe has to necessarily be computational in order to be real - everything has to be computational to be real, otherwise how can it ever be implemented. On your "divine command" bit: I don't think any theory has a good claim on the ultimate ontology of reality, so I don't see how one view is better than another. It's all some kind of divine command at the moment. Computationalism at least constrains the necessary properties the divine must have.

titzer 2y ago
> everything has to be computational to be real But that's just circular logic. It begs the question as to what is "computational" and what is "mathematical". E.g. Tegmark has good points in the "Mathematical Universe" that describe possible interpretations of what it means to be mathematical. But how is computation different than math? I'd argue that computation is primarily stateful, logical, and (mostly) deterministic with a clear flow of time, whereas mathematical models are often time-reversible (as most, if not of QM is), stateless, and not necessarily "logical" in the sense of relating finite symbolic quantities. Rather mathematical models happily relate infinite series, manifolds, surfaces, high-dimensional spaces, they talk about fields and operate on functions, etc.