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There are a lot of long comments basically saying what I am about to say so I will try to keep this brief: Computation is a metaphysically universal and fundam

There are a lot of long comments basically saying what I am about to say so I will try to keep this brief: Computation is a metaphysically universal and fundamental concept, since metaphysics is (tautologically) the domain of humans and we use symbolic communication. So of course very general theories of symbolic processes (e.g. Turing machines) are pertinent to the symbolic methodology we use to understand scientific processes. But it is a fundamental mistake to jump from that to saying computation extends to a law of the universe. Computation reflects laws of the universe, but only in the exact same way that scientific and mathematical human speech do. The mystery (still totally unsolved) is how humans are able to intuitively understand space / time / causality / etc in order to define coherent symbolic rules that reflect real processes. That computers can seemingly always implement these rules having been given the symbols is of philosophical/scientific interest, but it's solipsistic to say it's a fundamental concept of the universe.

Robotbeat 3mo ago
This is a misconception. It’s more fundamental than that. There’s a fundamental connection between (Shannon) information theory and thermodynamics. The Landau Limit, whether blackholes can destroy information or not, quantum mechanics, etc. Information is actually tangible. It’s not just an analogy or a coincidence that the word “entropy” is a word used in both physics and computer science (information theory). Thermodynamics, mind you, is perhaps THE most fundamental elements of physics and how the universe works.
- chermi 3mo ago
  Did you mean landauer?
  - Robotbeat 3mo ago
    Yes. Unable to edit it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle
- Diogenesian 3mo ago
  Information and computation are not the same thing. I was very specifically talking about Turing machines and other theoretical models of computation. That said, you are still making the same mistake I pointed out, elevating human symbolic information to a higher plateau than it deserves. I think it's because you're being too vague about the connection, when it's fairly mundane. The "fundamental connection" is that physical quantities are information, and on the other hand information is always a large collection of semi-independent semi-stochastic physical objects and can be profitably modelled by some sort of statistical mechanics. Information theory is relevant all over physics because human agents collect all sorts of physical information. The universe "doesn't care" about information in and of itself. Shannon entropy and Boltzmann entropy have similar formulas because they measure precisely the same thing; put another way, a goofy but formally equivalent way to model a gas would be a noisy radio channel communicating each molecule's kinetic energy. The problem with the black hole information paradox isn't that information is destroyed per se, but that it appears to be destroyed in a way that violates quantum mechanics (destroying quantum state without a measurement). The theoretically predicted destruction of information points to a more general problem. The Laundauer limit is no more fundamental to the universe than "a mechanical crane cannot violate the laws of pulleys." It says that no matter how you design your binary (or whatever) computer, it must involve an ensemble of binary states, and statistical mechanics puts an absolute floor on how little heat is required to alter such states. Whether these states are gas molecules or the written symbols "0" and "1" is immaterial.
  - chriswarbo 3mo ago
    > Information and computation are not the same thing. Shannon information, sure. However, algorithmic information (Kolmogorov complexity, etc.) is based on computation.
    - Diogenesian 3mo ago
      But that just takes us even further from physical relevance / universal fundamentals. Kolmogorov complexity is fundamental in computation, but its relevance in physical science is pretty selective.
  - 3mo ago
- jibal 3mo ago
  > It’s not just an analogy or a coincidence that the word “entropy” is a word used in both physics and computer science (information theory). Shannon asked von Neumann what to call it, and von Neumann said "You should call it entropy, for two reasons: In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage."
  - Robotbeat 3mo ago
    I’m aware of the von Neumann joke. There is, however, a direct equivalence between them derived from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle
    - jibal 3mo ago
      Um, only the second part was a joke. The first part was confirmation of your statement that it's not just an analogy or coincidence ... and Shannon followed von Neumann's advice (not joke).
- curiousest 3mo ago
  You can say things like, “In the domain of physics, X,” “Assuming the scientific method, X,” or “Assuming the premises of logic, X.” But “computation is a fundamental aspect of the universe”, in the way it's being understood in this thread (as opposed to the article) does not remain within any of those frameworks. It makes a claim about reality as a whole. Once you make that kind of universal claim, all the assumptions built into “computation” - about identity, distinct states, lawful transitions, causation, logic, etc. - become part of the claim. You cannot use those assumptions silently and then present the conclusion as framework-independent. And those frameworks come with consequences. Using the language of computation, they come with "lossiness" wrt modelling "reality". (see Aristotle Metaphysics -> Kant CoPR -> later Wittgenstein)
  - Robotbeat 3mo ago
    The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Laws of Thermodynamics are pretty d*mn fundamental.
  - pegasus 3mo ago
    The Church-Turing thesis (the fact that all models of computation we've been able to come up with are equivalent) gives the necessary weight to that claim.
    - Diogenesian 3mo ago
      The Church-Turing thesis is a statement about symoblic processes, and symbolism is simply not fundamental to the universe. It is fundamental to how humans understand the universe. That's the distinction.
- alfiedotwtf 3mo ago
  Thank you. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and couldn’t express what I was thinking about… but when you linked information theory to thermodynamics, it clicked. Given the quantum fields were collapsed in the early universe, I’m now wondering how information theory looked like during the different phases on the universe
GoblinSlayer 3mo ago
Also Ramanujan summation.
jibal 3mo ago
Prove any of this. Or at least provide a cogent argument for it. To me it looks riddled with mistakes, like > metaphysics is (tautologically) the domain of humans which is frankly incoherent.
- andsoitis 3mo ago
  Metaphysics operates one level up from physics or the sciences, asking what reality has to be like for anything, including the sciences, to be possible or meaningful at all.
  - jibal 3mo ago
    I know what metaphysics is (and your description isn't accurate--science is a knowledge-producing method that doesn't depend on metaphysics in order to be meaningful), but that has nothing to do with my statement. And it's called "metaphysics" because Andronicus placed that volume after the "physics" volume when he organized Aristotle's writings.
    - Diogenesian 3mo ago
      Science absolutely does depend on metaphysics. Most famously: the validity of the scientific method is ultimately a metaphysical extension of our intuitions about inductive reasoning and causality. There is no scientific proof that the scientific method is valid. ("Our intuitions" is why I said metaphysics is tautologically the domain of humans. This is essentially Kant's philosophical legacy: science will describe what it does, but humans intuitively understand reality in ways that defy noncircular scientific description, and metaphysics must be invoked to have a rational and grounded discussion about these intuitions.)
      - GoblinSlayer 3mo ago
        Isn't it obvious that scientific method is fallible? It's just statistically better than pure reason, which should be possible to demonstrate statistically. It's a product of trial and error, and there were many errors, I don't think there's much metaphysics there.
hitekker 3mo ago
Agreed. I’ll also make an observation based on this thread: the idea of computation as a fundamental law is most believable (and desirable) to people who like computers and want to reduce reality to a computer. The belief is like a cheat code: somehow our tinkering and 9-5 job somehow grants us, the computer nerds, a deep understanding of life, the universe and everything. Deeper than scientists, philosophers, etc. It’s epistemic catnip and pretty tasty at that!
peter_m1 3mo ago
A related question might be, what's the difference between mathematical (Godel), computational (Turing,) and physical (Yang-Mills) undecideabilty/computability?
deterministic 3mo ago
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Robotbeat 3mo ago

This is a misconception. It’s more fundamental than that. There’s a fundamental connection between (Shannon) information theory and thermodynamics. The Landau Limit, whether blackholes can destroy information or not, quantum mechanics, etc. Information is actually tangible. It’s not just an analogy or a coincidence that the word “entropy” is a word used in both physics and computer science (information theory). Thermodynamics, mind you, is perhaps THE most fundamental elements of physics and how the universe works.

chermi 3mo ago
Did you mean landauer?
- Robotbeat 3mo ago
  Yes. Unable to edit it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle
Diogenesian 3mo ago
Information and computation are not the same thing. I was very specifically talking about Turing machines and other theoretical models of computation. That said, you are still making the same mistake I pointed out, elevating human symbolic information to a higher plateau than it deserves. I think it's because you're being too vague about the connection, when it's fairly mundane. The "fundamental connection" is that physical quantities are information, and on the other hand information is always a large collection of semi-independent semi-stochastic physical objects and can be profitably modelled by some sort of statistical mechanics. Information theory is relevant all over physics because human agents collect all sorts of physical information. The universe "doesn't care" about information in and of itself. Shannon entropy and Boltzmann entropy have similar formulas because they measure precisely the same thing; put another way, a goofy but formally equivalent way to model a gas would be a noisy radio channel communicating each molecule's kinetic energy. The problem with the black hole information paradox isn't that information is destroyed per se, but that it appears to be destroyed in a way that violates quantum mechanics (destroying quantum state without a measurement). The theoretically predicted destruction of information points to a more general problem. The Laundauer limit is no more fundamental to the universe than "a mechanical crane cannot violate the laws of pulleys." It says that no matter how you design your binary (or whatever) computer, it must involve an ensemble of binary states, and statistical mechanics puts an absolute floor on how little heat is required to alter such states. Whether these states are gas molecules or the written symbols "0" and "1" is immaterial.
- chriswarbo 3mo ago
  > Information and computation are not the same thing. Shannon information, sure. However, algorithmic information (Kolmogorov complexity, etc.) is based on computation.
  - Diogenesian 3mo ago
    But that just takes us even further from physical relevance / universal fundamentals. Kolmogorov complexity is fundamental in computation, but its relevance in physical science is pretty selective.
- 3mo ago
jibal 3mo ago
> It’s not just an analogy or a coincidence that the word “entropy” is a word used in both physics and computer science (information theory). Shannon asked von Neumann what to call it, and von Neumann said "You should call it entropy, for two reasons: In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage."
- Robotbeat 3mo ago
  I’m aware of the von Neumann joke. There is, however, a direct equivalence between them derived from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle
  - jibal 3mo ago
    Um, only the second part was a joke. The first part was confirmation of your statement that it's not just an analogy or coincidence ... and Shannon followed von Neumann's advice (not joke).
curiousest 3mo ago
You can say things like, “In the domain of physics, X,” “Assuming the scientific method, X,” or “Assuming the premises of logic, X.” But “computation is a fundamental aspect of the universe”, in the way it's being understood in this thread (as opposed to the article) does not remain within any of those frameworks. It makes a claim about reality as a whole. Once you make that kind of universal claim, all the assumptions built into “computation” - about identity, distinct states, lawful transitions, causation, logic, etc. - become part of the claim. You cannot use those assumptions silently and then present the conclusion as framework-independent. And those frameworks come with consequences. Using the language of computation, they come with "lossiness" wrt modelling "reality". (see Aristotle Metaphysics -> Kant CoPR -> later Wittgenstein)
- Robotbeat 3mo ago
  The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Laws of Thermodynamics are pretty d*mn fundamental.
- pegasus 3mo ago
  The Church-Turing thesis (the fact that all models of computation we've been able to come up with are equivalent) gives the necessary weight to that claim.
  - Diogenesian 3mo ago
    The Church-Turing thesis is a statement about symoblic processes, and symbolism is simply not fundamental to the universe. It is fundamental to how humans understand the universe. That's the distinction.
alfiedotwtf 3mo ago
Thank you. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and couldn’t express what I was thinking about… but when you linked information theory to thermodynamics, it clicked. Given the quantum fields were collapsed in the early universe, I’m now wondering how information theory looked like during the different phases on the universe

GoblinSlayer 3mo ago

Also Ramanujan summation.

jibal 3mo ago

Prove any of this. Or at least provide a cogent argument for it. To me it looks riddled with mistakes, like > metaphysics is (tautologically) the domain of humans which is frankly incoherent.

andsoitis 3mo ago
Metaphysics operates one level up from physics or the sciences, asking what reality has to be like for anything, including the sciences, to be possible or meaningful at all.
- jibal 3mo ago
  I know what metaphysics is (and your description isn't accurate--science is a knowledge-producing method that doesn't depend on metaphysics in order to be meaningful), but that has nothing to do with my statement. And it's called "metaphysics" because Andronicus placed that volume after the "physics" volume when he organized Aristotle's writings.
  - Diogenesian 3mo ago
    Science absolutely does depend on metaphysics. Most famously: the validity of the scientific method is ultimately a metaphysical extension of our intuitions about inductive reasoning and causality. There is no scientific proof that the scientific method is valid. ("Our intuitions" is why I said metaphysics is tautologically the domain of humans. This is essentially Kant's philosophical legacy: science will describe what it does, but humans intuitively understand reality in ways that defy noncircular scientific description, and metaphysics must be invoked to have a rational and grounded discussion about these intuitions.)
    - GoblinSlayer 3mo ago
      Isn't it obvious that scientific method is fallible? It's just statistically better than pure reason, which should be possible to demonstrate statistically. It's a product of trial and error, and there were many errors, I don't think there's much metaphysics there.

hitekker 3mo ago

Agreed. I’ll also make an observation based on this thread: the idea of computation as a fundamental law is most believable (and desirable) to people who like computers and want to reduce reality to a computer. The belief is like a cheat code: somehow our tinkering and 9-5 job somehow grants us, the computer nerds, a deep understanding of life, the universe and everything. Deeper than scientists, philosophers, etc. It’s epistemic catnip and pretty tasty at that!

peter_m1 3mo ago

A related question might be, what's the difference between mathematical (Godel), computational (Turing,) and physical (Yang-Mills) undecideabilty/computability?

deterministic 3mo ago

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