Is Universe a Quantum Computer

Recently, a friend I’d made in the 60’s asked, “What is the Universe, really?” Immediately, the standard answers sprang to mind: Space and time, matter and energy, position and momentum, inertia and acceleration.

Then my friend’s question got me thinking. (Heaven forbid!) Before we transcended gender dimorphism, we relied on sexist memes to order our social world: “Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice; boys are snips and snails and puppy dog tails”. Might cosmology’s accepted wisdom be similarly facile…and wrong?

Fortunately, my friend supplied his own answer: “I think the universe is a quantum computer.” Of course it is! What else could it be?

The known universe consists of at least 10^80 bits of information. According to classical cosmology, each bit has one of two values: 1 or 0. That’s what makes ‘information’ information. Flip a bit! 1 becomes 0 or 0 becomes 1. Either way it’s an isolated event; the rest of the Universe remains as it was. All change, like ‘all politics’ (Tip O’Neil), is local.

In quantum cosmology, however, each bit is in a state of quantum superposition: not 1 or 0, but 1 and 0. While in classical computing, each bit has but one value (1 or 0) at time, in quantum computing, each bit has two values (1 and 0).  

In classical computing, all events are local; their impact on one another is mitigated by Newton’s inverse square law. In a quantum computer, on the other hand, each bit is potentially ‘entangled’ with other bits so that determining the value (1 or 0) of one bit simultaneously determines the value of another bit, regardless of that bit’s relative position in the cosmos. 

According to Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (1957), every time a bit flips a new universe comes into being. The result is powerful, albeit extravagant…and messy! Nonetheless, most cosmologists today subscribe to some version of Everett’s model.

Everett ‘interpreted’ quantum phenomena according to a classical framework. He had drunk the Kool Aid: ‘the quantum world is embedded in the classical’. But by treating the entire universe as a quantum phenomenon, we’re able to conserve the power of Evertt’s interpretation…without the mess. 

Everett assumed that each unique combination of 1’s and 0’s constitutes a novel universe. Without superposition and entanglement, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Reframing this model in quantum mechanical terms allows us to achieve the same result within a single universe, as long as that entire universe is entangled and in superposition.

Why didn’t Everett think of that? Well, for one thing, the principle of ‘non-locality’ (entanglement) was not discovered until 1964 (Bell). But beyond that, it was scientific dogma at the time that quantum phenomena could occur only on extremely small scales...certainly not on the scale of the cosmos.

How do local systems in superposition acquire classical values? Schoedinger’s cat, basking in a sort of suspended animation, learns its fate only when some ‘outside agent’ interacts with the experimental apparatus. Interestingly, if puss discovers it’s dead, it will have been dead for some time prior to realizing it. Quantum mechanics does funky things with time. (Feynman) 

Universe, however, by definition, has no outside agent – unless you wish to invoke God. But that is not necessary, at least not at this point. A feature of Universe, indeed a feature of all systems, is that it interacts with itself. It is incurably recursive.

Contrary to Bertrand Russell, IRL every ‘real’ set is a subset of itself. The whole is one of its parts. So the concept of Incarnation applies not only in theology but also in cosmology. Incarnation is not an exception to the laws of physics, it is a law of physics. To paraphrase Alfred North Whitehead, God does not reflect a suspension of the ‘rules’; God is the paradigmatic expression of those rules.

Therefore, a change in one part of a system entails a change in the whole while a change in the whole entails a change in at least one part. Sets that are not recursive in this way are merely useful mathematical abstractions. 

The universe, the set of all sets including itself, is in a permanent state of ‘self-assessment’. As a result, it manifests classical values at all times. But this is misleading. Those contingent classical values (Kant’s phenomena) mask substructural quantum reality (noumena). 

As Universe observes and interacts with itself, we experience consciousness and agency (free will). The phenomenon that you, acting recursively, experience as ‘you’ is a function of the Universe being aware of itself (consciousness) and acting on itself (agency). Every time an agent (e.g. you) makes a choice, i.e. exercises free will and acts on it, multiple potential values collapse down to a single actual value, mimicking a classical world.

We create a classical likeness of quantum reality. We run a virtual machine on the quantum software that is the universe. We convert pure potentiality into settled actuality. So yes, Virginia, Universe is a quantum computer.

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