Seth Lloyd
Seth Lloyd
Seth Lloydis a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He refers to himself as a "quantum mechanic"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
american-educator complexity entirely maybe surprised
We have a picture for how complexity arises, because if the universe is computationally capable, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that things are so entirely out of control.
american-educator hope metaphor picture precise
In this metaphor we actually have a picture of the computational universe, a metaphor which I hope to make scientifically precise as part of a research program.
american-educator held promise science
This democratization of science, this making it public, is in a sense the realization of a promise that science has held for a long time.
accessible american-educator form knowledge principle public science
So science is basically, at it most fundamental level, a public form of knowledge, a form of knowledge that is in principle accessible to everybody.
simple starting-over able
Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.
ongoing computer quantum
The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.
form
Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.
use flip energy
[With quantum computers] you can calculate how many bits are in the universe, how much energy it takes to flip them, how much energy exists, and use that to rule out lots of things about the universe's history. Anything that takes more bit flips couldn't have happened.
information laptops currents
The amount of information that can be stored by the ultimate laptop, 10 to the 31st bits, is much higher than the 10 to the 10th bits stored on current laptops.
simple law giving
The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.
trying dynamics looks
It's also a reasonable scientific program to look at the dynamics of the standard model and to try to prove from that dynamics that it is computationally capable.
features complexes universe
Another feature that everybody notices about the universe is that it's complex.
views dynamics natural
If you take a more Darwinian point of view the dynamics of the universe are such that as the universe evolved in time, complex systems arose out of the natural dynamics of the universe.
computer mechanic break
Yes, I am a quantum mechanic! Those darn quantum computers break all the time.