The World is Either Algorithmic or Mostly Random, FXQi Contest: Is Reality Digital or Analog? 3rd Prize winner

I will propose the notion that the universe is digital, not as a claim about what the universe is made of but rather about the way it unfolds. Central to the argument will be the concepts of symmetry breaking and algorithmic probability, which will be used as tools to compare the way patterns are distributed in our world to the way patterns are distributed in a simulated digital one. These concepts will provide a framework for a discussion of the informational nature of reality. I will argue that if the universe were analog, then the world would likely be random, making it largely incomprehensible. The digital model has, however, an inherent beauty in its imposition of an upper limit and in the convergence in computational power to a maximal level of so-phistication. Even if deterministic, that it is digital doesn’t mean that the world is trivial or predictable, but rather that it is built up from operations that at the lowest scale are very simple but that at a higher scale look complex and even random, though only in appearance. 1 Everything out of nothing Among the simplest hypotheses compatible with the best account of the ori-gin of the universe that we currently have, one can either choose to start from nothing, the state of the universe with all its matter and energy squeezed into an infinitely small point of no length, no width, and infinite density called a singularity; or else a fraction later, out of a state of complete disor-der such that once particles formed they couldn’t do anything except collide 1 a