Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Has the Universe finite or infinite complexity?

"[L]et's now finally discuss whether the physical universe is like π=3.1415926... which only has a finite complexity, namely the size of the smallest program to generate π, or like Ω, which has unadulterared infinite complexity.
Well, if you believe in quantum physics, then Nature plays dice, and that generates complexity, an infinite amount of it, for example, as frozen accidents, mutations that are preserved in our DNA. So at this time most scientists would bet that the universe has infinite complexity, like Ω does. But then the world is incomprehensible, or at least a large part of it will always remain so, the accidental part, all those frozen accidents, the contingent part.
But some people still hope that the world has finite complexity like π it just looks like it has high complexity. If so, then we might eventually be able to comprehend everything, and there is an ultimate TOE [Theory of Everything]! But then you have to believe that quantum mechanics is wrong, as currently practiced, and that all quantum randomness is really only pseudo-randomness, like what you find in the digits of π. You have to believe that the world is actually deterministic, even though our current scientific theories say that it isn't!
[...]Wolfram believes that very simple deterministic algorithms ultimately account for all the apparent complexity we see around us, just like they do in π. He believes that the world looks very complicated, but is actually very simple. There's no randomness, there's only pseudo-randomness. Then nothing is contingent, everything is necessary, everything happens for a reason. [Leibniz!]
[...]
Or perhaps from inside this world we will never be able to tell the difference, only an outside observer could do that."
Gregory Chaitin, Metamath!, Appendix II.

Notice that the last argument has also been mentioned by Karl Popper in his Open Universe (see my review of his book).