Digital Philosophy - Digital Philosophers

Digital Philosophers

• Rudy Rucker. In his book "Mind Tools" (1987), mathematician/philosopher Rudy Rucker articulated this concept with the following conclusions about the relationship between Math and the universe. Rucker's second conclusion uses the jargon term 'fact-space' ; this is Rucker's model of reality based on the notion that all that exists is the perceptions of various observers. An entity of any kind is a glob in fact-space. The world - the collection of all thoughts and objects - is a pattern spread out through fact-space. The following conclusions describe the digital philosophy that relates the world to fact-space.

1. The world can be resolved into digital bits, with each bit made of smaller bits.
2. These bits form a fractal pattern in fact-space.
3. The pattern behaves like a cellular automaton.
4. The pattern is inconceivably large in size and dimensions.
5. Although the world started simply, its computation is irreducibly complex.

• Edward Fredkin. In his paper "Finite Nature" (1992), computer pioneer Edward Fredkin stated two fundamental laws of physical information. In terms of unsolved problems in physics these two fundamental laws have two fundamental consequences.

1. All information must have a digital means of its representation.
2. An informational process transforms the digital representation of the state of the system into its future state.
3. If Fredkin's first fundamental law of information is correct then Einstein's theory of general relativity theory is not entirely correct, because the theory does not rely upon digital information.
4. If Fredkin's second fundamental law is correct then the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is not entirely correct, because quantum randomness lacks a digitally deterministic explanation.

• Stephen Wolfram. In Chapter 9 of his 2002 1200-page best-seller A New Kind of Science, the scientist and software developer Stephen Wolfram presents an outline of a multiverse automaton.

1. Below the Planck scale, there is an informational substrate that allows the build-up of time, space, and energy by means of an updating parameter.
2. The updating parameter for the multiverse is analogous to time via a mathematical isomorphism, but the updating parameter involves a decomposition across alternate universes.
3. The informational substrate consists of network nodes that can simulate random network models and Feynman path integrals.
4. In physical reality, both energy and spacetime are secondary features. The most fundamental feature of reality is signal propagation caused by an updating parameter acting upon network nodes.
5. The multiverse automaton has a model consisting of informational substrate, an updating parameter, a few simple rules, and a method for deriving all of quantum field theory and general relativity theory,
6. The totally finite nature of the model implies the existence of weird, alternate-universe forces that might, or might not, be too small for empirical detection.