First of all, I would like to welcome Switch to the forum. We look forward more of your posts. By the way, as a huge fan of Lumbergh in Office Space, I find the idea of a German Lumbergh pretty funny.
I've been so busy lately that it has taken a while to finally get a chance to view this video, which I thought was excellent. I am particularly impressed with Ed Fredkin and am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn't know who he was, or anything about his research over the years. But, coming from the computer science orientation, he totally gets the idea and possibilities of programmed reality, and I completely resonated with much of what he said. Unfortunately, I don't think I could say the same for Seth Lloyd, who didn't seem to be on the same wavelength. First, he confused digital and discrete, which are not the same thing. Then, he jumped on Jurgen's idea that the QM probability function may be discrete by saying that there was no evidence to that effect. But there is also no evidence that the QM probability function is continuous, because we have absolutely no way to make measurements at that level (Planck). So, to be adamant about one model over the other seems a little closed minded. He and Fotini seemed to be struggling to conceive of a computer being "emergent" from laws of physics rather than one that generated them. Finally, his assertion that you can't simulate something the size of the universe with a device smaller than the universe made no sense. What about considering the consciousness-centric model, for example. Or considering that information density could be drastically different in different scales of space. Jurgen kind of pointed that out with his 4-line program example.
Ed had some great ideas and quotes, like (paraphrasing):
"The place where the computer exists doesn't have to have beginnings and endings." What a great thought!
"I've never seen anything more hare-brained than the ideas that...the big bang started as the result of a quantum fluctuation." Bravo!
I also liked that Jurgen went beyond that physics-centric view of the holographic model being limited to the mapping of 3D space onto a black hole surface, by saying that that in itself could be the linear mapping of the program that generates the information.
Interesting that they never approached the idea of a creator. It is implied in the whole discussion, but I guess that would have pushed the discussion a little too far, huh?
One final thought (for now) is that while I was interested in Ed's concept of reversible computers, I have to say that:
You don't need a reversible computer to model the universe if THEORETICAL physics requires it but OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE does not!
Scientists have wondered for years why the laws of physics (which are of course man made) allow non-causality, but it is never observed in practice (save all of the
evidence for rewriting the past). Maybe it is because the computational mechanism is irreversible?
Any other thoughts on this program?