Technology

Dr. Faizal says the same limitation applies to physics. “We have demonstrated that it is impossible to describe all aspects of physical reality using a computational theory of quantum gravity,” he explains. 

“Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone.”

Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.

Impossible to describe does not mean that it’s not possible to simulate, and impossible is an incredibly strong criterion that sounds quite inaccurate to me. We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately. We don’t even know that gravity is quantum, so that’s quite a weird starting point but we’ll ignore that for a second. What is this argument?

This seems like a huge leap to conclude that just because some aspects of our understanding seem like we wouldn’t be able to fully describe them somehow means that the universe can’t be simulated.

“Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone,” says Dr. Faizal.

Who’s to say that reality is completely defined? Perhaps there are aspects to what we consider the real universe that are uncertain. Isn’t that foundational to quantum mechanics?