Programming the Universe
Jeff Mishlove
I'm afraid that the title of this book, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, promises more than it delivers. I was excited in purchasing the book. I know that quantum computing is a hot topic. And, I liked the idea that the author could demonstrate the universe itself was a large computer. I was I was just too naive, however, in expecting that this book would contain actual instructions (or even hints) for programming the universe. I guess I was hoping to discover another hidden treasure, like John Lilly's classic, Programming and Metaprogramming of the Human Biocomputer. And, because my expectations were unrealistically high, I found the book to be a disappointment.
To begin with, author Seth Lloyd was a colleague and admirer of Nobel Laureate physicist, Murray Gell-Mann. Well, I have interviewed Gell-Mann, and I know him to be an active (and ignorant) skeptic regarding my own academic speciality, parapsychology. Seth Lloyd, while not professing to be an active skeptic himself, nevertheless writes in a manner that is completely consistent with the (mistaken) Gell-Mann tradition of scientific materialism. As far as he is concerned, consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the universe's complexity -- merely the product of some fancy computations.
That, of course, is the mainstream argument within science today. But, I don't buy it -- and neither do philosophers of science and consciousness such as David Chalmers who point out, pointedly, that proponents of this viewpoint are not able to state, even in principle, how consciousness can arise from mere information, or from the interactions of particles that, themselves, are lacking in consciousness. The alternative viewpoint has been articulated elegantly by quantum physicist Amit Goswami, in a manner consistent with sacred texts from the world's cultures: consciousness itself is fundamental to the universe. It is at least as basic as matter, energy, time and space (if not moreso). This perspective has been echoed by a variety of other great physicists including Wolfgang Pauli, John von Neumann, Erwin Schrodinger and Eugene Wigner.
Seth Lloyd proposes in his book that it will be an advance for us to consider the universe as an information processing machine -- rather than merely a machine. No doubt, he is correct. But, in this blog, I have provided testimony regarding numerous synchronicities that have provided significant meaning and direction to my own life. Therefore, I propose that for a theory of the universe to be useful to me is has to have some power to begin to explain the operation of such synchronicities. I'm inclined to think that the information processing metaphor lacks this power -- whereas a metaphor that places consciousness within the universal computer (and, for a little spice, also adds in some higher-dimensional mathematics) seems to do the trick. That's why I highly favor the theoretical writings of my friend Saul-Paul Sirag (another of my magical friends who should receive a future blog essay about his interesting life journey).
One thing that I did find fascinating in Seth Lloyd's book were some of the personal stories concerning another of his mentors, a man whom I have met and admired, Heinz Pagels. Pagels was a great scientist who died tragically in a mountain climbing accident. And, it turns out -- as revealed in an appendix titled "Personal Note: The Consolation of Information" that Seth Lloyd was with alone with Pagels on that mountain at the time Pagels plummeted to his death. It is here that Seth Lloyd finally allows himself to speculate (in a very sentimental and superficial manner) on the very subject I had hoped would be the focus of the whole book. He writes about Pagel's death:
"Heinz's body and brain are gone. The information his cells processed is wrapped up in the earth's slow processes. He has lost consciousness, thought and action. But we have not entirely lost him. While he lived, Heinz programmed his own piece of the universe. The resulting computation unfolds in us and around us: the vivid thoughts and outrageous behavior he impressed on us still flourish in our thoughts and behavior and have their own vivid and outrageous consequences. Heinz's piece of the universal computation goes on."
Frankly, in spite of my disappointment that his book did not go as far as I would have wished, it is hard to really fault Seth Lloyd. In truth, his approach does constitute a brilliant new synthesis. He has shown the capacity to think deeply, in detail and in large terms about the universe. I would only like to encourage him to apply his talents just a little further -- to see if he can grapple with what David Chalmers has called "the hard problem of consciousness."
He might begin, for example, by asking himself if Heinz Pagel's untimely death was in any way programmed or prefigured in Pagel's own classic text, The Cosmic Code, in which Pagel uncannily described dreaming of a mountain climbing accident virtually identical to his own. Perhaps, however, I am simply asking too much from a professor of (quantum) mechanical engineering. Nevertheless, my challenge to Seth Lloyd is to take up this subject in future writing.
(Incidentally, I met Heinz Pagels through Seth Lloyd's own agent, John Brockman, who also happened to be the agent of my friend, physicist Fred Alan Wolf. Pagels was also very close to another friend, physicist Nick Herbert. Both Wolf and Herbert have written more deeply about the physics of consciousness. Bright thinkers, such as Seth Lloyd would do well to pay more attention to this literature.)
The main section of Programming the Universe ends with this modest thought:
"There's nothing wrong with thinking of the universe itself as some kind of gigantic intelligent organism, and more than it is wrong to think of the Earth itself as a single living being (an idea known as the 'Gaia hypothesis')....In the final analysis, to say that the universe is alive, or that the universe thinks, is only a metaphor. After all, what are these thoughts of the universe?"
I was disappointed that Seth Lloyd took such a condescending, dismissive attitude to such a great and profound thought. His position is one that fails to distinguish at all between thought and information processing. It is an error that has been highly criticized by historian Theodore Roszak in his book The Cult of Information.
I'm afraid to say that such attitudes are all too common in this dark age in which the scientific findings of parapsychology and related fields are virtually taboo when it comes to mainstream academic consideration. In future ages scholars will very likely look back and notice how potentially brilliant scientists such as Seth Lloyd were intellectually crippled by this prejudice. Others, however, may suggest that this crippling (like Chinese foot-binding) was part of the universal programming instructions. Somehow, even the crippling served a purpose. After all, how many metaphysical thinkers trouble themselves to build quantum computers?
Access: Public
amit goswami
August 2008 
Ooooohhhh!!! Cool.
We're actually going to be launching some REALLY cool tools this month that will allow us to archive our favorite books (list em by category, date read, etc. with reviews, favorite quotes and all that good stuff) and then be able to surf around and find all the other peeps who enjoyed the same book…while sharing our wisdom with others looking for the next step on their process.
This is one of the tools I am MOST excited about. Ryan's cranking on it now. :)
I have just edited the essay above – and added the very last sentence. Somehow, it did seem apt.
And, at the same time, I realized Dean Brown – the man who, during the last seven years of his life, had become my best friend in this world – was a prime contraction to my very thesis. He was a metaphysician of the first order – and also one of the unsung pioneers in the field of computer technology. And, I'll bet that – in the world of quantum computing – there are plenty of people with greater metaphysical depth and sophistication than the Murray Gell-Manns of this world. Even Seth Lloyd seemed to show a real appreciation for the writings of Lao Tsu.
Here are some additional thoughts regarding the above book review, contributed by my friend, Saul-Paul Sirag:
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I guess you know that Seth Lloyd was Heinz Pagel's graduate student at Rockefeller University. He received his PhD (on complexity theory) in
“Dr. Pagels, the author of several books that seek to explain to the
The obituary also quotes from *The Cosmic Code* the account of Heinz's
I guess you know that Heinz's wife was Elaine Pagels, the author of
“In memory of our son
Mark
Heinz (as you know) was a close friend of Nick Herbert. They were
I'm not formally educated in cutting edge physics. I took a year of physics in high school in the dark age of 1943.
Until the late 1950s, science believed that all matter was composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and even believed they could not be split into anything smaller. Powerful particle accelerators required a new model of the atom. In 1964, American physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig developed a theory of particle physics that proposed quarks as the building blocks of protons and neutrons, borrowing the word from James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake, which contains the phrase, “three quarks for Muster Mark.”
To give you an idea of what the future holds, nobody knows what we're looking at, but most of the progress being made in science is being made in quantum physics. Anyway, there were only two types of quarks to describe the proton and neutron: the “up quark” and the “down quark.” However, at the same time of the arrival of the quark, physicists discovered new elementary particles, including kaons, which they called “strange.” The explanation of these particles required a third type of quark, so physicists named it the “strange quark” to make three quarks for Muster Mark-the up quark, the down quark and the strange quark.
Now we know where we're going, right?
They used the three-quark model through the 1970s to learn about the internal structure of the proton. These experiments supported the existence of quarks and gluons inside protons, but they had not yet actually been discovered. In 1970, they predicted the existence of a fourth quark, called the “charm quark.” Thus, a particle containing the charm quark, the second-generation partner of the strange quark, alas, came the discovery in 1975 of a third-generation “lepton,” another building block of matter, which led scientists to predict the existence of a third generation of quarks. The “bottom quark” came along in 1977.
Pioneer Enrico Fermi's name lives on in the Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia, Illinois, which houses machinery that stands 3 stories tall and weighs about 5,000 tons. Four-hundred-fifty physicists coordinate their efforts around the Fermilab, which houses an accelerator big enough to build the energy required to see a “top quark.” In February 1995, the discovery of the theorized “top quark” was a big day for quantum physicists. The top quark, an essential in the construction of matter, was a giant step forward.
This quark which no longer exists in nature, played an essential roll in the primordial past. In the world of particle physics, this elusive giant (about the size of a gold atom) is extremely short-lived, but held to be of great importance to matter's early construction. The top quark, the “top kick” of the atom's organization, came along after physicists had struggled for considerable time to fill a hole in the standard model they envisioned for atoms. Knowing what controls atoms, a standard model predicting that three generations of quarks should exist, each one containing two different quarks.
Althourgh I don't know a lot about quantum physics, my guru is quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker, who knows a lot about consciousness. By the way nobody but me has mentioned his name. Anyway, aside from the study of quarks and such, he wrote a book entitled The Physics of Consciousness. I take his word on the mathematics. His reality fits mine. I look at it this way. I don't know a lot about what's going on in my brain. Nevertheless, I breathe and my heart beats. I' m content to let my mind do its thing, turning a world of not quite reality into mine.
According to people of ancient origin, I seem to have recondite consiousness. Modern astrologers have mapped me with Saturn trine Pluto; that is, geometrically speaking. “This trine gives natives the ability to understnand the laws by which subtle forces are organized… They are able to work slowly and make fundamental and irrevocable changes in their own and other's lives.” And so it has come to pass.