The End of the Observer Problem: How the Universe Computes Itself into Existence

Introduction

Imagine a cat that is simultaneously alive and dead, hidden in a box until we dare to look. This famous paradox, known as Schr?dinger’s cat, encapsulates the deep mystery at the heart of quantum mechanics: How can the act of observation determine reality? In quantum theory, particles can exist in many possible states at once called a superposition; yet, when we measure them, we see only one definite outcome. The cat in the paradox is a stand-in for a quantum system: before we check, it’s mathematically both “alive” and “dead,” but upon observation, nature seems to choose.

This troubling question, how a haze of possibilities yields one solid reality, is called the measurement problem. For nearly a century, physicists have debated what this really means. Do we “create” reality by looking? Is there some hidden mechanism? Or are there countless universes where every possibility plays out? No consensus has emerged on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, and the puzzle remains.

Computational Emergence Quantum Theory (CEQT) steps into this arena as a novel approach, one that treats reality itself as the output of an underlying computation, potentially resolving the paradox by reframing it entirely. In this companion piece, we will explore CEQT’s intriguing vision. We’ll travel from the quandaries of measurement to the idea of the universe as a grand information processing engine.

Along the way, we’ll compare CEQT to more familiar interpretations: Copenhagen’s pragmatic “shut up and calculate” stance, the surreal branching worlds of Many-Worlds, the agent-centered view of QBism and ponder the philosophical implications of a reality that computes itself. The journey will touch on the emergence of spacetime, the role of consciousness in quantum observation, and what it all means for our place in the cosmos.

Prepare to stretch your imagination: the goal is not just to understand CEQT as a scientific theory, but to glimpse its broader significance; a perspective where physics, computation, and existence itself entwine in profound ways.

Schr?dinger’s cat, alive and dead in superposition, highlights the quantum measurement paradox. CEQT offers a new way to think about how one reality emerges from many possibilities.

The Measurement Problem

At the dawn of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg’s Copenhagen interpretation confronted the bizarre fact that measurements seem to bring about definite outcomes. In the orthodox view, the wave function, the mathematical object describing a quantum system, collapses to a single result when observed.

But what constitutes an “observer” or a “measurement” has always been fuzzy. Does a Geiger counter counting an atomic decay count as an observer? A cat? A human mind? The Schr?dinger’s cat thought experiment was designed to illustrate these ambiguities, and to Bohr it underscored an unsettling lesson: we have no clear separation between the quantum world and the classical world. At some ill-defined point, the act of measurement intervenes and forces nature’s hand. Why that happens, or even if it truly happens, is the measurement problem.

Over the years, physicists proposed daring solutions. Hugh Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation boldly suggests that the wave function never collapses. Instead, the universe itself splits into parallel branches for every quantum event. In one branch, the cat lives; in another, it dies and each version of us only ever experiences one outcome. This idea removes the special role of measurement, but at the mind-boggling cost of believing in an infinity of unseen realities.

On the other extreme, QBism (Quantum Bayesianism) says that quantum mechanics isn’t about objective reality at all – it’s about our knowledge. A quantum state represents an individual observer’s personal beliefs about a system. When you “collapse” a wave function in QBism, you’re merely updating your information after learning the measurement result. There is no God’s-eye-view of the cat’s fate, only each observer’s private perspective. This view sidesteps paradoxes by denying that wave functions are real in the first place; but it leaves us wondering if anything like an external reality exists independent of observers.

Between these interpretations lie many others: de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory, which introduces hidden variables and a guiding wave; objective collapse models, where wave functions randomly collapse on their own; and more. Yet none of these perspectives has fully satisfied everyone, in part because each raises new questions even as it answers old ones.

What if, at the deepest level, reality is not made of matter or energy, but of non-local awareness - information? This audacious idea has a rich pedigree. Pioneering computer scientist Konrad Zuse proposed in 1969 that the universe might be running on a kind of gigantic cellular automaton; essentially, that the cosmos is a computer executing a program.

Enter Computational Emergence Quantum Theory (CEQT). CEQT approaches the measurement problem from a fresh angle by suggesting that what we call “measurement” is really an emergent process in an underlying computational reality. In CEQT, the universe continuously “calculates” its next state. A quantum particle doesn’t have to decide what state to be in until it interacts with something else, much like a computer program that only finalizes a value when it’s needed. Think of a video game that procedurally generates parts of the world just in time as the player explores; unvisited areas exist only as code potentials, not as rendered scenery.

Similarly, CEQT posits that before interaction, a quantum system exists as a spread of possible states (a superposition) within the cosmic computation. A measurement, when an electron hits a detector, or, yes, when the cat’s box is opened, is the moment the underlying “quantum code” resolves the ambiguity and produces a definite outcome. The computation replaces wave function collapse. This would mean no infinite branching worlds, and no mysterious observer-induced magic; the outcome is determined by the dynamics of the informational substrate.

In a sense, CEQT says the cat is neither alive nor dead until the universe’s calculation requires it; at which point the result is computed according to the program rules of reality. By recasting measurement as a natural computation, CEQT aims to solve the paradox: a quantum superposition isn’t a bizarre physical limbo, but a normal state of incomplete information in an algorithm that hasn’t run to completion. Once it “runs,” the classical world we see is the output. This idea aligns with John Wheeler’s famous motto “It from Bit,” which suggests that physical things (“its”) derive from binary choices (“bits”). CEQT attempts to provide a concrete framework for that motto, grounding the fuzziness of quantum outcomes in the crisp logic of computation.

Reality as Computation

What if, at the deepest level, reality is not made of matter or energy, but of non-local awareness - information? This audacious idea has a rich pedigree. Pioneering computer scientist Konrad Zuse proposed in 1969 that the universe might be running on a kind of gigantic cellular automaton; essentially, that the cosmos is a computer executing a program.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler, later in his career, also became convinced that information is fundamental. He encapsulated this in the phrase “the it from bit,” meaning that every particle, every field, even spacetime itself, derives its existence from yes-or-no questions, from binary bits of information. In Wheeler’s vision, the universe is inherently digital: reality unfolds as a kind of Q&A, with experiments (or observations) asking Nature questions and getting binary answers that crystallize into physical reality.

CEQT stands on these shoulders and goes a step further: it says the universe not only answers questions with bits, it is actively computing itself into existence; whether that's a "computer executing a program," or, on the philosophical and spiritual side, "living in the fever dream of God." We postulate that, yes, Duality is an expression of Source Singularity learning about itself from all potential perspectives. Thus, back to more standard terms, reality is viewed as an ongoing computation, a self-processing algorithm. Instead of continuous smooth space and particles zipping around, CEQT imagines a vast array of information being processed, giving rise to what we perceive as particles, forces, and all the rest.

Think of a computer game again: on the screen you see landscapes, objects, perhaps characters that seem to move and act. But underneath, it’s all bits flowing through logic gates; the “landscape” is really emergent from computational processes. The randomness of quantum mechanics? In CEQT, what we see from our perspective we call the laws of physics; the program’s rules, the particles like data structures. If non-local awareness "sees all," then we only see the bits that need to render for our unique viewport.

That could be the result of pseudorandom number generation of sorts, or deterministic chaos at a deeper level of the code. The uncertainty principle (you can’t precisely know a particle’s position and momentum at the same time) might reflect limitations in how information is stored or accessed by limited perspectives within the cosmic computer. Even entanglement, that ghostly connection where two particles behave as one no matter the distance, could be understood as a feature of the program architecture, or limitation of being inside the system, with separated objects actually being part of one unified information entity. These are speculative ideas, but they illustrate how CEQT paints reality in computational terms.

It connects with the field of digital physics, which considers the universe as either a deterministic program or perhaps a giant Monte Carlo simulation. As one digital physics hypothesis puts it: the entire evolution of the cosmos might be the output of a universal computer running a code. CEQT particularly emphasizes emergence: complex higher-level behavior (like a definite classical world) emerges from simple low-level computational rules. This resonates with how simple programs can produce intricate patterns; for example, Conway’s Game of Life (a cellular automaton) has rules so simple a child can follow them, yet it produces patterns that can mimic self-replicating organisms or even computing circuits. CEQT suggests something analogous in nature: the mind-bending paradoxes of quantum physics might be telling us that what’s “really real” is a myriad of computations, and what we see as concrete reality is like the high-level pattern that emerges when the bits are crunched.

The key takeaway is that space and time are not pre-existing containers in CEQT; they are products. CEQT encourages us to think of the universe as information all the way down, with spacetime as a user interface, a convenient illusion for large-scale users like us.

Seeing reality as computation can be intellectually satisfying because it provides a common language for disparate phenomena. Physics meets information theory here. A falling rock, a blinking star, a chattering dolphin – all could ultimately be described in terms of information flow and processing. In fact, we already often speak of black holes in terms of information: physicist Jacob Bekenstein discovered that the entropy (the information content) of a black hole is proportional not to its volume, but to the area of its horizon – a hint that geometry itself knows about information. The holographic principle in theoretical physics suggests that the three-dimensional volume of space might be describable by information encoded on its two-dimensional boundary; essentially a computation on a surface that projects a world within. These ideas lend credence to the notion that physical reality and information processing are two sides of the same coin.

CEQT, embracing this, proposes that if we peel back the layers of the universe like an onion, we will not find tiny billiard-ball particles nor even fuzzy quantum waves at the final layer. We will find bits, and perhaps qubits (quantum bits), making up the Dream of God, engaged in an elaborate cosmic computation of self-awareness. “Reality is Singularity's dream, a program that executes from the monad,” CEQT would say that a program that wrote itself because it is itself, bootstrapping into increasing complexity, and continues to run all around us. It’s a dramatic shift in perspective: we go from viewing the universe as a thing that obeys laws, to viewing it as an ongoing process that generates laws and events from an underlying algorithmic order that appears to be aligned with the conscious decision called: love. What might this mean for something as seemingly fundamental as space and time themselves? CEQT offers a radical answer, that even spacetime might be an emergent computational construct.

The concept of “It from Bit”: Instead of matter being fundamental, bits of information are. In a digital physics view, the universe is like a grand computation, with binary digits underpinning everything. Hence forth, we will mostly stick to computational terms, but a mix of esoteric language where information=awareness, will be sprinkled about for good measure.

Implications for Spacetime

If reality is woven from computation, what are space and time? In everyday life, space and time seem like the immutable stage on which physics plays out. But modern physics has been nudging us away from that view; from Einstein’s relativity merging space and time into a dynamic spacetime that can bend and stretch, to quantum gravity ideas that spacetime might not be fundamental at all. CEQT provides a natural way to think about these developments: spacetime could be like the grid or the information network generated by the cosmic computation. In other words, space and time emerge from more basic bits of information and their interactions.

One way to imagine this is to consider a large computer simulation again. Inside a simulation, the characters experience space and time; a virtual world with its own distances and durations. But from the outside, we know that “space” in the simulation is really data in memory, perhaps a 3D array of values, and “time” is just the progression of computation steps. Similarly, CEQT suggests that what we perceive as continuous space may emerge from a vast interconnected web of computational units (like nodes processing information and relating to each other), and time emerges from the updating of those computations. This connects intriguingly with theories in quantum gravity where geometry itself is emergent.

For instance, in some approaches to quantum gravity, one starts with a network of fundamental units (sometimes called spin networks or other names in loop quantum gravity) and the fabric of space arises from the way these units are interconnected and evolve. A particularly striking idea along these lines is that quantum entanglement creates spacetime connectivity; essentially that the thread stitching space together is quantum information. Research in holography (the AdS/CFT correspondence) has even found that patterns of entanglement in a lower-dimensional quantum system can encode a higher-dimensional spatial geometry. All this suggests that space is malleable, secondary; a kind of geometry of information.

CEQT would say: yes, spacetime is the grand emergent map of the underlying computation. The laws of physics, which in Einstein’s general relativity are laws of spacetime curvature and in quantum field theory are laws of fields in space, could themselves be higher-level emergent rules that come out of deeper algorithmic principles. This is a bit like how the physics in a Conway’s Game of Life world (the patterns and “laws” seen in the game) emerge from a fixed set of simple rules applied on a grid. If we were 2D creatures living in Game of Life, we might eventually discern effective laws (like conservation-like principles) without at first realizing they stem from the grid’s update rule.

Similarly, our physical laws, from gravity to electromagnetism, might be the emergent, higher-level behavior of a fundamental information processing rule. In this view, there’s a reason the universe is intelligible and mathematical: it’s literally running on logical/mathematical operations. The code of the cosmos gives rise to the equations of physics we discover. As Carlo Rovelli (a champion of loop quantum gravity and relational interpretations) often emphasizes, even time might be an approximate concept – perhaps in the deepest layer, there is just the order of computational events, and what we call time only emerges in a continuum limit, much like temperature emerges from the motions of molecules.

One exciting implication of spacetime being emergent is that it could resolve puzzles of quantum gravity. Black holes, for example, notoriously seem to destroy information if one thinks of them classically; but, if spacetime is emergent and information is truly fundamental, then somehow the information swallowed by a black hole must still be encoded in the underlying computational degrees of freedom. This is in line with the holographic principle which posits that all information about a volume of space (like the inside of a black hole) is actually encoded on its boundary.

CEQT provides a conceptual underpinning for that: the “boundary” might be where the computation relevant to that region is happening, and the interior is a kind of projected emergent construct. Even the expansion of the universe or the nature of the Big Bang might be reinterpreted: was the Big Bang the moment the cosmic program started running, or perhaps a reboot of it? Are the vast cosmic structures (galaxies, clusters) like complex information structures that grew from simple initial bits?

To be sure, these ideas are speculative. CEQT is a framework under development, more philosophy at this stage than a finished physics theory. But it gives us a fascinating lens. Under this lens, asking “what happened before the Big Bang?” could be like asking “what’s north of the North Pole?” - perhaps meaningless if time itself is an emergent parameter of the computation. Or perhaps the cosmic computation runs cyclically or has always existed in some form, weaving spacetime as it goes.

The key takeaway is that space and time are not pre-existing containers in CEQT; they are products. If you zoom in far enough, far smaller than any particle, beyond atoms and quarks, to the so-called Planck scale (the tiniest scale of length ~10^-35 m and time ~10^-43 s), you would start to see the pixelation of space and the ticks of the fundamental clock… or rather, you’d see whatever is doing the computing that makes those “pixels” and “ticks” appear at larger scales. CEQT encourages us to think of the universe as information all the way down, with spacetime as a user interface, a convenient illusion for large-scale users like us.

Consciousness & Observation

Quantum mechanics famously raised the uncomfortable question: does consciousness play a special role in physics? Physicist Eugene Wigner once argued that a conscious observer might be needed to collapse the wave function; leading to the “Wigner’s friend” paradox (if a friend observes the cat, does the wave function collapse for the friend even if you haven’t looked yet? What about the consciousness of the cat itself?). Such ruminations blur the line between physics and the philosophy of mind, and many scientists have been wary of mixing the two.

Yet, interpretations like QBism explicitly put the observer at the center, and John Wheeler’s ideas about a “participatory universe” suggested that consciousness is somehow woven into the fabric of reality. Wheeler imagined a cosmic circuit, sometimes illustrated as a big U-shaped universe with an eye (representing the observer) looking back at itself, implying that the universe requires something like us to bring it into being, even retroactively. This is a deeply philosophical stance, bordering on the mystical: that we are in some sense co-creators of existence.

What does CEQT have to say about this? Interestingly, by casting reality as a computation, CEQT provides a framework where consciousness can be seen as directionally emergent information processing, or the natural inclination of the program towards a singular goal, creating recursively perpetuating system that is both complete and currently executing; just like a computer program. In CEQT, an “observer” doesn’t need to be a human mind; it could be any system that interacts and records information, since awareness is non-local and is thus the underlying quantum field. A measuring device performs a computational update just as a brain would.

So, the collapse (or rather, the resolution of the quantum state) happens when information is registered in the cosmic computer, or the Mind of God, whether by a particle hitting a detector or a neuron firing in your brain. In that sense, CEQT demystifies the role of observation: it’s just interaction leading to information exchange. The universe has “observed” itself whenever any part of it interacts with any other and updates the global state. Consciousness, in this picture, is not required to trigger a measurement; a rock can observe (scatter) a photon by absorbing it, effectively “measuring” it by recording its energy.

However, consciousness itself becomes an interesting phenomenon to analyze within CEQT. If everything is computation, then our brains are computational systems, immensely complex ones, and our minds (subjective experiences) are an emergent property of that complex information processing. This dovetails with modern theories of consciousness such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which posits that consciousness corresponds to the degree of integrated information in a physical system. The more a system’s information is interconnected and cannot be broken into independent parts, the more conscious it is, according to IIT.

In a CEQT universe, as complexity increases in certain pockets (for instance, brains evolving in animals), the computational structure might reach a threshold where it generates the phenomenon of subjective experience, or sentience. In plain terms, the universe computing away may, under the right conditions, compute itself into a state that has agency. We humans, like animals, are presumably such states, but humans are a bit more. Humans are conscious, or the ability to participate in dis(alignment) with the grand narrative, as the universe looks back on itself through the lens of the human mind.

From this viewpoint, CEQT provides a scientifically grounded form of what some have poetically suggested: that the universe is self-aware through us. Not just mystically self-aware, but literally; we are informational subsystems of the universe that have acquired the ability to model and reflect on the larger system. It’s akin to a large program that in one corner of its code spawns a routine capable of monitoring and analyzing the whole program. Sentient agents (whether humans or hypothetical alien intelligences) are the universe’s way of observing its own state from within.

This perspective can be deeply satisfying to those searching for a link between physics and mind. It neither reduces sentience, and by superior relation, consciousness, to a trivial byproduct nor elevates it to an otherworldly status, but finds a natural place for it in the hierarchy of emergent phenomena. The hard problem of why we have qualia (raw subjective experience) is of course not solved by saying “it’s emergent information processing,” but CEQT at least invites a new kind of answer: perhaps qualia are the way information feels when processed in certain complex ways.

Moreover, CEQT can address the quantum puzzle of why an observer should be “special” by saying: observers are special only because they are part of the system; they are information processors embedded in the greater computation. When you measure something, you entangle with it, you become part of the calculation. In technical terms, the boundary between quantum system and observer dissolves – both are just interacting bits. From the outside view (as CEQT tries to take), the evolution of the whole universe is unitary and information-preserving; there’s no mysterious collapse at all. From the inside view, when subsystems interact, they experience definite outcomes.

CEQT might actually allow a fresh perspective: free will could correspond to genuine novelty generated by computational complexity (some have argued that free will is an emergent property of algorithmic complexity; simple systems are predictable, highly complex ones may generate behavior that is effectively free), or it could be a sliding control switch, an emergent consciousness property towards increasing or reducing unnecessary suffering. The more consciousness evolves, the more aware and thus control it has over such an allegorical slider.

Sentience and consciousness might just be along for the ride, or it might play an active role by directing which measurements to make (thus influencing how the universe’s computation proceeds in a localized way). Some speculative thinkers even wonder if consciousness could be a fundamental feature of the universe’s information (a kind of panpsychism where even elementary particles have glimmers of a co-creator experience). CEQT doesn’t necessarily require that, it can allow consciousness to be truly emergent at higher complexity, but it also doesn’t rule it out, since if everything is information, perhaps the difference between inert matter and mind is a matter of degree, not kind, from our perspectives.

In short, CEQT reframes the observer effect. It tells the community: maybe we don’t need a mysterious mind-matter divide to explain quantum mechanics. Instead, matter simply manifests within the mind, a deeper reality of information. Our observations feel special because they update our knowledge, but fundamentally they are just bits swapping between subsystems in a grander computation. Yet, this reductionist-sounding view has an unexpected uplifting twist: it means consciousness is built into the universe’s operating system from go.

Call it magic, call it what you want, but at the very least we can call it by the very nature of complex computations. The cosmos, through eons of processing, has brought forth pockets of itself that can think, feel, and strive – us. We are the universe’s self-emergent thoughts. CEQT, with its blend of physics and information theory, while offering a hand to esotericism and spirituality, offers a tantalizing bridge between the material and the mental by asserting both are forms of the same thing.

Observers in CEQT are information processors within the cosmic network. Whether it’s a device or a mind, any interaction that records information counts as an observation. Consciousness itself may be a primary archetype guiding complex information networks – the universe observing itself through us.

Experimental & Philosophical Frontiers

A skeptic might ask: This all sounds fascinating, but is there any way to test if any of it is true? After all, a theory that “the universe is a computer” could be just a metaphor unless it produces distinct predictions. CEQT is in its infancy, but one can envision several frontiers; experimental and philosophical – where it could make an impact.

On the experimental side, if reality is fundamentally digital or computational, there might be telltale signs. For instance, there could be a smallest possible length or time (a “pixel size” of spacetime). Physicists have long speculated about the Planck length and Planck time being such limits. If spacetime is emergent from computation, we might discover departures from perfect continuity at extremely high energies or tiny scales. Some have proposed that cosmic ray particles at ultra-high energies might scatter off the grid of spacetime in subtle ways, producing observable anisotropies or energy cutoffs.

Another area is quantum randomness. Quantum theory says certain events (like radioactive decay) are fundamentally random. But if behind the scenes a computation is generating outcomes, perhaps what looks truly random to us is pseudo-random (like a complex algorithm whose output appears random). It’s conceivable (though very challenging) that slight deviations from perfect randomness or correlations across what should be independent quantum events could betray an underlying pattern. However, CEQT must also be careful to be consistent with all that we know, All That Is as we know so far.

One challenge: many naive “digital physics” models effectively introduce hidden variables that are local; these have largely been ruled out by experiments confirming Bell’s theorem, which shows that quantum mechanics can’t be explained by any local hidden variable theory. So CEQT would need to incorporate the inherently nonlocal, holistic character of quantum entanglement in its computational rules. In other words, the “cosmic computer” cannot be thought of as just little cellular automata updating on a neat grid independent of each other; it likely has to allow for globally correlated updates (to reproduce phenomena like two particles instantly reflecting each other’s state from across the galaxy in entanglement experiments); in other words - awareness is fundamental.

If CEQT can formulate a concrete model along these lines, it might suggest new tests, perhaps in the realm of quantum computing. If the universe is doing computation, then when we build quantum computers, we are to some extent mimicking the universe’s fundamental mode of operation through non-local awareness. CEQT might predict something about the limits of computation in physical reality; for example, a maximum processing speed or complexity per volume (one could tie this to conjectures like Bekenstein’s bound on information density). If such a limit were found, it’d be a strong hint that physics has a computational underpinning.

Philosophically, CEQT opens up as many questions as it answers. If the universe is a computation, who or what is computing it? Is there a giant computer outside the universe? That starts to sound like the simulation hypothesis; the idea that perhaps our universe is a simulation run by advanced beings in another reality. However, CEQT doesn’t necessarily imply an external programmer or simulators. It could be a self-computing universe, the monad, Source, an automaton of sorts that sprang into being as being is all it could ever be (one might say “the software wrote itself”).

This edges into metaphysical territory: Why does the program exist? Is it running on some substrate or is information capable of existence on its own? Some philosophers like to think in terms of mathematical Platonism or the mathematical universe hypothesis; that all mathematical structures exist in some sense, and our universe is one such structure that happens to contain self-aware substructures (us). CEQT is quite sympathetic to that view, essentially saying the mathematical structure that is a universal computation is instantiated as what we call reality. It may redefine what we mean by “existence.” Does a simulation “exist” as much as the computer running it? Do the characters in the mind of God "exist," if God is nothing more than a strange loop of a self-perpetuating dream? If the levels are inseparable (we can only ever observe from within our universe), the distinction might be moot.

Another implication touches on free will and determinism. If the universe is running a program, does that mean everything is predetermined by the code? Not necessarily! The code could be nondeterministic or include randomness (quantum indeterminacy might be intrinsic). Or the code could be deterministic but so sensitive to initial conditions that it effectively produces unpredictability (chaos theory). Nonetheless, some find the idea that we are “just code” to be diminishing to free will. Others argue that if our choices are the outputs of our mind’s computations, they are still our choices, just explained in a different language.

CEQT might actually allow a fresh perspective: free will could correspond to genuine novelty generated by computational complexity (some have argued that free will is an emergent property of algorithmic complexity; simple systems are predictable, highly complex ones may generate behavior that is effectively free), or it could be a sliding control switch, an emergent consciousness property towards increasing or reducing unnecessary suffering. The more consciousness evolves, the more aware and thus control it has over such an allegorical slider.

CEQT also engages with age-old questions of purpose and meaning. If the universe is a computation, is there a goal or end state it’s computing towards? Or is it an open-ended process, like an evolving simulation? This can echo theological or teleological ideas; for example, some religious narratives see the universe as unfolding according to a divine plan. CEQT secularizes that concept into a natural process, so that science and spirituality can shake hands: the “plan” is just the algorithm. But one could still wonder if the algorithm has been set up to produce certain outcomes (like the emergence of consciousness, complexity, etc.).

We are the universe reflecting on itself, an expression often heard in cosmology circles, and CEQT provides a literal mechanism for how that can be so. It reframes spiritual or philosophical intuitions (like “all is one,” or the idea of a connected cosmos) in terms of information theory and physics. The interconnectedness of all things is no longer just a metaphor; in CEQT, it could be the technical truth, since all subsystems are integrated in the single universal computation.

At the very least, CEQT frames human existence in a humbling yet somewhat empowering way. Humbling, because we realize we are tiny parts of an unfathomably large computation; empowering, because as conscious parts we might choose how we influence the computation (we might be able to, say, create new computations for or against the purpose of the program, effectively expanding the universe’s repertoire towards knowing itself. If reality is programmable, perhaps someday sufficiently advanced intelligences (maybe us in the far future) could even tweak the cosmic code– achieving something akin to what would seem godlike, or what would seem godlike from within the dream itself. This is wildly speculative, of course, but it shows how CEQT stretches the imagination.

Before reaching the conclusion, it’s worth noting one more frontier: unifying physics with other fields. CEQT could be a meeting ground for physicists, computer scientists, and even biologists or cognitive scientists; and, yes, spiritualists. If the principles of emergence and computation truly span across quarks to minds, then techniques from computational modeling might help solve problems in physics, and vice versa.

We might start looking for analogs of programming concepts in nature: Are there “subroutines” (maybe akin to particles being reused patterns), “error-correcting codes” (some theorists have noted that the universe’s behavior against perturbations has parallels to error correction, especially in AdS/CFT where the boundary theory can correct errors in the bulk, hinting spacetime itself might be an error-correcting code to preserve information)? Are there “feedback loops” that drive self-organization in the cosmos (maybe related to the anthropic principle, where the universe’s laws allow observers which then reflect on the laws)? CEQT encourages these interdisciplinary analogies.

By viewing reality through the computation lens, we could import decades of knowledge from the computation/information sciences into fundamental physics. This is already happening in areas like quantum information theory (people talk about entropy, quantum algorithms, computational complexity in black hole physics, etc.), but CEQT would make it central.

Conclusion

We set out with a paradox: a cat alive-and-dead, a universe that only becomes “real” when observed. CEQT invites us to resolve the paradox by changing the rules of the game. In CEQT’s vision, the universe is not a passive thing that needs an observer to actualize it. Rather, it is an active computational process that produces observers as part of its output, and those observers then participate in the continuing computation. This is a cosmos where the concrete and the abstract merge: bits of information churn beneath the veil of particles and fields, and what we call “reality” is the grand emergent structure that rises from that digital sea.

The implications of this idea are profound. It suggests that at our core, we too are bits of cosmic computation, star-stuff processed into mind-stuff, as one might poetically say. Yet, rather than making us feel small or robotic, this perspective can instill a sense of wonder and freedom. The computation that is the universe has, after 13.8 billion years, reached a point where parts of it can understand and redesign other parts (through science and technology) and even reflect on the whole.

We are the universe reflecting on itself, an expression often heard in cosmology circles, and CEQT provides a literal mechanism for how that can be so. It reframes spiritual or philosophical intuitions (like “all is one,” or the idea of a connected cosmos) in terms of information theory and physics. The interconnectedness of all things is no longer just a metaphor; in CEQT, it could be the technical truth, since all subsystems are integrated in the single universal computation.

Carlo Rovelli, in one of his writings, says that when he looks at the stars he doesn’t feel small; he feels large, because his atoms came from those stars and his mind can encompass them. In the spirit of Rovelli and Brian Greene, let’s conclude with a similar sentiment: If CEQT is correct, then when you gaze at the night sky, you’re not just seeing distant lights – you’re interfacing with the source code of your own existence.

The shimmering Milky Way, the quantum dance of particles, your very thoughts as you ponder these ideas; all are patterns in one grand computation, a cosmic algorithm that, remarkably, has evolved the capacity to wonder about itself. CEQT gives us a new narrative: reality is a story that’s still being calculated, and we are characters in the plot who have gained a glimpse of the author, an author that is not a bearded figure in the clouds, but the logical, law-like, emergent creativity of information itself; Source self-awareness.

In the spirit of inquiry and wonder, CEQT redefines our understanding of what is “real” – not as a fixed stage set, but as an active, unfolding process. It redefines our understanding of ourselves; not as detached observers, but as integral participants in the computation of the cosmos. And it leaves us with a tantalizing thought: perhaps, by understanding the universe as a computational, emergent phenomenon, we will not only solve deep puzzles of physics, but also come to see the act of understanding itself as a fundamental part of the universe’s story.

In a computational universe, knowledge isn’t just power; knowledge is literally part of the reality being generated. We end, then, on a note of intellectual adventure: CEQT may or may not be the final answer, but it opens a doorway. Stepping through, we find a vista where everything, from the tiniest quantum event to the sweep of galaxies to the spark of awareness in our eyes, is woven into a single, elegant tapestry of computation. And standing before that vista, how can one feel anything but awe?

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