Where Is the Ultimate Computer?

When my son Richard was a precocious 7 year old, we were walking back to our car from an outing. We had parked some blocks away and suddenly we were uncertain as to where the car was. Richard piped up "I know exactly where the car is!" I was surprised and impressed, "Where is it?" I asked. "The car is in the Universe." he answered. As to where the Ultimate Computer is, we can give an equally precise answer, it is not in the Universe - it is in an other place. If space and time and matter and energy are all a consequence of the informational process running on the Ultimate Computer then everything in our universe is represented by that informational process. The place where the computer is, the engine thai runs that process, we choose to call "Other".

Where did Other come from? This question is actually quite easy to fence with. The nature of systems of laws that can support computation is very much broader than the nature of systems that are limited to the physics of our universe. In other words, many of the properties of our world that are necessary for our world to take the form it has are not necessary for other kinds of worlds that can support universal computation. Universal computation, the kind that can simulate other general purpose computers, is even a property of all ordinary commercial computers.

There is no need for a space with three dimensions; computation can do just fine in spaces of any number of dimensions! The space does not have to be locally connected like our world is. Computation does not require conservation laws or symmetries. A world that supports computation does not have to have time as we know it, there is no need for beginnings and endings. Computation is compatible with worlds where something can come from nothing, where resources are finite, infinite or variable. It is clear that computation can exist in almost every kind of world that we can imagine, except for worlds that are sterile or static at every level. Universal computation is essentially synonymous with the idea that something interesting is going on. Worlds where nothing interesting will ever happen are the only kinds of places that cannot support universal computation. What is certain is that worlds that are qualitatively beyond our power to imagine are also capable of supporting computation. What all this means is that the questions that puzzle us about the origin of our universe are most unlikely to apply to Other. It's not that the problem has been put off or postponed, the problem of the origin of Other is tautologically null. Other is that place that has such structure and laws as to not raise the question of its origins, as origins are a concept peculiar to our world.