Other Intelligence
If the Universe serves a purpose, does that mean that there is an intelligent creator? First of all, we must get used to the idea that in this context, humanlike intelligence is not relevant. Humans are the prototype thinking creatures on our planet. As such, our brains are very close in design and capability to the brains of other primates such as chimpanzees or gorillas. This is not meant to be demeaning to humans but simply a statement of the relative position of human intelligence; what else would it be close to? As the prototype thinking creatures we do our intellectual work with mechanisms that were really designed (by evolution) for the tasks of surviving in jungles and forests. We haven't had scientists around long enough for brains to have evolved that are better at doing science; besides, what could the selection process be? We can already see the possibilities of artificial intelligence appearing on Earth that will greatly exceed human intelligence by most objective measures of capability.
A heavy jet airliner weighs about 300,000 kg. We can imagine a cube of silicon, of about the same weight, made into a computer that contains 6x10^23 computing-memory elements operatic at cycle times of 10^-12seconds. That is 10 atoms per computing-memory element. One such machine could out-compute the combined powers of all of the computers built so far and out-think the combined thinking powers of allof the people who have ever lived.
This shouldn't frighten us, since no such machine will be better at being human that we are, it will just out-think us. Today we have machines that exceed humans in every physical measure; they are faster, more accurate, stronger, can fly, sail across oceans, explore the surface of Venus, look into distant galaxies, peer at atoms, etc. We are not intimidated by the physical prowess of machines, and we still engage in human sporting events, such as the marathon despite the fact that a motorcycle could do so much better. Similarly we shouldn't worry about machines doing arithmetic billions of times faster than humans, and eventually doing every kind of intellectual activity faster and more accurately than humans. Such machines will be no better at being human that a human can be better at being a mouse. Mice would rather live, work and play in the company of mice as opposed to humans.
The point is that machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we may build in the future will be qualitatively different in intellectual capability than are humans. We can't speak of AI as "intelligent" in human terms. Something that may have created our universe in a purposeful fashion is very different than something with human-like intelligence or the kind of intelligence we will see in Earthbound AI. There might be no more in common than the concept of questions and the concept of finding answers.
When primitive man gained control over fire, it was a great step. However, the Universe is full of fire; consider the stars. Because we can think, and nothing else on our planet seems to be able to do so, it is natural for us to hold our intellectual prowess in great esteem. However, it may be that information processing, instead of being the sole province of us humans and our machines, may be a part of almost everything else in physics. Life itself, is clearly mediated by digital information; the genetic code. Digital Mechanics assumes that physics is also a process based on informational processes. We may need to rid ourselves of the prejudice that purposeful, thought related action is exclusively the domain of humans or perhaps aliens similar to humans. There are kinds of thinking that are qualitatively unimaginable to us though we can think about it quantitatively. We should not be afraid to consider intellectual activity as the driving force behind the creation of the Universe. By a close and quantitative examination of the possible parameters of Digital Mechanics, we can arrive at reasonable guesses as to what might be the purpose behind the creation of a universe like ours. That, in turn, can lead us towards intelligent speculations about Other, the space that contains the engine of our world.
