The Psilocybin Solution

vacuous rules are applied. The output from this process yields a new configuration of on/off cells. The rules are applied repeatedly, hundreds or even thousands of times. The results can be striking. Not only do slightly different start configurations yield wildly different outputs, various patterns can form that endure throughout the game. If successive states of the cellular automaton are presented rapidly on a computer screen as opposed to being drawn on numerous sheets of graph paper, a Life movie can be watched as it progresses. Patterns emerge, move around, collide, mutate, oscillate, and some even seem able to replicate themselves.

Conway’s Game of Life grabbed media attention in the early 1970s through coverage in Scientific American. The various Life objects began to acquire names. Shuttles, beehives, and flotillas were born. Ships, boats, barges, and blocks were readily observed and documented as they meandered about the two-dimensional Life plain. (Animated examples of the Game of Life along with relevant freeware can still be found on the Internet—indeed nowadays certain interesting configurations can be iterated billions of times in just seconds.)

The genelike pattern with the capacity to replicate that sometimes emerged in the primordial Life soup was named the glider. Gliders were observed to collide with one another, resulting in the formation of a glider gun that shot out further gliders as though they were its offspring. It was even discovered that glider guns could be set up in such a way as to constitute a virtual computer. Conway proved that processions of gliders were able to code binary numbers, and that logic gates could be formed by making glider streams collide with one another in a specific way. The result is startling. The Life computer can itself embody yet another computer, and so on ad infinitum. A digital information process within a process within a process (this, of course, is reminiscent of patterns within patterns within patterns).

The fascinating feature of the lifelike patterns that evolved in the Game of Life was their origin. From initial simplicity, complexity was born. Furthermore, cellular automata were clearly computational, whether they were played out on a computer, a chessboard, or on graph paper. Through state transitions, information was being processed throughout the game. There was an unavoidable implication that life itself might represent a similar information-processing system. If so, then the Universe could most definitely be understood in computational terms.

We have now arrived back at the Universe-as-a-computation scenario. An ongoing computational system, the Game of Life vividly demonstrates how initial conditions and some basic state transition rules can give rise to organized complexity and the emergent phenomenon of self-replication. The real computational game of life in which we have been born similarly depends upon a well-defined initial state at some distant moment in the past and a set of rules. In this case the rules are the laws of physics and the constants of Nature (like the particular strengths of the various forces of Nature). This implies that we are inside the Universal Computation, much as gliders are inside of cellular automata.

A Discrete Look at Time

The case is still not watertight. Cellular automata, and indeed all computations proceeding within a computer, move in discrete steps. If the Universe is an ongoing computation, then, strictly speaking, it ought to proceed in discrete state transitions, frame by frame as it were. The late mathematician Martin Gardner, who originally introduced the Game of Life to readers of Scientific American, was one of the first to speculate about this. He wrote: “There is even the possibility that space-time itself is granular, composed of discrete units, and that the universe… is a cellular automaton run by an enormous computer.”^{39}

In other words, if the Universe is indeed a kind of computation, there is likely to be a smallest unit of time (time is granular) that cannot be broken down further. Such a hypothetical smallest unit of time is known as a chronon. A chronon is an absolute moment, or quantum of time, in which the Universe is in a particular state. This state will then proceed by a discrete “jump” to form the next chronon according to whatever laws are operating on that state, much like the movement of electrons, which are supposed to discretely jump from one orbit to another. There are believed to be no intermediary states between successive “jumps.”

If time does indeed move in discrete jumps, one might well ask why we experience time as flowing. There is no surprise here, for to talk of discrete time is like talking of the successive frames of a movie. If the frames are presented quickly enough, the illusion of continuity becomes apparent. An illusion of continuity is also manifest in the Game of Life. The state transitions of Life automata can be processed by a computer so quickly as to give rise to patterns, which, on the computer monitor, appear to flow across the two-dimensional playing field. In fact, all computer displays move in discrete stages, even in the most advanced programs. Popular computer games and cell phone apps might look as if they are flowing smoothly, yet in actuality they are proceeding in rapid state transitional jumps (hence a still frame, or “RAM slice,” can be observed if a computer game is paused).

The continuous flowing forms that seem to constitute the Universe must therefore be due to the presence of stable patterns that endure from one moment to the next. If one were to take one snapshot slice of reality, a single, all-encompassing chronon as it were, one would not be able to properly discern any patterns; rather, the patterns we observe, like planets and people, are patterned structures that emerge over a multiple succession of such slices. Likewise, I would assume that consciousness seems to flow precisely because it is an informational pattern that endures across successive frames of granular time.

There have been attempts to quantify the hypothetical chronon. For what it’s worth, it is assumed to be the shortest conceivable length divided by the velocity of light. For obvious reasons, I’ll take this definition on trust. Anyhow, this yields what is sometimes called the “Planck time,” and this may represent the elusive chronon. Intuitively it seems there must be discrete time, for otherwise a second could be divided into an infinity of moments. If so, then it is hard to see how time appears to flow at all. An echo of this “timely dilemma” is found in particle physics. Are there any smallest bits, or does scale and size continue indefinitely? It makes more sense to think of a smallest unit of matter (or information) and a smallest unit of time. The case remains open, however, though it is doubtful that any measuring instrument could be built to observe any discrete moves in time. Alternatively, it may still be possible to hold the computational view of the Universe with non-discrete time. This is a task someone else can tackle.

What Gave Our Universe Its Lucky Break?

Once more assuming that reality is indeed a kind of ongoing computation in which language-like information is everywhere being processed, and in which the moment “now” is the leading edge of the computation, we can return to the question of its software, that is, the laws of physics that determine how the Universe develops and progresses. As previously noted, the nature of the Universe is completely tied up with the laws of physics and the initial conditions prevailing at the beginning of time. Now, just how significant or arbitrary are these two sets of variables?

With the Game of Life, Conway’s four rules were specifically designed to ensure that enduring and interesting forms of information could arise as the game proceeded. The four rules were chosen from what is basically an infinite amount of possible rules. Indeed, it took Conway a great deal of time to discover these four rules. If you took just any old rules and applied them to the game, then nothing much of interest would happen. And if anything of interest did crop up, it would only be likely to vanish soon after. It is because Conway’s Life rules were so permanent, precise, and constraining that his game took off and was ultimately able to yield lifelike forms. Moreover, to obtain really interesting results (like getting a virtual computer to emerge), one must carefully engineer the initial state, set it all up in advance so to speak, to ensure that the system develops in the way you wish. Conway was clearly God of the Game of Life, or at least his intelligence was. For a glider speeding merrily about the Life plain, it could do a lot worse than worship the great and holy Conway of Cambridge as its creator.

So, what about the laws of physics and the initial conditions in the real game of life? Just how precise do