Yes, your computer works just like the universe does...
What do I mean by this statement? Well I’ve touched on this before. But consider the concept of video. There are basically two ways to produce video that we can watch. The first uses successive frames of a complete image drawn (or otherwise) frame by frame. Run them fast enough and the human brain can’t deal with it and it sees it as fluid motion. The second way is to use pixels. Each pixel contains 3 sub pixels. Red Green and Blue. Each of these sub pixels can either be ON or OFF. (In the case of LCD this is a little more complex because it works like an analog switch in a way with various different positions but that just over complicates the description because you can reduce the process to a binary one so imagine the Jumbotron in the Rogers Center (Skydome) in Toronto for the sake of this analogy.) The human eye sees these pixels together has the whole image (in a good display, otherwise we see screen door effects). The reason is because there are just so many individual ultra-small pixels that the human eye can’t detect them but can detect the resulting interaction. By controlling these pixels we can store data in a BINARY form that may or may not contain data about a specific pixel (i.e. only when the state must change) in a given “frame” (there’s really no such thing as a “frame” as you would think of it in the case of regular film but you get the conceptualization).
Now the key here is that both of these systems are actually binary in nature. You are now asking yourself “what the hell is he smoking, of course regular film is not binary!” Well as a matter of fact it is. Because for every film it is made up of discrete frames. For every frame it is made up of discrete chemicals. For every chemical it is made up of discrete compounds. For each compound it is made up of discrete atoms. At this point you get the picture so to speak. DNA actually works like a trinary system on it’s surface, but actually breaks down to a binary system when you get to the compounds that make up each of the three “switches” of DNA.
The further point here (recursion, isn’t it cool? (see below)) is that some point we get down to the “logic gate” (we haven’t hit it yet, but this is what string theory and quantum mechanics is all about, however wrong they are right now…). What a logic gate is, is a choice. A yes or a no answer to a question. (“Is the electron at this point in space-time right now?”)
Everything in the universe is governed by this basic principle. Everything follows this basic principle in its operation. Millions upon uncounted millions of discrete binary choices. Even the human brain, our own minds that we demand don’t follow logical rules follow the principle of the logic gate. The key is that our brains are massively parallel machines that make millions upon millions of yes/no decisions a second, all at the same time. Some of them interacting with each other to form new questions. (sort of like a mini-solar system and projecting out 1000 years into the future exactly where an electron will be. You can do it. It is possible. It’s just REALLY REALLY REALLY HARD because you have to know the state of every particle in the universe to do it.)
In fact the human brain and a computer have large amounts of concepts in common. As a programmer of very intuitive user interfaces, I see this for sure. In computational science we have a concept of “recursion” (there are multiple types of recursion but I’ll simplify for the general public. Sorry to you techy people in the audience for killing it, although so may programmers don’t understand recursion anyhow, I’m apologizing to a very small number of you!). What recursion is in the most basic sense can be explained by a tree. Take the main trunk. Follow it until you come to a divide (branch). This is a decision point. At this decision point you have only one choice (because the branches may be very very close together you may see it as 3 or even 4 or more branches at the same point, but it isn’t if you measured it with a very accurate microscope). Left or right, yes or no. That is your choice. Once you have made that choice, you then travel along the branch until you reach the next “sub choice” and so on. You cannot logically speak about the choice (or even know of it’s existence (well you can with tricks in code but that’s cheating)) made at branch n until you’ve traveled all of the (n-1) decision points.
The key here as the bright light LEDs in the audience will have noticed is that at decision point n where n is a really big number, the complexity of the choices made to date blurs together and creates an image, an analog object, or as Ayn Rand would put it, a derived conceptualization that requires the intrinsic knowledge of all of the previous choices, whether you’re aware or not of those choices that lead you to the current branch. The choices were still binary choices, but the human brain becomes incapable of discerning all of the choices that went into getting the the branch you’re currently at. Now consider that the brain does this millions of times in parallel at every instant much like a computer with millions of separate processors do when calculating the weather for example (or playing chess since the two and this entire point are very closely related!) and you understand the overwhelming nature of the problem and why subjectivism exists in philosophy.
At this point the subjectivists in the room are cheering because they think that they have another convert. Sorry to disappoint, but no.
The key here, just like the image on your DLP TV screen when you’re watching that HD-DVD (blu-ray I hope!) is that if you want to, or put in enough effort you can discern the individual pixels (get out a magnifying glass or get really close to the TV set). You can trace back from the current branch to the very beginning decision that lead to the current branch. That is, if you put in the effort you can discern the actions that lead to the consequences.
The same is true about the entire universe. You can work backwards from any point and see where it started. The reason you can do this is because everything is binary. Every decision point, or logic gate is binary. As a result, you know that if you’re on a branch and you come to a decision point, you know where you came from by the definition of “decision point”. If the universe was not binary, then you would not be able to do this. (i.e. a trinary system would fail because there are multiple backtrack points instead of only one possible.)
This is the fundamental concept of objectivism. As far as I know I’m the first person to actually lay this out in quite this way (if I’m not, please enlighten me, I’d be interested to read what others have said on the subject) but the point is still the same. Ayn Rand, Aristotle and all those before and after that have demanded that we can know the universe, that it is possible through rational thought to know the nature of the universe absolutely and unequivocally knew what I just wrote instinctually. They understood that from the effect you can discern the cause. (in medical terms this is called diagnostic medicine but diagnostic medicine is a very crude science at this point because they’re still looking at objects that contain many branches, not just one at a time, no offence to Dr. House… just say you love her damnit!) If you can discern the cause, you can know everything there is to know if you put in enough effort and have enough time because once you get back to the (I should probably say “a” because while the universe is infinitely old and has always existed, the big bang did happen and can be used as a starting point however crude.) beginning, you’ll know it. And once you’re at the beginning point you can know the answers to every single decision point from the beginning to the end (or infinity more correctly).
So the next time you curse your computer and how stupid it is, recognize it’s because a computer is a very simple brain. The two are the same, in fact the entire universe works like a computer. It is for this reason that we invented the computer. It couldn’t be any other way because just like Gravity, that is the fundamental nature of the universe. They work just like your brain does, just like your TV set, and just like everything else does. And it is that core realization that unlocks the universe. By realizing that the universe is binary is to realize that the universe is knowable and human beings can know it regardless of what inadequacies our senses may have, because binary is binary, you can always decompile the program and read the binary directly.
So be happy that your fear, uncertainty and doubt about your own ability and about what might come crashing down on your head without you knowing about it ahead of time is just your ignorance and laziness, not because you can’t possibly know. Which of course just throws out the whole concept of God, but hey I’m an atheist so he was gone a long time ago 