我的终极唯物宿命论

从小到大，就对物理有一种独特的感觉，记得高中上电磁学的时候，就归纳出一条理论，用于简单化做题。没想到那条理论就是书上后一节的内容。

本来我的这种言论是不能随意发表的，牵涉到会改变许多人的世界观，把人变得颓废。可昨天在Digg上看到一片新闻，一位麻省理工的量子计算机研究员竟和我有一样的想法……汗。

世界是唯物的，这个只要有点正常思维的人都知道，但这也是宿命的原因。

马克思说人类的主观能动性，能靠自身的意识，意志改变世界，这是错的，大错特错！

意识是什么？是人类大脑的产物，大脑本身就是物质，只要是物质，就会随周遭环境的变化发生变化。比如，在你想着现在到底应该背单词还是看《Summer Aroma》的时候，周围的空气湿度，辐射，光线，某人的怂恿，基因所决定的你的意志力等一切的一切，都会影响你大脑细胞的组织结构，改变脑电波，从而影响意识，使你做出必然的决定:)

其实一切都已既定，这就是宿命，只是没人能够预测而已。唯物和宿命并不冲突！

当时我就在想，如果把宇宙中最小的个体看作超级计算机内存里的一个字节，它们的大量聚集，组成肉眼所能看见的个体，再将一切物理定律，化学定律，生物定律输入进计算机的计算法则之中，让其以成倍的速度计算物质碰撞，分散，重组，这样就能预测未来！

当然，就目前的科技情况来看，完全没可能做到，因为超级计算机在计算时本身最小单位发生的变化不能被预测到，也就不可能出现真正精确的计算。除非人类能制造出所有定律完全隔绝的两个空间，这种想法才有可能实现。

至此可见，马克思所谓的人类主观能动性只是他激励人类向前进步的方式。如果人人都深信我这种终极唯物宿命论，都想着未来早已既定，世界就废了。

也许我的理论很不完整，漏洞百出，但自认为还是有一定道理的。如有什么可以质疑的可以发表，大家讨论下下。

by ila

以下是采访麻省理工量子计算机研究员的详细内容：http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/play.html?pg=4

Seth Lloyd is the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with. Between gulps, the MIT prof will impart the details of how the universe really works. And if you order another, he'll give you a summary of one of the most mind-boggling ideas emerging in science today. His new book, Programming the Universe, is a plainspoken tale of how the universe is - tell me if you've heard this before - one very large quantum computer. - Kevin Kelly

WIRED: I hear you're a quantum computer repair guy.
LLOYD: Yes, I am a quantum mechanic! Those darn quantum computers break all the time.

You've jumped from working on quantum computers to saying, oh, by the way, the universe is a gigantic quantum computer.
When you zap things with light to build quantum computers, you're hacking existing systems. You're hijacking the computation that's already happening in the universe, just like a hacker takes over someone else's computer.

What is the universe computing when we are not hijacking it for our own purposes?
It computes itself. It computes the flow of orange juice as you drink it, or the position of each atom in your cells.

Um, how many times have you seen The Matrix?
Sadly, only once. In The Matrix, what you see is fake - a simulation of bits - which is only a facade of what is real beneath it. But our universe is a simulation so exact that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. Our universe is one big honking quantum ?mech?anical computer.

When did you first start having these visions?
It's not a new idea, or my idea. The notion that the universe is a computer is as old as Isaac Asimov's story The Last Question in the '50s and work by computer scientists Ed Fredkin and Konrad Zuse in the '60s.

How do you explain Programming to your kids?
I tell them that it says everything in the universe is made of bits. Not chunks of stuff, but chunks of information - ones and zeros.

Do they believe you?
My daughter Zoey says, "No, Daddy, everything is made of atoms, except for light." So I tell her, "Yes, Zoey, but those atoms are also information. You can think of atoms as carrying bits of information, or you can think of bits of information as carrying atoms. You can't separate the two."

I've just put on your magic glasses, and looking around I see that, oh my gosh, everything is computing. Is this just fashionable?
Computers are our favorite metaphor at the moment, so maybe we see everything as com?puters. But this view is not that facile. Statistical mechanics, which underlies all chemistry, grew out of the realization that the world is information. The mathematical definition of a bit was first ?postulated not during the 1930s and '40s when Claude Shannon and Norbert Weiner started information theory but by James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann during their 19th-?century explorations of the nature of the atom. They were working on thermo?dynamics, but they discovered that the world was made of information.

Would it be fair to say the universe is a mind?
You could use that metaphor. And if you did, then you and I and my cat are its thoughts. But the vast majority of the universe's thinking is about humble vibrations and collisions of atoms.

You seem to be saying that the concept of the universe as one huge quantum computer is not just a metaphor - it's real.
Absolutely. Atoms and electrons are bits. Atomic collisions are "ops." Machine language is the laws of physics. The universe is a quantum computer.

Where is this all headed?
Some folks think life and technology and mind can keep expanding forever. Others say it can't. We are still not clear on that.

Is there anything we can be clear on?
If I have one new message to convey in my book, it's that the universe is a system where the very specific details and structures in it are created when quantum bits de-cohere - choose one path out of multiple possibilities - and that this process is identical to quantum computation. That is what I mean by programming the universe.