In any case, A New Kind of Science is a wonderful book, and I'm still absorbing its teachings.

A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules.

We're part of the unfolding world, surfing the chaotic waves

For me, the best thing about cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just pretend that the whole thing is two miles below the moon’s surface, and that half the people’s right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.

If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it's quite abundantly clear that there's not going to be a final answer and there won't be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!

Intellectually, perspective [drawing] is a breakthrough, because here, for the first time, the physical space we live in is being depicted as ifit were an abstract, mathematical space. A less obvious innovation due to perspective is that here, for the first time, people are actually drawing pictures of infinities.

Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons.