[With quantum computers] you can calculate how many bits are in the universe, how much energy it takes to flip them, how much energy exists, and use that to rule out lots of things about the universe's history. Anything that takes more bit flips couldn't have happened.

I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

Thinking of the universe as a computer is controversial.

Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them. I cannot prove that electrons exist..........if you don't believe in them I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.

According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we're sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here.

Yes, I am a quantum mechanic! Those darn quantum computers break all the time.