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.

Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.

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.

Bits of ignorance are like viruses that are copied and spread by interaction.

One of the things that I've been doing recently in my scientific research is to ask this question: Is the universe actually capable of performing things like digital computations?

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.