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.

Thinking of the universe as a computer is controversial.

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.

Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science.

Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.

Meaning is like pornography, you know it when you see it.

If you wanted to build the most powerful computer you could, you can't do better than including everything in the universe that's potentially available.