[ExI] Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: Proof of the Multiverse?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 12:28 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> But we know the bounds on regular, or "classical" computation. Seth
> Lloyd calculated <https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043> the entire
> computational capacity of the entire universe over its entire history, to
> be around 10^120 operations. And yet, a single quantum computer, one that
> in principle, could sit on a desk, can perform more operations in a few
> seconds than all the matter in the universe could over the billions of
> years of its existence. A quantum computer with 300 qubits, could
> simultaneously process 2^300 distinct states. This not only far exceeds the
> 10^120 operations, it even exceeds the 2^265 atoms in the observable
> universe.*
>

*It's a little more complicated than that. A quantum computer uses an
exponentially large space, but the exponential advantage only appears for
problems whose structure allows interference to guide the evolution of the
machine toward a useful result, such as in factoring large numbers,
searching through large databases, and simulating certain types of quantum
systems. A quantum computer gets its power from interference patterns
inside the machine, but to extract the correct answer from the machine we
need to write a program that amplifies the correct pattern and cancels out
the wrong ones, and so far we've only been able to find programs that do
that for a few things. I'm sure we will find more but how many more nobody
knows, there may be some problems where a quantum computer has no advantage
at all over a conventional computer.  *

*We only know of a few good examples because it's hard to write a quantum
program if we don't have a working quantum computer to work with; imagine
writing a program for a conventional computer if you didn't have access to
one and only had a book that showed you a wiring diagram of it. Actually
Bill Gates managed to do that in 1975, he wrote a Basic interpreter for the
8080 chip with just a book that gave the specifications of the chip without
access to the chip itself, and it worked the first time it was run on a
real computer, but it would've been a hell of a lot easier if he  had the
chip itself.  *

*> Wheeler was one of the first modern physicists to speculate that matter
> was not the most fundamental thing, writing: "Now I am in the grip of a new
> vision, that Everything is Information.*
>

*I think that's largely true, and I think it's a brute fact that
consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.  *


> *> in 2001, the logician and computer scientist, Bruno Marchal published
> a paper
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237005417_Computation_Consciousness_and_the_Quantum> demonstrating
> how many of the stranger elements of quantum theory, including parallel
> states, indeterminacy, and the non-clonability of matter would emerge from
> a reality consisting of all computations. *In a more recent paper he
> writes
> <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S007961071300028X%EF%BF%BD>,
> "Matter is only what seems to emerge at infinity from a first person plural
> point of view"
>

*For years I debated with Marchal on the Everything List about this, and I
soon came to the conclusion that his "proof" is utterly worthless because
he's assuming what he's trying to prove.  *

* > So when I say I understand quantum mechanics, I mean that I know that
> the first three postulates are directly consequences of us being observers.
> Quantum mechanics is simply a theory of observation!"*
>

*The primary reason I like the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics is that it has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness, there
is no need to open that can of worms and no need to explain exactly what as
"observation" is.   *


> *> In 2021, the computer scientist Stephen Wolfram published a theory of
> "The Ruliad
> <https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/>"
> -- a computational structure that represents all possible
> computational rules playing out in all possible ways. *
>

*As I understand it, the Ruliad includes every possible way anything could
ever work, in other words everything that is not forbidden by Schrodinger's
Equation, and in yet other words, the Multiverse. *


*John K Clark*
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