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

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Jason,

Very interesting stuff.

On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 10:26 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 11:54 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Saving people a click: no, it is not proof of the multiverse.
>>
>> "But what they did is just so mind-blowingly large" is not, contrary
>> to what the video claims, proof of any sort of new physics - any more
>> than the staggeringly large odds against sentient life evolving mean
>> that it could only have happened through the sentient, conscious
>> action of some godlike entity.
>>
>
> I think the answer of a multiverse is inescapable once we begin to probe
> more deeply, and ask "how could it be that quantum computers achieve what
> they do?"
>
> This question, of how quantum computers work, ties directly to some of the
> most fundamental questions, and I believe answering it requires that we
> understand the nature of reality itself. I will provide my cliff notes
> answer to this question here, and add further references at the end. I have
> arrived at this answer through my approximately 20-years of research
> seeking answers to fundamental questions. Note that the ideas I present
> below are not original to me, but represent what I consider to be the most
> promising and satisfying results by contemporary thinkers.
>
>
> *How Come the Quantum?*
>
> When quantum mechanics was first formulated (approximately 100 years ago)
> physicists were shocked:
>
> "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory
> cannot possibly have understood it." -- Niels Bohr
> "I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be
> so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?" -- Werner
> Heisenberg
> "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
> -- Richard Feynman
>
> And despite mulling over quantum mechanics for nearly a century, the
> mystery persisted. In 1998, John Archibald Wheeler wrote: "I have never
> been able to let go of questions like: How come existence? How come the
> quantum?" And he continued searching for an answer all his life.
>
> *Infinite Logic*
>
> In 1965, Richard Feynman wrote in his famous "The Character of Physical
> Law
> <https://archive.org/details/characterofphysi0000feyn/page/56/mode/2up?q=it+always+bothers+me>"
> series:
>
> "It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them
> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical
> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of
> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to
> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?"
>
> As the genius he was, Feyman figured out a way to turn this seeming
> problem into an advantage. In 1982 he proposed
> <https://www.fisica.net/computacaoquantica/richard_feynman_simulating_physics_with_computers.pdf> that
> this property could be exploited to build computers that could simulate
> physics much more efficiently. And in 1985, David Deutsch described
> <http://user.it.uu.se/~hessmo/QI/notes/deutsch85.pdf> how such a "quantum
> computer" could be built.
>
> 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.
>
> Where is all this computational capacity coming from?
>
> Deutsch offered <https://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse> his
> opinion on this question:
>
> "Since the Universe as we see it lacks the computational resources to do
> the calculations, where are they being done? It can only be in other
> universes. Quantum computers share information with huge numbers of
> versions of themselves throughout the multiverse."
>
> But this only poses deeper mysteries: Why should reality consist of a
> myriad of other universes, why should there be any form of
> interaction/information sharing (i.e. interference) between them, and where
> does all the computation necessary to support all those universes come from?
>
> *What underlies Matter?*
>
> It is only very recently, in the past few decades, that any progress was
> made on these questions, and we now arguably have empirical evidence to
> support a viable answer to this question.
>
> 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. The more I have pondered the
> mystery of the quantum and our strange ability to comprehend this world in
> which we live, the more I see possible fundamental roles for logic and
> information as the bedrock of physical theory." He termed this theory "it
> from bit <https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf>" in 1989.
>

 FYI, I took this paragraph and added it to the "it from  bit?" topic on
Canonizer
https://canonizer.com/topic/138-It-from-Bit/1-Agreement?is_tree_open=0&as_of=includereview&asof=review



Then 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 (defined by sharing the computations which are infinitely
> multiplied in the [Universal Dovetailer’s] work) when persons look at
> themselves and their environment below their substitution level."
>
> Expanding on this theme, the computer scientist Russell Standish in a 2004
> paper <https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0001020> and 2006 book
> <https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html> was able to derive three
> postulates of quantum mechanics, including the Schrödinger equation,
> starting only from the assumption that observers exist in an infinite
> plenitude of all possibilities. He writes: "The explanation of quantum
> mechanics as describing the process of observation within a plenitude of
> possibilities is for me the pinnacle of achievement of the paradigm
> discussed in this book. I can now say that I understand quantum mechanics.
> 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!"
>
> Then in 2017, the quantum physicist Markus Müller detailed
> <https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01826> how starting from the assumption state
> that all observer states are generated algorithmically (i.e. through
> computation) he could show that most observers will find themselves in
> universes having the property of time, an identifiable beginning, and will
> be governed by simple, computable, probabilistic laws. All of these
> predictions align with observations of our universe and its properties.
>
> 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. According to Wolfram,
> all computations playing out in all possible ways directly leads to
> observers who will see a universe with the second law of thermodynamics,
> general relativity, and even quantum mechanics. Regarding the emergence of
> quantum mechanics, Wolfram writes
> <https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciousness-some-new-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/>,
> "Does the observer 'create' the quantum mechanics? In some sense, yes. Just
> as in the spacetime case, the multiway graph has all sorts of
> computationally irreducible things going on. But if there's an observer
> with a coherent description of what's going on, then their description must
> follow the laws of quantum mechanics."
>


What is an "observer"?  Is a cat an observer?  Is a computer/robot an
observer?....


*Mathematical Truth*
>
> We can explain why nature is quantum mechanical if we assume that reality
> is something that contains all possible computations.
>
> So far, this is the only known theory that can account for why nature is
> as "absurd as it seems." This one assumption (that all computations exist)
> produces so many verifiable predictions motivates us to take it seriously.
>
> But why do all computations exist? On what do they *run*? To this
> question, one answer appeals most to me: infinite, absolute, eternal,
> uncreated, mathematical truth.
>
> In a resolution to a mathematical problem posed
> <https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1902-08-10/S0002-9904-1902-00923-3/S0002-9904-1902-00923-3.pdf> by
> David Hilbert at the turn of the century, four mathematicians proved
> <http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Matiyasevich_theorem> in 1970 that
> every computation exists within pure mathematics as a true statement about
> an equation involving natural numbers
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantine_equation>. This may sound like
> an obscure and trivial fact, but I think it has incredible consequences.
> Consider: It means there is an equation that picks chess moves like Deep
> Blue, there’s an equation that does your taxes like TurboTax, there’s yet
> another equation that does spellchecking like Microsoft Word. But of
> course, these are not the only equations that exist in math. There would be
> equations representing every computer game, as well as every possible way
> of playing them. There would be programs that simulate the physics of our
> universe, accurate down to the detail of every particle. And there would be
> simulations of every possible variation that must exist.
>
> All these computations fall out as a consequence of there existing
> objective mathematical truth concerning numbers and their relations. One
> way to think about all this, is that we (an the multiverse we find
> ourselves in) exist for the same reason that "2 + 2 = 4".
>
> So if one can accept the self-existent truth of "2 + 2 = 4", it can
> be demonstrated that one must further accept truths concerning other
> equations, equations whose truths concern all computational histories and
> all simulated realities playing out in all possible ways.
>
> This is an answer to where our reality, consisting of infinite
> computation, may come from. It is the most elegant and convincing answer I
> have encountered in all my research into this question. And so, at last, we
> have a way to explain fully how quantum computers work, why we're in a
> quantum multiverse, and what underlies the infinite computations supporting
> that reality. We have distilled the explanation to a final "because" which
> throws up no further "whys" as ultimately, the answer reduces to "because
> 2 + 2 = 4."
>
>
> Jason
>
> Along with the references I included as links throughout this e-mail, you
> can find further details and explanations here:
>
>    - My full article on "Why does anything exist?" (
>    https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/  or in video form:
>    https://alwaysasking.com/episodes/#Episode_09_%E2%80%93_Why_does_anything_exist
>     )
>    - A short summary of this view published by Closer to Truth:
>    https://loc.closertotruth.com/theory/resch-s-platonic-functionalism
>    - An excerpt from a draft of my upcoming article on consciousness,
>    concerning the nature of reality:
>    https://drive.google.com/file/d/11-fcvG1TiuHcS9bDCN05UQJyYY6Dl0LY/view?usp=sharing
>
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