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

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 4:20 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Jason,
>
> Very interesting stuff.
>


Thank you!


> 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
>


Excellent! Looks great.


>
>
> 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?....
>


That's really the million dollar question.

"A large fraction of the things we’re stuck on in
physics, of the unsolved mysteries, actually have to do with what it means
to be an observer. And if you take, for example, the biggest embarrassment
of all, that we can’t unify general relativity, the theory of the big, with
quantum mechanics, the theory of the
small, these two theories have the exact opposite definition of observer.
[…] So, no wonder we can’t unify them. Where the rub lies, it’s the fact
that we’ve tried to avoid talking about what an observer is even though
physics is supposed to be the subject of observation."

-- Max Tegmark in "Does Consciousness Require a Radical Explanation?" (2020)

So not understanding consciousness and not understanding what it means to
be an observer, is a major roadblock in the progress of physics. For
example, in it only in the problem Tegmark alludes to, but also in the
measurement problem, in defining the reference class in anthropic
reasoning, in the black hole information paradox, and in quantum cosmology.

Jason


>
> *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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