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Everything You See Is a Computational Process, If You Know How to Look
Computer scientist Lance Fortnow writes that by embracing the computations that surround us, we can begin to understand and tame our seemingly random world.
Even today, I don’t visualize or hear the machine, but it sings to me; I feel it humming along, updating variables, looping, branching, searching, until it arrives at its destination and provides an answer. The outcome depends on myriad variables: the force and angle and height of the flip; the weight, diameter, thickness, and distribution of mass of the coin; air resistance; gravity; the hardness of the landing surface; and so on. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful.
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