*I don't entirely enjoy coming across all crackerbarrel-metaphysician on the 'ol' blog here, but, you know, maybe the cosmos is constructed of self-replicating code.
*That could be, right? That's a modish notion, I've seen people approach it from different angles, but I find nowadays that it makes me uneasy. Probably because we've got so much code around in these times, and it's so un-Platonic and so merely-physical. Cosmic code? Really-really? I'd almost rather face a universe made of "statements," than a universe made of "code."
*Do we really wanna go here? What if it's all object-oriented ontological code? We're about a sneeze away from some awesome metaphysical-coding mash-up there, aren't we? Wouldn't we have modern philosophers walking around stating that the ontologically mysterious rocks cry because the Dysonian code says so? And wouldn't these people, like, properly belong under sedation, or something?
http://www.edge.org/conversation/a-universe-of-self-replicating-code
"Very few people are looking at this digital universe in an objective way. Danny Hillis is one of the few people who is. His comment, made exactly 30 years ago in 1982, was that "memory locations are just wires turned sideways in time". That's just so profound. That should be engraved on the wall."
(((That's some great stuff in the link there, that is. That's about as good as cosmological code gets. That's the Dysonian creme de la code. You can't ask for better. However, if people are gonna get all Bishop Berkeley with the cosmological coding there, then I'm gonna get all Dr Johnson today. See this big ugly rock?)))
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/feature_stories/vesta_coat_colors.asp
(((That's Vesta, a native of our solar system, and it's like, a huge dead rock. If the universe is cosmic coding, well, most of your beloved code is expressing that dead rock, okay? Not biology, viruses, strings, cellularity, cool coder stuff, but huge, inert rock. That's not "self-replicating," it's a cosmic rock.)))
(((We got, like, a machine we made that took this computer-colorized picture of this rock with a bunch of code, and then that machine flies away. This primeval, entirely lump of cosmic rock returns to its multibillion-year history of completely inconsequential debris-blasted rockiness. That's "cosmic," while your Mac iPad screen there isn't "cosmic." So: if there's "cosmic code," job one is to explain why the code is 99.999999% about the likes of that stuff, while all the exciting out-there whiz-bang stuff that most interests visionary coding-dudes is entirely irrelevant, and even, rather, well, self-glamorizing.)))
