Fumfer Physics 6: Digital Physics, Information, and Consciousness
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): СокальINFO
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner delve into digital physics, questioning whether the universe is computational or merely permits computation. Jacobsen frames reality through objects, processes, and operators, while Rosner argues the universe encodes information imprecisely at macro scales rather than through strict quantum events. They contrast Wheeler’s “it from bit” with a sloppier, associative model of information. The dialogue examines consciousness as either emergent information structure or illusion, echoing behaviorism’s “black box.” They also discuss jargon, popularization, and language in science and fiction, highlighting the tension between accessibility and the invention of new terms for emerging concepts.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us build this in cosmological terms, starting from digital physics: object, process, and operator. I had the terms right. An object is a state or structure in the information substrate. A process is the unfolding of that state over time—computation, motion. An operator is a rule that maps one state or object to another, defining the inputs, outputs, and sequences of state updates—the time evolution and the precise “how.” Once fixed at a sufficient scale in a universe, operators become the laws of nature or physics.
Rick Rosner: When I hear “digital physics,” I think of the “universe as a computer” model.
Jacobsen: However, this isn’t quite that—it is closer to a precursor. Digital physics often comes back to Wheeler’s phrase “it from bit.” What you’re describing is deeper.
Rosner: I haven’t thought about it that way in some time. Information in the universe is encoded, though even that word suggests more precision than I mean. The macro-information the universe “uses” as an information processor isn’t determined at the micro level. By “micro,” I mean individual quantum events—like an electron dropping to a lower state around a nucleus and emitting a photon. The universe as an information processor doesn’t register those. It takes larger collections of events.
The universe isn’t Minecraft. It’s more like modelling clay. Here’s my standard example: almost none of the quantum-level interactions in the center of a star register in a durable way. You have fusion events—hydrogen fusing into deuterium, then tritium, and eventually helium. Later, as hydrogen is depleted, helium fuses into heavier elements, such as carbon and oxygen. These events are comparatively rare, but they leave permanent traces in fused nuclei.
Meanwhile, countless thermodynamic events occur—photons emitted and absorbed at staggering rates, quintillions per second. These interactions happen, but they leave no record.
But those quantum events mean nothing informationally. They leave no trace. A photon doesn’t even have a chance to share information with the universe until it escapes from the Sun’s surface. Energy created by fusion at the Sun’s core takes thousands to hundreds of thousands of years to reach the surface. Most photons transmitting that energy are absorbed and re-emitted countless times, never escaping or leaving a permanent trace. This is brutal for the idea of “it from bit” in a computational universe—or a digital universe.
It suggests that the universe’s encoding of information happens at a macro or super-macro level, and that it’s associative and imprecise. There’s no strict code in our minds—or in the universe—for something like “orange” as a colour. Instead, it’s known through a web of associations. When enough stimuli overlap, “orange” emerges as part of what you’re perceiving. The universe runs sloppily. Our minds do too: they rely on tacit, imprecise, associative understanding rather than strict coding.
Jacobsen: What if the universe isn’t computational at all, but computations happen within it—like we can perform them with machines? In this view, the universe isn’t computation expanded; it’s non-computational but permits computation.
Rosner: I don’t know, because I haven’t thought in those terms for decades. I’ve always assumed the universe is built from information and processes information. That assumption allows for a structure—hidden from us—that preserves information and keeps the universe from dissolving into chaos. It’s similar to how our brains make consciousness possible. We experience consciousness through our minds. We live inside our minds.
But perhaps our minds are illusions. Maybe we shouldn’t think in terms of “mind” at all, but only of how the brain presents information to itself.
Without resorting to the idea of “mind,” you could still frame mental information as an information structure—not independent, but distinct from the connectome, the brain’s wiring. Or you could call that whole program nonsense and say, ‘We are our brains.’ We’re fooled into thinking we have minds by the way the brain processes information. In that sense, we—our experience of being selves—are no more “minds” than food delivery robots have minds. Consciousness could be a convenient shorthand, but it may also be an illusion. Physics, neuroscience, and the world could be fully described without resorting to “mind” or “consciousness.”
That argument has a precedent. Behaviourism in the 1930s treated the brain as a black box. Too complex to comprehend, researchers ignored the inner workings and focused solely on the input and output. Stimulus in, behaviour out. No speculation about what happened inside the box.
The universe could be like that: soulless, fundamental physics. It contains information we can extract, but it doesn’t“process” information. Its job is only to exist according to physical laws. As beings who process data, we can find patterns in it, but that has nothing to do with the universe’s nature. That’s possible. Not a view I like, but possible.
And, as I’ve said many times, quantum mechanics cuts against that. It’s so much a theory of information.
Jacobsen: There’s a tendency among “big thought” people to take a sweeping idea, dress it in jargon, and elevate it to capital-T Truth.
Rosner: Someone just told me about reading a PhD thesis—so thick with jargon it was unreadable. Some disciplines, depending on the school, get lost in that. Specialists often communicate only through dense terminology, which is unintelligible to outsiders.
Then you have popularizers. Every field has them. In physics, they take brutal math and theory, strip them down to essentials, and present them to the public in ways that are accessible and engaging.
Jacobsen: People have different tendencies.
Rosner: It’s a common tendency. I enjoy physics, and I’ve coined a few terms myself. I’m also writing a near-future novel, which requires balance. A convincing near future needs new terms, but too many can make writing unreadable. Anthony Burgess faced this in the 1960s with A Clockwork Orange. The novel, narrated by a young thug named Alex, is drenched in slang. Alex and his gang call themselves “droogs”—from the Russian word drug, meaning “friend.” The slang reflects a Cold War scenario in which Russian cultural influence is perceived as corrupting British youth.
It’s tough to wade through the language, but the book remains deeply satisfying, and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation is excellent. In that case, the heavy slang had a purpose.
So, yes, if you want to explore big ideas, you sometimes need shorthand, even coined terms. In my novel, set in the near future, AI and neural implants play central roles. Consciousness is close to being replicated. But the word“consciousness” is long and unwieldy. Its plural—“consciousnesses”—is worse. So in the book, people in the field call it “C.” Much shorter.
I also imagine that the specialists in this future will be called “Sengineers”—short for “consciousness engineers.” That’s less clumsy than spelling the whole phrase out. Maybe in time there’d be an even shorter word. The trick is walking the line: avoiding pretentious jargon while still inventing terms to express genuinely new ideas.
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