Stephen Wolfram

And you're getting yourself into something of a sort of paradox because you're saying, if it's knowable what the answer is, then there's a way to know it that is beyond what the universe provides.

But if we can know it, then something that we're dealing with is beyond the universe.

So then the universe isn't the universe, so to speak.

Yeah.

Well, we better not be able to, because if we can, it kind of denies, I mean, we're part of the universe.

So what does it mean for us to predict?

It means that our little part of the universe is able to jump ahead of the whole universe.

And this quickly winds up, I mean, it is conceivable.

The only way we'd be able to predict

is if we are so special in the universe, we are the one place where there is computation more special, more sophisticated than anything else that exists in the universe.

That's the only way we would have the almost theological ability, so to speak, to predict what happens in the universe, is to say somehow we're better than everything else in the universe, which I don't think is the case.

Well, look, the most remarkable thing about the universe is that it has regularity at all.

Might not be the case.

If you were just- Does it have regularity?

Absolutely, it's full of, I mean, physics is successful.

It's full of laws that tell us a lot of detail about how the universe works.

I mean, it could be the case that the 10 to the 90th particles in the universe, they all do their own thing, but they don't.

They all follow, we already know, they all follow basically the same physical laws.

And that's something, that's a very profound fact about the universe.

What conclusion you draw from that is unclear.