# Universality of the laws of physics means they apply everywhere and at all times ## Associated Entries: - [[./ Unfortunately, that turns out to be a bad explanation too, because focusing on fundamental constants is parochial there is no relevant difference between (I) 'the same' laws of physics with different constants and (2)]] - [[./ This universality in the human condition is part of a broader phenomenon that I shall discuss in Chapter 6. We do not share it with any other species currently on Earth. But, since it is a consequence of the ability to]] - [[./ Tom Ashbrook 2434You say don't fear them. Stephen Hawking says fear them. You say don't.David Deutsch 2438Yes. That is because we have to understand the lesson of universality. The lesson of universality is]] - [[./ This place and not other places in the universe is a hub which contains within itself the structural and causal essence of the whole of the rest of physical reality. And so far from being insignificant, the fact that]] - [[./ Here is an even more speculative possibility. The largest benefits of any universality, beyond whatever parochial problem it is intended to solve, come from its being useful for further innovation. And innovation is]] - [[./ Because of the necessity for error-correction, all jumps to universality occur in digital systems. It is why spoken languages build words out of a finite set of elementary sounds speech would not be intelligible if it]] - [[./ And they carry much the same content not only is the universe full of evidence, it is full of the same evidence everywhere. All people in the universe, once they have understood enough to free themselves from]] - [[./ David Deutsch 4835From scratch, that's the thing. When you get to a universal constructor, you have this jump to universality where suddenly the repertoire, instead of being a large repertoire, like, you know, for]] - [[./ This problem seems to attract bad explanations. Just as religious people tend to see Providence in the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in science, and some evolutionists see the signature of evolution, and]] - [[./ all had a finite and tiny repertoire. What makes you think that our latest technology has an infinite repertoire, an unbounded repertoire Well, it's because of a feature of the laws of physics, which is Turing]] - [[./ As with all jumps to universality, the way in which the jump emerged out of gradual changes is interesting to think about. Creativity is a property of software. As I said, we could be running AI programs on our laptop]] - [[./ David Deutsch 3622Yes, there is the question of levels of explanation. So it could be that, like, in fact, I'm sure it is that the mind has the ability to abstract in many different ways. And one of them is the]] - [[./ There's no further change in capacity to understand and control the world, yes. Again we are at any particular time like a computer, we're limited by the amount of hardware that we happen to have, but there's no limit]] - [[./ This universality in the human condition is part of a broader phenomenon that I shall discuss in Chapter 6. We do not share it with any other species currently on Earth. But, since it is a consequence of the ability to]] - [[./ is understood, then the depth of our theories must continue to grow fast enough to make this possible. That can happen only if the fabric of reality is itself highly unified, so that more and more of it can become]] - [[./ Christofer Lovgren 4829So the important part here is the mind is the universal information processor, so to speak, that runs on the brain, the program.David Deutsch 4839Yes, it's a program, that's right. It's]] #L2