Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Intelligent Design vs. Quantum Computation

I think it was Van Till who called creationist views just another variation on the old trick ‘heads I win, tails you lose’. If the universe has characteristics that can lead to life and complexity coming about through natural processes, this is taken as evidence that the universe is designed and fine-tuned by a creator. If the universe does not have such characteristics then life is improbable and thus must have been supernaturally created. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Pointing this out is not intended to detract from the legitimate point that life and complexity, and indeed existence itself, are wondrous mysteries. My biggest criticism of most creationist viewpoints is that they treat a mystery as though it were an explanation.

The image of the heads and tails comes from a coin toss, providing two binary possibilities – a bit, as it were. Now Seth Lloyd, in his book Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, suggests that such bits of information (with their inherent ability to compute) may be more fundamental to the nature of the universe than previously realized. Let me offer just a few highlights from the book, which is extremely thought-provoking, even as its fundamental thesis seems, like evolution through natural selection, incredibly obvious once one has thought about it. The book is full of humor as well and an enjoyable read.

First, one important observation I do not want to skip, even though it is extremely basic, is that meaning only exists relative to some scheme of interpretation (p.25). I had the misfortune earlier of having to listen to the static of my modem trying to communicate through my phone lines even after it ought to have disconnected. But of course, it wasn’t “static”, although to my ear there was no distinction. An intelligent signal only reveals itself to be such when we know the language and other relevant information. DNA, with its four letters in endless chains, is thus not all that interesting, information-wise. What is interesting is that these long chains of only four letters are interpreted within cells into complex tasks. It is the interpretation that is interesting and not the long chain of letters per se.

The creation of “specified complexity” by random chance is often compared to monkeys typing at typewriters. Lloyd suggests that this image is the wrong one, and that in our universe the monkeys are typing at computers. Reality itself is computational, and random code will occasionally turn into something interesting – just as a monkey at your computer, even though it may not produce Hamlet, may set interesting processes in motion.

The most interesting result of Lloyd’s research is his conclusion that “quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, can create information out of nothing” (p.118). If he is correct, then this will blow the ID argument about information out of the water altogether. The book is devoted to exploring how quantum computation might potentially provide a “Theory of Everything”, how it can potentially integrate both relativity and quantum mechanics, and how it relates to other topics such as the origins of life.

It is still too early to know whether observational data will confirm or contradict the possibilities explored in the book. But at the very least, it shows that science has genuinely interesting and plausible things to say about questions that proponents of Intelligent Design regard as unanswerable in naturalistic terms.

On a final note, those readers of this blog who are interested primarily in Biblical studies and/or early Christianity will find themselves connected to the book in one more way: Elaine Pagels is mentioned more than once, since Lloyd studied and worked with her late husband, the physicist Heinz Pagels.