Karl Svozil

A Different Take on Creation:

Karl Svozil's Digital Dualism

by Ross Rhodes
RhodesR@BottomLayer.com

Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology
www.researchnews.org
June 2003

    Svozil asked his audience, "Suppose you are God: how would you do it?"  The suggested answer was surprisingly easy to grasp, because Svozil asked us to look no farther than our desktop, and to consider the technology that routinely creates new worlds from mathematics: the design and programming of computer games.

    From the earliest days of practical programmable computers, there have been persistent speculations that a computer might be programmed to "create" a world that is the image of our world. This quickly leads to the further speculation that our world itself may have been programmed in this way. Svozil traces the concept to1956, when Edward F. Moore of IBM proposed that a computer program might duplicate some of the seemingly impossible feats of quantum mechanics. In 1969, the father of the modern programmable computer, the German engineer and scientist Konrad Zuse, published a book titled "Calculating Space," in which he proposed that simple computer processes could account for all of the phenomena that we observe in the natural world. This idea had been the focus of a group at MIT led by Edward Fredkin, which had made substantial progress in addressing some of the most immediate technical objections.

    Svozil also noted that the basic thesis was recently endorsed by Stephen Wolfram, who was among the first recipients of the MacArthur Foundation "genius award" in 1981, and who brings a strong background in both physics and computer science. In his 2002 book, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram carefully describes the uncanny resemblance of many physical processes to the results obtained by running a particular class of simple computer programs known as cellular automata. Repeatedly throughout the book, Wolfram declares his "strong suspicion" that the natural phenomena themselves are the result of computer operations.

    In the company of these physics-as-computation researchers, what separates Svozil from the pack is his model. Most theorists in this area endorse the idea of "strong artificial intelligence," believing that a computer can think for itself and even develop into an independent life form fully equivalent to a human being. From this, the preferred model is a self-contained computer program that gives birth to everything in human experience – including the very humanness of consciousness and experience. Given such a model, the universe may be a black box humming in the corner of a closet, generating billions of artificial life forms (humans among them) that exist wholly inside the circuitry but which, in some sense, "experience" the program's evolution as their day-to-day lives. The difficulty with this approach is that artificial life remains a controversial topic (despite its adoption by Hollywood). There is a continuing debate whether true artificial consciousness is possible, even in principle.

Svozil takes a different approach, with significant practical and philosophical advantages. His model is the computer game simulation – a user interacting with the computer's programming in a type of training exercise, or even for pure entertainment. Svozil's model has the practical advantage of familiarity, with proof-of-concept available at your local arcade. Every computer system in our experience eventually includes a user, if only to read the data or look at the monitor screen. Modern networked computer games can easily accommodate multiple players in the action. Svozil observes that "this picture is an old idea in a relatively new context—dualism."

    Svozil's years of research into computer systems and the information aspects of physics lead him to the conclusion that all of the necessary components are available. Even so, he concedes that real proof is lacking. No matter how consistent the theory, Svozil doesn't expect the idea to take hold in the scientific establishment unless and until it proves to be a better hypothesis than the conventional approaches.

    Philosophy is another matter. The philosophical advantage of Svozil's approach is that it preserves the notion of free will, because the player makes choices and controls the progress of the game independently of the game itself. By contrast, the artificial intelligence community inevitably confronts the brick wall of determinism, which implies a complete lack of free will.

Svozil's model also preserves and even defines a role for the Creator in a comfortably familiar way. All of our own computer programs were designed and coded by instructions written in one or another computer "language," representing the operations of the math. The computer's words, and the programmer's words, are actual words. They describe (in a highly stylized way) what the computer should do and when it should do it. Svozil concludes that God needs nothing more than these words to accomplish a full creation. In principle, there is nothing to prevent the programmer from entering into the game as one more player. The result would be, in Svozil's words, "a clocklike universe inspired by miracles. By 'miracles,' we mean all ad hoc occurrences which can in no way be explained in an otherwise clocklike universe."

    Drawing on off-the-shelf technology, Svozil proposes that if you were God you would create a world by and through the word of the programmable computer. Although Professor Svozil did not say so, this happens to be the very mechanism suggested by religious tradition: "God said …," and it was so; "In the beginning was the Word … Through him all things were made." This is creation by language; and a God made known and manifest through the Word.

Svozil's paper based on his talk at Linz may be accessed at
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305048

Ross Rhodes is the founder of BottomLayer.com, a web resource devoted to physics and philosophy. He has written on the convergence of physics and theology, most recently in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought.