Seth Lloyd Quotes

Quotes about:

• Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.

  Seth Lloyd

  Simple, Starting Over, Able

  45 Copy quote

• The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.

  Seth Lloyd

  Ongoing, Computer, Quantum

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• We couldn't build quantum computers unless the universe were quantum and computing. We can build such machines because the universe is storing and processing information in the quantum realm. When we build quantum computers, we're hijacking that underlying computation in order to make it do things we want: little and/or/not calculations. We're hacking into the universe.

  Seth Lloyd

  Order, Machines, Hijacking

  "Q&A: Seth Lloyd". Interview with Jason Pontin, www.technologyreview.com. July 1, 2006.

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• Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics.

  Seth Lloyd

  Law, Life Is, Metabolism

  Nature 430, 971, August 26, 2004.

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• In order to figure out how to make atoms compute, you have to learn how to speak their language and to understand how they process information under normal circumstances.

  Seth Lloyd

  Order, Atoms, Information

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• Quantum mechanics is weird. I don't understand it. Just live with it. You don't have to understand the nature of things in order to build cool devices.

  Seth Lloyd

  Order, Mechanic, Quantum

  "Seth Lloyd on Quantum Computing" by Scott Dewing, blog.insidethebox.org, September 23, 2011.

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• When you zap things with light to build quantum computers, you're hacking existing systems. You're hijacking the computation that's already happening in the universe, just like a hacker takes over someone else's computer.

  Seth Lloyd

  Light, Hijacking, Hacking

  "Life, the Universe, and Everything". WIRED Interview, www.wired.com. March 1, 2006.

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• Thinking of the universe as a computer is controversial.

  Seth Lloyd

  Thinking, Computer, Controversial

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• When it comes to their capacity to screw things up, computers are becoming more human every day.

  Seth Lloyd

  Becoming, Computer, Capacity

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• Bits of ignorance are like viruses that are copied and spread by interaction.

  Seth Lloyd

  Ignorance, Viruses, Spread

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• Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.

  Seth Lloyd

  Form

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• At some point, Moore's law will break down.

  Seth Lloyd

  Law, Breaking Down, Break

  Seth Lloyd (2011). “Programming The Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos”, p.157, Random House

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• [With quantum computers] you can calculate how many bits are in the universe, how much energy it takes to flip them, how much energy exists, and use that to rule out lots of things about the universe's history. Anything that takes more bit flips couldn't have happened.

  Seth Lloyd

  Energy, Use, Flip

  4 Copy quote

• Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.

  Seth Lloyd

  Imagination, Mutation, Firsts

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• If you wanted to build the most powerful computer you could, you can't do better than including everything in the universe that's potentially available.

  Seth Lloyd

  Powerful, Computer, Wanted

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• The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.

  Seth Lloyd

  Simple, Law, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.

  Seth Lloyd

  Needs, Want, Information

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• Quantum mechanics is just completely strange and counterintuitive. We can't believe that things can be here [in one place] and there [in another place] at the same time. And yet that's a fundamental piece of quantum mechanics. So then the question is, life is dealing us weird lemons, can we make some weird lemonade from this?

  Seth Lloyd

  Believe, Fundamentals, Pieces

  "A Quantum Leap in Computing". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. July 21, 2011.

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• All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of.

  Seth Lloyd

  Views, Wish, Information

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• Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them. I cannot prove that electrons exist..........if you don't believe in them I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.

  Seth Lloyd

  Believe, Fool, Argument

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• Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all its matter into energy.

  Seth Lloyd

  Memories, Space, Energy

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• There are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most important.

  Seth Lloyd

  Important, Degrees, Information

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• One of the things that I've been doing recently in my scientific research is to ask this question: Is the universe actually capable of performing things like digital computations?

  Seth Lloyd

  Research, Digital, Performing

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• Science has an uncomfortable way of pushing human beings from center stage. In our prescientific stories, humans began as the focal point of Nature, living on an Earth that was the center of the universe. As the origins of the Earth and of mankind were investigated more carefully, it became clear that Nature had other interests beyond people, and the Earth was less central than previously hoped. Humankind was just one branch of the great family of life, and the Earth is a smallish planet orbiting an unexceptional sun quite far out on one arm of a run-of-the-mill spiral galaxy.

  Seth Lloyd

  Running, People, Stories

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• I would suggest, merely as a metaphor here, but also as the basis for a scientific program to investigate the computational capacity of the universe, that this is also a reasonable explanation for why the universe is complex.

  Seth Lloyd

  Metaphor, Program, Capacity

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