---
title: "Decoding Reality"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoding_Reality"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:31:37.289689+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== "Surfing the Waves: Hyper-Fast Computers" ===
Quantum computers offer a search advantage over classical computers by searching many database elements at once as a result of quantum superpositions. A sufficiently advanced quantum computer would break current encryption methods by factorizing large numbers several orders of magnitude faster than any existing classical computer. Any computable problem may be expressed as a general quantum search algorithm although classical computers may have an advantage over quantum search when using more efficient tailored classical algorithms. The issue with quantum computers is that a measurement must be made to determine if the problem is solved which collapses the superposition. Vedral points out that unintentional interaction with the environment can be mitigated with redundancy, and this would be necessary if we were to scale up current quantum computers to achieve greater utility, i.e. to utilize 10 qubits have a 100 atom quantum system so that if one atom decoheres a consensus will still be held by the other 9 for the state of the same qubit.

=== "Children of the Aimless Chance: Randomness versus Determinism" ===
Randomness is key to generating new sources of surprise in a reality. Compression of these new sources to discard unimportant information is the deterministic element and organising principle.

=== "Sand Reckoning: Whose Information is It, Anyway?" ===
The information content of the universe as measured in bits or qubits. Vedral uses the initial effort of Archimedes of Syracuse in calculating the amount of sand that could theoretically fit inside the universe and compares it to a modern-day attempt to calculate the bit content of the universe. Vedral however sees this content as ultimately limitless as possibly maximum entropy is never reached as compression of complexity is an open ended process and random events will continue to occur. As Vedral sees information as the ultimate building block of physical reality, he speculates that information originating at any scale can force outcomes in all other scales to abide where mutual information is shared. For example, a human performed macro-level scientific test in search of a behaviour in a quantum particle could set parameters for that type of particle in the future when subjected to a similar test.

=== "Destruction ab Toto: Nothing from Something" ===
The information basis for creation ex nihilo. According to John von Neumann, starting trivially from an empty set of numbers an infinite sequence of numbers can bootstrap their way out. An empty set creates the number 1 by observing an empty set within itself which is enough of a basis for distinguishability. It creates the number 2 by observing an empty set within the second empty set and the number 1, and so on. Vedral sees this not as creation but as data compression, as every event of a reality breaks the symmetry of the pre-existing formlessness. Science is the process of describing a large amount of observed phenomena in a compressed programmatic way to predict future outcomes, and in this process of data compression science creates new information by eliminating all contrary possibilities to explain those phenomena.

== Synopsis ==
The book explains the world as being made up of information.

== Notes ==

== References ==
"A quantum calculation". The Economist. April 2010.
Lloyd, Seth (March 2010). "The universe is a quantum computer". New Scientist (2757).
Cane, Alan (April 2010). "Decoding Reality". Financial Times.
Poole, Steven (March 2010). "Et cetera: Steven Poole's non-fiction choice". The Guardian.

== See also ==
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife