Episode description

In this episode I actually do some readings from the chapter (unlike in last episode). Here we really delve into the new science of the constructor theory of information. We learn about what the physical requirements are for information to exist in our universe and therefore why it is that information is a physical property. The very possibility that matter can allow for negation (or flip) operations and copy operations is a property of matter in our universe. It did not have to be this way. A physical account, therefore, of these operations and further the so-called “interoperability” of information (the substrate independence of information or the capacity of information to be transferred or copied from disparate media to other media) all lead to a discussion of the universality of information. All of these are counterfactual rather than factual properties of physical systems in our universe.

This is fascinating but subtle stuff that few physicists have yet grasped the significance of and for that reason alone is well worth understanding for anyone who would like to be at the cutting edge of problem solving at the foundations of physics.