The Ascent of Information Quotes

“That is not to say that there’s any change in their individual physics, but rather that the physics of these building blocks is not enough by itself to tell you all their properties and behaviors when they’re part of you.”
― Caleb Scharf, The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm

“In a very real sense all of us, and all of what surrounds us, are pieces inside an ongoing four-billion-year-old game. It’s not a game with a perfectly prescribed set of rules. Instead it’s a game governed by rules that emerge from the game itself. One might say that the very object of the game is to produce its own rules. The ultimate players of the game are also hard to spot. They are even more ancient, and have no discernable physical form—they are the root properties and predispositions of the universe; they are everywhere, yet nowhere in particular.”
― Caleb Scharf, The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm