Is the Universe Really So Simple?

Abstract

The intriguing suggestion of Tegmark (1996) that the universe--contrary to all our experiences and expectations--contains only a small amount of information due to an extremely high degree of internal symmetry is critically examined. It is shown that there are several physical processes, notably Hawking evaporation of black holes and non-zero decoherence time effects described by Plaga, as well as thought experiments of Deutsch and Tegmark himself, which can be construed as arguments against the low-information universe hypothesis. In addition, an extreme form of physical reductionism is entailed by this hypothesis, and therefore any possible argumentation against such reductionism would count against it either. Some ramifications for both quantum mechanics and cosmology are briefly discussed.