All of the known laws of physics are computable to arbitrary precision by a Turing machine, including quantum decoherence. Even non-determinism and chaos aren’t barriers, since you can simulate the state space of the system instead of just tracing one state.
In the cartoon, the computations done are just enormous numbers of finite state transitions with a much smaller state space than even a four-function calculator. The inclusion of a human figure in the picture is just to make it relatable.
The FPGA evolution experiment doesn’t say anything at all about what can be simulated. That experiment can almost certainly be simulated, and similar experiments with similarly puzzling results have been simulated, and then shown to be valid in reality.
One thing we can be sure of: anything that we can discover in finite time can be simulated. The Church-Turing thesis deals with behaviour of computation over unbounded times. All bounded computation is Turing-computable.
All of the known laws of physics are computable to arbitrary precision by a Turing machine, including quantum decoherence. Even non-determinism and chaos aren’t barriers, since you can simulate the state space of the system instead of just tracing one state.
In the cartoon, the computations done are just enormous numbers of finite state transitions with a much smaller state space than even a four-function calculator. The inclusion of a human figure in the picture is just to make it relatable.
The FPGA evolution experiment doesn’t say anything at all about what can be simulated. That experiment can almost certainly be simulated, and similar experiments with similarly puzzling results have been simulated, and then shown to be valid in reality.
One thing we can be sure of: anything that we can discover in finite time can be simulated. The Church-Turing thesis deals with behaviour of computation over unbounded times. All bounded computation is Turing-computable.