On the Algorithmic Nature of the World

We propose a test based on the theory of algorithmic complexity and an experimental evaluation of Levin’s universal distribution to identify evidence in support of or in contravention of the claim that the world is algorithmic in nature. To this end statistical comparisons are undertaken of the frequency distributions of data from physical sources–repositories of information such as images, data stored in a hard drive, computer programs and DNA sequences–and the output frequency distributions generated by purely algorithmic means–by running abstract computing devices such as Turing machines, cellular automata and Post Tag systems. Statistical correlations were found and their significance measured.