Episode 6.36: That the universe is irreducible is stranger than it may appear at first sight.

The idea that there are processes that are either computable irreducible or just plain irreducible, that go merrily along their way despite the absence of some underlying principle that decides how they behave, is much harder to appreciate than we might at first sight think. If the universe is really purely random and not governed by any intrinsic underlying laws that we might get some sort of intellectual handle on by formulating those laws, what kind of being does it have that carries on doing what it’s doing despite the fact that there is no underlying law and no underlying set of principles governing that behaviour? Is such a notion even intelligible? Probably not. But that’s my point: perhaps the only intelligible thing about the universe is that it is unintelligible; and not only to we poor finite humans, but to anything at all including the Vogons.