Jon,
My apologies for the tardiness of my reply. You made a post in my forum and I did not notice it since it was a reply to an old thread.
I'll repeat it here
"Do you think it is possible that we may be living in a finite and discrete universe that could be described in an informational way? Do you think we could make more progress in our understanding of physics if we looked towards computer programs/simulations, instead of new sets of math equations, for explaining phenomenon? How much complexity do you think is in the universe, and how much of it is compressible?"
I think the universe is finite. I cannot say anything about whether or not it is discrete. I'm not even sure how the word "discrete" would be applied to the universe. Is the universe a discrete solution to a massive system of wave equations? Some people argue that the wave equation for a Bose-Einstein condensate at 2.7 K describes the universe.
How would a computer program or simulation help? Wouldn't it need to be given rules to obey? To me, that would still constitute mathematics. I think you are asking about emergent behavior ... Even that can be described by statistics although then there may not be a method of cleanly connecting the various laws to the results or to the other laws.
The universe is a complex as it needs to be to be the universe:-)
Regarding your essay ... it was interesting enough ... the numerous quotes were very telling ... which one is the actor and which one is the physicist? It made me think of a book titled "Physics on the Fringe". It was about some amateur scientists. I have not read it but the reviews were interesting. The author compared a meeting of the amateurs with a meeting of cosmologists and she concluded that she could not tell who was who:-)
Best Regards and Good Luck,
Gary Simpson