It's nice that we have universal formal systems like cellular automata, Turing-completeness and all. Yet formalism ever only happens on an actual substrate.
The substrate typically has different principles and the properties necessary for the formalism built on top emerge from lower-level, simpler interactions, that typically have nothing to do with the formalism.
This is why quantum mechanics appears so weird. The substrate is so different from the emergent formalism of classical mechanics that we have to give up the mere notion of time that seemed so central.
For another example of unexpected substrate you can build logic gates on top of the overall behavior of swarm of crabs http://wpmedia.wolfram.com/uploads/sites/13/2018/02/20-2-2.p... . In theory, with enough logic gates you can build a Turing-complete system. Not a very efficient one, sure. Generally, remember not all outcomes are determined by efficiency, only by chains of causality.
It's nice that we have universal formal systems like cellular automata, Turing-completeness and all. Yet formalism ever only happens on an actual substrate.
The substrate typically has different principles and the properties necessary for the formalism built on top emerge from lower-level, simpler interactions, that typically have nothing to do with the formalism.
This is why quantum mechanics appears so weird. The substrate is so different from the emergent formalism of classical mechanics that we have to give up the mere notion of time that seemed so central.
For another example of unexpected substrate you can build logic gates on top of the overall behavior of swarm of crabs http://wpmedia.wolfram.com/uploads/sites/13/2018/02/20-2-2.p... . In theory, with enough logic gates you can build a Turing-complete system. Not a very efficient one, sure. Generally, remember not all outcomes are determined by efficiency, only by chains of causality.