People too easily esteem the power of technology, and this propensity is often magnified in thought-experiments. Of course, they also underestimate this power in other (sometimes convenient) ways.

We do not possess and cannot currently construct an actual Turing machine. But in our vast awe of the powers of this speculative construct, we overlook something fundamental about the nature of mathematics, consciousness, and, apparently, the universe. Incompleteness.

A Turing machine may perfectly embody any other computational device in theory; but it cannot tell you which simulation corresponds to which device, or if any of them do, or anything at all. It does not tell. We do.

The meaning of this is complex, but part of it is that without an actual living participant, the tool isn’t even meaningful, let alone masterful.