>>14123753It sounds like you're talking about constructor theory. It's a new idea started by David Deutsch, the guy who invented quantum computing, and expanded by him and Chiara Marletto. It is a theory that attempts to talk about physical processes or potential technologies in terms of counterfactuals, in order to physically prove whether or not certain technologies or "constructors" are possible in principle.
It has nothing to do with Turing Machines or Cellular Automata, as Turing Machines are a mathematical constructs that do not actually exist. Physical machines that we use to compute are physical structures (constructors) that are a subset of the laws of physics, and different constructors have different abilities that are themselves constrained by the laws of physics. Classical Turing Machines are already inable to perform the same set of computations as a Universal Quantum Computer. This is outlined in Deutsch's 1985 paper "Quantum theory, the Church–Turing principle and the universal quantum computer" where he proves that classical Turing Machines are strictly weaker than Universal Quantum Computers, and started the field of quantum computing.
For example, a pretty intuitively obvious but otherwise unproven (without constructor theory) is the potentiality for a machine like a "star trek replicator"; A machine that takes as input any set of matter and produces as output any desired clump of a different material. Basically a "universal matter converter machine", or something. You can prove that such a machine is NOT possible to build, even in principle regardless of how much knowledge is brought to bear, by using constructor theory, without needing to fall onto vague physical intuitive explanations for why such a machine is not possible.
