All I'm saying is, if you think you have an unbounded demand for computation, I see no computational reason to expand at anything less than the maximum speed.

I agree. That's why I was careful to ask the advice of physicists and not computer scientists. I am a computer scientist myself.

How do two such civilizations react when they collide?

I don't know. But these cyclic cellular automata were an influence when I was thinking about these ideas. http://www.permadi.com/java/cautom/index.html (Java applet)

and the moment you talk about "processes", you have implicitly reintroduced the concept of time.

Your critique is misdirected. If I, a time-based creature, write a long paragraph about a timeless theory, it is not surpising that accidentally I will use some time-based notion in the text somewhere. But this is not a problem with the theory, this is a problem with my text. You jumped on the word 'process', but if I write 'pattern' instead, then you will have much less to nitpick about.

2) You hope to derive time from memory. I see two ways that can work out, neither satisfactory. Either you talk about memory processes and we are back to the previous problem of presupposing time; or you adopt an explicitly timeless physical ontology, like Julian Barbour, and say you're accounting for the appearance of time or the illusion of time. Are you prepared to do that - to say simply that time is not real? I'll still disagree with you, but your position will be a little more consistent.

Little more consistent then the position you put into my mouth after reading one paragraph? This is unfair and a bit rude. (Especially considering the thread we are still on. I came here for some feel-good karma and expert advice from physicists, and I was used as a straw man instead. :) Should we switch to Open Thread, BTW?)

To answer the question: yes, I am all the way down route number 2. Barbour has it exactly right in my opinion, except for one rhetorical point: it is just marketing talk to interpret these ideas as "time is not real". Time is very real, and an emergent notion. Living organisms are real, even if we can reduce biology to chemistry.

then careless or unwary thinkers simply equivocate between the mathematics and the thing represented.

Please read my answer to ata. I'm not a platonist. I don't do such an equivocation. I am a staunch formalist. I don't BELIEVE in Tegmark's Multiverse in the way you think I do. It is a tool for me to think more clearly about why OUR Universe is the way it is.