Simplest Universal Turing Machine

One might think that computational ability would be a more gradual phenomenon: that as one increased the complexity of the rules for a system, the system would gradually show greater computational ability.

But PCE says that's not how it works. It says that above a very low threshold, all systems will be exactly equivalent in their computational capabilities.

http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/10/the_prize_is_won_the_simplest.html?lid=title

i.e. the old argument that if we could just juice up machines a bit more we would get more out of them may be even consciousness is not true.