Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to live in simulated universe.
It would probably slow down or cause elevated heat between two mirrors.
Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
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Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#42Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to live in simulated universe.
Well you are in a way, what is a simulation ? It's just a set of rules you follow that are simpler than the more complex environment that it runs in: I suppose if we could "see" "outside" the "universe", we'd understand that maybe our reality is very simple and limited compared to the "reality" outside. Maybe this would be true infinitely, or maybe the outside reality would be much more logical than ours, and we'd ac…
I think modern people have so much faith in this reality, they'd have little chance accepting that it is other than it seems. Any evidence would have to be stark.
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#43There is an excellent hard science fiction book called permutation city that very related to this topic…it made me feel like i was in a dream when i read this post’s title
Permutation City is briljant - Greg Egan has many (free) stories exploring physics on his website: https://www.gregegan.net/
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#44Only tangentially related, but the lovely (quite) short story "I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility" is fantastic and kind of hits on simulating worlds, in a sense: https://qntm.org/responsibility
I'd love to read alternate endings to it.
I've been thinking about writing a story with a very similar plot for a couple of years, but it had a big plot hole: computation overhead between the universes, and I hadn't thought about quantum computers as a way to solve it.
The other main difference with the story that I had in mind is that the characters would write a story about it, which would be "my" story, and they'd find a way to make it so that the ending would tell the reader the universe depth they are in, by creating a variable whose value is incremented by 1 for each universe.
For anyone reading this on HN, you're 8474771628371839 levels deep.
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say that as if you aren't. What proof do you have either way?
why does it matter? If we are, we're in a sandbox that cant be escaped. live your best life and get on with it If we aren't Live your best life and get on with it. I've never seen the point of the question.
What if we could escape the sandbox? Our software has crappy exploits all the time, why wouldn't theirs?
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#46Only tangentially related, but the lovely (quite) short story "I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility" is fantastic and kind of hits on simulating worlds, in a sense: https://qntm.org/responsibility
I'd love to read alternate endings to it. I've been thinking about writing a story with a very similar plot for a couple of years, but it had a big plot hole: computation overhead between the universes, and I hadn't thought about quantum computers as a way to solve it. The other main difference with the story that I had in mind is that the characters would write a story about it, which would be "my" story, and they'd…
> it had a big plot hole: computation overhead between the universes
Unless you're going hard sci-fi, you can do what this story did. Give them by fiat "infinite processing power and infinite storage capacity."
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simulation has a nonzero chance of having exploits, and it's debatable whether it is in our best interest to discover them.
What's an "exploit"? Is electricity an exploit of that weird phenomenon where a balloon sticks to a wall sometimes?
I’d imagine that’s an application of a rule, whereas an exploit is a violation of a rule that allows for (a && !a) or some such inconsistency.
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#48One of my favorite courses at university was energy policy analysis, where we played around with the EPPA model (developed at MIT) [0]. We made changes to certain parameters to see how things might work out, e.g. if cost of energy storage is reduced 10x.
Lots of fun, but I unfortunately never managed to find anything similar to do in my job.
[0]: https://globalchange.mit.edu/research/research-tools/eppa
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#49Why only fragment shaders? If you had vertex shaders for a heightmap too then you could zoom down to the surface.
Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU
#50Only tangentially related, but the lovely (quite) short story "I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility" is fantastic and kind of hits on simulating worlds, in a sense: https://qntm.org/responsibility
I’m not sure I really know how to handle this. Do I just read the latest version linked at the top of the page? Or is the one offered by this like somehow more canonical or something? I’m not sure I’ve ever been faced with different versions of a fiction before. Just textbooks. I really love thought pieces like this if you refrain from poking holes in the logic or physics. I love the idea of a multiverse where they’r…
Canon is just a construct invented to sell merchandise and keep out competitors. Enjoy whichever version of the story you’d like!