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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

#51

Post by BelleOfTheBall »

catoc wrote: post #43
ahmadmk wrote: post #23

There 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/

Egan is one of those rare writers where reading his book made me realize just how much smarter he is than me. Not even in a negative way, it's simply like listening to a lecture by a brilliant, brilliant man.

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#52

Post by zxexz »

disillusioned wrote: post #3

Only 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 remember watching a (won‎d‎erful) T.‎V. ‎show[0] that came out within the last couple decades, and feeling like a certain scene was definitely a nod to this story. The drama, and physics (and resolution) was done differently, but it left me in a similarly, pleasantly pensive state. [0] I almost made the mistake of naming it, or the director - but caught myself, realizing the context of this comment alone could be a major "spoiler".

Maybe I've encoded the name in this comment (honestly though, I tried, and it's late - maybe search engines are good enough for it these days :) )

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#53

Post by kennyadam »

zxexz wrote: post #52
disillusioned wrote: post #3

Only 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 remember watching a (won‎d‎erful) T.‎V. ‎show[0] that came out within the last couple decades, and feeling like a certain scene was definitely a nod to this story. The drama, and physics (and resolution) was done differently, but it left me in a similarly, pleasantly pensive state. [0] I almost made the mistake of naming it, or the director - but caught myself, realizing the context of this comment alone could be a…

What's the name of the show?

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#54

Post by zxexz »

kennyadam wrote: post #53
zxexz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching a (won‎d‎erful) T.‎V. ‎show[0] that came out within the last couple decades, and feeling like a certain scene was definitely a nod to this story. The drama, and physics (and resolution) was done differently, but it left me in a similarly, pleasantly pensive state. [0] I almost made the mistake of naming it, or the director - but caught myself, realizing the context of this comment alone could be a…

What's the name of the show?

U+200E before letters spelling out show in my comment. Just noting that while I would have enjoyed the show very much even if I had this "spoiler", it certainly would have lost some "magic".

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#55

Post by noduerme »

Mm..cool but the last part where any civilization that has night lights would by definition burn all the fossil fuels and turn the place into a desert seems like an assumption based on only one possible trajectory of our own civilization, let alone all other possible alien civilizations. There's nothing to make death by warming and desertification any likelier than nuclear war or the development of clean fusion, or a plague or an invasion from another nearby procedurally generated earth-like planet.

Basically it's a cool sim when it's trying to simulate stuff that actually happened, and before it gets opinionated.

Moreover, it apparently equates heat with dryness, and also doesn't take into account the effect of additional CO2 on plant life. It is called a greenhouse effect for a reason. It's quite possible the equatorial belt could heat up to where it's uninhabitable by humans but overrun by jungle rather than desert.

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#56

Post by chii »

zxexz wrote: post #54
kennyadam wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the name of the show?

U+200E before letters spelling out show in my comment. Just noting that while I would have enjoyed the show very much even if I had this "spoiler", it certainly would have lost some "magic".

you could use a url shortener to hide the link to the show's wikipedia page. For those who don't mind spoilers, they can know what you're talking about.

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#58

Post by LoganDark »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46
diego_sandoval wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I think all of qntm's stories are hard sci-fi.

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#59

Post by arrowsmith »

chii wrote: post #56
zxexz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U+200E before letters spelling out show in my comment. Just noting that while I would have enjoyed the show very much even if I had this "spoiler", it certainly would have lost some "magic".

you could use a url shortener to hide the link to the show's wikipedia page. For those who don't mind spoilers, they can know what you're talking about.

https://tinyurl.com/mrx6rfef

Re: Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

#60

Post by melagonster »

mistermann wrote: post #42
xwolfi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Actually, physics supports the probability that we live in a simulation. Our universe has the highest limitation of speed and the smallest units of length and energy.
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