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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

#61

Post by namanyayg »

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…

I think they definitely got "inspired" from qntm's story, but the ending of that TV show was unwatchably bad.

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

#62

Post by thfuran »

dheera wrote: post #17
shanxS wrote: post #2

Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to live in simulated universe.

The energy and matter in the universe is actually a big analog quantum computer simulating the result of a set of equations. Nobody said the simulation had to be run on semiconductors.

It's less commonly said, but the territory isn't the map either.

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

#63

Post by fersaysrelax »

kmoser wrote: post #40

Back in 1996/1997 I worked on a CD-ROM game that simulated movement of the tectonic plates, as well as temperature, elevation, and precipitation, over millions of years. Amazing to see how evolution (heh!) of computing hardware and software have come so far in 28 years: https://www.kmoser.com/evolution/

I think you are the first person I come across that knows that game and you were an actual dev on it! So thank you! I played it when I was around 13(I think) and I loved it. The whole concept of simulating a planet and the animals on it was pretty much mind blowing for me at the time(it still is). I should have kept the poster that came with it...the different sapien evolutionary branches were really interesting.

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

#64

Post by baxtr »

noduerme wrote: post #55

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…

While I have some doubts some of your statements your comment still resonates.

Unfortunately, we live in an “Excel world”. The predominant thinking is that our highly complex world can be modeled into an excel sheet. And based on the outputs we should make decisions.

This approach mostly ignores the second order effects you describe.

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

#65

Post by exe34 »

netcraft wrote: post #34
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

I havent yet read permutation city but Diaspora is one of my favorite sci-fi novels. I need to make time for it

there's a short story in his anthology that is a sequel to diaspora. oceanic.

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

#66

Post by Retric »

LoganDark wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Infinite processing power, infinite storage, zero latency, etc is about as soft of a setting as it gets.

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

#67

Post by idunnoman1222 »

baxtr wrote: post #64
noduerme wrote: post #55

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…

While I have some doubts some of your statements your comment still resonates. Unfortunately, we live in an “Excel world”. The predominant thinking is that our highly complex world can be modeled into an excel sheet. And based on the outputs we should make decisions. This approach mostly ignores the second order effects you describe.

Climate change predicts a warmer wetter world The author just didn’t know this

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

#68

Post by rcxdude »

LoganDark wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They're pretty soft, I would say. Most of Fine Structure is basically just magic.

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

#69

Post by LoganDark »

rcxdude wrote: post #68
LoganDark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're pretty soft, I would say. Most of Fine Structure is basically just magic.

If you're going to accuse something of using magic, I'm surprised you didn't accuse Ra, which even has something called 'magic'. I've been reading Fine Structure this morning and it doesn't seem magical to me at all. It's about as magical as quantum physics would be, I guess.

I suppose even Ra still obeys the speed of light, though.

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

#70

Post by LoganDark »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #44
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'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…

> For anyone reading this on HN, you're 8474771628371839 levels deep.

"Do you know how big the average positive integer is?"

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