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I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

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Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#71

Post by gus_massa »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #59

Very interesting story. After reading a few thoughts came to mind: 1. I don't agree with the "midpoint stability" argument. Since these are simulations - the real one is on the top, but there is no "bottom simulation", since every simulation below is also running a simulation. Hence there is no stable middle point - since there is no middle in the first place. 2. About simulating the future. It seems quite obvious th…

About 1: There are some recursions that after some iterations approach a stable cycle, in the most simple cases it can be a cycle of length 2, like A -> B -> A -> B -> ... but there are longer cycles, and in some cases no cycles at all. This example has a lot of possible behaviors changing the parameter r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#72

Post by blueblisters »

I think the simulation theory posits a fascination of people to simulate ancestral experiences. But I would find it equally (perhaps more) fascinating to simulate random universes with random initial conditions and stochastic physics and see what happens. Or put another way, if we are in a simulation, I see no reason not to consider the possibility that the entity simulating us is doing it just for science.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#73

Post by morelisp »

blueblisters wrote: post #72

I think the simulation theory posits a fascination of people to simulate ancestral experiences. But I would find it equally (perhaps more) fascinating to simulate random universes with random initial conditions and stochastic physics and see what happens. Or put another way, if we are in a simulation, I see no reason not to consider the possibility that the entity simulating us is doing it just for science.

Yes, the original simulation hypothesis was phrased in terms of a trilemma, one of which seems like it must be true (plus the uncertain base assumption that a simulation of sentience is sentient):

- The fraction of posthuman civilizations capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations is very close to zero

- The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero

- The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

For a certain kind of person who is also the most likely to engage with the hypothesis 3) is the most exciting, so it got the most attention. I think 1) and 2) are more probable and at least as worthy of deep consideration.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#75

Post by MereInterest »

Lerc wrote: post #66

You could give this somewhat of a horror ending by having the characters realise, after figuring out the implication of turning the simulation off, that the top level would not have had the black sphere appear and as such would have no reason to keep their simulation running and were about to turn it off.

True, but they also could just as easily exit debug mode and allow the simulated universe to run to completion. It costs them nothing to do so, and gives the simulated universe a full lifetime. That changes the story from horror to a question of empathy.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#76

Post by konjin »

Lerc wrote: post #66

You could give this somewhat of a horror ending by having the characters realise, after figuring out the implication of turning the simulation off, that the top level would not have had the black sphere appear and as such would have no reason to keep their simulation running and were about to turn it off.

They did, but because you have infinite computing power all the lower levels completed the simulation in the time it took to shut down.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#77

Post by konjin »

kybernetikos wrote: post #25
tobmlt wrote: post #13

Ian M. Banks novel “surface detail” comes to mind. Please note it is better than the tawdry wiki write up. Somehow, it gets similar points across — similar to this essay, but deeper in feeling. Let me also say the authors here have done really well with so short a format. To paraphrase my toddler son, I want more story!

These guys now have godlike powers. Most stories that start there quickly move to how such power corrupts those who have it, or at the very least separate them from their humanity. Either that or a government agency figure it out (how? That could be interesting) and plays the part of the antagonist / devil. These guys seem nice, and surprisingly already mentioned ethical implications early, so their corruption might…

>These guys seem nice, and surprisingly already mentioned ethical implications early, so their corruption might take longer or develop along unexpected paths.

It's hard to treat people below you worse when you know that he people above you will do the same thing if you do. It's an unstable equilibrium made stable by the fact it's already happened.

Put another way, you won't start tap dancing on someones head when you're in the middle of an infinite tower of tap dancers each standing on another tap dancers head.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#78

Post by lmarcos »

Something I have been thinking about related to this story: we, as humans, will never know what reality is (not just "our" reality as in "our" universe, but "everything"). You either a) have to accept the idea of infinite as in realities have always existed and have bootstrapped inner realities with time. They never "were created", they just "always existed". So whenever we get to know the details of reality N, we don't know yet 100% what reality N-1 is about (we may have an idea, a theory, but just that). We would never reach to understand/experience reality 0.

Or b) you don't accept the idea of "infinite" and you think everything has one single beginning, one original "big bang" that bootstrapped everything and that nothing ever existed before that moment, not even time. But as humans I don't think our brains are wired in a way to understand "there was nothing before something", we will always ask ourselves "what is the cause of that?".

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#79

Post by Schiphol »

lmarcos wrote: post #78

Something I have been thinking about related to this story: we, as humans, will never know what reality is (not just "our" reality as in "our" universe, but "everything"). You either a) have to accept the idea of infinite as in realities have always existed and have bootstrapped inner realities with time. They never "were created", they just "always existed". So whenever we get to know the details of reality N, we do…

This is Kant's [first antinomy of pure reason] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant%27s_antinomies)

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#80

Post by Filligree »

rkachowski wrote: post #44
kian wrote: post #35

He's one of the best modern sci-fi writers. The whole collection of short stories here is fantastic, as is the "Anti-mimetics division" series he wrote over on SCP wiki.

i had no idea that was the same author, both the linked story and the anti memetics sequence have taken root in my mind for a long time. Before reading the antiemetics series I had always considered SCP to be an awkward xfiles style fan fiction collection, I'm still looking for more to scratch that itch.

*Antimemetics

The quality of the SCPs has increased over time, by and large, though there were always outliers. A good way to find the better stories is to look at the Exploring series on Youtube; for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pJUm4lKOhE

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