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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)

#81

Post by throw0101a »

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…

> 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?".

Parmenides would like a word:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_comes_from_nothing

One also has to ask "what keeps reality/realities existing?". Why doesn't everything simply just go poof into non-existence?

Aristotle (and Thomas Aquinas, in this Second Way):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)#Secunda_Vi...

argue that there must be an Uncaused Cause. Not a "cause" in the temporal sense of a first domino knocking over a second, third, etc, starting with the Big Bang; but rather like Yo-Yo Ma playing his cello causing music. What is the cello player of reality that is causing the reality that we perceive?

Whatever said entity is, it itself cannot be caused by something else, as you get into an infinite regress.

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

#82

Post by Viliam1234 »

konjin wrote: post #77
kybernetikos wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You could treat simulations of other people worse, and the simulation of you better. (Assuming you are the guy who controls the computer at all levels.)

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

#83

Post by lmarcos »

Schiphol wrote: post #79
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 )

Thanks for the link!

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

#84

Post by mannykannot »

l33tman wrote: post #52
Zanni wrote: post #50

Okay, this is wonderful, but there's an obvious, nagging question that hasn't been addressed--what happens if they run the simulation ahead of present time? We know they have fine-grain control over the speed of the simulation. There's no actual obstacle to running it forward ... except the feedback loop gets very weird. I want to read that story.

And.. what if, when you run it forward ahead of the present time, you come to a point where the simulation just crashes and you can't simulate ahead of that point no matter what you do? This is the premise of the tv series Devs. Cool idea but super-bad execution, it just devolves into a standard bad-guy hunting good-guys with pistols story..

It is a premise of this story that the real universe is completely deterministic, so running a simulation ahead (which will only be observable in the real world, if my analysis in my other post is correct) will merely reveal what has already been determined will happen in the real world's future, like a completely accurate weather forecast. The premises of this story do not permit free will, even in its real world.

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

#86

Post by Viliam1234 »

AaronFriel wrote: post #11
ro_bit wrote: post #9

Now I'm curious how the behavior of the people in the "first" universe, unencumbered by the idea of how affecting the machine's reality would affect their own reality, is different from the behavior of the people we see.

I imagine that they couldn't be perfectly confident that they weren't just far enough away from the fixed point that their universe was the same as the one they observed. A sort of a Roko's Basilisk, except with an omnipresent dread that they might be say, the 2nd or 3rd universe and the first just hadn't messed with them yet. If they do anything that scares or abhors the people above, they could be turned off. Maybe…

> If they do anything that scares or abhors the people above, they could be turned off.

But maybe also if they are too boring. :(

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

#87

Post by Viliam1234 »

necovek wrote: post #60
knorker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the scenario they are countable. They even imply a finite universe.

Yet we know for a fact irrational numbers exist, and some of them are even trivial to grasp (like pi, which they mention how they are calculating all the digits of, which is weird on its own since pi has a greater than aleph-0 digits in any numbering system, because it's, well, an irrational number). But writing a coherent story around non-countable infinity is so much harder because our brains struggle to grasp that…

> pi has a greater than aleph-0 digits in any numbering system, because it's, well, an irrational number

In usual math, irrational numbers have aleph-0 decimal digits.

(Rational numbers also have aleph-0 decimal digits, but after some point they start repeating in a loop of finite length.)

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

#88

Post by Viliam1234 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63
l33tman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the story is about super-determinism; the simulated universes below are simulated identically to the one they are in, and statistically they are just one in the middle in that "pillar". So if they decide to destructively interfere with the universe below, all the others in the pillar will have the same idea including the ones above.

oh. not free will. ok I get it. Of course super determinist asteroids become worrying. Or can they adjust those ? If you can interfere can you interfere to produce "good" outcomes ? Steer asteroids away?

> Of course super determinist asteroids become worrying. Or can they adjust those?

Yes, but not on the highest level. :(

So it depends on whether they can simulate the future, and whether someone up the ladder will be nice enough to simulate enough future (with the asteroids deflected) for those below them before they (the ones up the ladder) get killed.

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

#89

Post by seqizz »

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…

But isn't "reality", in this usage, enforces the idea of always having the N-1? Suppose you can jump between realities (duh) and you've found the reality 0 by asking the right questions on every step, what would be the first question to ask there?

Edit: Just to support that I am on 2nd solution :)

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