FEDIT POLITICS Thread

Don't get me started.
I can go all Riven length about how there's a bunch of evidence that we live in a simulation.

 

Simulcast

 

Ok. I'm gonna do it.

First think about a simulation in the terms that we are able to construct/comprehend with our own technology.

If you were a computer program living in a simulation, how would you know that you were in a simulation? Computers are just fancy calculators that treat every input, output and action as simple mathematical operations on numbers. The defining characteristics of any computer are how fast it can do an operation (clock speed) and the size of the number that can be operated on (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, etc.).

Now if you're a program living in a simulation, and everything you are or know is defined by the parameters of the simulation, how would you know if you're in the simulation?

You might be able to observe some of the processing limitations the simulation. You would observe absolute speed limits on how fast things can happen in the simulation due to the clock speed of the processor that hosts the simulation. The universe as we observe it has an absolute speed limit on how fast things can happen--the speed of light. Nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Seems like a strange thing to have a speed limit in a naturally occurring phenomenon, but it makes perfect sense for a simulation.

Another effect an in-simulation observer might be able to observe is digitization/quantization effects related to the size of the numbers that the simulation processor can operate on. If you're on an 8-bit computer, adding two 16-bit numbers takes (at least) twice as much processing power as adding two 8-bit numbers because you have to break the 16-bit numbers into 8-bit pieces and operate on them multiple times, because you can only ever deal with 8-bits at a time. But what about numbers that aren't even multiples of the bit size. Adding two 1-bit numbers takes the same about of processing power as adding an 8-bit number because you still have to use you 8-bit registers to do the 1-bit addition. So anything between 1-8 bits requires the same amount of energy. Same with 9-16 bits. It's an interesting characteristic of an 8-bit digital computer that doing something with 9 bits takes twice as much energy as doing something with 8 bits. When we look at the univers on an atomic scale, it works exactly the same way. If you apply energy to an atom, they'll behave exactly the same way over some range, then at some exact threshold energy level, the atom will behave differently. These levels are always the same for a given kind of atom...just like the bit-width in a digital computer. Why would something naturally occurring have discrete quantum mechanical events like this? But again, it makes perfect sense in a simulation.

This is too long...I'll talk about consciousness some other time.

 

As long as Patrick Ewing is around, never.

 

Neo and Morpheus like this.


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No love from Trinity?

 

Wait what part is communist?
Because I do the satellite thing too.

 

funny, you struck me as more of an oracle guy...

 

I know that I don't know what's best for anyone else. Shit, I don't know what's best for me most of the time.

 

I'm not that old...yet!

 

yeah, but older women...
oracle, orifice... just saying

 

Gives a whole new meaning to "the well's run dry".

 

Weird that ruven hasn't weighed in on this.
I'm setting the over/under on his next post at 50000 words.