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I figure that if we did live in a computer simulation it's been 13.8 billion years since the last downtime. I'm skeptical software could run for so long without

I figure that if we did live in a computer simulation it's been 13.8 billion years since the last downtime. I'm skeptical software could run for so long without any catastrophic bugs.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
Is a Minecraft world aware it's was rebooted or restored from a previous state?
- aikah 10y ago
  > Is a Minecraft world aware it's was rebooted or restored from a previous state? That's an excellent point, we wouldn't know or be aware of that. For all we know the system is offline everyday as our reality stops for a thousand year for maintenance.
300bps 10y ago
I'm confident you're making a joke but there's nothing to say that a simulation couldn't spawn a 13.8 billion year old universe that has only actually existed for a second. And any downtime is likely to be invisible to anyone inside the simulation. Even a catastrophe could have the simulators restoring from tape and putting things back the way they were while we files are none the wiser.
- angstrom 10y ago
  Could actually go a step further if relativity is right your'e looking at time slices in your local environment and ephemeral time slices before or after your plane of existence outside your local observable universe depending on your relative motion. The very premise that there is a constant rate of change which cannot be exceeded could also indicate everything has already been simulated. Is it fate or freewill? It's a debate as old as philosophy.
AlexeyBrin 10y ago
Backup systems - save a copy of the universe at some fixed time interval. In case of failure restore from the most recent backup and eventually correct the cause of the last failure.
hashkb 10y ago
You only know it's been around as long as you have. History may have been preloaded. Also, you may have started running at 18 with preloaded memories.
kukx 10y ago
But the simulation doesn't have to be 1:1 in regard of time. They could have started the system just an hour ago. Hence blue screen of death is still a dreadful possibility.
noonespecial 10y ago
13.8 billion years in the sim might only be 12 seconds on the sim. Plus the whole mess seems pretty glitchy to me. I'm guessing undergraduate work at best.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Honestly, we hacked most of it together in Perl. https://xkcd.com/224/ https://xkcd.com/224/
kamaal 10y ago
1. They restore and restart the simulation from the last known stable snapshot. So you don't know about a downtime even if one happened. 2. While testing out a RTC program on 8085 processors in college we used to run the clock faster just to check if Clock counted to all conditions correctly. There is a always a fast forward option to jump the states you are interested in. 3. For the people running the simulation the time between big bang and heat death could be something like 5 mins what we perceive as billions of years.
greggyb 10y ago
How long does it take Dwarf Fortress to create a new world?

I figure that if we did live in a computer simulation it's been 13.8 billion years since the last downtime. I'm skeptical software could run for so long without any catastrophic bugs.

jasonkostempski 10y ago

Is a Minecraft world aware it's was rebooted or restored from a previous state?

aikah 10y ago
> Is a Minecraft world aware it's was rebooted or restored from a previous state? That's an excellent point, we wouldn't know or be aware of that. For all we know the system is offline everyday as our reality stops for a thousand year for maintenance.

300bps 10y ago

I'm confident you're making a joke but there's nothing to say that a simulation couldn't spawn a 13.8 billion year old universe that has only actually existed for a second. And any downtime is likely to be invisible to anyone inside the simulation. Even a catastrophe could have the simulators restoring from tape and putting things back the way they were while we files are none the wiser.

angstrom 10y ago
Could actually go a step further if relativity is right your'e looking at time slices in your local environment and ephemeral time slices before or after your plane of existence outside your local observable universe depending on your relative motion. The very premise that there is a constant rate of change which cannot be exceeded could also indicate everything has already been simulated. Is it fate or freewill? It's a debate as old as philosophy.

AlexeyBrin 10y ago

Backup systems - save a copy of the universe at some fixed time interval. In case of failure restore from the most recent backup and eventually correct the cause of the last failure.

hashkb 10y ago

You only know it's been around as long as you have. History may have been preloaded. Also, you may have started running at 18 with preloaded memories.

kukx 10y ago

But the simulation doesn't have to be 1:1 in regard of time. They could have started the system just an hour ago. Hence blue screen of death is still a dreadful possibility.

noonespecial 10y ago

13.8 billion years in the sim might only be 12 seconds on the sim. Plus the whole mess seems pretty glitchy to me. I'm guessing undergraduate work at best.

majewsky 10y ago
Honestly, we hacked most of it together in Perl. https://xkcd.com/224/ https://xkcd.com/224/

kamaal 10y ago

1. They restore and restart the simulation from the last known stable snapshot. So you don't know about a downtime even if one happened. 2. While testing out a RTC program on 8085 processors in college we used to run the clock faster just to check if Clock counted to all conditions correctly. There is a always a fast forward option to jump the states you are interested in. 3. For the people running the simulation the time between big bang and heat death could be something like 5 mins what we perceive as billions of years.

greggyb 10y ago

How long does it take Dwarf Fortress to create a new world?