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The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the
by incompatible 7y ago
The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons?
I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distributed stars, and in ours they've been grouped into galaxies. Perhaps if you were bored you'd try running it a few thousand times on each setting to see if it makes a difference?
- justicezyx 7y agoThen how to simulate the aspects of human that can only be aroused by having the concept and the ability to explore that universe?
- p1esk 7y agoThey only have to simulate the signals we get about the Universe, not the Universe itself.
- fooker 7y agoRight, and sometimes they can mess up. One example could be the star found recently to be older than the universe!
- ncmncm 7y agoI was driving from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, once, and the moon was dead ahead. Caught 'em!
- beefield 7y agoThere is also the possibility that it is simulated only to one person's sensory input, which reduces the computing power needed quite a lot. I mean, how are you supposed to prove that author of this comment is not just crappy AI homework from a lazy student participating in the simulation study? Frankly, that would explain a lot...
- DvdGiessen 7y agoAs it turns out, your post triggered this crappy AI's reply_with_obligatory_xkcd() subroutine. https://xkcd.com/876/ https://xkcd.com/876/
- atoav 7y agoMaybe the real civilisation has spread over the universe, so it made sense for them to simulate it just for us to study and travel it.
- bitL 7y agoMaybe the real civilization is in shutdown due to some catastrophic event and this is the cheapest way to preserve conscious beings until the event is resolved.
- darawk 7y agoThe universe we happen to inhabit is just the chosen world of the simulation. It may not bear much resemblance to base-level reality. In the same way that Skyrim's universe is different from ours.
- Animats 7y agoThe assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Right. And why so much unnecessary detail down to the quark level? (Of course, if you really like the simulation idea, maybe we're in an unimportant corner of the simulation and the real action being observed is elsewhere. Much simulation-hypothesis blithering has the same human-centered problem as theology.)
- mpoteat 7y agoFloating point has a finite resolution, and so does the position of subatomic entities, it turns out. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. :)
- Animats 7y agoNo, floating point would result in physics behaving differently depending on distance from the origin, which is a problem with some game physics engines. (More promising was Wolfram's attempt to define physics in terms of cellular automata, which does not seem to have worked out.)
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago> Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. But that's exactly how it is with our Universe! There's clear evidence that the important and relevant stuff happens only in the Solar System, and the rest of the Universe is just empty procedurally-generated useless filler.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoMaybe the rest of the universe is being cheaply simulated, the simulator only computing what we observe. And it isn’t like it has to do anything for what is outside of our observable universe.
- danbmil99 7y agoThis could be the answer to the Fermi paradox...
- bitL 7y ago> why bother to simulate the entire Universe? How do you know it's simulated in detail? It could be just in a sufficiently coarse level of detail and compute detailed events only when they are observed at that level. Quantum mechanics actually has some spooky things that would be explainable by "lazy" computation of the universe.
- rapnie 7y agoYes, and the simulation could very well be limited to just one person (and that person being you, of course).
- insickness 7y agoThe entire simulation could have started ten minutes ago, with false memories implanted.
- incompatible 7y agoMy life seems too mundane for that to be plausible. It's hard to see what anyone would gain from this simulation.
- baggy_trough 7y agoYou're probably just a NPC put there to comment for my benefit.
- incompatible 7y agoNow I'm vacuum cleaning. This is the most boring simulation ever.
- incompatible 7y agoNo you.
- CM30 7y ago> In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? Maybe they're just the kind of game designer who obsesses over details, even if those appear superfluous to the core experience. Like say, the makers of Star Citizen. Or Dwarf Fortress. After all, many games in our own world have far more detail in their world building than we'd ever normally see, often even including stuff that's outside the view of the camera or contingent on the player doing something they'd never normally think of doing. Alternatively, it could be for future DLC purposes. Or lootbox type gambling mechanics not yet implemented. Or hell, just dummied out 'beta' content. For instance, the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has every enemy killed instantly by the final boss' laser attack, despite the fact you're never going to encounter a single enemy in said battle. Why? Who knows, maybe it was planned at one point, or left in as a failsafe. Same could apply to the 'real world' too.