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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 r
by kkoncevicius 6y ago
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 that, since everything is based on determinism, they cannot look at the future and change something so that the future they observe is no longer the case. Hence the only possible future they could look at would be that which they wouldn't want to change in any way. Which is really an interesting idea. But furthermore - when they look into the future (say) 100 years from now - the simulation they are seeing would be the one which already "looked" into the future. So the act of looking must have a profound effect - it has to order the future so, that whoever is looking at it would not be able to change it, because: 1) if you can change it then determinism falls apart, and so the whole premise of simulation, and 2) if you would decide to change it then, within the future you see in the simulation, that change has already taken place.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gus_massa 6y agoAbout 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map
- mannykannot 6y agoI don't think there are any causal cycles here - I don't think a simulation can have a causal effect in the sumulation (or real world) which launched it. Even though the simulator can observe the simulated, which might seem to provide a channel for communication, the latter cannot do anything that was not determined by the rules set up by the simulator.
- JadeNB 6y agoEvents in the physical world cannot do anything that was not determined by the laws of physics, and yet they affect the rest of the physical world.
- mannykannot 6y agoFair point - I suppose that, for example, a simulation runner could make a note of something that occurred in her simulation, and that would count as a causal effect on the simulating world from the simulated one. I still feel, however, that the story's requirement, that the simulated world mirrors the simulating world (except when the latter is the real world), depends on the physics of the real world (and its simulations) being maximally deterministic (in that everything that is possible happens with probability 1) or else the butterfly effect will cause them all to diverge quite rapidly. But with that level of determinancy, there is no need for a feedback mechanism to achieve "midpoint stability" - there is no possibility of divergence from the already-determined future.