4 ms·

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. This question is appropriate, but currently, and perhaps permanently unanswerable. One thing I wonder about is, if

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. This question is appropriate, but currently, and perhaps permanently unanswerable. One thing I wonder about is, if we are in a simulation, and the simulation is using some sort of data compression, then if you increased the entropy of the universe such that it became less compressible you might cause some sort of error due to exceeding the storage capacity of the host, which would cause our universe to basically BSOD.

dcolkitt 5y ago
The Voyager space probe entered interstellar space sometime around 2012. My off the wall theory is so many events in the past decade (like a spike in UFO sightings) have been so bizarre because this degraded the simulation quality.
Jensson 5y ago
The universe has three main optimizations to combat exponential compute problems. The speed of light, accepting desynced particles and gravitational time dilation. Lazily handling desyncs means you can run computations and just occasionally check for interactions (quantum mechanics), greatly reducing exponential explosions. Same thing with speed of light. And lastly, those two would still break down if you accumulated enough particles in a small area, in those scenarios the computer will just run that part of the simulation slower, until it becomes so bad that the computer just skips computing those areas entirely and it becomes a black hole that is very simple to compute the effects of on its surrounds. Those three basically ensures we wont ever have problems with lack of compute for the simulation.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Really cool insight. I'd also add dark energy and accelerating cosmic expansion to this list. Without acceleration the size of the observable universe would keep increasing with the passage of time since the Big Bang. That would mean processes running on cosmic timescales could potentially entwine an exponential number of bits. But with dark energy the size of the observable universe will plateau and start shrinking past a certain date. That caps the number of bits accessible on a cosmic scale.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Interesting. We (humans) would not notice the simulation running slower because we are inside it. Only those on the outside would get frustrated by the fact it is running below realtime, I would guess.

dcolkitt 5y ago

The Voyager space probe entered interstellar space sometime around 2012. My off the wall theory is so many events in the past decade (like a spike in UFO sightings) have been so bizarre because this degraded the simulation quality.

Jensson 5y ago

The universe has three main optimizations to combat exponential compute problems. The speed of light, accepting desynced particles and gravitational time dilation. Lazily handling desyncs means you can run computations and just occasionally check for interactions (quantum mechanics), greatly reducing exponential explosions. Same thing with speed of light. And lastly, those two would still break down if you accumulated enough particles in a small area, in those scenarios the computer will just run that part of the simulation slower, until it becomes so bad that the computer just skips computing those areas entirely and it becomes a black hole that is very simple to compute the effects of on its surrounds. Those three basically ensures we wont ever have problems with lack of compute for the simulation.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Really cool insight. I'd also add dark energy and accelerating cosmic expansion to this list. Without acceleration the size of the observable universe would keep increasing with the passage of time since the Big Bang. That would mean processes running on cosmic timescales could potentially entwine an exponential number of bits. But with dark energy the size of the observable universe will plateau and start shrinking past a certain date. That caps the number of bits accessible on a cosmic scale.
kingcharles 5y ago
Interesting. We (humans) would not notice the simulation running slower because we are inside it. Only those on the outside would get frustrated by the fact it is running below realtime, I would guess.