4 ms·

Sometimes I think Bitcoin was inspired by this story. Instead of monks computing the 9 billion names of God, you’re computing the 21 million units of True Money

by pavlov 4y ago

Sometimes I think Bitcoin was inspired by this story. Instead of monks computing the 9 billion names of God, you’re computing the 21 million units of True Money. The devotion of Bitcoiners has a monk-like aspect of religious asceticism. Like the God-name printouts, you’re not supposed to actually do anything with the outputs of Bitcoin. Just hold them and pray until one day the process is complete, all the coins have been excavated, and the paradise of sound Money will reign on Earth.

EarlKing 4y ago
Once the last coin has been minted, every note of fiat currency will begin to spontaneously wink out of existence. 南無不可思議光怜. 南無不可思議光中村.
GistNoesis 4y ago
This is not so far off as one might think. You see, a lot of people believe in the simulation hypothesis. And sequential hash computation, aka proof of work, means that even from inside the simulation we can be assured by math, that the upper computer running the simulation has done the work. One might argue that the universe is doing much more computation every instant, but it's not so evident because of compression (for example algorithm like Hashlife). There are numerical shortcuts as anyone that has written a numerical simulation knows. For example you can simulate a black hole that may one time have been entire galaxies by just a few numbers (its mass, momentum, and spin). Proof of work, give us an upper bound on the computation available to us. The question is what is going to happen when we cross this bound. I like to call it Numerical Biological Instability : when you write big enough simulations you have to take into account for the emergence of unwanted sub-computations that may end-up stealing all your computation cycles. And I like the idea of NBI being one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox : We are the first advanced civilization because there can't be multiple advanced civilizations because as soon as we suck-up all the available computation the simulation speed crawl to a stop. And given that we can see to the edges of the universe with telescopes, it's not easy to put computational limits on parts of the universe without leaving observable traces. And given that computational power tend to follow exponential growth. Only universes with a single advanced pre-singularity civilization tend to be simulated.
- jstanley 4y ago
  I don't think this is quite right. If our universe can be simulated, then the simulation is just computing a (complicated) mathematical function. If all of our observations are emergent effects of the mathematical function, then our observations are exactly the same regardless of whether there is an "upper layer" actually computing the function. Imagine writing a simulation of a point mass following a parabolic arc under the influence of gravity: the path of the mass is the same regardless of whether you run the simulation or not. It would be the same for our universe. If it is possible to describe mathematically, then you don't need to run the simulation in order for the contents of the universe to experience themselves existing. The simplest explanation is that there is no uppermost layer, it's all just mathematics. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe
  - GistNoesis 4y ago
    There is something Wolfram would call computational irreducibility (related to the Halting Problem), which means even though the simulation is just a deterministic mathematical function, to know what happens in it you must run the code, and that may require lot of memory and compute along the way even if the universe ends in an heat death. In fact universe is probably stored by a seed (42), along something like 10 lines of definition, and 100 line of code would be enough to implement it in a naive version (Physicists sell tee-shirts with some pseudo version of it). Morpheus would say : "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path..."
    - jstanley 4y ago
      For someone outside the universe to know what happens in it, they must run the code. For someone inside the universe, their observations are just part of the function. To know the millionth digit of pi you have to calculate it, but the digit is the same regardless.
  - unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
    I think there's a subtler point in the parent comment, that is whenever we observe different parts of the universe we are collapsing its quantum wave function, which would have large consequences for any would-be simulation. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43406/what-constitutes-an-observation-measurement-in-qm https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43406/what-const...

by pavlov 4y ago

EarlKing 4y ago

Once the last coin has been minted, every note of fiat currency will begin to spontaneously wink out of existence. 南無不可思議光怜. 南無不可思議光中村.

GistNoesis 4y ago

This is not so far off as one might think. You see, a lot of people believe in the simulation hypothesis. And sequential hash computation, aka proof of work, means that even from inside the simulation we can be assured by math, that the upper computer running the simulation has done the work. One might argue that the universe is doing much more computation every instant, but it's not so evident because of compression (for example algorithm like Hashlife). There are numerical shortcuts as anyone that has written a numerical simulation knows. For example you can simulate a black hole that may one time have been entire galaxies by just a few numbers (its mass, momentum, and spin). Proof of work, give us an upper bound on the computation available to us. The question is what is going to happen when we cross this bound. I like to call it Numerical Biological Instability : when you write big enough simulations you have to take into account for the emergence of unwanted sub-computations that may end-up stealing all your computation cycles. And I like the idea of NBI being one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox : We are the first advanced civilization because there can't be multiple advanced civilizations because as soon as we suck-up all the available computation the simulation speed crawl to a stop. And given that we can see to the edges of the universe with telescopes, it's not easy to put computational limits on parts of the universe without leaving observable traces. And given that computational power tend to follow exponential growth. Only universes with a single advanced pre-singularity civilization tend to be simulated.

jstanley 4y ago
I don't think this is quite right. If our universe can be simulated, then the simulation is just computing a (complicated) mathematical function. If all of our observations are emergent effects of the mathematical function, then our observations are exactly the same regardless of whether there is an "upper layer" actually computing the function. Imagine writing a simulation of a point mass following a parabolic arc under the influence of gravity: the path of the mass is the same regardless of whether you run the simulation or not. It would be the same for our universe. If it is possible to describe mathematically, then you don't need to run the simulation in order for the contents of the universe to experience themselves existing. The simplest explanation is that there is no uppermost layer, it's all just mathematics. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe
- GistNoesis 4y ago
  There is something Wolfram would call computational irreducibility (related to the Halting Problem), which means even though the simulation is just a deterministic mathematical function, to know what happens in it you must run the code, and that may require lot of memory and compute along the way even if the universe ends in an heat death. In fact universe is probably stored by a seed (42), along something like 10 lines of definition, and 100 line of code would be enough to implement it in a naive version (Physicists sell tee-shirts with some pseudo version of it). Morpheus would say : "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path..."
  - jstanley 4y ago
    For someone outside the universe to know what happens in it, they must run the code. For someone inside the universe, their observations are just part of the function. To know the millionth digit of pi you have to calculate it, but the digit is the same regardless.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  I think there's a subtler point in the parent comment, that is whenever we observe different parts of the universe we are collapsing its quantum wave function, which would have large consequences for any would-be simulation. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43406/what-constitutes-an-observation-measurement-in-qm https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43406/what-const...