6 ms·

Limits like speed of light, planck length, etc might indicate some resource constraint in the simulator

by kirubakaran 3y ago

zabzonk 3y ago
in the simulation, but not in the thing running the simulation
- coldtea 3y ago
  What the parent means is that they have those limits imposed in the simulation, to make the thing running the simulation run it more efficiently (which would imply it's resource intensive to run a simulation). The same way hat if we looked at a physics simulation codebase, and notice that it uses higher granularity constants, more coarse calculations and other such limits (like moderate refresh rates), we could deduce that the programmers put those there because the simulated physics would be too costly for the CPU they run on otherwise.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    > which would imply it's resource intensive to run a simulation well, it doesn't necessarily imply that. perhaps the beings running the simulation simply wanted to experiment with things like a slower speed of light (in the simulation). or perhaps in their universe, there is no light, and they wanted to play around with the concept?
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >well, it doesn't necessarily imply that It doesn't prove it, but it sure does imply it. It could also imply a few other things (like what you suggest). An observation, after all, can imply several alternative potential explanations. I'd say though that "they wanted to play around" is a weaker hypothesis than "they had performance constraints" (as one is more universally applicable, and would apply to all kinds of simulations run, whereas the other depends on a specific choice of the simulation creators). Plus we see more constraints than the "speed of light". >or perhaps in their universe, there is no light, and they wanted to play around with the concept? Btw, "speed of light" doesn't have much to do with light (it's just the example upon which the theory was made). It applies to anything massless, all kinds of electromagnetic radiation, and so on. The real meaning of "speed of light" is the speed of causation propagation, or the speed of information propagation if you wish. So unless their universe didn't have causation either, and everything happened "all at once", they'd have the same kind of limit (regardless of whether they had light).
voidfunc 3y ago
None of those are rules that have to exist outside the simulation. If we're truly in a simulation, everything is a lie potentially.
fzeroracer 3y ago
Or maybe it was done as a joke. Maybe the speed of light is some cosmic punchline. Maybe it was a lazy programmer and they decided to go with a small int. It's trying to divine some sort of intention behind things we inherently can never know.
coldtea 3y ago
We put limits in apps that we run by the dozens on our computers - not because they represent some huge resource hog individually, but because we want to run many of them in parallel and not bog down the OS. Besides, sometimes an approximation is enough, and even though we could waste 10000x the resources on an app, we chose not to.

Limits like speed of light, planck length, etc might indicate some resource constraint in the simulator

zabzonk 3y ago

in the simulation, but not in the thing running the simulation

coldtea 3y ago
What the parent means is that they have those limits imposed in the simulation, to make the thing running the simulation run it more efficiently (which would imply it's resource intensive to run a simulation). The same way hat if we looked at a physics simulation codebase, and notice that it uses higher granularity constants, more coarse calculations and other such limits (like moderate refresh rates), we could deduce that the programmers put those there because the simulated physics would be too costly for the CPU they run on otherwise.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  > which would imply it's resource intensive to run a simulation well, it doesn't necessarily imply that. perhaps the beings running the simulation simply wanted to experiment with things like a slower speed of light (in the simulation). or perhaps in their universe, there is no light, and they wanted to play around with the concept?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >well, it doesn't necessarily imply that It doesn't prove it, but it sure does imply it. It could also imply a few other things (like what you suggest). An observation, after all, can imply several alternative potential explanations. I'd say though that "they wanted to play around" is a weaker hypothesis than "they had performance constraints" (as one is more universally applicable, and would apply to all kinds of simulations run, whereas the other depends on a specific choice of the simulation creators). Plus we see more constraints than the "speed of light". >or perhaps in their universe, there is no light, and they wanted to play around with the concept? Btw, "speed of light" doesn't have much to do with light (it's just the example upon which the theory was made). It applies to anything massless, all kinds of electromagnetic radiation, and so on. The real meaning of "speed of light" is the speed of causation propagation, or the speed of information propagation if you wish. So unless their universe didn't have causation either, and everything happened "all at once", they'd have the same kind of limit (regardless of whether they had light).

voidfunc 3y ago

None of those are rules that have to exist outside the simulation. If we're truly in a simulation, everything is a lie potentially.

fzeroracer 3y ago

Or maybe it was done as a joke. Maybe the speed of light is some cosmic punchline. Maybe it was a lazy programmer and they decided to go with a small int. It's trying to divine some sort of intention behind things we inherently can never know.

coldtea 3y ago

We put limits in apps that we run by the dozens on our computers - not because they represent some huge resource hog individually, but because we want to run many of them in parallel and not bog down the OS. Besides, sometimes an approximation is enough, and even though we could waste 10000x the resources on an app, we chose not to.