> and it could be shown that its property would be of such near-infinite complexity to rule out us running in a simulation. I believe a fractal is not a viable

> and it could be shown that its property would be of such near-infinite complexity to rule out us running in a simulation. I believe a fractal is not a viable experiment. You hinge the experiment on assumption any simulation would be bound by memory size or time taken to compute. Practical constraints aside (matter and space is quantized at very small scale, so the depth of computation is finite), I don't believe we can just assume such limitations. I believe memory shouldn't be a problem for a fractal, because properties of the fragment you are trying to observe can be computed directly from equations describing the fractal, never mind the scale. As for time taken to compute, it is not observable. We don't know of any reliable timing source outside of the hypervisor[1] to compare time taken for computation to; the supposed VM is free to take as long as it needs to to advance to compute state, before advancing one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time * * * It could be argued the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem of all the celestial bodies already puts our supposed VM to a good test ;-) --- [1] if we knew one, it would make the experiment moot, as we would have a direct proof we're inside of a simulation ;-)