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> * You will need to run not just one, but many simulations. However, the same argument that implies the simulation will be slower than reality also implies tha

> * You will need to run not just one, but many simulations. However, the same argument that implies the simulation will be slower than reality also implies that it will be bigger than reality. You don't need to simulate reality, you only need to simulate the minds that perceive reality. Thus cuts computational costs by many orders of magnitude over a reality simulation. We don't have the understanding yet to be able to precisely quantify it, but just eliminating the dependency on quantum mechanics is huge. > * It is quite possible that an economic system would work very well at first, only to collapse 50 years later for a variety of difficult-to-foresee reasons. And climate models could diverge from reality 100 or 200 years later too, we still run those because reasonably accurate short to medium term information is better than none. > (unless it's quite crude and approximate, in which case it won't tell us much about reality.) Even our crude and approximate simulations of quantum chemistry, protein folding, weather, climate, orbital dynamics etc. tell us a lot.

breuleux 3y ago
> You don't need to simulate reality, you only need to simulate the minds that perceive reality. Thus cuts computational costs by many orders of magnitude over a reality simulation. Ehhhhh... let's think about it. First, that does not eliminate the speed bottleneck, which is determined by what you do decide to simulate accurately. It is... unclear whether human minds can be simulated efficiently. I would not be surprised if the best accurate simulated brain we can muster is ten times slower and ten times bigger than a real one. Or worse. Second, surely you need to simulate more than minds. You need some kind of environment to put them in. But if you're giving them some pale ersatz of reality in which they cannot develop effective technology, because stuff stops working when they stop looking at it, I'd argue you're wasting them. Minds act very differently depending on their capabilities --- simulating minds without simulating reality is a bit like studying the behavior of birds with clipped wings. > just eliminating the dependency on quantum mechanics is huge. What makes you think it can be eliminated? I'm not saying minds require quantum mechanics in principle, but evolution doesn't try to make its designs robust to changes in the laws of physics. There's a sizable chance that simulation of a human brain fails if you ignore quantum effects, simply because that violates its calibration. You would therefore need to reimplement minds from first principles, but that's a whole other problem. > And climate models could diverge from reality 100 or 200 years later too, we still run those because reasonably accurate short to medium term information is better than none. These models run far, far, far faster than real time. You can't forecast a phenomenon using a simulation that's slower than the phenomenon itself.

breuleux 3y ago

> You don't need to simulate reality, you only need to simulate the minds that perceive reality. Thus cuts computational costs by many orders of magnitude over a reality simulation. Ehhhhh... let's think about it. First, that does not eliminate the speed bottleneck, which is determined by what you do decide to simulate accurately. It is... unclear whether human minds can be simulated efficiently. I would not be surprised if the best accurate simulated brain we can muster is ten times slower and ten times bigger than a real one. Or worse. Second, surely you need to simulate more than minds. You need some kind of environment to put them in. But if you're giving them some pale ersatz of reality in which they cannot develop effective technology, because stuff stops working when they stop looking at it, I'd argue you're wasting them. Minds act very differently depending on their capabilities --- simulating minds without simulating reality is a bit like studying the behavior of birds with clipped wings. > just eliminating the dependency on quantum mechanics is huge. What makes you think it can be eliminated? I'm not saying minds require quantum mechanics in principle, but evolution doesn't try to make its designs robust to changes in the laws of physics. There's a sizable chance that simulation of a human brain fails if you ignore quantum effects, simply because that violates its calibration. You would therefore need to reimplement minds from first principles, but that's a whole other problem. > And climate models could diverge from reality 100 or 200 years later too, we still run those because reasonably accurate short to medium term information is better than none. These models run far, far, far faster than real time. You can't forecast a phenomenon using a simulation that's slower than the phenomenon itself.