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Put very well by Iain M. Banks in The Hydrogen Sonata, “Most problems, even seemingly really tricky ones, could be handled by simulations which happily modelle

Put very well by Iain M. Banks in The Hydrogen Sonata, “Most problems, even seemingly really tricky ones, could be handled by simulations which happily modelled slippery concepts like public opinion or the likely reactions of alien societies by the appropriate use of some especially cunning and devious algorithms… nothing more processor-hungry than the right set of equations… But not always. Sometimes, if you were going to have any hope of getting useful answers, there really was no alternative to modelling the individuals themselves, at the sort of scale and level of complexity that mean they each had to exhibit some kind of discrete personality, and that was where the Problem kicked in. Once you’d created your population of realistically reacting and – in a necessary sense – cogitating individuals, you had – also in a sense – created life. The particular parts of whatever computational substrate you’d devoted to the problem now held beings; virtual beings capable of reacting so much like the back-in-reality beings they were modelling – because how else were they to do so convincingly without also hoping, suffering, rejoicing, caring, living and dreaming? By this reasoning, then, you couldn’t just turn off your virtual environment and the living, thinking creatures it contained at the completion of a run or when a simulation had reached the end of its useful life; that amounted to genocide.”

mcintyre1994 13y ago
That is really nicely put, but by that same logic is who/whatever is responsible for simulating us somewhat responsible for genocide caused by humans since they, by necessity, gave us free will? What about the extinction of the dinosaurs, assuming the asteroid theory? Perhaps it was necessary to their simulation for a large asteroid/comet to be able to hit Earth, but are they somewhat responsible for wiping out life? I guess these questions are very strongly parallel to those that can be asked about God, which is perhaps a better definition than computer for something that simulates our universe anyway.
- thret 13y ago
  Not parallel, identical. The Judeo-Christian God only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and he designed it. The delightful thing about the simulation hypothesis is that it allows us to hope for some type of afterlife. Maybe we get to play a different level, or we get to play the same game again. Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible.
  - Shorel 13y ago
    > Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible. It makes it nothing more than any other religion.
andybak 13y ago
Would hitting 'pause' in the simulation count as genocide? Neither 'yes' or 'no' really make sense as answers and 'depends for how long' raises it's own set of problems. Now consider the ethical dilemmas posed by a 'rewind' button. Is it murder to rewind the simulation and edit things so that someone was never born? Words like 'murder' and 'genocide' cease to have a real meaning when you consider the god-like role of someone outside the simulation. For the record I don't think stopping a simulation is genocide. I think the ethical dimension of murder needs to consider the human context and removing the entire universe also removes the ethical problem. There are no ramifications within the sim as it no longer exists.
slacka 13y ago
It is interesting how counterintuitive quantum mechanics seems and yet many aspects make perfect sense in the eyes of a programmer. * The foundation of Quantum Mechanics is the idea of quanta. The data or physical quantities of a computer and our Universe can change only by discrete amounts like the bits of a computer. Time, space, and energy are quantized in our universe. * The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle also implies Interactions don't 'count' unless they affect some other piece of the system. Is the Universe doing called 'lazy evaluation' here? * Quantum entanglement is like dereferencing a pointer to our universe's data (quanta). Einstein called this spooky action at a distance. Physics today are using this principle to instantly teleport data on photons located hundreds of miles away. * In computer simulations, the von Neumann stabilitiy criterion states that no effect can propagate at a speed faster than the size step divided by the time step. Interactions in our universe are also limited by the speed of light. * E=mc2 : mass and energy are two forms of the same thing. Data and the instructions that operate on it are both stored in memory. * Holographic Principle does away with spatial locality, drastically reducing the number of possible states our Universe can have. None of this makes sense unless the Universe is trying to minimize resource usage.

mcintyre1994 13y ago

That is really nicely put, but by that same logic is who/whatever is responsible for simulating us somewhat responsible for genocide caused by humans since they, by necessity, gave us free will? What about the extinction of the dinosaurs, assuming the asteroid theory? Perhaps it was necessary to their simulation for a large asteroid/comet to be able to hit Earth, but are they somewhat responsible for wiping out life? I guess these questions are very strongly parallel to those that can be asked about God, which is perhaps a better definition than computer for something that simulates our universe anyway.

thret 13y ago
Not parallel, identical. The Judeo-Christian God only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and he designed it. The delightful thing about the simulation hypothesis is that it allows us to hope for some type of afterlife. Maybe we get to play a different level, or we get to play the same game again. Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible.
- Shorel 13y ago
  > Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible. It makes it nothing more than any other religion.

andybak 13y ago

Would hitting 'pause' in the simulation count as genocide? Neither 'yes' or 'no' really make sense as answers and 'depends for how long' raises it's own set of problems. Now consider the ethical dilemmas posed by a 'rewind' button. Is it murder to rewind the simulation and edit things so that someone was never born? Words like 'murder' and 'genocide' cease to have a real meaning when you consider the god-like role of someone outside the simulation. For the record I don't think stopping a simulation is genocide. I think the ethical dimension of murder needs to consider the human context and removing the entire universe also removes the ethical problem. There are no ramifications within the sim as it no longer exists.

slacka 13y ago

It is interesting how counterintuitive quantum mechanics seems and yet many aspects make perfect sense in the eyes of a programmer. * The foundation of Quantum Mechanics is the idea of quanta. The data or physical quantities of a computer and our Universe can change only by discrete amounts like the bits of a computer. Time, space, and energy are quantized in our universe. * The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle also implies Interactions don't 'count' unless they affect some other piece of the system. Is the Universe doing called 'lazy evaluation' here? * Quantum entanglement is like dereferencing a pointer to our universe's data (quanta). Einstein called this spooky action at a distance. Physics today are using this principle to instantly teleport data on photons located hundreds of miles away. * In computer simulations, the von Neumann stabilitiy criterion states that no effect can propagate at a speed faster than the size step divided by the time step. Interactions in our universe are also limited by the speed of light. * E=mc2 : mass and energy are two forms of the same thing. Data and the instructions that operate on it are both stored in memory. * Holographic Principle does away with spatial locality, drastically reducing the number of possible states our Universe can have. None of this makes sense unless the Universe is trying to minimize resource usage.