4 ms·
The simulation could be lazy, only simulating what it needs to for the observers contained within. Keep in mind that if you are inside a simulation, your sense
by maaku 12y ago
The simulation could be lazy, only simulating what it needs to for the observers contained within. Keep in mind that if you are inside a simulation, your sense of time is artificial. When something requiring more fidelity is run, the entire simulation could slow down, or stop momentarily while lazy contexts are evaluated, and you wouldn't know it.
- tomp 12y agoThe problem isn't runtime, it's the memory. The earth is the most efficient storage of all the information about the positions/trajectories of all particles that make up earth.
- maaku 12y agoThat's missing the point, I think. In the simulation the Earth doesn't exist. Instead, some high-level model is used to generate the observations we make at the macro scale. Only when we perform sensitive experiments which require a finer resolution is that detail generated in such a way as to remain consistent with observations made so far. Of course as someone who writes simulations I can tell you that it is not so easy in our computational models. Indeed it would seem very difficult, though not fundamentally impossible for a high level model to correct macro behavior in all cases. But we cannot know the constraints of the universe which contains our simulation, which may be very different from ours.