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I don't remember who authored the following, but I thought it was amusing enough years ago to toss it into my interesting-quotes.txt: I recall reading a scienc
by tvmalsv 12y ago
I don't remember who authored the following, but I thought it was amusing enough years ago to toss it into my interesting-quotes.txt:
I recall reading a science fiction story that involved the first human spaceship to reach the edge of the universe. When they tried to go through they bounced off, it was impenatrable.
Then we cut to 2 higher dimensional beings, and one says, "On that run it took life only 14.7 gigayears to reach the edge."
The other one says, "Great! Let's do another run. Sterilize the medium."
- Udo 12y ago:D That's a very funny story! When I imagine an intelligent life form simulating the universe, it might as well be a simple creature just pushing little stones from cell to cell across a coordinate system drawn into the sand of an impossibly huge plain, using a few very simple rules about where stones move on every single cell. And when the creature gets to the last stone in the grid, it starts the same thing again from the top. This is also not my idea, I don't remember where I heard it first. But it's appealing for several reasons. It illustrates that no intelligence is necessary to run the universe. More fundamentally, however, it shows how a higher-dimensional being might very well have no real concept of what goes on in here. ;)
- nvader 12y agoYou're thinking of http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/