10 ms·
Clever optimization by our simulators, Big up
by davidrusu 11y ago
Clever optimization by our simulators, Big up
- marwatk 11y agoI've always wanted to read (or write?) a book about us determining we are in a simulation, but we find subtle flaws like this we're able to exploit in weird ways. Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something. Anyone know of a story along those lines?
- gall 11y agoCheck out Greg Egan's Permutation City in which sort of the opposite happens.
- nitrogen 11y agoI'm reading that book right now, and so far it's good. One can also read: Anathem, Snow Crash, http://qntm.org/ra http://qntm.org/ra, or (extremely NSFW) The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. All of them explore the nature of reality and consciousness in some way. To the parent commenter, please write your story. The world always needs good fiction.
- sdenton4 11y agoI just finished reading Permutation City a couple weeks ago. Good fun. The core conflict is between two different approaches to modeling, via mimicry of existing systems versus really interesting cellular automata. The automata version doesn't need to 'cheat' in the same way, and is thus a bit harder to find the edges of... (Hopefully that doesn't count as spoilers.)
- rjurney 11y agoWrite it. Always thought about it, never seen it... except for Reggie Watts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc
- sunsu 11y agoIsn't that the entire premise of The Matrix?
- aswanson 11y agoMaybe you should approach the revelation and "breaking through" by a philosophical rather than logical approach..if we are a simulation the logic we work with is artificial and arbitrary anyway. So in the story, get to the "real reality"...by taking the ideal of what reality should be and comparing it to what is observed to be and somehow "crack" into ultimate reality by doing so.
- childoftv 11y agoThe Truman Show (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/) covers a lot of this turf albeit TV rather than total simulation.
- bitwize 11y ago"Beyond" in The Animatrix.
- rbanffy 11y agoI think Charlie Stross did a particularly interesting one that happened within a simulation where the characters ultimately discover the enemy they were fighting already won and their simulation ran under a larger simulation. Can't remember the name...
- rbanffy 11y agoActually, it's Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosembaum's "True Names". My confusion is a compliment to all three authors.
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoSounds like the ending to A Colder War.
- rosser 11y agoCheck out Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game.
- rbanffy 11y ago> Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something The difficulty is keeping track of the context while you attempt the exploit. You would have to be able to plant code outside the simulation without causing it to crash. OTOH, from within, you'd only see a successful attempt to escalate privileges. Imagine being able to edit reality.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kybernetikos 11y agoI've definitely read one where we're an experiment and the speed of light limit is to stop us from escaping all over the lab equipment. I can't remember what it was called now. I feel as if fiction where we're in a simulation is relatively common, but one where the hacking of reality is actually done well and plausibly rather than handwaved would be pretty new. The author of Ra also did a short piece you'll probably enjoy: http://qntm.org/responsibility http://qntm.org/responsibility
- batou 11y agoTron Legacy. The programs want to break out of the VM. Good film.
- viraptor 11y agoSnow Crash has elements of that idea. At least in the fragments about Sumerian history and their powerful language.
- defen 11y agohttp://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/
- tobias3 11y agoOff to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. Did not like it, though.
- icanhackit 11y agoHad to find a way to keep the framerate from dropping below Planck time levels.
- NeutronBoy 11y agoAh, but how do you know the simulation doesn't just slow down the simulated flow of time so it can keep up? Think of a bullet-time like concept. The universe can be simulated as fast as the underlying hardware can keep up.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoMaybe the universe doesn't do it for the same reason games and movies don't do it, the people watching expect smooth playback.
- sdenton4 11y agoBut if you're enmeshed in the simulation, you would never notice the slowdown! The only reason the video game is annoying is because we experience time outside of it.
- learc83 11y agoI think the OP is referring to people watching from outside the simulation.
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoYeah, the crystal people.
- CamperBob2 11y agoOnce you read Teller and Hanrahan's SIGGRAPH paper on potentially-visible set computation, you instantly grok what quantum mechanics is for. At least in an "I want to believe" sense.
- has2k1 11y agoHow do we go about determining if we are in a lossless compression or not? I wonder if there is some ordering of "conservation of ---" laws that is strictly enveloping/hierarchical, such that you could choose a level at which to simulate/design a universe.