my thought exactly. There's no way processor speed can continue at its current pace to that point. It would have to be nearly infinately fast to simulate all the 10000000000000000000000000000000000's of atoms i can see right now, and even put an electron microscope up to and see formations of. There's just too much to simulate, that is, of course judging that this person is saying that WE will be able to do it eventually. I don't doubt that it's possible that processors are a lot faster beyond the matri
Well, you see, the funny thing is that you don't need to simulate the atoms at all. All that you need to simulate visually is the smallest object a person can resolve with his unadied eyes. Everything else is simply mapped on top of that.
For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear.
All of these would need to have a certain safely margin to account for people whose senses are better than oth
Uh, what if someone builds a device to look at smaller objects than the unaided eye can see?
There are so many ways to do that, that it might conceivably be better to simulate at a lower level than to deal with all the possible special cases, or allow people to detect the flaws.
As for processing limitations, it's might not be impossible if you can underclock the minds of participants - put them in suspended animation or something.
High level emulation. If there is a microscope for you to look through, it is being emulated, then whatever has created the microscope can program it to rewrite everything you look at with it in a way that makes sense to your species.
it would be mind-numbing to write (much less RUN) a program that would fully emulate every atom in the world at all times. all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen. if someone needs to look closer, emulate what they're examining properly, only while they are examining it. Otherwise you can very easily emulate a white box with bumpmaps, rather than the wood, the drywall, the paint, the electricity, and everything else that makes a wall. until someone examines the wall, you can get away with just a white box with paint-like bumpmapping.
Consider the worst case: I make an observation, then I look away and you stop simulating what I don't see. Then I look again and make another observation. What do I see? The more you don't simulate, the more randomness must be perceived, because causality extends through unobserved reality. You have two options: What I see is either random or you simulate everything which has an influence above randomness on what I'm supposed to see (actually that is only one choice: level of randomness). If you start post-
Consider the worst case: I make an observation, then I look away and you stop simulating what I don't see.
Assuming the ones simulating our world even _need_ to recover that small amount of computing power saved when you looked away. Based on what is happening on our planet, in our solar system, and galaxy, computing power is not a factor.
If you knew all the rules of the universe, it might not be that mind-numbing to write a full simulation. Especially if there really is a grand unifying theory. In fact, it would probably be significantly easier to emulate everything properly than adding a bunch of speed hacks.
it would be mind-numbing to write (much less RUN) a program that would fully emulate every atom in the world at all times. all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen.
I dont think that it would be all that mind numbing to simulate every atom. In fact, we have a process to do such a similar thing, and have been doing that for at least 45 years. It's called cellular automation. We use it to model fluid dynamics among other things. THe rules tend to b
all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen.
On the Summer Reading List thread, many slashdotters mentioned The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Within Ch. 6 was a description of how Prime Intellect "rewrote" the Universe, as follows:
"No, you wouldn't. Let me ask you something. If I leave here...if I go back to civilization...does this forest continue to exist?"
"I can leave it running in your absence if you want." Caroline wanted to throw up. Now even the forest wasn't real. Nothing was real. "Don't bother. Get rid of it." Instantly, it disappeared. She was standing in an antiseptically white space so pure and seamless and bright that the eye balked at reporting it to the brain. She was standing on a hard, smooth surface, but it was not visible. There were no shadows. There was no horizon; the floor and the sky looked exactly the same, and there was no transition from one to the other. She might have been standing on the inside of some enormous white ball. Prime Intellect was still there. "What is this?" she asked. "Neutral reality," Prime Intellect said. "The minimum landscape which supports human existence. Actually, not quite the minimum. I could get rid of the floor. But that would have startled you."
So basically, the visual portion of this world would just be like a raytracer running constantly. Whatever the eye can see it simulates and draws; out of the eye, nothing is (and need to be) simulated.
Sure, you can simulate a table with four corners and a wood texture, but what if you try to set fire to it? What if you spill hot water on it, what if you stump out a fag end on it? What if you go at it with a saw? What if you drop a hippo on it? What if you wire it up to the mains, what if you bang a nail into it, what if you drive a bus over it? Can you even *imagine* trying to make your fake table react to all these things in the proper way? You've *got* to get down to the lowest level, because otherwise
Assuming you had the processing power, and the program... you couldn't simulate only what is currently being observed. You must simulate what is currently being observed and everything that *has* been observed and might be double-checked at some time in the future.
Imagine some IBM lab scientist with an electron microscope writes "IBM" in atoms.
Imagine he goes back a year later to read it again for old time's sake and notices that the shape of the letters is slightly different, because the simulator didn't
> it would be mind-numbing to write (much less > RUN) a program that would fully emulate every > atom in the world at all times
Actually it'd be pretty easy.
Just define several arrays of about 10^^300 x 10^^300 x 10^^300 or so, representing in 3-space every possible position in the universe, and start filling 'em up with subatomic molecules, set down the rules (or go deeper, similarly for quantum mechanics) and just check each position against all the others for collision detection, etc.
Since I'm the only person who really exists in the first place, the simulator only needs to emulate to full visual resoluiton the stuff that is in a 10 foot sphere around me. It can diminish resolution outwards from there. It only needs to simulate the people I actually run into.
Really - would you notice if 99% of the people you bump into at the mall were autogenerated 1 second before you looked at them?
Also - the simulation doesn't have to run in real-time.
"Be there. Aloha."
-- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
and this my friends is why (Score:5, Funny)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:5, Insightful)
For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear.
All of these would need to have a certain safely margin to account for people whose senses are better than oth
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:3, Insightful)
There are so many ways to do that, that it might conceivably be better to simulate at a lower level than to deal with all the possible special cases, or allow people to detect the flaws.
As for processing limitations, it's might not be impossible if you can underclock the minds of participants - put them in suspended animation or something.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:5, Interesting)
it would be mind-numbing to write (much less RUN) a program that would fully emulate every atom in the world at all times. all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen. if someone needs to look closer, emulate what they're examining properly, only while they are examining it. Otherwise you can very easily emulate a white box with bumpmaps, rather than the wood, the drywall, the paint, the electricity, and everything else that makes a wall. until someone examines the wall, you can get away with just a white box with paint-like bumpmapping.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2)
Assuming the ones simulating our world even _need_ to recover that small amount of computing power saved when you looked away. Based on what is happening on our planet, in our solar system, and galaxy, computing power is not a factor.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:1)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2, Interesting)
I dont think that it would be all that mind numbing to simulate every atom. In fact, we have a process to do such a similar thing, and have been doing that for at least 45 years. It's called cellular automation. We use it to model fluid dynamics among other things. THe rules tend to b
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:4, Interesting)
On the Summer Reading List thread, many slashdotters mentioned The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Within Ch. 6 was a description of how Prime Intellect "rewrote" the Universe, as follows:
So basically, the visual portion of this world would just be like a raytracer running constantly. Whatever the eye can see it simulates and draws; out of the eye, nothing is (and need to be) simulated.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:1)
Sounds alot like the Construct.
but what about interaction? (Score:1)
Re:but what about interaction? (Score:2)
You can't simulate *only* the currently observed (Score:1)
Assuming you had the processing power, and the program... you couldn't simulate only what is currently being observed. You must simulate what is currently being observed and everything that *has* been observed and might be double-checked at some time in the future.
Imagine some IBM lab scientist with an electron microscope writes "IBM" in atoms.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:1)
> RUN) a program that would fully emulate every
> atom in the world at all times
Actually it'd be pretty easy.
Just define several arrays of about 10^^300 x 10^^300 x 10^^300 or so, representing in 3-space every possible position in the universe, and start filling 'em up with subatomic molecules, set down the rules (or go deeper, similarly for quantum mechanics) and just check each position against all the others for collision detection, etc.
For all you
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2)
Since I'm the only person who really exists in the first place, the simulator only needs to emulate to full visual resoluiton the stuff that is in a 10 foot sphere around me. It can diminish resolution outwards from there. It only needs to simulate the people I actually run into.
Really - would you notice if 99% of the people you bump into at the mall were autogenerated 1 second before you looked at them?
Also - the simulation doesn't have to run in real-time.