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
Incorrect. For a more primitive being, perhaps animals at the zoo, such an environment would suffice. However, if you are creating a virtual world where the smallest resolution is only a few microns, you will inevitably run into problems when the intelligent beings of that world attempt to use science to learn. If our world were virtual, and had no detail below 10 microns, or a tenth of one, or a thousandth, scientists with knowledge of what should be, would notice. Experiments could be devised using
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday June 01, 2003 @05:32AM (#6088913)
Well, reality is what we perceive. A computer can only simulate worlds which are less complex than the world in which the computer exists, but if the simulation is closed, its inhabitants have no way of proving that it's a simulation. They simply have no way of knowing how things are in the real world. Even bugs in the simulation would appear as an empirically found law of physics to them. A laser in such a world would not exist except as a function of the basic elements that exist in the simulation. However, such a simulation would obviously need to either be seeded without science and develop it by itself or overthrow the science it was seeded with.
That complexity thing is only true if you constrain it to be possible in real-time.
As for the rest, you are perfectly correct. If there was a flaw in the program, (like, say, nothing was smaller than 1 nm or the speed of light is only half of what we measure it to be), then that is an absolute fact as far as the people inside are concerned. As long as they have never known any different, they have no reason to disbelieve it.
The complexity issue is complicated. You add another, but entirely different, complicated issue: time. How would a computer store a state that is more complex than the world in which the computer itself exists? The computer can take all the time it wants, but the information it has about the simulated world is necessarily less then the information which is needed to represent the "real" world.
A computer can only simulate worlds which are less complex than the world in which the computer exists
Not necessarily. Remember, the computer is only simulating the complex world, it doesn't have to implement it. Only things which we look at and focus our attention on need to be simulated. The far side of the moon need not be simulated, for example. It is possible, even in today's virtual reality type video games to create the illusion of worlds much more complex than the program really deals with. Y
This argument seems to be very popular, but it is still wrong. If you use a reasonable and consistent measure for complexity, a system cannot simulate a more complex system. Anything which you omit from the simulation because there is no observer reduces the complexity of the simulation. If you look at a computer game long enough, the illusion falls apart, unless it is really a full simulation. (These terms are quite arbitrary. Of course a program which creates an illusion of higher complexity is a simulato
Well, if "this" is a simulation then chances are that it is not perfect. In this case someone *will* eventually find a problem. Providing that the creators are not perfect, they could never create a flawlessly closed simulation.
Buffer overflows == Wormholes? Null pointers == Black holes?
How would anyone prove that the "bug" is a bug and not just normal "reality"-type phenomenon?
Citing your own example, a blackhole == a null pointer, all current scientists think a black hole is a huge gravity well, they don't think its a bug in a matrix-like simulation we're all a part of. If someone published such a theory they'd be laughed at and branded a hippy. Everyone hangs on to reality quite firmly.
You are totally right about perception. It would be possible to simulate a different matrix world for each person without much difficulty. All you need to simulate at one time in a world is whatever can be seen, touches, heard, smelled, or tasted but each person. Much of the world could be stored database style and not pulled up untill someone needs to experiance it.
Also, as for the inhabitants of the matrix using science to discover the fact that would also be easy to prevent. The computers simply need to
"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)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:0)
As for the rest, you are perfectly correct. If there was a flaw in the program, (like, say, nothing was smaller than 1 nm or the speed of light is only half of what we measure it to be), then that is an absolute fact as far as the people inside are concerned. As long as they have never known any different, they have no reason to disbelieve it.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:0)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Remember, the computer is only simulating the complex world, it doesn't have to implement it. Only things which we look at and focus our attention on need to be simulated. The far side of the moon need not be simulated, for example. It is possible, even in today's virtual reality type video games to create the illusion of worlds much more complex than the program really deals with. Y
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:0)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2)
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2, Insightful)
Buffer overflows == Wormholes? Null pointers == Black holes?
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:1)
Citing your own example, a blackhole == a null pointer, all current scientists think a black hole is a huge gravity well, they don't think its a bug in a matrix-like simulation we're all a part of. If someone published such a theory they'd be laughed at and branded a hippy. Everyone hangs on to reality quite firmly.
Re:and this my friends is why (Score:2)
Also, as for the inhabitants of the matrix using science to discover the fact that would also be easy to prevent. The computers simply need to