sam_handelman's Journal: Larry Wall and you are both dreams

Firstly, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the entire observable universe - you, me, this dinner party - is, indeed a simulation.

  It's probably true that this dinner party has been run through in its entirety, at least once. So in the sense that things inside the simulation are real - this dinner party is probably real.

  However, it's also probably true that whoever is running the simulation is going to choose interesting segments, and run them over and over again with slightly different parameters.

  The total simulation time of these small repeats probably greatly outweighs the simulation time of the entire age of the universe.

  So, while it's true that this dinner party is probably real, in each particular moment that we occupy, we are vastly more likely to be in some instantaneous slice of simulation - disconnected, in a sense, from everything that may have happened before or since - than in a continuous run that includes the entire dinner party.

  So the Buddha is probably right, most of the time. The only thing that exists is the now.

  If we assume that all of this is true, this also helps to explain why it is so difficult to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics.

  Relativity is a pretty straightforward simplifying assumption on large distance scales - if I want to simulate what happens in this room for the next 45 seconds, my simulation only needs to include a sphere, 90 light-seconds across, centered on the room. The simulation can shrink as it runs.

  Likewise, quantum mechanics is a simplifying assumption on small distance scales.

  If we assume that quantum mechanics are relativity are both kludges, tacked on at the last minute to save CPU cycles, maybe coded by different people looking at the problem from opposite ends, it makes sense that they don't reconcile cleanly or easily.

  Given that it's such a dirty hack, the universe probably was written in perl.

Falsifiable theory

[Profane MuthaFucka]

If you're looking for something to falsify the idea that we are a simulation, do not make reference to Planck. A fundamental constant expressed in terms of energy and time, used to measure quanta, is precisely what I'd invent to make my simulation run on a digital computer.