Yeah, but while not my question or joke, it still warrants being asked non-stop until such time as the engineer themselves should they exist shows up to answer us.
Some physiologists will have it that the stomach is a mill;—others, that it is a fermenting vat;—others again that it is a stew-pan;—but in my view of the matter, it is neither a mill, a fermenting vat, nor a stew-pan—but a stomach, gentlemen, a stomach.
A computer running a simulation this complex is likely running it very slowly and efficiently getting its power from the rotational energy of a black hole in a much colder universe that is in a much higher entropy state than our own.
how would you explain a computer to someone who only knew about complex gears?
How would you explain complex gears to someone who only knew about wheels?
This is pretty great. All four of those fit together so well. The wheel thing is called iteration. The word thing is like a predestination, like we’re all… cogs in a machine. The simulation is executing that code, iterating, on predestined variations, of interlocked parameters. Nicely done!
I love how even our Bronze Age ancestors had that one dorm room thinker who chewed some mandrake root or something and developed a totally ironclad Theory of the Universe.
Oh man, I'd love to see something like this but for the brain as well. In Greece it was waterways (the humors), in the middle ages it was a pipe organ, in the Victorian era a steam engine, in the 60's a computer and now it's a neural net. So much of AI inevitability is mixing up the metaphor.
Metaphors can definitely make lead you down weird wrong paths. Listen to @astrokatie.com on her podcast talk about the atom and the Big Bang to see how simplified models have made it difficult to explain what we know about the true nature of them.
"And were there a planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible) this inference [that the universe was spun like a web] would there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence . . ."-David Hume
It's pretty simple, "What if we're living in a simulation, bro" guys are all just sociopathic narcissists with Main Character Syndrome looking for an excuse to treat other people like NPCs.
I dunno man, I think if I show this to my flat-earther cousin she'll just go, "yeah, that all sounds reasonable, those guys are right." But she also thinks that the queen of England is a still-alive spacetime vampire who has Tom Hanks send her sex-trafficked children for adrenochrome, so YMMV.
A lot of people will say that's because of the toxic media environment we all inhabit but I think the decades of "drug use / libertarianism cocktail" is probably also a big part of it.
We can’t live in a simulation because the amount of energy to simulate it would be greater than that exists in the universe. And if we’re simulated by a universe of higher complexity, than there is no difference between sim or reality, because when spacetime was created in included all time too.
Combining simulation theory with Last-Thursdayism to acknowledge my truth: a real version of me exists somewhere, but I am just a computer-generated copy loaded with all of my memories that just booted up when I typed this.
I've always wondered why anyone would simulate me - frumpy dumpy middle-aged woman with too many cats who's idea of a Hot Saturday Night is eating those weird Veggie Stix snacks while watching YouTube videos on esoterica and crafts, when you could be Batman.
Comments
"Why is the entertainment complex in the sewer?"
*By interns
-- William Hunter
Bro
How would you explain complex gears to someone who only knew about wheels?
"Life is but a dream!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_finite_automaton
Keyword IF, so probably not
he stared at the pacific, bro
Bro its turtles all the way down…
Schrodinger: bro the world is really just a cat inside a box bro
I don't know why no one remembers this.
The Russian movie is probably the best version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(1972_film)
But George Clooney's adaptation is also good.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/