I'm confused because Game of Life is a board game from the 1860s.
Is the computer built in the game as fast and as capable as the one running the game itself?
Is the universe that exists within the computer within the game as large and as complex as the universe of the game?
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brb homonecrobatrachophile, Mon 5 Apr 2021, 14:26,
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If the Game of Life is a board game and its playing the Game of Life then where is the sofa down the back of which an essential game piece has been lost
are we that game piece? Is our existence to slowly gather dust while facing the shadows dancing on the wall and believing them to be our world? In those shadows can we see the Game of Life play the Game of Life? What did they replace the missing piece with?
(, Mon 5 Apr 2021, 14:56, Share, Reply)
What's missing down the back of a missing simulated sofa? More sofas? And what's missing down the back of them?
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brb homonecrobatrachophile, Mon 5 Apr 2021, 17:29,
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An interesting aspect of the question "are we living in a simulation" is that...
...it doesn't really matter how fast such an exterior computer is,
since the passage of time inside is just a simulated concept.
If the simulation is merely an algorithm ticking along somehow, it
shouldn't matter on what machine it ticks along, from the perspective
of anyone living inside the simulation.
One would imagine some absurdly advanced hyperdimensional supercomputer
more powerful and sophisticated than we would ever possibly imagine...
some kind of god machine.
But if it's just an algorithm it could all be handled with pen and paper
(or the outer universe's equivalent)... so long as the algorithm continues to
tick along in the outer universe, the inner simulated universe continues to run.
It might all be egg timers and abacuses for all we could ever know.
(, Tue 6 Apr 2021, 1:26, Share, Reply)
A lot depends of the parameters of the simulation though...
Whether or not complexity is averaged out at scales and only becomes complex when observed, for example. Whether or not a single observation manifests for the entire universe or only for the observer, too.
Do all observers each have their our own simulated universe? Are microbes observers? I guess the universe simulated for an organism with no sense organs could be fairly basic, but you'd still require quadrillions of them.
If each Planck-tick in our simulation takes more than one Planck-tick in the next universe up, that's probably a post-stellar universe by now, unless the entire universe was only just created in this instant, with all our memories fabricated.
It's a tantalisingly silly and unfalsifiable idea.
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brb homonecrobatrachophile, Tue 6 Apr 2021, 15:32,
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