From: Carl Feynman (carlf@abinitio.com)
Date: Wed Mar 14 2001 - 14:30:05 MST
Gordon Worley wrote:
>
> Of course, there is always the chance that this is the real world,
> but we'd always want to believe that, no matter how poor of a
> simulation this is. :-)
If the simulation runs long enough for its inhabitants to evolve, the resulting
species would take the simulation with deadly seriousness, no matter how
glaring its deficiencies. I'm thinking of deficiencies like
-- Absurdly simple laws of physics-- only a few lines long-- indicating that
the programmer was too lazy to code up anything interesting.
-- So-called "consciousness" resulting from a poorly designed API between mind
and body. The API was designed to allow the simulators to take control of
simulated bodies, so they could mess with the simulation. The programmer just
slotted a general-prupose evolvable thought module into the "mind" side of the
API, producing the illusion that we have "selves" that "do things". Zen
Buddhism lets you get around this bug, but only temporarily.
-- "Collapse of the wave function" resulting from round-off error in the
many-worlds probability calculation.
-- Huge quantities of distant galaxies that have no effect whatever on the game
action.
We should demand to be ported to a better simulation.
--Carl Feynman
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