Hacker News Reader

Comment by OneTimePetes | Hacker News Reader

That is nonsense. We can do "unlimited" detail, by just-in-time generating details on observation and extrapolating from some mathematical deterministic constants tail. Not everything that can be seen, needs space- lots of it can be reproduced with formulas just in time on observation.

The only observable thing would be a "detail snap" and the same "high-res" details were the same hash is produced. Which could be avoided by hashing in the observer, at some level of detail.

View on HN

Carrol calls it the "Resolution Conundrum" [0]. If you believe in the underlying logic that there is a kind of runaway effect, of simulations within simulations, etc, it's inevitably going to be the case that the most probable simulated universe is the one with the least available computing power. So whatever trickery you use to get around the problem of low resolution just substitutes one problem for another, and then the new thing runs up against limits of computing power. We would be most likely to experience the simulation that's most likely to generate noticeable artifacts as the simulation runs up against limits.

0: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/08/22/maybe-w...

It could also be that the most probable simulated universe is one in which it is very hard to simulate other universes.

We do 2D simulations, games of life, etc. If our universe is simulated, why wouldn't the "parent" one be vastly more complex (more dimensions) and a much better place to run simulations?

It could be highly hyperdimensional and contain unimaginable levels of detail, even "time" in our universe could be a construct (or multidimensional) in the parent universe.

the thing that I don't understand is why people think that there would be a simulation of a universe; surely it would be more likely that this is a simulation of "you" (well me as obviously you lot aren't real) - vastly simpler and more plausible

In a simulation, would make the idea of a simulation inconceivable not be the best recursion prevention?

No we can go deep but no where near unlimited zoom. Watch a video that shows a fractal zoom to say 10^20,000 and that feels like forever but it’s nothing next to 10^(10^20,000) let alone anything actually large.

Even seemingly simple problems run into surprising issues when you want arbitrary precision. What’s the one’s place digit of π^(π^(π^π)? I mean sure you could fake unlimited zoom by just picking arbitrary numbers like say 4, but that’s no longer zoom.

Heisenberg discovered the simulation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com