Hacker News Reader

Comment by mshake2 | Hacker News Reader

If we can't detect previous advanced civilizations, I think it adds more evidence to the simulation hypothesis. Why would simulation designers include ancient nearly-undetectable advanced civilizations? Why don't video game designers fully model and texture areas of the world that aren't accessible?

View on HN

If we were living in a simulation, I think it would be programmed in such a way that it would be emergent. A bit like a mandelbrot set, where the rules are simple but the complexity is infinite. No need to texture anything if the rules define what the texture would look like by a minimal fixed set of rules (laws of nature).

To me, it would be more interesting to design specific scenarios to study.

> it would be more interesting to design specific scenarios to study

The weakness, to me, in the simulation hypothesis is the ancestor simulation assumption. Most of our computing power concerns itself with the future. Not the unchangeable past. Hell, simulated universes with different physical constants would be far more interesting.

I know folks doing climate modeling - there’s extensive simulating the past, because it’s the only way for us to validate our models.

There’s a part of me that kind of views this as a theological prospect—that God (or however you care to name the supreme being, as such) is constantly upping the challenge for us as humanity.

If you have the capability to run such a simulation, why not start from time=0 and just let it run... if you already have near infinite compute ability what does it matter? If you are an observer outside the universe so to speak does time even happen?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com