Today I was reading an article about airless tyres and this led me to realize something funny about tyre producing companies such as Michelin or Goodyear.

The business of those companies consists in reinventing the wheel.  Literally.

+1

If the Pixar studio could be in charge of a new Star Wars movie, the result might be cool.

Somehow it seems to me the following video might be relevant in this thread:


NASA | Computer Model Shows a Disk Galaxy's Life History

It's amazing how they manage to see how a galaxy gets this typical disk form.   This the central black whole, spiral-shaped branches and all.  I mean, ten years ago this process was pretty much a mystery, and now it can be reproduced on computer.  That's impressive.

Not even a subatomic-scaled simulation of a billion years of evolution for a whole universe?  I doubt so.

I believe reality goes "as fast as possible".  If you could go faster, it seems to me that it kind of would mess up with the very definition of time.   But I confess I'd have difficulties to rigorously explain why.  It's an intuition I got.

This entity does not need to have any intelligence, conscience or whatever.  For instance in the holographic principle, the simulation is realized by the very particular physics occuring at the horizon of a black hole.  And there is no need to imagine that a black hole is some kind of self-aware being.

added to list

«
A Turn of the Page for Newsweek

After 80 years in print, the newsmagazine adopts an all-digital format.
»

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/18/a-turn-of-the-page-for-newsweek.html


Neither the first, nor the last, but I think this subject deserves its own thread if there is none already.


Newsweek
Time
The Times
The Washington Post
The Wall Street Journal
...
...
Bitcoin magazine
(we should fill this list)

Interesting point.   Simulating a Lorentz invariant world got to be tricky.  I don't quite see how the simulator's clock could fit when compared to those of the simulation.

Damn, you're right.   Ok, then I'll also create something I'll call "dark energy" and this thing will have the power of expanding the universe at an ever-accelerating rate.

I know it sounds totally lubricious but for some reason I'm sure they'll buy it.  

True.  Kind of like Conway's game of life, but in more complicated I guess.  Haven't thought about that.

It's not from the 13th floor.  I imagined it.  

I'm glad to see someone will be able to do it at some point.  I confess I tried to read the autotools documentation but I found it quite tough to grasp so I kind of gave up.

If you can do it, it's great.  It's ok if you prefer to wait until he changes the directory structure.  There is no rush.

I would have much difficulty to explain why, but I have a strong belief that the kind of simulation he's talking about can not run faster than reality.  Therefore, It is not possible for evolved conscious beings to simulate their evolutionary history up to their current level of consciousness, as it would take way too much time.  So they would not do that, either because it would be pointless (who wants to wait a billion years for the result of a computation?), or because they would just have no time to do it in the universe they live in (considering their universe might have a finite lifespan for cosmological reasons).

So I think amongst his three hypothesis, it's the second which is true:

« any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); »

It doesn't mean they can not gather enough computing power.  It just means that having an infinite computing power does not mean you can simulate anything as fast as you want.

It's a very interesting paper though.  Thanks.  I'll read it more thoroughly some day.

Just watched "the 13th floor" for the first time.  It was nice.  Funny it came out the same year Matrix did.

It made me think of the following dialog:

«
- Damn those simulated human beings are so annoying.  They keep exploring the artificial world we create for them.
- So? That's good right?  It means they have curiosity and initiative.
- Yeah, but eventually they always manage to find out the limit of the domain and then they realize they are not real.  It's messed up.  So we have to make an other world and reboot the whole thing.
- Can't you make a bigger world?  Or a world topologically round?  Like a sphere?
- We did.  We made a round planet for them to live on, with a force that attracts them to the center, so that people on the lower half don't fell off.
- Makes sense.  Did that work?
- Nope, they did explore the whole planet but those morons also started to look at the sky.  Like, "with a telescope" look.
- What's the problem with that?
- The problem is that it gave them the idea of exploring space as well.
- Jeez.  And now you need to make a closed-curved universe as well?
- Screw that.  I don't have enough energy and resource to do something like that.  I'll make it simpler.   I'll make it look like the universe is extremely big and that stars are separated by huge distances, like light-years distances.
- Won't work:  at some point they'll manage to increase the speed of their spaceships and they'll reach your limits again.
- Yeah, that's why I'll add a rule saying that mass increases with speed, so that one needs an infinite amount of energy to accelerate above the speed of light.
- I see.  With such a rule, interstellar space travel will never be possible for them so whatever they do they'll never encouter the limits of your data.  Good work.
»

This thread reminds me of a theory from Nikodem Poplawski according to which the universe might be inside a black hole (and that black holes are actually alternate universes).

I have to dig into his work one of this days because it's much more credible than one might think.

Did you know that apart from neutron stars and black holes, the only thing whose radius is of the same order of magnitude than its Scharzchild radius is the observable universe itself??

If you link this to the holographic principle, then a black hole's horizon is kind of a 2D quantum-computer which simulates its own universe.  And we would be the result of such a simulation.

I don't think the proposed test in this thread could be applied though.  From what I understand, they imagined kind of an inferior type of computer.  Not as powerful as a black hole horizon.

You wrote "conciseness" three times.  If you're a computing simulation, there's a bug.

Lol.  Exactly.

Damn.  Here we go a gain.  Guess a lot of people are going to come and complain about deflation/thesaurization/whatever.


78% to me seems good enough, anyway.

That's possibly the best explanation.  Which gives me an idea for a poll.

For those interested in the holographic principle, there is this presentation from Leonard Susskind (pretty much the guy who developped the concept):

The world as an hologram

Google "holographic principle".