Assuming our simulation is not designed to auto-scale (and our Admins don’t know how to download more RAM), what kind of side effects could we see in the world if the underlying system hosting our simulation began running out of resources?
Assuming our simulation is not designed to auto-scale (and our Admins don’t know how to download more RAM), what kind of side effects could we see in the world if the underlying system hosting our simulation began running out of resources?
New human instances are being created, and as our society’s general education keeps going up, they demand more processing power.
As our tech goes up, this has to be simulated as well. Not only things like telescopes and the LHC, but your computer who’s running a game world doesn’t actually exists and it’s the super computer who’s running it.
Obviously, this is just a drop in the bucket for an entity that can make a fully simulated universe but the situation quickly becomes untenable if we start creating hyper advanced simulation as well, we are maybe only a few decades away.
Human instances still run on the same underlying physics. No further RAM is needed.
Everything is made up of atoms/photons/etc. If every particle is tracked for all interactions, it doesn’t matter how those particles are arranged, it’s always the same memory.
Atoms and photons wouldn’t actually exist, they would be generated whenever we measure things at that level.
Obviously, there’s many ways to interpret what kind of simulation it would be. A full simulation from the big band is fun but doesn’t make for good conversation since it would be indistinguishable from reality.
I was thinking more of a video game like simulation, where the sim doesn’t render things it doesn’t need to.
That can’t work unless it’s a simulation made personally for you.
I don’t follow. If there are others it would render for them just as much as me. I’m saying it wouldn’t need to render at an automic level except for the few that are actively measuring at that level.
Everything interacting is “measuring” at that level. If the quantum levels weren’t being calculated correctly all the time for you, the LEDs in your smartphone would flicker. All those microscopic effects cause the macroscopic effects we observe.
If it was a simulation, there would be no need to go that far. We simulate physics without simulating the individual atoms.
None of it would be real, the microscopic effects would just be approximated unless a precise measurement tool would be used and then they would be properly simulated.
We wouldn’t know the difference.
But you already said you have to go that far whenever someone is doing something where they could notice microscopic effects.
So it’s not a simulation as much as a mind reading AI that continuously reads every sentient mind in the entire universe so as to know whether they are doing a microscopic observation that needs the fine grained resolution result or an approximation can be returned.
There would be no need to go that far at all times is what I’m saying. It’s the equivalent of a game rendering stuff far away only when you use a scope. Why render everything at all times if it isn’t being used and does not affect the experience. It would augment the overhead by an insane amount for little to no gain.
This is also just a thought exercise.