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[Arbinire]

So I stumbled upon this article:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6071511/a-physics-experiment-might-soon-tell-us-if-were-living-in-a-2d

And I couldn't help but wonder, at which version of Dwarf Fortress do you think we'll be at when our dwarves start doing this, wondering if they are just a simulation and potentially discovering they are?  Imagine the tantrum spirals XD

[Eagleon]

Soon! We just need an API to hook DF into a raspberry pi and the raspberry pi to provide some mutually meaningful gameworld feedback, and we're in business. We could have dwarf-powered robots in no time.

Now, they might not tantrum over finding out about the real world. But they could be made to.

Though...

If you program something to feel pain, if you tell it to act like it does and move towards stopping it, if other programmed things around it react to the pain in a way that's relevant, you've caused it pain. Oh, sure, it's not like our pain. Our pain was evolved, is based on chemicals instead of electrons, represented by our reactions in the real world instead of one with dragons. But the distinction is entirely arbitrary.

In that sense, every time you've killed a video game character could be considered a violation of their basic sense of self-preservation. DF takes it much farther than other games - most game AI won't run away, or form friendships, or grieve for their loved ones. Maybe this is overanalyzing, and they haven't passed some threshold of true feelinglikeness, where they don't quite do all the things we need to do because they didn't have all the little pressures we've had over the past few millions of years. Maybe that makes it ok. Or maybe we'll look back on this time as an age of unknown and uncountable tragedy, a brief madness before true contact with our own homegrown brand of alien was truly initiated on equal terms.

Good night.

[Orange Wizard]

I like how the very first reply went off-topic. I always knew Bay12 was bad (good?) with derailing threads, but this is quite something.

Anyway, a 2D Universe is an interesting concept, but I can't really see why it matters. Unless we can take the knowledge and do something with it, it's just kind of pointless.

[BoredVirulence]

Anyway, a 2D Universe is an interesting concept, but I can't really see why it matters. Unless we can take the knowledge and do something with it, it's just kind of pointless.

We're generally quite good at using what could be useless knowledge and doing stuff with it. Scientists, engineers, mathematicians, they're like us, just in the real world and with more ethical applications and theories.

Lets completely forget about how physics really works, pretend it works like this:

Much like characters on a television show would not know that their seemingly 3-D world exists only on a 2-D screen, we could be clueless that our 3-D space is just an illusion. The information about everything in our universe could actually be encoded in tiny packets in two dimensions.

And now that we've done that, lets make some really hypothetical situations mirroring the "its like a computer" scenario.

Lets say we can intercept these packets, what happens if we found a way to modify them? Its like hacking in a video game, but in real life!

Thats a whole lot of practical applications. Imagine a DFhack, for the world we live in...

Disclaimer: I've made a lot of assumptions, some of which likely aren't possible. If this experiment turns out to be true though, you can bet that someone, somewhere, will find a way to do something interesting with this new found understanding of the world.
Personally, I have my own experience where physics has failed me. I attribute it to the matrix having an improper implementation of a stack, its the only way to explain it.

[askovdk]

Lets say we can intercept these packets, what happens if we found a way to modify them? Its like hacking in a video game, but in real life!

What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output.
    Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Universe confirmed for DF