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[Lagslayer]

Time is a perception, not something that can be traveled through. I'd go on, but I already went over this in the general discussion forums on 2 separate threads.

[King_of_the_weasels]

Bear in mind that if the universe lagged, we wouldn't notice it, because we'd experience the same lag.

*waves hand in front of face* Cosmic

[Ricky]

Well, if we are lagging and we don't notice, I'm just afraid somebody that does notice is going to start culling humanity to get decent FPS.

[Dakk]

Bear in mind that if the universe lagged, we wouldn't notice it, because we'd experience the same lag.

*waves hand in front of face* Cosmic

Thats your brain lagging, not the universe

[Urist Imiknorris]

Well, if we are lagging and we don't notice, I'm just afraid somebody that does notice is going to start culling humanity to get decent FPS.

Or maybe shrink the universe.

[Reelyanoob]

Compared to that modern computers have the sophistication of an ant burping.

Actually an ant burping probably has more raw cpu power than most modern computers. Insects do quite a bit of advanced processing. Just to put our advanced tech in perspective.

[Roflcopter5000]

I think it's important to indicate that although the universe can be viewed as a singe, enormous data-set, there is no evidence to indicate that anything is processing all of it...

Also, if relativistic time dilation  is like lag, then it is also like hyper-speed processing, given that, you know, its effects are relative to the observer. =P

And Nil, you're assuming two things that are certainly not verified fact:
(a) The universe is old enough to play host to multiple 'post-human' civilizations. It is quite possible that we are towards the head of the civilization advancement curve, as we define it.

Far more relevant:
(b) It would be physically possible for us to observe these civilizations, and all post-human civilizations would -want- to run ancestor simulation. It could be possible that the technology that post-human civilizations might use to run these ancestor simulations could be so efficient that it would radiate very little heat or observable light. It could be possible that there are no civilizations that are this advanced within our light-cone. It could be possible that Ancestor Simulations don't interest the civilizations within our light cone that might have the capacity to run them.

It's really, really silly to assume that predictions made about things that we don't understand yet are going to be anywhere close to accurate. Not saying that futurism is pointless, only that when discussing futurism, it is very important to realize that you are stumbling blindly in the dark.

[Fayrik]

It's really, really silly to assume that predictions made about things that we don't understand yet are going to be anywhere close to accurate. Not saying that futurism is pointless, only that when discussing futurism, it is very important to realize that you are stumbling blindly in the dark.

I think that statement brings this whole argument back down to one thing.
Cats.

[Jeoshua]

You know, it is actually possible that we, Earth, ARE the ancestor simulation.  Or not simulation, but actual implementation.  Our oldest stories are of beings coming from the heavens  and teaching us how to be like them.  So from a cultural standpoint, we may actually be the descendants of another race of beings.  Not physically, or genetically, maybe... but mentally and culturally.  And ultimately isn't that what really MATTERS about the human race, is our mentality, culture, and knowledge?  Who cares if we have eyes or feet or drive cars or build buildings.  Other creatures have those things and do things something like that.   But inside, mentally, culturally, we are something seemingly unique on this planet.

Yet all out oldest stories are about how we didn't come up with it ourselves.

[Solace]

Traveling very fast through space leaves less energy to travel through time, slowing your perception down or "lagging".

As far as I understand it, traveling really fast doesn't really make your time slow down, it merely makes you act like your time is slowing down. A silly sounding distinction, but important.

Basically, say I'm dribbling a basketball in a spaceship. At "normal" speeds, the speed of the spaceship isn't important. But, if I'm traveling at 99% lightspeed... the basketball can only travel at most at the speed of light. If 99% of the speed it can possibly do is in one direction, it's only got that 1% left over as the maximum up-and-down speed. And remember, things like heat and sound are also forms of movement, not just movement you can see. At 99% light speed, things "act slower" because their maximum possible amount of movement is mostly "used up".

[Jeoshua]

The mechanism for the time dilation is unimportant, really.  The important part for my statement of "Warp Speed" is that you don't notice it at all.  From the passenger's perspective, everything in the ship is happening at a normal speed.

[MasterMorality]

I've had much the same thought every now and then.
Now:

Take the world with all of that.
Then expand. outwards.
The galaxy - various panets, stars, etc.
Consider the calculation of say one of the gigantic storms on Jupiter, is it? I think.
Consider the effects of solar storms, sun spots, etc etc on our world (and it has among other things, at least one surprising effect, REALLY surprising effect that you wouldn't even think of.)
Consider that it tracks asteroids, collisions, further out from our solar system. Across billions of solar systems, in which any number of them anything could be going on.
Consider how ridiculously VAST the universe is, and consider how ridiculously varied it is.

Here's the thing: games like Oblivion, etc etc are known to have big game worlds (and I know there are much bigger). They are generated by, pretty much, layering the same set of terrain formation (via algorithm) over and over again in various ways. This means that you don't have to calculate each 4bits of memory per tiny little face on the mesh. Calculating all of that individually would probably slow most of the biggest machines down to a crawl, let alone putting AI in there.
The real world has no problem with this and it's got the biggest game worlds beaten by fucking MILES.
Now you've got that attributed to untold numbers of planets, formations, etc

Shit, I could on and on, because there's so much of the universe, and we probably only know about 0.1 percent of anything, but yeah. Moving out from the world in that frame of mind is pretty interesting.

[antymattar]

Having toooooo many cats. I currently have 3. I had 5(gave away 1 and one got killed by a rival catgang). Man, that really requires you to do many many hugs and cuddles.

[Komus]

It's an interesting subject area that Nil is touches on. Enrico Fermi once said "Where is everybody?" 

[Starver]

[...]So from a cultural standpoint, we may actually be the descendants of another race of beings.  Not physically, or genetically, maybe... but mentally and culturally.[...]

How about memetically?  If were talking about simulations.

Or we, as alive as we think we are, are just blocks of 'on/off', much like a Conway Game Of Life is.


And in Warp Speed, the bit of the universe the ship is 'bubbling along' in supposedly is much the same as if the ship is stationary (or, at most, going at barely-relativistic impulse speeds), hence no twin travelling on a Warp-enabled ship gets to age less than his or her sibling who never took off.  (Ignoring gravitational effects on time and any significant amount of barely-relativistic speed, of course).  It's just that this bubble is drawing in space at the front and piling space out of the back at >c, so when the ship de-warps at Alpha Centauri, it will be picking up the faint remnants of Earth's radio signals from four years prior to when it set off.  (Or thereabouts, for the higher warp numbers, as you can 'just'be going at "Warp 1" and actually just keep pace with the radio signals.  You age four years during the trip, but the photons of the signal don't age in their more legitimate and classically-relativistic approach going at the speed of light.)

Komus: Talk to Drake about that.  It's possible that his eponymous equation has the answer, once we can narrow down the unknowns a bit.  Or, to take a leaf out of Stewert'n'Cohen's book regarding the treatment of that, maybe the classical Drake Equation says there's nobody, but that's because it assumes civilisations that have adopted our particular style of communication (radio) because of them living in environments similar to ours (atmosphere/ground interface).  Supremely intelligent and capable sub-sea creatures on a water-world might not have mastered electricity, but be broadcasting messages across an entire empire thanks to specialist focussing bioluminescence 'satellites' floating above the inhospitable ocean top and sporulated themselves across many worlds of their type in ice-shelled pods.  Right now I can't even think of what a gaseous planet's purely atmospheric inhabitants would use as long-range communications (must re-read "Wheelers" and "Heaven", to see if it was mentioned but I've just forgotten), but it might be more in the lines of directed laser-light, which we generally wouldn't see unless one was misaligned to face us by accident.  (And, even then, we might not notice.)