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[UnrealJake]

There seems to be a very heavy philisophical discussion going on here... I'm just going to leave this here:

I personally find it to be a very reasonable arguement, perhaps a few flaws but on the whole very sound and quite thought provoking. Just listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56OhRqFBxKY

[Asmageddon]

I might have poor hearing and not be a natively english speaking person, but all I hear is barely understandable word "space" repeated hundreds of times.

[UnrealJake]

Shhhh, you're ruining the troll.

[SalmonGod]

I might have poor hearing and not be a natively english speaking person, but all I hear is barely understandable word "space" repeated hundreds of times.

Don't worry.  We are here to protect you.  Space has a terrible secret.

[Jeoshua]

So you're proud of trying to derail possibly the most interesting thread on this forum that many of us have ever seen?

Son... I am dissapoint.

I have a similar wish to know what reasoning there could be for a dense conglomeration of matter having an effect on the objective processing speed of a simulated universe.  Certainly, such a conglomeration would have a marked effect on the subjective experience of the surrounding space, as has already been pointed out vis a vis gravity's effect on perception of time.  But the objective "fps" would seem to be quite the same no matter if the particles of matter were widely separated or closely packed.

Either way, all particles would need to be simulated.  In fact, in such a hot, dense environment, science has shown that certain of the fundamental forces merge together.  So if anything there would be less required calculation, hence BETTER FPS...

[UnrealJake]

Ehhh, not really proud, I just can't drag myself to read through the several pages of this discussion with the mood I'm in, I've been ill lately and I'm kinda tired, so I figured I would be a bit of a dick silly and post that...

To be honest, I still don't see this whole Schrodinger's cat, it's either dead or alive, we simply don't know, the only thing that knows is the cat its self... and only half the time!

[Jeoshua]

There you go, that's the spirit!  And yeah this thread is dense.  I love these kind of conversations, but over half the stuff is so completely over the top, TLDR.

Yeah Quantum theory is ridiculous.  The thing is the math checks out.  That doesn't mean that the universe is actually operating in the way that Quantum Mechanics declares, but it does mean you can predict it within a certain amount of accuracy.

It's more a question of statistics than anything.  Just because I can tell you that the coin flip is going to be heads 50% of the time, doesn't mean I can tell you what it WILL be next time.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The probability of humanity reaching post-humanity is exactly nil. For obvious reasons.

The probability of humanity reaching post-modern-humanity is (almost) exactly one-it just varies on how much you require to be post-modern.

[Armok]

Also, I'm a bit hazy on the quantum mechanics but I'd think that things like the big bang there were just relatively simple hot plasma would be much less computationally intensive than... well, anything except black holes really. Even interstellar vacuum might be worse due to all those mater-antimater pairs popping in and out of existence and photons going everywhere.

Also, the idea that this thread would be deep and scientific is kinda laughable, having seen what real discussions by people who actually work with this kind of stuff looks like.

[finka]

Bad precedent set now for popping into here and dropping a link, so I hesitate to do so, but -- Egan's Wang's Carpets is a well-spun take on this kind of simulation stuff.  One could well imagine

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

an analogue of lag differential having a definite impact on the survival of these creatures: if say one creature demands so many of a certain rare tile in its carpet that its simulation evolves more slowly in real external time, might its carpets just be Darwinianly outcompeted on the metalevel by a creature without such an imbalance?

Generalisation to FPS is an exercise for the reader

(Hypothetically, I imagine that the "skin" of a Conway-being would be a mass of 'feeler' tendril structures, continually maintained and/or regenerated by the underlying substrate.  As and when these feelers 'feel' something else this disrupts them, sends a ripple down to the substrate which absorbs it (translating it into a subtle disturbance in a form of transmitted signal, probably far more complex than a "glider stream", to travel towards/form part of the creature's consciousness/awareness) and then reinforce the tendril to prevent its re-assimilation or loss.  But that's probably anthropomorphising things far too much and it'd be nothing like that anyway.)

FWIW I've imagined quite a similar thing, except with much more focus on cleaning, being that low-level Life reactions are quite fragile to such detritus, and less on perceiving.  Perhaps, except for important specially structured objects, it wouldn't care about the feedback from cleaning the small things in the environment out of its way, since that might not encode anything useful -- I could see it to be less like a sense of smell, say, and more like knowing where all the dust motes you run into as you walk are.  But perhaps not; depends massively on whether the Life universe needs to be locally specially structured before such beings have any chance of arising.  Stabs in the dark, anyway, yes.

[Jeoshua]

Umm, your Wang's link is broken

[Asmageddon]

Also, the idea that this thread would be deep and scientific is kinda laughable, having seen what real discussions by people who actually work with this kind of stuff looks like.

Am interested, can you cite/link?