Unfortunately trees can't reclaim co2 at the rate we release it though. Seems like supplementing that strategy with novel solutions like this makes sense.
That doesn't automatically mean that dictionaries are just as fast with hundreds of thousands or millions of keys. I don't know one way or the other, but it's conceivable that performance could degrade somewhat with large numbers of keys.
> Should any error [in the program] occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation.
This seems really problematic to me. Why would you assume that a full-on universe simulator has a concept of a brain? If you're in the business of simulating the interactions of nanoparticles, having a "brain" object doesn't seem to make much sense. I suppose that you could implement some heuristic to identify minds with some degree of accuracy, but then you're getting into some weird territory. Someone wants to model the entire universe just to observe life here on earth? Why assume the author of this system is even aware of us at all?
> It could be the case that one planetary civilisation is all that can be simulated, without running into computational capacity issues.
Again, why would a system like this be optimized toward the civilisation level?
The idea is cool, maybe probable, but this write up seems pretty fanciful.
It seems to be a thought experiment in torturing the inhabitants of a computer simulation. How else would you pose the question "Is this a reality that may be modeled, or a simulation of a model?" If it's a perfect simulation, there is literally no difference to the inhabitants. If it's not a perfect simulation, then the experiment being run is what differentiates this model? The answer is clearly those conscious of the problems with the model and how they react. And if a physicist ever seriously posits we're in a simulation, they had better have better evidence than "because humans are interesting".
Anyway, until we fuzz physics enough to detect inconsistencies in (e.g.) conservation of energy, this is an entirely fanciful and useless topic. If I may bring in Plato's allegory of the cave, it's fairly clear this line of thought is only useful if we can detect and/or manipulate it. Until then, it's fairly absurd to think what we may be "turning our back to" in the cave when we are unable to even figure out if we have a back.
> Why assume the author of this system is even aware of us at all?
Think about why we simulate systems. There are two reasons that I can think of to do so. First, to exist inside of it, like a flight simulator or Minecraft. Second, to observe the emergent effects, like Conway's Game of Life. Assuming we're in a simulation, we'd have to assume that we're in the second kind of simulation. (Now that I think about it, what we term as deities could simply be alien 'players' of our universe game. Other examples of the first I can think of are ridiculously over-powered humans like Steve Jobs or John D. Rockefeller or Genghis Kahn.)
Assuming we're living in a simulation of the second type, it's the emergent properties of these that make them interesting. Emergence means you can't make a predictive mathematical model of what's going to happen. If what you're after is something you can predict mathematically, then you'd just do that with an algorithm rather than run a much more complicated simulation. We do do things like make computers in Minecraft, but the size and complexity and overall 'seriousness' of our universe sort of implies that that would have been a design goal for our world, rather than some cosmic two-year old's science project.
It would seem to me that if you have the power to simulate the universe then you could probably model quantum effects mathematically. I mean, we already do with the classical laws of physics, though obviously not to that level. I would think that life itself would eventually top the list of research priorities for our supernatural creators. I'm not saying they'd be interested exclusively in human-like intelligence, but they already had billions of years to study cosmic physics. Why keep the thing running once life starts evolving if that's all you're after? Ethical issues aside, it would have to seriously impact the performance of your simulation algorithm, the same way that sort of thing makes our own games more complex.
The hypothesis presented in the article is that of an ancestor simulation. A future post-human civilization may very well be interested in the brains of their ancestors or creators.
I agree, i'd assume the simulator would be programmed with the fundamental laws of the universe and the basic particles and then let loose. Everything after that would just be a collection of basic particles, it shouldn't even have a notion for what an atom is, let alone a brain.
Personally, before I decide to try something like this I would be interested to know how the app collects data from the user. I participated in https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/. If you aren't familiar, it surveys you multiple times per day (it was configurable I think). The survey's were short. At first I was happy to do it, but over time the surveys got more and more annoying to the point where I stopped doing them altogether. It got too annoying for me personally before I completed enough surveys for them to compile a full profile for me. Has this app improved upon the data collection process at all?
We're over manual tracking too, and trying to remove all that friction. Most of the data we collect is passive - you connect a service via OAuth and never have to think about it again. Just keep using your Fitbit, or last.fm, or making events in your calendar.
The one exception is mood tracking, where you reply to an email every night and manually rate your day.
The whole time I read that article I told myself that it will be different for me. The whole time I also knew it won't be different for me. Maybe denial can be a good thing?
