X-Message-Number: 16769
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: Simulations: Laws of Physics
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 12:02:55 +0100

Writing in cryonet (#16677) Robert Ettinger suggested

>>>>>
A simulation necessarily contains only those "laws" of physics known or
believed by the programmer at the time. Hence a simulated scientist cannot
discover new laws or new phenomena, and apparent inconsistencies or
incompleteness in "existing" laws could not be reconciled. Over time, this
might provide good evidence of being in a simulation.
<<<<<

I wonder whether a way around that may be achieved by having the simulation
change the laws of physics as the boundaries are approached by the occupants
of the simulation. In our case Earth could have been a flat area with
countryside created as simulants wandered into it.

Indeed such a simulation may have run into problems with available memory
and a solution found by making the world a sphere.

Of course such changes would have to be backwards compatible, and that
itself could produce anomalies that could be searched for. If old physics
text show that certain experiment produce certain results and no one can no
replicate them, for example. The design of PCs shows that backwards
compatibility is very difficult, and indeed is being abandoned. People
discover this when they try and run old programs on modern versions of
Microsoft Windows. But designers still haven't solved the problem of linear
memory addressing (there is still severe competition for the lower 640K of
RAM) This is due in part for Bill Gates saying that 640K is as much memory
as anyone will ever need (presumably for all eternity).

Dynamic laws of physics would make for a much more interesting simulation in
my viewpoint, possibly even producing concepts that the creator of the
simulation had never considered previously.


Sincerely, John de Rivaz:      http://www.deRivaz.com
my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, music, Inventors'
report, an autobio and various other projects:
http://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt
http://www.autopsychoice.com - http://www.cryonics-europe.org -
http://www.porthtowan.com

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