Say you take a standard slide rule with two log scales, and want to do a division problem, x/y. There's more than one way to do it. I can think of at least 3. One of them won't just compute x/y for your particular x, but will compute x/y for ANY x.
Accuracy is always the issue with analog stuff, but they sure are neat.
Another fun one to contemplate is spaghetti sort. With an analog computer of sufficient resolution, you can sort n elements in O(n). You represent the numbers being sorted by lengths of spaghetti. Then you put them on the table straight up and bring a flat object down until it hits the first and largest piece of spaghetti. You set that down and repeat the process, selecting the largest element of the set every time.
I've always liked the idea of hybrid systems. I envision one where you feed the analog part of your problem with a DAC, then get a really close answer up to the limit of your precision from the analog component, then pass that back out to an ADC and you have a very very close guess to feed into a digital algorithm to clean up the precision a bit. I bet you could absolutely fly through matrix multiplication that way. You could also take the analog output and adjust the scale so it's where it needs to be on the ambiguous parts, then feed it back into your analog computer again to refine your results.
Isn’t this how very old sorting machines with punch cards worked? I’m thinking of the kinds used by the census or voting machines in the late 1800s or early 1900s.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_optics
Simulation is when we manipulate things (concrete or abstract) according to the rules that govern other concrete things, e.g. pushing around balls in circles to (highly inaccurately) represent the orbit of planets around a star.
Not all calculation is simulation, and not all simulation is calculation, but there exists an intersection of both.
The key trick you can do with that last category is that when the physical system you're simulating is controllable enough, you can use the correspondence in the other direction: Use the concrete things to simulate the abstract things. It's simulation, because you're manipulating concrete entities according to the rules that govern other entities (who happen to be abstract),but what you're doing also amounts to doing a calculation with those abstract entities.
If we accept it, for argument's sake, then what's happening is essentially delegating the computation to the ultra-meta-computer that runs the simulation.
Universe being mathematically consistent and being simulated are completely orthogonal concepts.
On second reading though it seems like all you're proposing is a mental model for 'analog' computation; that it's like outsourcing the computation to a lower level of hardware. Then yes I agree with that.
As for the validity of simulation hypothesis itself, I'd say it's essentially religion in disguise*. It's unfalsifiable by definition too, and personally I apply Occam's razor on the idea, but obviously I can't disprove it. The question can't be "is it true", but it's fine to ask "is it a useful (or at least thought-provoking) metaphor?" (in a given context).
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* Most religions, in my view, can be broken down to the sum of: a) simulation hypothesis of sorts (universe run by Creator), b) code of ethics with mnemonic narratives, c) ceremonies, that covers most of it analytically speaking.
Google tells me that this phrase has been used twice on the internet, both times by you on HN. I Googled it because I thought it was an interesting expression and wondered whether it was in popular use.
Ed: honestly though, it's kind of surprising no one else has independently come up with the same phrase. I know I'm not the only one thinking about things like this.
I had a pretty convincing revelation last night that the simulation was run by insects. I could only get back to sleep by ridiculing myself for such a derivative thought. Or is there a reason it's universal?
...that or the much older idea that if the whole universe is the dream of a dragon (or a butterfly or Chuang Chou) then let's not do anything that's too startling or implausible so we don't wake them up and end it all!