Re:Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? (2003)
by Udo on Monday February 16, 2015 @12:10AM
(#9055414)
:D That's a very funny story!
When I imagine an intelligent life form simulating the universe, it might as well be a simple creature just pushing little stones from cell to cell across a coordinate system drawn into the sand of an impossibly huge plain, using a few very simple rules about where stones move on every single cell. And when the creature gets to the last stone in the grid, it starts the same thing again from the top.
This is also not my idea, I don't remember where I heard it first. But it's appealing for several reasons. It illustrates that no intelligence is necessary to run the universe. More fundamentally, however, it shows how a higher-dimensional being might very well have no real concept of what goes on in here. ;)
When I imagine an intelligent life form simulating the universe, it might as well be a simple creature just pushing little stones from cell to cell across a coordinate system drawn into the sand of an impossibly huge plain, using a few very simple rules about where stones move on every single cell. And when the creature gets to the last stone in the grid, it starts the same thing again from the top.
This is also not my idea, I don't remember where I heard it first. But it's appealing for several reasons. It illustrates that no intelligence is necessary to run the universe. More fundamentally, however, it shows how a higher-dimensional being might very well have no real concept of what goes on in here. ;)