I've always wanted to read (or write?) a book about us determining we are in a simulation, but we find subtle flaws like this we're able to exploit in weird ways. Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something. Anyone know of a story along those lines?

I've definitely read one where we're an experiment and the speed of light limit is to stop us from escaping all over the lab equipment. I can't remember what it was called now.

I feel as if fiction where we're in a simulation is relatively common, but one where the hacking of reality is actually done well and plausibly rather than handwaved would be pretty new.

The author of Ra also did a short piece you'll probably enjoy: http://qntm.org/responsibility

Isn't that the entire premise of The Matrix?

No.

O_o

Write it. Always thought about it, never seen it... except for Reggie Watts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc

Check out Greg Egan's Permutation City in which sort of the opposite happens.

I'm reading that book right now, and so far it's good. One can also read: Anathem, Snow Crash, http://qntm.org/ra, or (extremely NSFW) The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

All of them explore the nature of reality and consciousness in some way.

To the parent commenter, please write your story. The world always needs good fiction.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is one of my favorite sci-fi novellas. But yes, extremely unsuitable for anyone with a weak stomach.

Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation) wrote a novel that used simulation as a plot device. It's called "Mogworld". I thought it was well done.

I just finished reading Permutation City a couple weeks ago. Good fun. The core conflict is between two different approaches to modeling, via mimicry of existing systems versus really interesting cellular automata. The automata version doesn't need to 'cheat' in the same way, and is thus a bit harder to find the edges of... (Hopefully that doesn't count as spoilers.)

I think Charlie Stross did a particularly interesting one that happened within a simulation where the characters ultimately discover the enemy they were fighting already won and their simulation ran under a larger simulation. Can't remember the name...

Actually, it's Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosembaum's "True Names".

My confusion is a compliment to all three authors.

Sounds like the ending to A Colder War.

Maybe you should approach the revelation and "breaking through" by a philosophical rather than logical approach..if we are a simulation the logic we work with is artificial and arbitrary anyway. So in the story, get to the "real reality"...by taking the ideal of what reality should be and comparing it to what is observed to be and somehow "crack" into ultimate reality by doing so.

> Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something

The difficulty is keeping track of the context while you attempt the exploit. You would have to be able to plant code outside the simulation without causing it to crash.

OTOH, from within, you'd only see a successful attempt to escalate privileges. Imagine being able to edit reality.

Snow Crash has elements of that idea. At least in the fragments about Sumerian history and their powerful language.

The Truman Show (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/) covers a lot of this turf albeit TV rather than total simulation.

Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. Did not like it, though.

"Beyond" in The Animatrix.

Check out Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game.

Tron Legacy. The programs want to break out of the VM.

Good film.

Once you read Teller and Hanrahan's SIGGRAPH paper on potentially-visible set computation, you instantly grok what quantum mechanics is for. At least in an "I want to believe" sense.

How do we go about determining if we are in a lossless compression or not?

I wonder if there is some ordering of "conservation of ---" laws that is strictly enveloping/hierarchical, such that you could choose a level at which to simulate/design a universe.

Had to find a way to keep the framerate from dropping below Planck time levels.

Ah, but how do you know the simulation doesn't just slow down the simulated flow of time so it can keep up? Think of a bullet-time like concept. The universe can be simulated as fast as the underlying hardware can keep up.

Maybe the universe doesn't do it for the same reason games and movies don't do it, the people watching expect smooth playback.

But if you're enmeshed in the simulation, you would never notice the slowdown! The only reason the video game is annoying is because we experience time outside of it.

I think the OP is referring to people watching from outside the simulation.

Yeah, the crystal people.