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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16769