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originally posted by: cooperton
originally posted by: Barcs
If the universe is a program then 99% of it is wasted space.
or 99% waiting to be explored.
originally posted by: Thorneblood
In fact, i did attempt to explain it to you but you chose to ignore it in favor of your own belittling line of arguments in which you repeatedly insult me. And yet you believe i am the one losing the argument?
One of the first mistakes I see being made in many of these posts is the notion of programming all of this manually. This form of creation as you seem to see it, well it's extremely limted. As the OP pointed out, using pre-established patterns and god like knowledge there would be no need to enter the formulas into some vast unintelligible language. You just need to know it, understand it and sort of imagine it being where you want it to be.
Think of the Matrix, think of Neo. Think of what we really define as VR, a fully immersive reality that intercepts the signals transmitted by your brain and causes appropriate actions in a controlled environment. If your brain is the controller, the keyboard, the mouse, then all that would be required to program a reality on this level would be your own damn mind.
You chose to ignore, ranting on about how im using magic and creationism to circumvent your agrument when in fact the whole basis of the conversation is magic and creationism as pointed out by the OP's initial post here..
Then having taken him up into the mountain, he hid him in a cloud and took him out of all earthly things... and he gave him a new birth as if he were a child in the womb... and revealed to him all that he had done in making the world in six days, showing him in six other days the making of the world, performing in his presence the work of each day.... (Cosmas 3.13)[30]
When Philo described the apotheosis of Moses on Sinai he said that he entered the darkness where God was; ‘...the unseen, invisible, incorporeal, and archetypal essence of all existing things and he beheld what is hidden from the sight of mortal nature’ (Moses 1.158). This is what the Qumran texts describe as the raz nihyeh, (4Q300, 417), what 1 Peter describes as ‘the things into which angels long to look’ (1 Pet.1.12).
Considering that many of the concepts we are talking about here are most often used in video gaming, and yes that is my field, then to answer your mundane questions. I would use procedural generation for the universe, applying various statistical models and equations that i have learned or have access to. Which, while not complete, is human and obvious. I'm also a big fan of using concepts from Emergent Gameplay to invoke the various creative choices some players make when dealing with how to solve problems.
As I am sure you are aware one of the big parts of being God, especially in the biblical sense, is infinite knowledge. The all knowing mind. Which, if i possessed, would include such things as the laws of physics, the nature of consciousness and well...everything.
So when God made the heavens and the earth he didn't just throw up some pretty 3d assets (Also one of my skills) he invoked magic and yes IMAGINATION to place the stars in the sky and apply the basic programming for their function. He sparked conscious by giving us not only the light of the stars, but the light of intellect and knowledge, the spark of creation and humanity that makes us everything we are.
Instead of completely excluding God from the argument and focusing on the mundane reality of programming in the modern era, try to invoke the sense of awe and wonder you feel when you actually do get inspired by reality or gaming or whatever. Look at the vast emptiness of the universe that you see as wasted space and ask yourself the simplest of questions.
If I were a God, how would I fill the heavens?
originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: Barcs
Are you trying to say they are NEVER used? I don't buy it, sorry. If the universe is a program then 99% of it is wasted space.
No of course it is a bad comparison, but we don't yet know how much space (empty space) in the universe is "used". We are both stuck with guessing.
originally posted by: Barcs
originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: Barcs
Are you trying to say they are NEVER used? I don't buy it, sorry. If the universe is a program then 99% of it is wasted space.
No of course it is a bad comparison, but we don't yet know how much space (empty space) in the universe is "used". We are both stuck with guessing.
I think it's safe to say that the empty space between stars and planets is NOT used as there is nothing there but debris.
If you guys are just talking about god, then why even bring up VR?
your argument is very heavily based on assumptions and beliefs. Is Thorne correct in saying that you are talking creationism and not actual programming of code
originally posted by: Barcs
I think it's safe to say that the empty space between stars and planets is NOT used as there is nothing there but debris.
Objective time should pass inevitably, by its own nature, needing nothing else, but virtual time
depends on processing cycles. In Conway’s Life simulation (Figure), pixels reproduce and die by
program rules. So blobs grow and contract until (often) a steady state is reached. For a pixel entity in a
Life simulation, time is measured by the events that occur to it. Many events constitute (for it) a long
time, while a few events are a short time. Time is the processing cycles experienced, and we measure
time like this in our world, as atomic clocks count atomic events.
Suppose a Life game that usually takes twenty minutes to reach a certain state is run again on a faster
computer, and reaches the same end state in two seconds. Re-running it takes less time in our reality,
but the virtual time doesn’t change, as the same number of events occurred. A being in the simulation,
seeing the same number of events passing, sees the same time passing. The simulation time depends
solely on the number of processing cycles that occur in the
simulation.
If a computer game slows down under load, like say in a big
battle, the player experiences game lag, as the screen slows
down. However from the point of view of an onscreen avatar
nothing changes, as they also slow down. If our world is a virtual
reality we won't in theory see load effects, and indeed relativistic
changes in space-time are undetectable to the parties affected.
However if processing is distributed, as here, people under
different local loads can later compare time differences, e.g. in
Einstein’s twin paradox, a twin travels the universe in a rocket
at near the speed of light and returns a year later to find his
brother an old man of eighty. Neither twin knew their time ran
differently and both still got their allocated number of life
breaths, but one twin's life is nearly done and the other's is just
originally posted by: mikegrouchy
originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: mikegrouchy
how does one insulate the simulation from outside influence?
Would you need to if you were the one creating it? it would really only be your influence right? Unless a virus was introduced?
I know how to start and stop my computer that's about it soooo:-)
We can be fairly sure that our existence here on planet earth circa 2015 is not a simulation because no bot-gold-seller has popped up spamming the place with "Players of Earth, Resurrection rods, only 5000 souls @ Antares trading post." In fact a great deal of the angst present in the poetry of mankind through the ages is aimed at the apparent vast emptiness of the universe and our lack of "visitors" proving there is something else.
Outside influence.
Mike Grouchy
originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: CynConcepts
I was thinking, if relating to ancient texts and assuming we are in a virtual reality it will have a creator. Now in the texts the creator said he liked to walk in the garden with his creations, he enjoyed this.
However from the point of view of an onscreen avatar
nothing changes, as they also slow down. If our world is a virtual
reality we won't in theory see load effects, and indeed relativistic
changes in space-time are undetectable to the parties affected.
the brain is the CPU and the chemical reactions are the machine code. The consciousness is the programming language.