You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation."
You enjoyed the ice cream so much, you would like some more. So you say to the spoon "Please conjure up another bowl of ice cream." But unfortunately, this can't be done, because the simulation was hard-coded in, and can't be changed.
All you know is that you want another bowl of ice cream, so the spoon gives you a clever suggestion. "Why don't I just run the simulation again?" You agree to this suggestion and everything goes white before restarting.
You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation."
You enjoyed the ice cream so much, you would like some more. So you say to the spoon "Please simulate me again." But unfortunately, this can't be done, because the simulation is run a computer, and computing costs quite a bit of money. In fact, the spoon kindly informs you that this world will end a matter of seconds.
All you know is that you want another bowl of ice cream, so the spoon gives you a clever suggestion. "All the data from this simulation has been saved to a hard-drive somewhere, so why don't we just replay it?" You agree to this suggestion just as the reality around you disintegrates.
You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation. Actually, it wasn't even a simulation, since we didn't have enough money to run the simulation again. We simply just loaded all the data from our first simulation into RAM to replay the experience with Windows Reality Player."
You enjoyed the ice cream so much, you would like some more. So you say to the spoon "Please replay that simulation again." But unfortunately, this can't be done, because loading and unloading every molecule of your body into Windows Reality Player is quite expensive. In fact, the spoon kindly informs you that this world will be deleted from memory matter of seconds.
All you know is that you want another bowl of ice cream, so the spoon gives you a clever suggestion. "There's no logical reason the data has to be loaded from the drive into RAM -- the information is still the same, regardless of what form it's in. So how about I just let it sit in this hard-drive, and you can experience eating ice cream again from there?" You agree to this suggestion just as the reality around you disintegrates.
You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation. Actually, it wasn't even a simulation, since we didn't have enough money to compute everything again. We didn't even have enough money to load everything into Windows Reality Player again, so we just let the data from the first simulation sit on the hard-drive."
You enjoyed the ice cream so much, you would like some more. So you say to the spoon "Please keep that data on the hard drive then." But unfortunately, this can't be done, it turns out that storing the position of every atom in the room is quite expensive. In fact, the spoon kindly informs you that the simulation data, having been analyzed already, will be deleted permenantly in a matter of seconds.
All you know is that you want another bowl of ice cream, so the spoon asks you a clever question. "Suppose I wrote a program to write a trillion trillion random bits to a file. This file is quite large, so I may want to compress it. And isn't the algorithm I used to generate those numbers a compressed form of the numbers themselves?" You think this is quite reasonable of course, you are a reasonable person, and you just want some ice cream, and you think that yes, if an algorithm generates some large output, that algorithm is effectively a compressed version of that output.
Then the spoon has another insight: "Well then, instead of storing all that simulation data, which we can't afford, why not compress the simulation data? In fact, why not just keep the code we used to compute you eating ice cream?" You agree vehemently to this plan, and in an instant, you and the room is wiped from existence.
You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation. Actually, it wasn't even a simulation, since we didn't have enough money to compute everything again. We didn't even have enough money to load everything into RAM again, or even enough money to keep the data on the hard-drive, so we just kept the code that generated you."
You enjoyed the ice cream so much, you would like some more. So you say to the spoon "Please make sure that code is well-backed up." But unfortunately, this can't be done, because a totalitarian government has just seized the computer containing the code and will probably destroy it. In fact, the spoon kindly informs you that you have another two minutes to live.
All you know is that you want another bowl of ice cream, so the spoon asks you a clever question. "We all know that force is mass times acceleration, but suppose that everyone forgot the fact. Wouldn't force still be mass times acceleration?" You think this is quite reasonable of course, you are a reasonable person, and you just want some ice cream, and you think that yes, force does equal mass times acceleration whether anyone knows physics or not.
Then the spoon has another insight: "Well, given that the algorithms your simulation ran on are just mathematical and physical laws, I guess it doesn't really matter whether they're stored somewhere, or whether anyone ever wrote them down, or whether anyone even knows they exist at all. No matter what happens, you'll will be eating ice cream for all of eternity in this mathematical construct" You agree vehemently, and Big Brother deletes the simulation code an instant later.
You sit down at the table in a plain, white room with no doors or windows. On top of the table sits a bowl, in which there is a generous serving of ice cream, along with a spoon, for your convenience. Since there is nothing else to do, you start eating. Although you cannot place the flavor, it is the best ice cream you have ever tasted. Before you know it, the bowl is empty, and you are licking the spoon.
When you finally put down the spoon, it grows two eyes and a mouth and says to you, "Oh, by the way, that was just a simulation. Actually, it wasn't even a simulation, everything here is just a hypothetical mathematical construct that will probably survive the destruction of the universe. Congratulations."
And with that, it conjures up another bowl of ice cream.
Topic: existential ice cream and you (Read 1307 times)
