Thanks! Yeah, I basically agree with you overall that Skunkworks could be undermined by our lack of understanding of real-physics dynamics. We certainly wouldn’t be able to create perfectly accurate simulations even if we threw all 35 OOMs at the problem. The question is whether the simulations would be accurate enough to be useful. My argument is that since we already have simulations which are accurate enough to be useful, adding +12 OOMs should lead to simulations which are even more useful. But useful enough to lead to crazy transformative stuff? Yeah, I don’t know.
For Crystal Nights, I’m more ‘optimistic.’ The simulation doesn’t have to be accurate at all really. It just has to be complex enough, in the right sort of ways. If you read the Crystal Nights short story I linked, it involves creating a virtual world and evolving creatures in it, but the creators don’t even try to make the physics accurate; they deliberately redesign the physics to be both (a) easier to compute and (b) more likely to lead to intelligent life evolving.
Your comment about Crystal Nights makes sense. I guess humans have evolved in a word based on one set of physical laws, but we’re general purpose intelligences that can do things like play videogames really well even when the game’s physics don’t match the real world’s.
Thanks! Yeah, I basically agree with you overall that Skunkworks could be undermined by our lack of understanding of real-physics dynamics. We certainly wouldn’t be able to create perfectly accurate simulations even if we threw all 35 OOMs at the problem. The question is whether the simulations would be accurate enough to be useful. My argument is that since we already have simulations which are accurate enough to be useful, adding +12 OOMs should lead to simulations which are even more useful. But useful enough to lead to crazy transformative stuff? Yeah, I don’t know.
For Crystal Nights, I’m more ‘optimistic.’ The simulation doesn’t have to be accurate at all really. It just has to be complex enough, in the right sort of ways. If you read the Crystal Nights short story I linked, it involves creating a virtual world and evolving creatures in it, but the creators don’t even try to make the physics accurate; they deliberately redesign the physics to be both (a) easier to compute and (b) more likely to lead to intelligent life evolving.
Your comment about Crystal Nights makes sense. I guess humans have evolved in a word based on one set of physical laws, but we’re general purpose intelligences that can do things like play videogames really well even when the game’s physics don’t match the real world’s.