The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover

Eliezer Yudkowsky

So I'd intended this story as a bit of utterly deranged fun, but it got out of control and ended up as a deep philosophical exploration, and now those of you who care will have to wade through the insanity. I'm sorry. I just can't seem to help myself.

I know that writing crossover fanfiction is considered one of the lower levels to which an author can sink. Alas, I've always been a sucker for audacity, and I am the sort of person who couldn't resist trying to top the entire... but never mind, you can see for yourself.

Click on to read my latest story and first fanfiction, a Vernor Vinge x Greg Egan crackfic.

Yes, that identified him pretty unambiguously as Mr. Rogers... I was trying to figure out the significance of the bloodstained sweater, if he was thus the "Ultimate Battle" version. :)

Oh, incidentally... It should actually be possible to set up the base level computer to run all the programs for equal amounts of time (at least at the base level. Taking into account programs containing other programs is a whole other issue):

Program 1: 1 step

Program 2: 2 steps

Program 1: 1 step

Program 2: 1 step

Program 3: 3 steps

Program 1: 1 step...

...

Program 4: 4 steps

... etc.

I'm not convinced that when you look at the whole set of minds doing dovetailing simulations and put probability distributions on how far they go, your algorithm and Eliezer's give different results. Actually calculating it out looks a bit tough; my intuition is based on the fact that a simulator doing N computations gives program n of the order of Sqrt(N) computations using either algorithm, provided that n << N.

1Peter_de_Blanc17y

Awesome. I'd upvote your post twice if I could.

11Eliezer Yudkowsky17y

Interesting; I confess I hadn't thought of that at all! Now I wonder if using this rule along with the underlying anthropic premise, would cause subjective experience to dissolve into chaos, or make no discernable difference (i.e. reality still ends up looking just as ordered for the most part), or if it argues against the underlying anthropic premise by showing how easy it is to make probabilities refuse to converge to a timeless limit. (And yes, it's that Rogers - you can tell because he's the closest thing the group has to a leader. One wonders how the blood got on his sweater. Surely it's not the blood of an enemy, as the original song implies. Perhaps it's the blood of Big Bird, who died fighting for Amber, or something along those lines.)

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