Stanislav_Datskovskiy comments on Universal Fire - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 April 2007 09:15PM

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Comment author: Stanislav_Datskovskiy 13 December 2007 01:39:08AM 5 points [-]

This assumes that the laws governing the magical universe must be parsimonious, like those of our own. There is no reason why this has to be the case, though. Picture writing a simulation of such a place. Include as many absurd special cases as you want. You could model it on a high level - from the point of view of conscious agents only, and delve into particle interactions only when there is no other choice (say, the inhabitants learn to build particle accelerators.) Even in the latter case, you could stop the sim-creatures from delving too deeply via "slow zone" effects: if they try to build anything complex enough to stress your simulation's resources or reveal embarrassing inconsistencies, it will simply fail to work.