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RolfAndreassen comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong
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-- Fine Structure
Shouldn't that be "omniscient"?
Nope. Firstly, code is not data. Secondly, in the physics of the fic, access to the source code enables you to install informational machinery in your brain, which can modify the universe in essentially arbitrary ways, because the universe is asserted to consist of a long series of statements like "there is a proton at location (x, y, z)" and so on.
A complete listing of the code is different from ability to change it, let alone feed the modified code back into the active interpreter (I'm going to guess that it's not a compiled language in this case). I suppose Ching also had this ability?
He did, yes, as I outlined in the parent of your post. Perhaps the quote needed a bit more context, but it's hard to find a pithy explanation of the background information.
That aside, I suggest that a full listing of the source code of the universe you're running in is the maximum potence you're likely to get, no matter which specific hacks it allows.
How the frell did I miss that?
Seriously. WTF.
Out of fic, though, I doubt that knowing the laws of the universe immediately leads to 'maximum potence'. There are hard engineering problems.