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DanielLC comments on Alpha Mail - Less Wrong
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If I were trying to communicate with a simulation, I'd be more overt. I suppose that it's possible that things like light are so much more complicated than we imagine that whoever's running the simulation wouldn't be able to just make light, but it seems unlikely. Just set up some kind of broad-spectrum broadcast all over the universe that shows some simple math puzzle, and look for a place that solves it.
You might want to make the signal hard to find. If it's your test for intelligence, the harder it is to find the alpha mail and construct a response, the higher the level of intelligence it would select for.
Maybe no puzzles are seen from our perspective simply because we aren't on the order of magnitude of the level of intelligence that any who have the power to simulate a universe like ours would be looking for.
This is what I was thinking also. Not only would it be important to be selective but also attempt to minimize disruption as much as possible. Shining a light through a universe might make some life forms uncomfortable.
Depends on the simulation, IMHO. If we (or our simulators) were to simulate the universe using space/time coordinates (i.e. "grid" and "ticks"), then I can imagine a plausible way of communication by creating unphysical objects - e.g. perfectly rigid letters with zero gravitational but infinite inertial mass. Though they might get the scale wrong - there could be a whole encyclopedia embedded inside a pebble somewhere in Earth's crust, or the Boötes void is a dot over an i.
If, however, the simulation is neither time nor space based - e.g. the universe appears inside Fourier transform of some simulation parameters, then not only intelligent agents, but even large scale activities inside the simulation might go unnoticed by the simulators. Similarly signals being sent into the simulation could remain unnoticed by the inhabitants.