[extropy-chat] the structure of randomness

[Russell Wallace]

On 12/31/05, Jeff Medina <analyticphilosophy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/30/05, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> > of physics. Detection of ground-level universe simulation based on a
> slight
> > imperfection such as anisotropy, would require that the computer has
> just
> > barely enough power for the job.
>
> It could also simply be the way the simulation was coded, not in any
> way indicating a limitation on how much power the computer running the
> sim had available to it. So, no, that's not required.


Why would it be coded to produce almost but not quite perfect results, if
the computing power for perfect results were available? (One could fall back
on "we don't know anything about the entity that wrote the code", but such
an agnostic position is hard to reconcile with any conclusion other than "we
don't know whether we're in a simulation" - which is indeed the conclusion I
hold.)

> The amount of power required is on the
> > order of the exponent of the number of particles in the visible
> universe,
> > something like 10^10^89 (including cosmic background photons and
> neutrinos);
> > that's a small target to hit in the range 0 to infinity
> > [...] I'll suggest it seems a little unlikely that the amount available
> would be
> > just that much.
>
> No matter what the actual number of particles or power required, it
> would be EXACTLY as "small" a target. Pulling "13" out of a bag filled
> with all the positive integers is precisely as unlikely as pulling
> "10^10^89".


But "much less than 10^10^89" and "much more than 10^10^89" are much bigger
targets than "just about exactly 10^10^89", and my argument requires only
those three categories.

- Russell
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