[ExI] The System Level Issue

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 9:44 PM,  samantha <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> Keith Henson wrote:

>> We might even prefer to be in a simulation.
>>
>> Base reality may or may not permit time travel.  Whatever we are in
>> appears not to permit it.  A computer simulation that is check pointed
>> periodical (the state saved) could be restarted at a check point and
>> reentered at states corresponding to earlier times.
>>
>>
> Hmm?  Assuming continuous simulation you can't move your state to a past
> time that the underlying computing substrate ran in its past and is not
> running now.  Ditto for the future.

It would be a new instance, restarted from a checkpoint with an
additional character inserted in the simulation or an existing
character's memory changed to reflect the character later memory
state.  And there are limits.  You can't go further into either the
local past or future than the points at which checkpoints were made.

> But you might be able to teleport
> if you could persuade that which simulates or is in control of the
> simulation to move you to a different part of the currently running
> universe.

Obviously you pray to the spirit of the operating system.  Alternately
the sysop.

Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> That wouldn't be much fun though, since you won't be able to remember
> the future as remembering the future was not part of the simulation
> when run the first time.

As above, why not?  A restarted simulation with a character or
characters who had knowledge of a future version of the simulation is
not going to follow the same path as the original simulation branch.

Keith