Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Course, another question is, "Is it truly possible to create such a 
> construct, in which the actors in the construct can *never* be aware of 
> the nature of the construct?" I.e., no flaws can be detected, things 
> that happen in ways they shouldn't, or which otherwise implies that the 
> system was "designed". 

Yes, it's trivial. If the system is deterministic, you run it until one of 
the simulees notices something wrong. Then you back it up, fix it, and let 
it go on again.

I'd say nowadays we're finding all kinds of things that may very well be 
flaws we're detecting: Bell's inequality, Plank length, dark energy, 
incompatibility of GR with QM, inability to separate out an individual 
quark, etc etc etc.

I thought one of the more interesting ideas was in one of Wolfram's books. 
If we're simulated, there's no reason to believe the universe updates all at 
once. There's no reason why each atom can't be moving one step of simulation 
(one plank length?) at a time, once for each particle in the universe, one 
at a time. You wouldn't notice, because your brain isn't getting updated 
while every other atom is getting moved into position.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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