You could still go mining — computer games already simulate detailed physics for things you are near and less detailed for further away things. So when you tunnel through the rocks, the detail is filled in. They just do not bother simulating the sound of trees falling in forests where there are no people around..

Likewise, the effects of billions of tons of rock which is currently inside the Earth can be approximated, and then you’ve ended up with billions of spare tons of computronium and still have the same human habitat..

And that’s ignoring the fact that a simulated Earth probably wouldn’t actually require all the features that the real Earth comes with. To pick a relevant recent example, we could omit the earthquake generating engine provided by the magma without anyone missing it very much…

There is another way in which you can compress the simulation, and again it’s one we already use.

We can do car crash simulations which obtain good results. The results may not be exactly the same as those obtained from crashing real cars, but then neither are the results of two car crashes — we just consider the “real” world to be the “correct” answer. Inside a simulation, “good enough” becomes “correct” — in the case of crash simulations we consider the result to be real enough to be able to design physical artifacts based on the data gathered from virtual ones

Crucially, the “world” computes its result in a tenth of second using several tons of metal. The “simulation” computes its result in (maybe) hours using a few grams of silicon.. We may not care if the simulation of the Earth runs at half speed on half the mass of the Earth. We’ll be inside it and won’t notice and the outside universe does not seem short on available time…

I’m not saying the idea of building a duplicate Earth in a computronium core is particularly sane, I’m just disputing your contention that it necessarily requires at least as much computronium mass as the Earth itself.

Anyway WHO knows the natural patterns and the whole genom and every process and physical law of the universe to recreate it. We need brain transfer or nanomachines and such… screw virtual world… We will stay here, evolve, improve, and explore.

Ya know, Rudy, if you keep this up you could become a smart guy. You could even write books!

enjoy!
Jeffrey Martin

I read this wonderful essay a while ago on consciouness being the eleventh dimension in String theory, which argues that what we call consciousness is a pervasive quality present in all ‘matter’.

What makes us humans so ’special’ is that we are gaining more and more access to this pervasive consciousness over time through the establishment of meaningful connections within the pervasive consciousness.

Therefore creating computronium is nothing more then infusing what we humans have come to appreciate as important: meaningful interconnection, back into the fabric of the universe and in doing so we can immerse ourselves into the true nature of reality; because we all know this whole 3+1D reality thing we’re experiencing is just one random configuration of all possible realities right?

That’s why I would like to leave you all with a timeless quote from Bill Hicks:

‘Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

…Here’s Tom with the weather!’

With Rudy Rucker’s permission I’d like to make that a T-shirt slogan.

I’ve worked in a computer game company for many years. And one thing strikes me about computers: The more I get to know them, the less they impress me.
And the promises of coders impress me even less: how many times now have we been promised Artificial Intelligence?

If reality was a program, it would have crashed a long time ago.

The idea of virtual reality is a ‘metascape’ of human imagination, the processing power to create a fully immersive world is well within grasp. When you have to power to morph and sculpt your entire virtual existence to your heart’s content, completely bypassing the physical limits that these very fundamental interactions impose, nobody will care that the nanoscale behavior of virtual matter is not quite ‘perfect’.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting completely disassociating with the physical world, but if you believe that people would rather go skiing on a real mountain because it has real atoms, I think you’re greatly exaggerating the number of people that really give a damn.

G