{"id":494,"date":"2008-03-05T14:45:53","date_gmt":"2008-03-05T22:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/05\/limits-to-vr-2-answers-to-comments\/"},"modified":"2021-11-09T07:25:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T15:25:18","slug":"limits-to-vr-2-answers-to-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/05\/limits-to-vr-2-answers-to-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Fundamental Limits to Virtual Reality, Part 2: Answers to Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow! Thanks, all, for the responses to my blog post, \u201cFundamental Limits to Virtual Reality<\/a>\u201d\u009d, on the subject of RR (real reality) vs. VR (virtual reality).<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s the most comments <\/a>I\u2019ve ever gotten on a single post, and they\u2019re still trickling in. It\u2019s nice to know that there I do have readers out there in RR, even if you don\u2019t always agree with me. And it helped that BoingBoing <\/a>mentioned my post.<\/p>\n

I’m not exactly “against the singularity.” It’s rather that I’m against one particular postsingular notion, that is, the idea of grinding up Earth to make a VR Vearth. If I have any beef with the singularity it’s simply with how rapidly the public discussion of it has narrowed down to a very few ideas that are already cliches. And that’s what I’m trying to shake free from in my Postsingular <\/a>series. Being a Hegelian, I like to leapfrog discussions, moving to the next idea down the line.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll post some more pictures from the Pinedale, Wyoming, environs today, along with some back-atchas. I wrote this up somewhat hastily, so I apologize to those I left out, and to those whom I\u2019ve misquoted or misinterpreted.<\/p>\n

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Jeff Saltzman : \u201cStill, virtual realities are very real, they just have different qualities from RR\u201d\u201c isn\u2019t a 3D multiplayer game a virtual reality? … I think the only content with staying power will be captured reality\u201d\u201c people you know, telepresence at sporting events or concerts or plays, the ability to have a simulated window that looks out on a real<\/em>_ vista.\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: In terms of actual applications, I think \u201cmixed reality\u201d\u009d software is going to be very big. Things like overlays on actual scenes and live video blogs. I wrote about these \u201cvlogs\u201d\u009d in Mathematicians in Love<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nJeff Taylor: \u201cIn the virtual worlds that we now inhabit in games, the 3d environment is rendered only when it needs to be … with a bit of imagination isn\u2019t it possible to make a long and dubious leap to theorizing that the universe is tracking what is being observed? And once that theory has been thrown out there, couldn\u2019t a system that tracks observation also be rendering reality in a finite bubble around all \u201d\u02dcobserved\u2019 particles?\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: The solipsistic version is that the narrator is the only real character and everything is simply being brought into view as he or she (but usually its a he) looks around. Fiction dramatizes our own psychodramas. Solipsism is an immature worldview, not the view of someone who\u2019s been around the block, loved people, fought enemies. But you\u2019re suggesting something different, that maybe only certain points in the universe are conscious and those are the zones being decohered. My current thinking is that consciousness is universal, so that everything is being filled in.<\/p>\n

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\nabend : \u201cIf you can simulate a person on a computer sufficiently well that they don\u2019t notice the difference, then you can do things like send copies of them to other planets, keep backups in case of damage, optimize their thinking to eliminate cognitive biases, eliminate the need for sleep, etc.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

ChristopherMoody:\u201cThe only difference between me in a biological substrate and me in a utility fog is that the former is limited in its capabilities and extraordinarily fragile whereas the latter is infinitely mutable and near immortal. This is a life-affirming notion not a life-hating one. I love all of the zany, unpredictable complexity of life more than anything which is why I don\u2019t ever want it to end. Cobb Anderson seemed to understand that soul=software as well as the desirability of continuing to run that software indefinitely. …Did I completely miss the mark in your writings?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

McBob: \u201cThe life-hating bit though\u2026personally, if my mind could stay intact, I\u2019d like to see the stars. What\u2019s so magical about your body that you\u2019d lose your joy in life by changing it? The techie dream here is simple – I am me, no matter what body or form I have.\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: These responses make the point that, given that our bodies do seem doomed to decay, might it not be wise to seek out digital immortality? I\u2019m all for immortality\u2014at least on my good days\u2014but there\u2019s no particular reason to think we\u2019ll find it in digital form. My sense is that the digital age is going to be over in another couple of hundred years. We\u2019ll be back to analog matter biocomputations. Rather than going all around Robin Hood\u2019s barn to put yourself into a buzzing beige box, you\u2019ll just grow yourself a new meat body.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still somewhat comfortable in saying that soul = software, but I now realize that the software goes down much deeper than I\u2019d realized before. You need to carry over the machine code and the ROM code and the laws of physics… And, again, I think that modeling all this digitally is a dead end.<\/p>\n

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Steve H: \u201cErasing this world to make another one would be nuts. Making another one just like it would be cool, though. Turn Jupiter into computronium, or Mercury, and make a really hardcore Second Life.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Rick York: \u201cIsn\u2019t the point of creating VR is to make it different? I love RR, but I want to bend the rules.\u201d\u009d <\/p>\n

Jeff: Where do you get the energy to turn conventional matter like silicon or iron into raw, unprogrammed computronium?\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: Certainly if you want to crunch up a junker world like Neptune (but what do the Neptune crystal creatures think of that?) and make a Vearth, that is less objectionable. And making a world quite different from Earth seems interesting, that\u2019s what we do when we write novels, too.<\/p>\n

I take objection to Stross\u2019s notion of smashing things up to make computronium. Remember, guys, \u201d\u02dccomputronium\u2019 is just a word that Charlie made up<\/em>. Matter doesn\u2019t need to be optimized for computation. It\u2019s just that we don\u2019t yet have the I\/O, the input output.<\/p>\n

[Correction form a late-breaking comment by Andrew Doull: “Computronium<\/a>” predates Stross.]<\/p>\n

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paradoctor: \u201cMy own fantasy isn\u2019t Vearth but Earth 2.0. Keep nature, just add to it. For instance, how about giving every cell on Earth a molecule-sized computer to use? The difference between Vearth and Earth 2.0 is that on Vearth the nanocomputers own the cells, and on Earth 2.0 the cells own the nanocomputers.\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: This is exactly the idea that underlies my ending to Postsingular <\/a><\/em>and the whole underlayment of my novel Hylozoic, which I\u2019m just finishing.<\/p>\n

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someguy: \u201cMaybe the best explanation for plank time \/ length and all the other quantum weirdness is that we are in a simulated universe and we are viewing the computational limits of that simulation.\u201d\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rudy: My friend John Walker has been talking about this, too. It\u2019s a great SF concept. This said, I don\u2019t see our universe as a simulation inside something else. It\u2019s a simulation that\u2019s simulating itself. It\u2019s the hardware and the software.<\/p>\n

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Jason Blum: \u201cVR will very soon fly straight past rR (with a small r.) It doesn\u2019t need to match nature – it need only match your perception of nature, which ain\u2019t much.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

I dunno: \u201cAll you have to do is fool the entities in the Vearth … That said, the whole concept is silly to me. I don\u2019t get why anyone would want to.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

mahalis: \u201cI think it\u2019s reasonable to say that …it would be possible to set up a virtual space that was real enough.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cThere are huuuuuuuuuge amounts of detail we can\u2019t perceive that doesn\u2019t need to be rendered, which is computational power which can be used for other things. Like laserdragons.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Vidar Hokstad: \u201cWe can\u2019t predict the arrangement of individual atoms in a large object. Why would a simulation even try? If someone do point an electron microscope at an object in the simulated world, the simulator can pick any random arrangement and we wouldn\u2019t know better.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Sam Walker: \u201cQuantum computing, could duplicate pretty much the whole universe in something like 10^300 fully entangled qubits.\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Rudy: My whole point is to wake people up to the fact that the physical, daily world is inconceivably rich. It\u2019s something that we forget if we look at screens all the time. And I think it\u2019s safe to say that the rulers and merchants in our society are interested in blurring this distinction. If you\u2019re outside looking at a cloud, you\u2019re not spending money and you\u2019re not thinking about what the politicians are up to.<\/p>\n

And if you really think that there is some shortcut desktop way of simulating reality in full, I\u2019m sorry, but you\u2019re just factually wrong. Not that 10^300 fully entangled qubits is a desktop system! That’s, like, the universe. One remark re. quantum stuff— it may very well be that quantum mechanics is just a high-level approximation, and matter is in fact infinitely, or even transfinitely, divisible.<\/p>\n

The notion of leaving the details up to randomness is an interesting move. But maybe they aren\u2019t random. Wolfram sometimes claims the whole kaboodle comes out of some, like, ten-bit rule that\u2019s run for a really large <\/em>number of cycles. Here\u2019s the number of cycles that\u2019s the thing that won\u2019t fit on your desk.<\/p>\n

When people talk about a substitute being \u201cjust as good,\u201d\u009d I think of the Who song.<\/p>\n