From: hal@finney.org
Date: Thu May 04 2000 - 09:22:47 MDT
Billy writes:
> The implication is that the most efficient way to simulate anything is going
> to be a specialized simulation program running directly on physical
> hardware - IOW, something roughly analogous to existing simulation software.
> The data models used by the simulation may be extremely abstract and
> specialized, but they need to come as close as possible to being directly
> implemented in hardware. Adding anything else to the system (like a VR world
> running virtual hardware) would simply impose additional overhead and slow
> it down.
I may have misunderstood Robert's point, which Billy takes as that
running a computation within a VR would take less work than running the
same computation in the physical world. This is clearly impossible.
I thought he meant that you could create a VR where running the
computation would take less energy than running it in a physical world
approximately the same as the simulated one. This is theoretically
possible.
If so, and if you're going to live in the world where the computations
are done, it may be more advantageous to live in the VR world.
For example if you want to minimize energy costs in running your brain,
you have two choices: live in the real world with an artificial brain,
or live in a VR. The latter gives you more opportunities to save energy,
because for example you can reverse time for the entire world in order
to undo some reversible calculations.
Hal
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