this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Assuming our simulation is not designed to auto-scale (and our Admins don’t know how to download more RAM), what kind of side effects could we see in the world if the underlying system hosting our simulation began running out of resources?

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[–] MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Ever walk into a room and forget why you went in there? That's garbage collection

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago

Why do you think our admins wouldn't use autoscale, when they've obviously built it into the simulation?

[–] Seraph@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Human music. Huh. I like it!

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm more concerned with what happens when the hardware invariably fails...

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[–] son_named_bort@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

We download more RAM.

[–] esc27@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

This is why the Hubble telescope had mirror problems and James Webb was so delayed. The admins had to sneak delays into the simulation while they upgraded the hardware to render more of the universe.

[–] lanolinoil@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You get stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner and the same movie/media coming out over and over again

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[–] cmat273@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

The universe starts swapping

[–] picandocodigo@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

You should check out the short story "Sleepover" by Alastair Reynolds.

[–] espentan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Who knows.. maybe we'll experience pointless wars and massive inequality.. selfish douchebags who only care about bolstering their ego might gain power.. heck, maybe even the climate will slowly start changing for the worse.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 1 points 10 months ago

So... the ultra-rich are just poorly programmed process with memory leaks. And there's no runaway process killer to protect the system.

God is just a hack scripter; it makes sense.

[–] MrJameGumb@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

There would either be some kind of mass extinction event or something that would be considered "supernatural" would occur to maintain the status quo

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

The server admins run a kill -9 on a few processes. Inside the sim, this looks a lot like the Chicxulub impact.

[–] elbowgrease@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

adjacent answer, but resource requirements are lower than might be expected since the simulation only needs to capture elements observed by a conscious entity. the vast majority of the known universe has not been observed in any detail that requires significant memory or processing resources. this same technique is employed by computer game designers so that only scenery and elements within view of a player are fully rendered.

[–] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Starts with erectile dysfunction and ends with the little blue pill...

[–] rem26_art@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

once we run out of ram then the universe starts running on Skyrim physics

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Given the vastness of space and time, the. Umber of people who die and have yet to learn anything (babies), I’d imagine we’re a system with 32gb of RAM, only consuming a few hundred megabytes.

Besides, I’d imagine that any intelligence capable of constructing and running such a complex simulation would have the ability to scale their system as needed. Using our existing technology, they probably use hot swappable components so that if there is a hardware failure or the need to “download more ram” 🤣 then they can just remove and insert new components on the fly and we’d be none the wiser.

Of course, we being part of the simulation, I’d also wager that unless the creators of said simulation are truly evil and sadistic, we’ll never know because it’s just not part of the programming. And if not we’re, we’d probably already have figured it out by now (beyond guessing and thought experiments). But rest assured, it is fun to think about, in a creepy and existential way.

If we are a simulation, what is the end goal of our creators? Could we be the roadmap for creating anew world in their real life? Maybe they are studying their own history and trying to figure out how their race came into being and evolved over time. Or maybe we are part of a crude video game keeping little Suzie occupied until dinner time. Better yet, maybe Susan is learning about simulations at university and we are part of her post-doctoral thesis.

[–] primalmotion@lemmy.antisocial.ly 2 points 10 months ago

The number of people is 1. It's me. You guys are all NPCs

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[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Probably a mass removal of the poor - oh wait that's already happening.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago
[–] 31415926535@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Well, if we're in a simulation, then any assumptions we have about definitions, limitations, they may not apply. So, we think storage needs ram, but outside our restricted simulation, it could be far different.

Like, I frequently ponder how did something come from nothing. But I know I'm making assumptions when I ask that question. It may not be linear, may not be either or, there's something crucial im not seeing.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

This is why older people think slower and lose memories or cognitive functions as side effects. They are depriorizized and moved from ram to pagefiles/swap disk.

If you're unfamiliar, the OS will move process memory onto disk when RAM runs out.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Teleportation based on old location data being deleted

[–] SparkyTemper@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago

I am the only person who lives in the simulaton. You all are computer generated.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

We are the RAM

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