In a stroke of fractal insight, the discovery was made that the universe was infinite in all directions. This went for all the directions of three-dimensional space (those we are all familiar with), but it also goes for size. If you zoom in on something with sufficient intensity, you loop around to the biggest possible scale, where it becomes possible to zoom in ever further. Infinity in this case is not a matter of space, but one of vectors. Any given line of zoom – in or out – could go on forever, until eventually it ran into (and past) itself. The limiting factor seemed to be the average life span of the observers
This naturally had implications for space travel. As any consciousness with the ability to utilize the zoom function could, with moderate effort, view any thing at any scale, going places became an exercise in decadence. Sight-seeing could be done anywhere, without moving. In terms of space mining, robots were far better at fetching minerals than humans ever were, once located. Omniscience, it turned out, was fatal to space travel
In this study, we make the methodological assumption that the universe exists within a computer simulation. This simulation would, by necessity, be all-encompassing and able to account for every possible state our universe has ever been in or could ever be in. By definition, there would be nothing available to our sensory organs that could exist outside this simulation. Therefore, there would be no direct way to demonstrate conclusively that the simulation is in fact a simulation; the simulation would self-correct to provide consistent sense data should any error occur. However, it is our belief that we can approach the simulation indirectly, and use statistical analysis to tease out the truth of the matter. If we live in a simulation, there ought to be limits to how complex the situation can become before things start to glitch out. Thus, by introducing a great number of easily calculable processes running in parallel, we hope to discern at least the computational power of the simulation. If we exist in a real universe, everything should proceed smoothly. A simulation, however, would exhibit slowdowns, glitches or other aberrant behavior (e.g. things going out of bounds) after a certain point
We operationalize this methodological assumption by firing an ever increasing number of bouncy balls into an ever larger number of rooms, in the hopes of eventually running into the upper bounds of the computing power of this place we call home
It had been a long day of adventuring. A hostage situation in a goblin camp (resolved peacefully, thank the yods), before a long trek to the mine entrance. There, it had taken long, arduous hours to figure out how the ancient mechanical puzzle lock were to be opened, and they had almost given up hope before one of the younger party members accidentally poked the correct lever. Inside the mines, the party had tried and failed to parley with the dwarven authorities, which necessitated the slightly less than lawful act of jailbreaking. Once outside the grand city, a fierce battle with a pack of phase spiders had pushed everyone to the limits of their respective endurances, and thus camp had been made. At camp, the party members discussed plans to evade the search parties that were sure to follow them when the cause of the system-wide prison break was eventually discovered. These deliberations continued long into the depths of night
Early the next morning, the party awoke well rested and ready to face a new day of adventuring and spelunking
More longer friend see that sky? 