Category Archives: Design

Excess Mortality, COVID and Simulation Limits

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If we do live in a simulation, then presumably it is one of many, and therefore constraints will be involved.

There will be physical constraints:

  • Time – while our time could be sped up versus the time of those who run this, there will be limits to how much time can be sped up, and limits on how long the show-runners will want to wait and see the results
  • Size – even in a future where a realistic simulation is achievable, there will be limits on processing power and data storage

And there will be constraints around the purpose:

  • Time – when does the simulation start and finish in the years of the simulation? There must be an end-goal, and it there must be finite limits to how long it will run for
  • Staying on Target – if the simulation goes in an unintended direction, it will need to be adjusted or ended

Which got me thinking about to angles that relate to and might explain what we see happening in our world.

Wars are a feature of modern human civilisations, and we see them as sad, strange, but inevitable. Even when we progress in so many other ways, one mad-mad (Putin) upsets things with a war that only has negative outcomes for all except for one man and his dream of a legacy.

Wars have also been based on religious beliefs a lot, even when the sparring sides believe in the same god, but have differences of opinion around how to worship it/them.

So conceivably, when the world trends towards becoming too homogenous, in culture or belief, the show-runners interfere and create a war. Which suggests that they control our leaders. That might explain why many leaders are so ideologically nice until they actually get into power, and then their ideals fade away.

Pandemics or natural disasters, are often seen as acts of god. Perhaps they truly are? It is entirely possible that there is a limit to the number of players (humans) that our simulation can handle. So maybe we are reaching that hard limit and alongside lower birth rates, we have an engineered pandemic to reduce the global population.

Recently there is a puzzle as to why the excess mortality rates are substantially higher than those attributed to COVID. Quite likely they were simply undiagnosed, or were indirectly caused by the virus, adding to the woes of a body that was already sick, and killing them months after the illness.

Or, perhaps, our show-runners have turned up the mortality dial a bit. More people randomly getting cancer and heart disease, or it becoming more fatal than before.

They need to be careful because some of us in the game might notice that things are not adding up.

 

They Keep To Themselves

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I think a way to crack any existential puzzle is to have as many disparate inputs as possible, and absorb it all. I was just watching Stranger Things and simulation theory popped into my head. Meanwhile non-player characters cannot be found out…

It is hard to believe that every NPC is totally unique, like us real people. Inadequacy in the design process, efficiencies, or simply hubris could cause them to have shared traits or commonalities.

Which would have been fine 100 years ago, but today such similarities are more easily discoverable, if the data is available.

In anticipation of the technology – not hard, it turned up in many other simulations – they may have designed the NPCs to not be very social and sharing. Possibly they hide behind a cult like Scientology (or golfers, or cyclists), hiding in plain sight, or possibly they just don’t show up on the radar.

You know how the neighbours of a terrorist thought they kept to themselves, but otherwise seemed nice enough? Maybe all violent extremists are NPCs?

What if hundreds of NPCs loved eating octopus, read every James Bond fan-fiction and never tied their shoe-laces? If they shared all of these things in the socials, or even “private” online chats, that could be discoverable. Easiest just to program them to live a quiet, mostly hidden life.

So, any friends or acquaintances who “aren’t into social media” are worthy of suspicion.

But also, some NPCs may be placed here as a catalyst, like Shakespeare or Darwin. And they seek attention absolutely.

Real players are likely in-between. And would be the only people to read this.

A Simulation Without Aliens

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Many people figure that the universe is so vast and old, it makes no sense that aliens haven’t stopped by to say hello.

What if, in the real world, aliens did turn up, and everything changed in unimaginable ways good or bad?

What if the aliens created a simulation to see what would’ve become of humans if the aliens never interfered?

If they were advanced enough to make it to Earth, they are perhaps advanced enough to build such a simulation.

Start the simulation prior to alien contact, and simply remove aliens from the simulation. Let the solar system be navigable, but beyond that is just lights in the sky and not an actual whole universe in the simulation.

Which means “we” can never see proof of aliens out there, or on Earth, because in our simulation they don’t exist!

 

Diamonds & Salmon

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The nicest things from nature cost the most!

No, of course not, flowers are wonderful and grow for free. 

Some of the nicest things from nature cost the most!

Diamonds are rare. Muck is common. Do we like diamonds because they are rare, and that is the only reason? Would we like muck if it was rare, and pay $50K per kilo?

It is complicated!

My guess is that truffles and caviar are seen as delicious because they are expensive. And we know things like salt used to be very expensive.

But you don’t need many tweaks to gamify a world. Often just one thing that we are told to desire will suffice. In games like Fortnite it is outfits. My kids have had hundreds of outfits but desire the expensive ones they don’t have, that to my eye are no different. And makes the developers hundreds of millions.

Maybe diamonds are intended to be the goal in our simulation. Regardless of how things actually turn out, our world is different to other simulations by only three factors:

  • diamonds exist naturally
  • they are rare and hard to attain
  • we think they look amazing

Someone from another simulation will think they look like a pebble.

So maybe there is a single thing that this world has unique, to randomise the outcome. It doesn’t have to be what we end up desiring for all time, but most likely will be at least for part of our evolution and history.

It could be anything we have ever fought over, like salt and gold. Or it could be something that is really similar to cheaper versions, but we prefer the expensive one, like salmon.

 

Photogrammetry

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A wave of new games use a technique called photogrammetry to produce digital replicas of the real world. The technique can be used to recreate rooms, objects, streets and even whole cities.

…Photogrammetry works by gathering hundreds of photographs of an object or scene taken from multiple angles and combining them into a 3D model. Common points between photos are joined up to create a basic shell and this virtual object is then skinned with the overlapping images.

“You not only end up with the exact shape of the object but the exact look of the object as it appears in the photos,” says Andrew Poznanski of The Astronauts. The results are so accurate that photogrammetry has been used to improve aerial mapping and forensic analysis of crime scenes. [Source: New Scientist, 12 July 2014]

So, the idea here is that a virtual world can be recreated from still images taken in a real world.

Lots of images, so many that it would probably be obvious that the shots were being taken.

Clearly our current world could not be created using this technique – unless time-travellers brought back cameras and filmed the entirety of our planet without being noticed…

However, given that this technology is now being used, anyone born beyond today has the possibility of living in a world recreated from photographs.

Dark Matter & The Four Dimensions of the Universe: A Concept

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I’ve been thinking about dimensions, frameworks and basically how our universe might be constructed, be it real or artificial. What got me started was wondering about dark matter and dark energy. If we can’t see these, perhaps they are on a different dimension?

[I’m not qualified in any scientific field, so this is just a hypothesis at best]

Our universe exists of 3 dimensions – 2D, 3D and 4D. We perceive the 3D world, we can’t see the 4D world, and we should be able to see the 2D world except it might be too small or fragile to notice.

The 2ND Dimension

  • 1.665% of matter in our galaxy
  • The framework / lattice / layout
  • We should be able to see it, but perhaps it is too small?
  • Possibly every sub-atomic particle lives in its own circular 2D environment
  • Being 2D, it can’t see the 3D world, but perhaps it can sense it somehow?
  • The source or realm of quantum physics?

The 3RD Dimension

  • 4.6157% of matter in our galaxy
  • The user experience

The 4TH Dimension

  • 98.336% of matter in our galaxy
  • Dark Matter
  • Ether
  • God
  • Universal Mind
  • Too big to see, or perhaps we can’t see it because it has 4 dimensions?

ANALOGIES

Web Design: Layout / User Experience / Content
Religion: Hell / Earth / Heaven
Art: Canvas / Paint / Brush

Our world is like the Internet, where the Internet is also the observer/reader/visitor. Creator and viewer at the same time.

PERCENTAGES

I think the relative size of the dimensions should be square or cubes. So the numbers above are just a guess based on one of many patterns:

The amount of 3D matter is the cube of 2D matter. Adding 2D and 4D gets 100%.

I can’t explain why!

VISIBILITY

Watch the start of this video to see how a 2D being would see a 3D object intersect with their world.

Or read more here:
http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/4d/vis/04-xsec

Basically, in a 3D world we should be able to see all of a 2D world, but the 2D world can only see us if we pass through it. If we are an irregular shape, then we would appear to grow, shrink and change.I think the 2D folk would see the object as 1D?

So I presume it works the same if we move up one dimension. A 4D world can see us, be we can only see them if they pass through our world. And they would also appear to grow, shrink and change to us. I think us 3D folk would see the object as 2D?

In the video, at any time the man can remove is hand, seemingly vanishing from the 2D world. Presumably a 4D being could be seen and then vanish from our world. Could this be an explanation of ghosts and/or UFOs?

If they appeared 2D for us, then UFOs need to be high in the sky, or else we would notice their 2D nature. Perhaps ghosts can’t be seen side-on?

Quantum Physics and UFOs

Seemingly little particles can sense when they are being observed. Perhaps in quantum physics, 2D beings can’t see anything from our 3D world, but they can sense our presence?

Likewise, perhaps some people and animals can sense 4D beings that are nearby, even though we can’t see them?

Graham Hancock suggests that 2% of tribal people become shamans, and 2% of modern society witness UFOs. Perhaps both have the ability to sense 4D beings nearby, and imagine that they are actually seeing them? Could explain ghosts as well.

Further complicating this, a 4D being could deliberately be seen, visibly, by choosing to intersect with our world – just as the man in the video chooses to push his arm through Flatland.