If we all exist in a simulation, what will happen once we start running out of RAM?
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?
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.
Have you ever noticed when you look into a telescope that it takes a little bit to position yourself right to see what you’re looking at? And it seems like you used to be able to do it a lot faster? That’s not age, that’s actually lag time added to cover decompressing the data.
That would only be a problem if you need dynamically allocated memory. It could be a statically allocated simulation where every atom is accounted for.
The assumption that it isn’t designed around memory constraints isn’t reasonable.
We have limits on speed so you can’t go too fast leading to pop in.
As you speed up the slower things move so there needs to be less processing in spite of more stuff (kind of like a frame rate drop but with a fixed number of frames produced).
As you get closer to more dense collections of stuff the same thing happens.
And even at the lowest levels, the conversion from a generative function to discrete units to track stateful interactions discards the discrete units if the permanent information about the interaction was erased, indicative of low level optimizations.
The scale is unbelievable, but it’s very memory considerate.
For a simulation as complex and powerful as the universe. we would be running in a Real-Time OS. So applications couldn’t even run if the resources weren’t sufficient.
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.
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