this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 218 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Well, have you considered that perhaps that’s the point?

In the beginning was the Creation of the Universe. This has made a lot of people angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is the second post in a row where I see Douglas Adams referenced.

[–] SculptusPoe@lemmy.world 48 points 2 weeks ago

Time was when you would be in a forum and think "This is the second post in a row where nobody referenced Douglas Adams."

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[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 87 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Maybe the frame rate is slowing down already. We'd never know.

[–] SculptusPoe@lemmy.world 32 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

We wouldn't even know if He had to turn it off and back on again a couple times.

[–] xylol@leminal.space 13 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

That happens nightly unless a user is still running which causes the next day to run all slow and laggy

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[–] Kaiserschmarrn@feddit.org 15 points 2 weeks ago

I can already feel the GPU getting warmer and warmer...

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 67 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

The simulation will simply take longer to get to the next state. We wouldn't be able to tell.

Heck, we might have crashed the simulation multiple times already with crazy experiments and they had to load a backup.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

We've been crashing this shit since 2012 and the results have been... interesting so far.

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[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 51 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Don't worry, light pollution from cities cancels it out. The simulation used to need to render a detailed night sky for pretty much everyone on the planet. Now most people just get a dull greyish black.

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[–] makyo@lemmy.world 38 points 2 weeks ago

Nah we’re fine, it doesn’t use processing power until we observe it. Maybe if we set up a bunch of observation posts and intentionally tried to DDOS reality, but I’m sure it has enough resources for our puny science.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

FOV: 0.1

Render Distance: 13b light years

CPU: 😵‍💫

[–] LeFrog@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Heat sink of the NVIDIA graphics card: And I took that personally

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[–] iamdefinitelyoverthirteen@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It's all good, the simulation has asset culling and LOD settings.

[–] match@pawb.social 24 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You know that friend of yours who never did anything after high school and then completely disappeared? That's right. Asset culling.

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[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, planck length & planck time are probably the resolution our simulation runs at. And collapsing superposition? Obviously just the "LoD" system only rendering what's relevant to the users/creators and wasting no resources on unused assets.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That suggests we can change the superposition collapse distance by changing how much were observing. By measuring the proportion of change as we turn on or off large-scale observation systems, we can calculate how much of the universe is being loaded by other users. We can finally start solving the drake equation!

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[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Yeah because rendering a blurry image of a star is so difficult compared to simulating physics for billions of beings and plants down to the atom.

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[–] cdf12345@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I imagine it’s like the original Doom engine, it’s only rendered by ray tracing and showing what you (or anyone) can see.

[–] exocortex@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

That's why there's quant mechanics. The simulation can always invent invent thinga on the fly to reduce computational load. It's like lazy execution when soneone's looking i.e. me - let's not kid ourselves: the simulation is only simulating my surroundings - of which all af you are part of. Yadda yadda, there's only me.

On another note: the simulation can also always rewritebparts of my brain and retroactively change stuff in my memory making me believe different things. So i could also be reprogrammed to believe I saw this or that insteas of

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Like before the last reboot 13,8 billon years ago

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[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 weeks ago

DoS on the universe

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 19 points 2 weeks ago

Lol it would be the simulators fault for trying to run the universe on a potato computer!

Just download more ram Mr Simulator!

[–] Juice@midwest.social 18 points 2 weeks ago

We love neo-geocentrism

[–] BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

[to be read in a snobby British accent]

Dear Gentle or Ladyman

It appears that you might have some trouble understanding the fundamental concepts of "the universe". See, in order for us to, let’s say, "know“ what is out there, we first have to observe it. Or rather, explain why a certain thing is the way it is.

You see, we already are affected by the working is these said far away galaxies and celestial bodies. Which means that this is like a slime farm in the spawn chunks. While we do not see it, the farm continuously runs.

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[–] Damaskox@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I'm imagining a big ERROR - pop-up appearing in the sky all of the sudden.

The idea amuses me!

[–] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago

I remember playing starfield and a planet preview got corrupted, so the planet was full of "you shouldn't be seeing this" textures

Something like this

https://i.redd.it/bt47ag7dmkmb1.png

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[–] Yeller_king@reddthat.com 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'd imagine they save the state intermittently and can boot it back up if needed. Depends on how valuable this sim is I guess.

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 15 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

It's a race between GrayStillPlays and Let'sGameItOut to see who can break the game first, and I'm here for it.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm waiting for TheSpiffingBrit to finally find an exploit for infinite entropy.

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

At least it's a testable hypothesis. That's way farther than most pseudoscience does.

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago

Nice story by Isaak Asimov - The Last Question

https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-last-question/

(PDF and Audio)

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

How many billions of people have we got? It seems like the universe is very good at scaling.

And even if it crashes, why would that mean it disappears? If your computer crashes, does it typically stop working forever, or can you fix it?

For all we know, maybe it already crashes a lot and there is just no way for us to know about it.

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[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

At some point you just gotta realise you won't support 2+k consumer graphics & simply let it render at less details.

Who is gonna know? Yes, boobs have always been triangles.

[–] LemmyBeMyself@lemmybefree.net 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They have a trick: every time you sleep, they reboot to avoid memory leaks.

It also allows them to optimize in the background.

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[–] danekrae@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago

We do need a reboot...

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There is something inherent about spending too much time with computers that warps people's brains into compulsively perceiving everything around them in digital logic.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Many of the allegories from the likes of Descartes and Aristotle use the concept of the mind being manipulated by demons - a common trope of their times - but the concepts being explored were the same as people talking about being a character in a book, or a brain in a jar, or a computer simulation; they're just using the prevailing ideas of their time to communicate ideas to their contemporaries.

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[–] Krono@lemmy.today 12 points 2 weeks ago

I like how she tags Neil DeGrasse Tyson as if the funny haha tv scientist podcast man is out there writing budget proposals for CERN or Fermilab

[–] anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

If that were true, and it was just a simple large telescope using lenses, would anything have to actually be rendered or would simple 2D images displayed in the telescope results suffice? Also assumes no pre-rendering.

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[–] jack@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Do universal simulationists believe in an anthropocentric simulation? They really gotta go all the way to reinventing a personal god who cultivates all of creation around human experience while remaining invisible and omniscient, but this time it's a robot they're inside of.

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[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago

I gotta hand it to them, as far as wildly outlandish conspiracy theories go this is entirely internally consistent

[–] justastranger@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The simulation is intentionally choosing the most convoluted and incomprehensible content possible in order to try and stop us.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

You joke, but the James Webb DLC is tripping everyone up.

isn't there a hard limit on what even a perfect telescope (photon receptor of some kind) can see, based on the speed of light? it's fuckin huge like 900 billion light years or something, but the universe is probably bigger than we could ever actually measure.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I would fucking love to see the walls around me come crashing down with a matrix effect.

It'd be a sigh of relief. A deep one.

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[–] pxlkttn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 weeks ago

good! we need to turn it off and then on again.

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago

I'm here for it. Let's speed run the next cosmic reboot.

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