Mar 30, 2023·edited Mar 30, 2023Liked by Mark Newheiser
Amazing story. The premise feels like studying for a surprise dream exam, which might not be far off.
I'm assuming you've read QNTM's related one: https://qntm.org/responsibility- this feels like a deeper dive I always wanted. If you extend it I'll definitely enjoy it.
Edit: I was very proud of myself for remember Avogadro's number for that blade of grass question, I'm debating whether it was foreshadowing that the first answer was wrong.
The premise came to me in a dream strangely enough, a fractal world stacking simulations on top of simulations, as I tried to imagine my way out of it, and came up with the idea for this story and its currently un-written follow-ups.
I haven't read that piece yet, hopefully it won't contaminate any of my ideas or find out they're already done too explicitly. I admittedly haven't written the follow-ups yet because I've had other writing projects that interested me more you can find on this same blog, but it's in the backlog.
The 3rd and 4th seasons of a certain anime explored a similar premise, which I won't name because it's quite cringe. But with recent AI-related events, it feels timely to explore such questions again. We can't simulate anything remotely on a Fractal level yet, but even the fairly-crude algorithms available today can manage to tug at heartstrings and otherwise register as sometimes-humanistic. And of course it's natural that simulated people's first usage for a simulated simulation would be to model death and destruction. Always in the name of progress and learning. Any model trained on humans - which here is done very explicitly - is gonna carry the same dark desires meat-level humanity carries...
It'd have been cool to finish this story, but I think that's a good stopping-off point too. The interesting parts are the simulations and metaphysics; what exists in "the real world" is honestly beside the point, and much less novel territory to explore. Like yes, I do wish they'd ever made a sequel to The Matrix, but again - the fun parts there are what happens inside The Matrix. Everything else is just Scifi Greatest Hits reruns. Best not to get painted into that tired corner.
I do have a plot outline for continuing this story that I think has some interesting ideas left in it that continue to explore the multi-layer simulated world and some consequences of moving up and down the stacks, but I'll also admit to having been more interested in writing other things for a while, so I'm not in a rush to jump back at the moment. My heart is also closer to the Library/Detective Manse lines of continuity at the moment.
Amazing story. The premise feels like studying for a surprise dream exam, which might not be far off.
I'm assuming you've read QNTM's related one: https://qntm.org/responsibility- this feels like a deeper dive I always wanted. If you extend it I'll definitely enjoy it.
Edit: I was very proud of myself for remember Avogadro's number for that blade of grass question, I'm debating whether it was foreshadowing that the first answer was wrong.
The premise came to me in a dream strangely enough, a fractal world stacking simulations on top of simulations, as I tried to imagine my way out of it, and came up with the idea for this story and its currently un-written follow-ups.
I haven't read that piece yet, hopefully it won't contaminate any of my ideas or find out they're already done too explicitly. I admittedly haven't written the follow-ups yet because I've had other writing projects that interested me more you can find on this same blog, but it's in the backlog.
No mention of Zeno's Paradox, heh...
The 3rd and 4th seasons of a certain anime explored a similar premise, which I won't name because it's quite cringe. But with recent AI-related events, it feels timely to explore such questions again. We can't simulate anything remotely on a Fractal level yet, but even the fairly-crude algorithms available today can manage to tug at heartstrings and otherwise register as sometimes-humanistic. And of course it's natural that simulated people's first usage for a simulated simulation would be to model death and destruction. Always in the name of progress and learning. Any model trained on humans - which here is done very explicitly - is gonna carry the same dark desires meat-level humanity carries...
It'd have been cool to finish this story, but I think that's a good stopping-off point too. The interesting parts are the simulations and metaphysics; what exists in "the real world" is honestly beside the point, and much less novel territory to explore. Like yes, I do wish they'd ever made a sequel to The Matrix, but again - the fun parts there are what happens inside The Matrix. Everything else is just Scifi Greatest Hits reruns. Best not to get painted into that tired corner.
I do have a plot outline for continuing this story that I think has some interesting ideas left in it that continue to explore the multi-layer simulated world and some consequences of moving up and down the stacks, but I'll also admit to having been more interested in writing other things for a while, so I'm not in a rush to jump back at the moment. My heart is also closer to the Library/Detective Manse lines of continuity at the moment.