this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Fantastic explanation. I can totally see the connection you were drawing now.
Convincing me that free will exists might be a bridge too far, but you've definitely opened a new avenue of inquiry in my mind.
When utilizing this procedural generation technique in our games, it allows us to use much less memory and processing power because the world can be continuously recreated with relatively little computational complexity. Is that roughly correct?
If so, aside from being a possible argument regarding the existence of free will, this comparison could also be used to support the idea that we live in a simulated reality, a la the Matrix. Gnarly
Kind of. It has more to do with tracking state interactions by free agents than memory though.
Imagine a continuous curve like a SVG. Now imagine a user nudges it to add a dent to the curve. Keeping track of exactly where the user changes it, particularly as the number of changes adds up, becomes very difficult if you are tracking those changes as an alteration to 0.65434567... to 2.25677743... on it. But if instead you convert it to discrete units, now you are only tracking a change from 1 to 2 rounding to the nearest discrete unit.
A bit like how artists can go vector to pixels easily and make changes to the pixels but getting it back into a vector is a nightmare.
And yes, it can't directly address whether free will exists, as part of why we design worlds the way we do may be because of the foundational ways our world works.
It's more to the point of if we are in a simulation it appears to be designed in such a way that free will exists within the simulation.
(Free will as a consequence of the design details necessitates it having been designed as such.)
This is another great analogy.
Fascinating, compelling ideas that are new to me. I could have trawled reddit for 10,000 years and never found content like this. Thanks for taking the time to explain, you're a very good communicator.
Thanks!
If you are interested in content like this, I created a community on [email protected] for things like this.
Been a bit busy lately so haven't posted much there, but I plan to when the opportunity presents.
Awesome, I'm in. Looking forward to more discussion in the future.