[DGD] just out of curiosity

[RobF]

On 11/09/2012 22:29, Shentino wrote:
> One other thing I was hoping to do with Kotaka was allow megascalediff.
>
> Able to have a town simulated/emulated down to the meter, at least
>
> ...but still be able to have moons orbiting planets, planets orbiting
> suns, and suns orbiting black holes.
>
> Probably have a dedicated server to handle a planet...possibly with
> "lieutenant" servers to handle continents.
>
> This goes back to my ealier thread about r-trees.
>
> Basically a server running "earth" would handle the entire earth...and
> possibly also supervise sub-servers below it that handle
> continents...plus pay attention to its superior server "sol" which is
> itself busy supervising the solar system.
>
> Meanwhile, the earth server would be supervising the lunar server, and
> also handling trnasit between the planet and the moon.
>
> If anything interesting happened on a continent, such as a rocket
> launch, the continetn server would pass the rocket objecdt up to the
> earth server.
>
> Meanwhile, the sol server would notify the earth server if something,
> say, like an asteroid, got close enough to earth that earth would care
> about it.
>

I'm going to take an abstract turn on this.  We've already got one 
perfectly functioning instance of the cosmos, so unless this is for the 
sake of scientific models, I'm wondering what the point of what you're 
discussing is?

If we are speaking of games, then I think we should embrace the 
distilled, representational versions of reality that they use rather 
than try to copy reality exactly.  To emulate reality would be boring 
and pointless; a game is about offering the mind new problem(s) to solve 
that are man-made and not preexistent.  To that end it needs to strip 
out all the boring or frustating elements that reality has, and then 
invent new ones.  Sincerely attempted imitations of reality, on the 
other hand, will always be swiftly obseleted by the real thing.

If the 'problem' of productivity eveer becomes 'solved' ala Star Trek: 
The Next Generation--humans will lose their sense of purpose and will 
seek to recreate productivity itself in order to remain active; if such 
a future is possible and in store for us, then I think that is the 
destiny of such efforts to realistically simulate the world like what 
you are discussing here.  We will create fake problems with life-long 
range in the most realistic manner possible.

Right now, though, the 'problem' of production _isn't_ solved, and so 
pursuing a more convincing reality simulator may have a dark side, 
causing a brain and labour drain in society if it gets more effective at 
creating addicts out of people.  I'm not sure if this is psychologically 
plausable or if only those with an addictive personality need be 
worried, but I do think it's something to be wary of.