Simulation Hypothesis
English

The computing in one day · how much computing it takes to simulate one day of one life

Describe a day and the receipt lists the computing it takes to simulate it for one observer. We only render what that observer perceives. The constants are the same as in the Sandbox.

Your day

Every atom tracked on its own, using classical physics.

SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS
computing needed · one observer · one day
  • Your mind8.6 × 1022
    Functional model, all day. Sleep counts at the same rate, since the brain stays active. rough
  • Your body1.8 × 1050
    At the atom floor, since you perceive the whole body. rough
  • Everything within reach1.7 × 1055
    About a building’s worth of matter near the observer, at the atom floor, while awake. wild guess
  • Everything seen but not touched5.8 × 1017
    Painted: just a surface, with nothing inside until an observer gets close. rough
  • 6 conversations7.2 × 1016
    Faces and voices, twenty minutes each. Their minds aren’t counted here. They’d be counted in their own days. wild guess
  • Screens1.8 × 1017
    A render inside the render. Whatever shows on a screen has to be rendered too. rough
  • Sky and weather3.6 × 1018
    The air out to the horizon, run as a regional weather model, while you’re outside. rough
Not rendered today
  • While you slept−8.6 × 1054
    None of the matter outside the observer’s head needed rendering.
  • The inside of the Earth−1.5 × 1073
    The rest of the planet. Nobody observed any of it.
  • The far side of the Moon−9.5 × 1070
    Nobody observed it, so it isn’t rendered.
  • Everything past the Moon−3.9 × 10101
    Shown as a painted backdrop.
TOTAL1.7 × 1055 operations
  • Biggest line: everything within reach.
  • Peak: 3.0 × 1050 FLOPS, about 2,200 × a Sun of Landauer-limit chips. textbook
  • That’s 2.0 × 1029 days of every computer on Earth running flat out. rough
  • At the thermodynamic floor: 5.0 × 1034 joules, 1.3 × 108 seconds of the Sun’s entire output. textbook
  • On today’s hardware: 2.4 × 1044 joules, 6.1 × 1017 seconds of the Sun’s entire output. rough
Counts are in operations. All estimates are on a log scale.
Link format

The whole state of this page lives in its link, so a link can be written by hand, by a script or by an agent. Parameters for /bill:

  • aw: hours awake. 0 to 24, in steps of 0.5
  • ou: hours outside. 0 to 24, in steps of 0.5
  • sc: hours on screens. 0 to 24, in steps of 0.5
  • pe: people talked to. integer 0 to 200
  • fl: matter floor near the observer. painted, tissue, cell, atom, particle, quark
  • mm: how the observer’s mind is computed. scripted, functional, biophysical, molecular, quantum, outside
  • sk: optional: looked at the night sky. 1

Example: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/bill?aw=16&ou=1&sc=5&pe=6&fl=atom&mm=functional. The same for every tool, and the site’s open data, at /llms.txt.

How it’s counted

  • One observer, one day, and only what that observer perceives. Everything else is rendered as scenery, the cheapest option the Sandbox has.
  • The mind runs all day at the rate of the model you pick. The rates come from the whole-brain emulation roadmap of Sandberg and Bostrom (2008).
  • We assume the matter within reach is 107 kg (a wild guess), computed at the floor you pick. The body is always computed at that floor. While you sleep, the matter around you isn’t rendered.
  • Other people’s minds aren’t counted here. If they’re simulated, their computing belongs to their own days.
  • The savings are the computing we skip for matter nobody perceived, at the same floor. That’s what rendering on demand saves.