Scenarios1/9
The Matrix · Present-day Earth with billions of fully computed minds, drawn in only where someone is looking.
The world of the film The Matrix, with one change: the sleepers’ minds are computed too, not real brains in pods. A present-day Earth that’s drawn in consistently wherever anyone looks. Billions of people live in it without knowing it’s a simulation, and a few suspect it. Suffering is higher than what we see, and it helps keep things stable. Choices are fixed by earlier causes, but they feel free.
Required computing power rough
8.2 × 1031 FLOPS
Our computers could run this between 2097 and 2127, if steady growth runs a fifth faster or slower (2109 at the central rate). The countdown ▸
More than every computer on Earth put together, by a factor of about 1011.
Computer sizerough
10¹¹ × every computer on Earth
Servers, personal computers, phones and consoles added together.
Feasibility
Beyond all existing hardware
More than every computer on Earth combined.
Universe-computerstextbook
10-72
One universe-computer is every kilogram in the observable universe computing at Lloyd’s bound.
Power draw, Landauer floortextbook
240 GW
The thermodynamic minimum for flipping bits at room temperature. The best real hardware uses about five billion times more energy than that.
A fraction of a national power grid, at the thermodynamic minimum for erasing bits.
On every computer on Earthrough
2,598 years per second
How long it takes, on a clock, to compute one second of simulation on all of humanity’s computers, ~1021 FLOPS.
2,598 years of all Earth’s computing for every simulated second.
World actually computedwild guess
0.071637%
1.4 × 10-6% of the mass is watched by 8.2 billion observers. The observation dial sets how much of the remainder is computed at the full floor.
- If you can’t tell the difference, does it matter?
- Does knowing you’re simulated change what you owe anyone?
- Is suffering justified if it keeps the illusion stable?
- Should the ones who suspect tell everyone else, or let them be?
“Worked out a world with more suffering than ours: 8.2 × 10^31 FLOPS. Suffering isn’t what takes the computing.”
Instance report
PAINTED SURFACES, FULL MINDS
PAINTED SURFACES, FULL MINDS
Settings
ScaleEarth
Matter floorPainted set
LobbyReal and scripted minds
Inner lives8.2 billion · biophysical
Computed0.071637%
TimeLinear, live from 1996
SlotA scripted character that detects the seams
Computing needed
8.2 × 1031 FLOPS
Computer size10¹¹ × every computer on Earth
Universe-computers10-72
FeasibilityBeyond all existing hardware
Judged, not measured
The author’s reading. None of these changes the computing total.
SufferingRaised
Free willFeels free
Utilitarianleans against
Deontologicalleans against
Virtue ethicsleans against
Existentialistleans against
“Worked out a world with more suffering than ours: 8.2 × 10^31 FLOPS. Suffering isn’t what takes the computing.”
Two of these are rough and three are wild guesses, and each is tagged that way. Change any one dial and you get a different universe.
Matter computingrough
8.2 × 1022 FLOPS
Only surfaces are computed, and only where someone is looking. Anything unobserved is just a stored value.
Mind computingrough
8.2 × 1031 FLOPS
Sandberg & Bostrom 2008, level 5
8.2 billion minds, each computed as a biophysical model. Next to the matter, they’re a small part of the total.
Inner liveswild guess
8.2 billion
8.2 billion real minds. 4.5 × 1020 organisms left as scenery.
Operations so farrough
7.8 × 1040
30 years on the clock, at 8.2 × 1031 per second.
History that is only storedrough
99.9999998%
Computing begins in 1996. 5.77 billion humans are present at the start, with preinstalled memories.