Scenarios3/9
Solipsism · One real mind. The world is only as detailed as that mind can test.
Only one mind is real. The world is drawn in around wherever it’s paying attention, and goes back to stored values everywhere else. The detail only goes as deep as that mind’s instruments can test. Open a drawer and there’s an inside. Use a microscope and there are cells. Every other person is scripted.
Supercomputer scale. Big, expensive, and already built.
Computer sizemeasured
the biggest supercomputer
Exascale class. It fills a building.
Feasibility
Possible at national scale
Supercomputer territory: large, but it exists.
Universe-computerstextbook
1.2 × 10-86
One universe-computer is every kilogram in the observable universe computing at Lloyd’s bound.
Power draw, Landauer floortextbook
0.0029 W
The thermodynamic minimum for flipping bits at room temperature. The best real hardware uses about five billion times more energy than that.
At the thermodynamic minimum, a wall socket would do.
On every computer on Earthrough
faster than real time
How long it takes, on a clock, to compute one second of simulation on all of humanity’s computers, ~1021 FLOPS.
Real time, on computers we have today.
World actually computedwild guess
1.7 × 10-16%
1.7 × 10-16% of the mass is watched by one observer. The observation dial sets how much of the remainder is computed at the full floor.
- Are other people real, or just convincing?
- If nobody else is conscious, is anything allowed?
- Does looking at something actually bring it into existence?
- If you’re the only real mind, are you alone?
“Worked out a world that’s only drawn in where one mind looks: 10^18 FLOPS.”
Instance report
ONE MIND, DRAWN-IN SURROUNDINGS
ONE MIND, DRAWN-IN SURROUNDINGS
Settings
ScaleEarth
Matter floorPainted set
LobbySingle player
Inner lives8.2 billion · functional
Computed1.7 × 10^-16%
TimeLinear, live from 1996
SlotA player
Computing needed
1018 FLOPS
Computer sizethe biggest supercomputer
Universe-computers1.2 × 10-86
FeasibilityPossible at national scale
Judged, not measured
The author’s reading. None of these changes the computing total.
SufferingAs found
Free willGenuinely free
Utilitariandivided
Deontologicaldivided
Virtue ethicsleans for
Existentialistleans for
“Worked out a world that’s only drawn in where one mind looks: 10^18 FLOPS.”
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
1013 FLOPS
Only surfaces are computed, and only where someone is looking. Anything unobserved is just a stored value.
Mind computingrough
1018 FLOPS
Sandberg & Bostrom 2008, level 4
One fully computed functional mind and 8.2 billion scripted ones.
Inner liveswild guess
8.2 billion
1 real mind, 8.2 billion scripted, 4.5 × 1020 animals as scenery.
Operations so farrough
9.5 × 1026
30 years on the clock, at 1018 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.