The Universe as a Simulation

‘Duh huh! That’s putting it mildly!’ Zinda purses her lips. ‘There are two problems, really. The first is that we can’t solve any hard problems. Not really. Anything that’s NP-complete. The Travelling Salesman. Pac-Man. They are all the same. All too hard. Even if we had a computer the size of the Universe! It drives the Sobornost crazy. We don’t mind it so much: that’s what makes most games fun. And we have quantum shortcuts for some special cases, like coordination. And for ...

 The Zoku Jewel

‘Volition is a funny thing,’ Zinda says. ‘The jewels don’t just respond to what we want, but what we would want if we were wiser or smarter or knew more. The zoku as a whole tries to extrapolate what you really need, rather than just what you are asking for, and in line with everybody’s volition. I’ll give you an example. Tell me something you really like. A food, or something.’ Mieli hesitates. ‘This is pointless.’ ‘Come on. Don’t take it so seriously!’ Mieli sighs...