Hints at Life Being a Simulation

Without going into unnecessary detail, we have built into the simulation a few telltale incoherencies—such as the idea that consciousness depends upon the brain, some logical paradoxes, and the measurement problem (etc) surrounding quantum physics. In SG the pieces are allowed to discover and reflect upon their “world” and to ask themselves whether it really makes any sense. Once they realize it doesn’t, the question is when they will hit on the correct explanation of their predicamen...

 The Problem of Measuring Productivity

Although the official productivity statistics are encouraging, they are far from perfect. They don’t do a very good job of accounting for quality, variety, timeliness, customer service, or other hard-to-measure aspects of output. While bushels of wheat and tons of steel are relatively easy to count, the quality of a teacher’s instruction, the value of more cereal choices in a supermarket, or the ability to get money from an ATM 24 hours a day is harder to assess. Compounding this measure...