[dnos]

The idea of creating computers out of virtual objects has always fascinated me since I first saw someone do it in Minecraft.

It really brings up some interesting scenarios that I like to day dream about sometimes.

For instance, in a real world simulation, you could build a processor with a gazillion transistors because you don’t have to worry about the same physical limitations like size or heat. Could it take an input and compute an output faster than something in the real world?

Would you be bound by the speed of light in the virtual world? You control the physics in your virtual world, so technically nothing prevents it right? Information can travel faster than the speed of light relative to your virtual objects. Say you model the earth at 1:1 scale in the simulation and have avatars on complete opposite sides of earth. They could exchange messages faster than they could in the real world since the information wouldn’t have to physically travel across physical space. (e.g. send message directly to memory address X instead of sending light through fiber optic physics simulator).

Essentially, in a simulation of the physical world that has tweaked physics, could information be processed faster than the processor running the simulation?

Is there some sort of conservation of energy law, but for information?

[bordercases]

The information would "appear" to be processed "faster" to the digital system merely because the digital system would have no memory of there being a moment in between its current state and the next computed state. Even supposing that it's possible for there to be a subjective experience of a computer: this goes in to physical time and psychological time and whether the two bear a strict relation, as well as the relative nature of time in physical space.

On the first topic, if you can stomach having to reformat a PDF, the "No Free Lunch in Machine Learning" guy wrote a paper on thermodynamics and psychological time:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226069884_Memory_sy...

On the second one... I think it's more interesting to think if there's a theory of relativity for computation. Imagine if two systems were updating one another's state but were separated by physical distance. Wouldn't you have to hold the state of one to only update when it a receives a message from the other, for the systems to "experience" instantaneous communication? That would mean there would be a third system for whom time would have to pass to transfer the message and compute it in such a way that the amount of updating required for the receiving systems are minimal.

Maybe we have to guarantee that at least one system has to experience time more slowly than the others, to compute the information necessary for instanaeity to be true for the communicating systems.

[seventhtiger]

As far as we know, there is no way to compress reality. The smallest full simulation of a thing is the thing itself.

That means the real world simulation would be as big as the real world. To exchange messages from one side to another means the information has to travel from some point in the physical network to another. Although the nodes may be closer in the physical network than in the virtual world, taking less time, that can't be true for any two nodes.

On average, a full simulation of something will be as physically large as the thing itself, and the distance information has to travel is on average the same virtually and physically.

What if it's not a full simulation? Then you can break those rules. I can draw two galaxies and a spaceship that travels between them in seconds therefore achieving your premise.

Can a restricted simulation ever be computationally faster than a reality/a full simulation? My intuition says no. I can't think of a source.

[onion2k]

could information be processed faster than the processor running the simulation?

No. Whatever you do to process the information could always be done faster if you did it directly on a computer without the overhead of the simulation itself.

[TheDong]

> Is there some sort of conservation of energy law, but for information?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit

[zild3d]

> Essentially, in a simulation of the physical world that has tweaked physics, could information be processed faster than the processor running the simulation?

Nope, the simulator has to run it still - how would the simulation update anything unless being told to by the processor running the simulation?

[alexjray]

At the end of the day it's all just energy.