From: diego@minerva.st.dsi.unimi.it (Diego Montefusco)
Subject: Re: PHIL: Will ever VR be like reality?
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 02:42:07 CET



In <9301301609.AA11318@ghost.dsi.unimi.it>, on Jan 30, you wrote:

> From: mauah@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr I D Bygrave)
> Subject: Re: PHIL: Will ever VR be like reality?
> Date: 29 Jan 1993 12:27:06 -0000
> Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
> 
> In article <1kav8aINNq24@shelley.u.washington.edu>
> diego@minerva.st.dsi.unimi.it (Diego Montefusco) writes:
> 
> >[VR] can't contain anything
> >you haven't put inside it (i.e. modelled)...
> 
> The real world doesn't contain anything that nature(God?) didn't put
> there. Not so much of a limitation. Lucky for God, the real world is
> powerfull enough to implement the totality of Its creation. Not so for
> most VR model builders.

I don't believe in God or nature. Only in Chaos and, although I don't
know enough of Chaos Theory, I think that ... well chaos made a very
good work with the universe!
 
> >You CAN'T
> >put EVERYTHING in a computer system.
> 
> You can't percieve everything in the real world. I would say that it
> is not a physical imposibility for a (big enough) computer to store
> the sum of the sensory input of one humans life (being finite). What I
> mean is that computers can model a subset of the universe. There is no
> physical law which limits this to less than the subset of the universe
> that a human experiences.

Sure! I do agree that a computer can well, one day or another,
simulate VERY WELL a subset of the universe. What I was saying is that
it'll have to leave out something, by means of which you'll be able to
know whether you are in a simulation or in the every-day "real" world.
Maybe it could take a LONG time before you find the first
approximation that will let you understand you didn't take off the VR
glasses, but you'll find it.

> >Or at least I DON'T WANT to believe this is possible!
> 
> Why?

Dunno... maybe fear.  The idea that one day you could FULLY simulate
the universe, to the extent that it is impossible to distinguish the
simulation from the simulated, somehow frightens me...

Diego