Big Picture (Destiny)

by dogcow , Hiding from Bob, in the vent core., Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 07:25 (2590 days ago) @ Cody Miller

If you are talking about a total possibility simulation tree, what are the limitations/rules? There have to be bounds to the simulation otherwise they WOULD be able to think of something outside of the simulation.

Assuming the simulation is run on a computer, then the code sets the limitations.

Here's a simple example:
A computer cannot simulate something greater than itself. It can't simulate a computer with more memory than it has.

Someone never used RAMdoubler in the 90s…

Heh, you better bet I did. As a teenager who couldn't afford more ram I was desperate. Only worked so-so.

Lets see, how to explain... ah! This isn't exactly how it works, but it should convey the idea. Compression doesn't allow you to represent a larger number of possible states, it simply throws away the unused states. The computer is still only capable of representing the same number of finite states.

This is a contrived example, but should illustrate:
Imagine text files only could have 20 different characters in them, represented with the two-digit numbers 00-19. You have a text file that only has 10 of the possible 20 characters. You could compress that file by mapping the 10 characters to single-digit numbers 0-9 instead of all possible digits 00-19, thus cutting the filesize in 1/2.