Presumably it has an error catcher that outputs ‘DO NOT MESS WITH TIME’ when this happens.
That message came from Harry, not from physics. Roughly speaking it indicates that a stable loop where Harry gets hysterical is easier to arrive at than a stable loop where the problem is solved. ie. In one of the instances something surprising and dangerous but non-fatal (would have) happened so that (potential) Harry would have set up a stable time loop that prevented that branch from ever happening. (Or maybe Harry just went paranoid for no reason—hard to tell with him.)
Everything that comes from Harry comes from physics! But of course I really mean that it outputs something to deter the agents in question from trying to push things that far. In Harry’s case, that’s ‘DO NOT MESS WITH TIME’ in scratchy letters; in somebody else’s case, that’s something else. But the simulation should be able to calculate whatever is needed.
But of course I really mean that it outputs something to deter the agents in question from trying to push things that far. In Harry’s case, that’s ‘DO NOT MESS WITH TIME’ in scratchy letters; in somebody else’s case, that’s something else. But the simulation should be able to calculate whatever is needed.
The thing is we don’t need to hypothesize this extra mechanic in order to explain the observations we have seen. It is like, say, hypothesizing a new force in physics called the ‘siphon’ force when siphoning is explained perfectly well by gravity and pressure differences in the fluid.
The thing is we don’t need to hypothesize this extra mechanic in order to explain the observations we have seen.
We do if we want the universe to be computable. To calculate our posterior probability of the simulation hypothesis, P(A|B), using Bayes’s Theorem, we first find (among other things) P(B|A), the probability that we would have observed the new evidence if the simulation hypothesis were true. I’m arguing that this is higher than Harry thinks (hence so is P(A|B)), since it’s easy to come up with ways that it could happen (contra Harry’s claim quoted above). I’m not claiming that P(A|B) is actually high.
More generally, people need to be open to hacks and kludges when considering the simulation hypothesis.
That message came from Harry, not from physics. Roughly speaking it indicates that a stable loop where Harry gets hysterical is easier to arrive at than a stable loop where the problem is solved. ie. In one of the instances something surprising and dangerous but non-fatal (would have) happened so that (potential) Harry would have set up a stable time loop that prevented that branch from ever happening. (Or maybe Harry just went paranoid for no reason—hard to tell with him.)
Everything that comes from Harry comes from physics! But of course I really mean that it outputs something to deter the agents in question from trying to push things that far. In Harry’s case, that’s ‘DO NOT MESS WITH TIME’ in scratchy letters; in somebody else’s case, that’s something else. But the simulation should be able to calculate whatever is needed.
The thing is we don’t need to hypothesize this extra mechanic in order to explain the observations we have seen. It is like, say, hypothesizing a new force in physics called the ‘siphon’ force when siphoning is explained perfectly well by gravity and pressure differences in the fluid.
We do if we want the universe to be computable. To calculate our posterior probability of the simulation hypothesis, P(A|B), using Bayes’s Theorem, we first find (among other things) P(B|A), the probability that we would have observed the new evidence if the simulation hypothesis were true. I’m arguing that this is higher than Harry thinks (hence so is P(A|B)), since it’s easy to come up with ways that it could happen (contra Harry’s claim quoted above). I’m not claiming that P(A|B) is actually high.
More generally, people need to be open to hacks and kludges when considering the simulation hypothesis.