Today, the journey to office was uneventful. I forgot to change the pickup location, so my Uber driver made an unnecessary U-turn and I crossed the road twice. For lunch we had gone to Panditji ka Dhaba in Raipur Khadar which is at an excellent location, is on the first floor and has open views of the street on three sides. There is a table for big parties on the inside. The food was really good, we had a paratha, mix veg, butter naan, butter roti, dal and chawal among three people. Food was good and filling.
The main topic of discussion was the paper on the Simuverse by Evangelos Katsamakas. A colleague was insisting that the ideas proposed for operating a simulation, such as research or education were anthropocentric. My point was that it does not matter what the specific use case is, what Katsamakas is essentially exploring is a different perspective, not a philosophical one about the nature of reality itself, nor a physical one where the universe is a 3D projection from a distant 2D surface, one on the economics of simulating universes. I explained that just the idea of sustainable activities cannot be a uniquely human approach, that even gods will be constrained by energy use and conversion, and that the paper was actually just saying that simulations, irrespective of their purpose, can be thought of as one of three possibilities, a one-off project being undertaken for a specific purpose (the actual purpose does not matter here, can be no reason or a mad civilisation), a service that is offered as a subscription for users, and as a platform that allows for multiple users to interact in the simulated universe, a setup which would have network effects.
The discussions grew out of two stories I had published, one on News9 and another on my site, Starbullet.in.
Finished most of my work with only about an hour to go. On Sundays, they do the pest control in office which stinks up the place. Taking a break right now because they just came around.
No comments:
Post a Comment