Planetary Mass Computers

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Andreas

There are plenty of useful computations for such a large computer. There are after all computations being done today distributed over the internet. At the very least, such computers are useful for embarrassingly parallel tasks.

You still cannot just scale it up logarithmically. Speed of processing is one of the things that the Complexity scale takes into account. If your computer is on the order of 10^9 times slower, it has to be lower in Complexity.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

How would a planet's plate tectonics affect the computer's parts, though?

The convection of the mantle would serve to maintain thermal equilibrium, so plate tectonics, volcanism, hurricanes, etc. would just be part of cooling mechanism of the planetary computer. As for the idea of us being in a simulation, we have tested that and, if we are in a simulation, it is a very good one, as it is capable of simulating quantum and probabilistic functions that would take something more advanced than a planetary computer. However, that does not preclude the possibility that we live on a planetary computer, just that we are not the beneficiaries of such a technology except that we evolved within its cooling system.

That is always the problem with the idea of humans being in a simulation, it assumes that humans are special to anyone but other humans, which keeps humans as an important, even essential, aspect of the Universe (such as in the Matrix series). I believe that the only entities that are going to save us are other humans, which means that we are pretty much up the creek without a paddle. If the Earth is a planetary computer, we are less important to it than the dust mites on our laptops are to us (global warming may reduce the efficiency by 0.1%, but it is not like similar situations have not occurred in the geological past).

What happens though if humans discover that they exist on a planetary computer though? Will they accept it and attempt to access it? Will they reject it and attempt to destroy it? Will they ignore it and just go on with their lives?

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You still cannot just scale it up logarithmically. Speed of processing is one of the things that the Complexity scale takes into account. If your computer is on the order of 10^9 times slower, it has to be lower in Complexity.

It isn't 10^9 times slower for the class of problems I mentioned. For such problems, you don't need frequent communication between distant parts of the computer and the computers size therefore doesn't slow it down. You can just split the problem up into numerous chunks and have small parts of the computer deal with each chunk independantly of each other.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The convection of the mantle would serve to maintain thermal equilibrium, so plate tectonics, volcanism, hurricanes, etc. would just be part of cooling mechanism of the planetary computer.

That makes sense about the convection, but I was wondering about the continents physically moving around, breaking apart, merging, etc. If computer parts are in or on those continents, their connections to other parts on other continents, or to the other side of a continent that splits, will have to be designed to survive without any permanent physical attachment.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The convection of the mantle would serve to maintain thermal equilibrium, so plate tectonics, volcanism, hurricanes, etc. would just be part of cooling mechanism of the planetary computer. As for the idea of us being in a simulation, we have tested that and, if we are in a simulation, it is a very good one, as it is capable of simulating quantum and probabilistic functions that would take something more advanced than a planetary computer. ...

We can't disprove it. Because if we're programs, then we could just as easily be programmed to think we got the results that would convince us we're not programs.
Also just because our universe is of a certain complexity does not mean that the reality the computer running it is no more complex. We could all be running on the equivalent of a god's laptop.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

...
The Earth and Venus would be two potential candidates and, for all we know, they may both be planetary supercomputers. We may expand out into space, unwittingly following the footsteps of a much greater civilization, and would not know it until we started to dismantle planets (even terraforming may go unnoticed). If we were noticed though, they may possess sufficient 'primitive' technology to deal with surface threats, perhaps hidden within the local version of the KBOs.

New take on the hollow earth theory. It's not full of dinosaurs, but computers.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Andreas

It isn't 10^9 times slower for the class of problems I mentioned. For such problems, you don't need frequent communication between distant parts of the computer and the computers size therefore doesn't slow it down. You can just split the problem up into numerous chunks and have small parts of the computer deal with each chunk independantly of each other.

I think that says that those problems are lower in complexity.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

That makes sense about the convection, but I was wondering about the continents physically moving around, breaking apart, merging, etc. If computer parts are in or on those continents, their connections to other parts on other continents, or to the other side of a continent that splits, will have to be designed to survive without any permanent physical attachment.

That seems like a trivial problem. It's not very different in principle from a computer's using random access memory to store its data and its programs, so that it doesn't need to have the next datum or instruction to be in any specific address, but just to know how to find which address it's in. You just need a modestly more complex procedure to figure where your pointer needs to go next. And if I recall correctly, tectonic motion is on the order of centimeters per year or less, which is going to use up vanishingly few cycles on an ultra-high-speed computer to keep track of.

[scc]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that says that those problems are lower in complexity.

These problems tend to be things like simulating nuclear fission and fusion, they require high complexity computers to solve.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by scc

These problems tend to be things like simulating nuclear fission and fusion, they require high complexity computers to solve.

"Complexity" is an unfortunate term. Problems that require a lot of processing power can do so simply because of scope, not because the algorithm itself is complex. It might be a pretty simple loop over a whole bunch of elements, doing a straightforward calculation at each element. The problem isn't complex -- but the actual machine capable of doing that simple thing many, many times in a short period of time might well be a much more complex piece of hardware than a simpler computer running a larger program that deals with many different features and options (say, a word processor), which could well be described as a "complex" program.

A large memory footprint isn't necessarily an indicator of a complex program. And a simple program might still require complex hardware. So we have to careful with real-world analogies and intuition.

GURPS "Complexity" seems to me to mean hardware complexity and processing power. It's a game term to provide a rating for computing power. The same word is used for software, to indicate programs that demand the complicated, high-end machinery to run. It makes sense to label Program X "Complexity 5" if it needs Complexity 5 hardware to run. But that need doesn't mean that the software structure is also complex in the usual sense.