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Old 11-11-2018, 02:51 AM   #51
isf
 
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
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.

You could give it some levels of reduced time rate but allow it to take a penalty top give a quicker answer (scaling for different levels of RTR from the -10 to use a skill instantly) to represent the limitations in transmission speed.
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Old 11-11-2018, 01:10 PM   #52
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

When we are talking about such computers, they are probably running trillions of programs (effectively acting as billions of discrete computers). With Complexity 33, they can act as 100 billion Complexity 22 computers, each capable of running 10 billion Complexity 10 AI programs, 10 billion Complexity 10 VR client programs, and one Complexity 21 VR manager program with only a fraction of their computing power. If Earth was such a computer, it could easily contain a virtual galaxy within the planetary computer, and the AI running on the planetary computer would not know that they were not within a real galaxy.
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Old 11-12-2018, 06:59 AM   #53
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

If I ran across such a computer in a game or a work of fiction, I'd likely assume its a world, hosting a massive virtual population. Demand for Living space tends to scale in an epic manner.
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Old 11-12-2018, 07:08 AM   #54
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

One possibility would be such a computer defaulting to running probabilistic scenarios of the surface world. With TL12 nanotechnology, it would be possible for such a computer to map the genetic data, genetic expression, and neurology of every human in existence and run multiple versions of each person through a variety of alternate realities. It could even store the original copies of each human to ever exist within its massive data stores, creating a virtual afterlife. If the Earth is such a supercomputer, it could be running copies of each of us through billions of alternate realities, just because it has nothing better to do and finds our antics amusing.
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Old 11-12-2018, 07:54 AM   #55
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

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One possibility would be such a computer defaulting to running probabilistic scenarios of the surface world. With TL12 nanotechnology, it would be possible for such a computer to map the genetic data, genetic expression, and neurology of every human in existence and run multiple versions of each person through a variety of alternate realities. It could even store the original copies of each human to ever exist within its massive data stores, creating a virtual afterlife. If the Earth is such a supercomputer, it could be running copies of each of us through billions of alternate realities, just because it has nothing better to do and finds our antics amusing.

Actually, its trying to find the best possible versions of us. It will run your program again and again until it finds a version of it that it finds "Good enough"!
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Old 11-12-2018, 04:24 PM   #56
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Default Re: Planetary Mass Computers

Another possibility is that the characters are already 'living' AIs in a 'perfect' VR simulation and that the 'real' them is living in the physical world. As a 'living' AI (Complexity 10 program) guided a 'perfect' VR manager (Complexity 10 program), the VR world (a Complexity 20 program) is indistinguishable from the real world because the VR managers adapt to the perception of the individual 'living' AIs and work together to shape their consensual reality. If you included 'living' AI copies of animals with their own more limited VR managers (Complexity 6-8 for both programs), the entire construct could be mistaken for the real world and would only require Complexity 21 (meaning that a Complexity 33 computer could run one trillion such VR worlds).
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