Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sims Sponsor Technological Advancement

Running simulations of the past, present and future will be valuable tools in exploring, understanding and testing any and every situation.

What if Rome did not fall, what if Germany won WWII, what if humans were not corrupt, what if it were socially unacceptable for educated women not to work in the paid labor force, what if hormone management programs had become possible and de rigueur centuries ago, what if the Pangaea split had been different, what if the Chicxulub asteroid had not rendered the dinosaurs extinct, what if sustainable life had started earlier?

Technological Advancement
The most useful sims would be those either arising naturally or "managed" such that advancement optima were achieved and the sim world evolved at a faster rate than the world that initiated the sim (how many sims and iterations will that take?) Sims could be run at sped-up time to iterate and generate results more quickly. Ideas and technologies could then be harvested for use in the initiating world. (Would that be ethical? Would that be cheating?)

It might be easier and more desirable to join the sim world, at least with a self-copy rather than extract and apply the technology. Lequel est plus réelle? Some interesting questions could be studied regarding technology relevance in the absence of the ideology, politics, economics, culture [and world] of its founding.

The current human population is gated by physical-world resource constraints, sims could make it possible for billions, trillions, etc. of 'people,' self-aware autonomous intelligent agents, to exist. Would this be desirable? Would this extend human knowledge, productivity, creativity and happiness? What kind of restrictions, fears, threats and opportunities would this impose?

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