I can't understand why the thread creator referred as a troll here. I exactly thought the same thing, maybe we will play car racing games where the fuel goes to the engine and burns there due to chemical laws everything is calculated in atomic size, or maybe FPS games where enemies have circularity systems, lungs etc. and when you shoot them everything is realistic.

Of course they don't seem reasonable right now since Moore's law won't be valid for too long, maybe we need quantum computers or a change in the silicon material to achieve that.

Concerning the AI thing, if we COULD compute ALL atoms' movements. It is the same thing as AI. Your neural network, brain, and its decisions may look like VERY COMPLEX to you but we have been kinda training them for years and years without many people trying to understand the basics behind our decisions and movements.

But before going up to the most complex neural network, lets think of a one cellular living. When you are aiming to understand 5th dimension it is better to start with understanding the transaction between 2nd and 3rd dimension. WHAT is exactly giving life to that cell, can anybody explain that? In my opinion all the things it makes are due to physical forces between atoms & molecules. The DNA can be treated as brain of the cell but as far as I know they created an artificial DNA and put it inside a cell and it continued "living". What if we replaced all the molecules in one cell? Or samely what if we copied all the molecules in one cell to another place, will it be cloned or won't they live due to lack of "soul" I think it will live. And then it goes up like what if we copied all the molecules in a human, what do you think it will be?

To sum it up in my understanding of the world and universe, EVERYTHING is based on physics, and physical laws. I am not talking about the ones we modelled right now, our laws can be wrong but afterall there is something according to which particles are "moving". We know that Newton's approximation was false, maybe Einstein's will not work under some conditions too.

When the forces are about atoms & molecules, we created chemistry to make approximations and create straight-forward rules, sometimes not so straight-forward but compared to simulating and calculating everything in sub-atomic particles they are very well straight-forward.When we taught chemistry we generally hear things like, under normal conditions this is true but else this law will fail. This is because as I said they are approximations but that is not something bad because we need to do them to actually achieve something and make use of chemistry. Nothing in chemistry can contradict with physical laws, and every chemistry law can be derived from physical laws, I think everybody agrees with me here.

Quick example: Law: Polar and Apolar liquids do not resolve in each other. When a question is asked you can use this law to answer and to back your thoughts. But you can very well derive it from physics. Since polar molecules have + and - poles, because an atom's protons is closer they pull the electrons to one side, they pull themselves like magnets and they stick with each other this makes the other liquid's molecules go up or down.

When we needed to examine the interaction of very big numbers of molecules and atoms we created biology.
One of its basic laws: The cell membrane is waterproof, of course not fully but in a reasonable way. This is due to molecular interaction between the molecules of the cell membrane and water molecules. You can go up the hierarchy till physics to explain this.

That was probably the best post in this entire thread. I should close this abomination now so we can quit on a good note.

This may technically be off topic... But I'll throw an idea out there for ya. Something I've been constantly thinking about how I can make fun, for a good 3 years now.

The game has a single game board... imagine a 2D fish tank, without the fish. Then inside of it you got several hundred electrons, constantly moving and bouncing like bumper cars,each colored to match the player that owns the electrons. The idea behind the game is to take your electrons combine them together to make elements. So combine two electrons together and one becomes the nucleus, and the other attaches itself to the nucleus and together they are hydrogen or another element.

Because of the way elements and all that works if they get close enough to other electrons they can absorb them into the atom and become newer bigger elements. This way you can steal electrons from other players and turn them into your own. Then you can take combo of elements and combine them for reactions like explosions or fire that will affect the electrons around it. Either making the players electrons completely vanish or converting them to your own.

I exactly thought the same thing, maybe we will play car racing games where the fuel goes to the engine and burns there due to chemical laws everything is calculated in atomic size

I'd love to get a hold of the source code polyphony uses for the latest gran turismo, or even the last... since I have a feeling they dummy'd things down in the new one. I would assume they go as far as simulating the transfer of power from the engine to the sloshing of the torque converting to the rotation of the tranny, possible slipping between the clutch and flywheel to the rotational resistance of the drive shaft. The resistance from a rusted trailing arm, to the hick ups of bad timing cause from the worn bushing of the aft and tranny mounts. Then again they probably have a crap ton of shortcuts and tricks that look and feel real but aren't anywhere near how life works.

Not that Dave needs it, but I have to come to his defence here. His point was bang on-- mathematics is still a work in progress, as is physics (and by extension everything else).

Yeah, I just let that one drop since he didn't understand where I was going with it. Considering I've written and lectured about the 3-body problem and the 'butterfly effect' before, I'm quite well-versed on it. I had posted in haste and not made the complete connection. My bad... and not worth it given the enormous theoretical weight of this thread.

Thanks, though.

I can't understand why the thread creator referred as a troll here. I exactly thought the same thing, maybe we will play car racing games where the fuel goes to the engine and burns there due to chemical laws everything is calculated in atomic size, or maybe FPS games where enemies have circularity systems, lungs etc. and when you shoot them everything is realistic.

Of course they don't seem reasonable right now since Moore's law won't be valid for too long, maybe we need quantum computers or a change in the silicon material to achieve that.

Concerning the AI thing, if we COULD compute ALL atoms' movements. It is the same thing as AI. Your neural network, brain, and its decisions may look like VERY COMPLEX to you but we have been kinda training them for years and years without many people trying to understand the basics behind our decisions and movements.

But before going up to the most complex neural network, lets think of a one cellular living. When you are aiming to understand 5th dimension it is better to start with understanding the transaction between 2nd and 3rd dimension. WHAT is exactly giving life to that cell, can anybody explain that? In my opinion all the things it makes are due to physical forces between atoms & molecules. The DNA can be treated as brain of the cell but as far as I know they created an artificial DNA and put it inside a cell and it continued "living". What if we replaced all the molecules in one cell? Or samely what if we copied all the molecules in one cell to another place, will it be cloned or won't they live due to lack of "soul" I think it will live. And then it goes up like what if we copied all the molecules in a human, what do you think it will be?

To sum it up in my understanding of the world and universe, EVERYTHING is based on physics, and physical laws. I am not talking about the ones we modelled right now, our laws can be wrong but afterall there is something according to which particles are "moving". We know that Newton's approximation was false, maybe Einstein's will not work under some conditions too.

When the forces are about atoms & molecules, we created chemistry to make approximations and create straight-forward rules, sometimes not so straight-forward but compared to simulating and calculating everything in sub-atomic particles they are very well straight-forward.When we taught chemistry we generally hear things like, under normal conditions this is true but else this law will fail. This is because as I said they are approximations but that is not something bad because we need to do them to actually achieve something and make use of chemistry. Nothing in chemistry can contradict with physical laws, and every chemistry law can be derived from physical laws, I think everybody agrees with me here.

Quick example: Law: Polar and Apolar liquids do not resolve in each other. When a question is asked you can use this law to answer and to back your thoughts. But you can very well derive it from physics. Since polar molecules have + and - poles, because an atom's protons is closer they pull the electrons to one side, they pull themselves like magnets and they stick with each other this makes the other liquid's molecules go up or down.

When we needed to examine the interaction of very big numbers of molecules and atoms we created biology.
One of its basic laws: The cell membrane is waterproof, of course not fully but in a reasonable way. This is due to molecular interaction between the molecules of the cell membrane and water molecules. You can go up the hierarchy till physics to explain this.

Maybe someone already made that car racing simulation and it's us. Newton so call "science" do not predicts this either/

Sorry but no. His point was that we couldn't accurately analyze three gravitationally bound bodies in terms of physics. This isn't true. At any point we can see the resultant forces, center of gravity, momentums of every component and subset of an n-body situation. We just don't have the mathematical tools to model them with closed expressions. His point was correct in that we do not have a perfect knowledge of physics. His example was incorrect. We do have perfect knowledge of the 3, 4, or even n-body problem. We just don't have the mathematical tools to model it with a closed expression.

a. It was already established one of the root causes was our lack of understanding the physics. And he pointed out we can't yet solve the 3-body problem.

b. The butterfly effect is a subset of the chaos theory. And when we go into Chaos Theory, we find out we don't know yet whether real life(tm) is deterministic or not. Should we scientifically prove God plays dice once just for fun in a while causing the universe to be non-deterministic, then our simulation becomes flawed, since PCs are inherently deterministic. We can try to play with entropy data from the outside or go multi core and hope the quantum mechanics break the determinism we need. But even then we wouldn't be able to introduce the same randomness "God" put into our life; being us unable to reproduce reality accurately. Furthermore, happen our world to be non-deterministic; many simulations would actually fail to produce life even if we knew all physics equations and had a 100% understanding. I'm cheering for a deterministic world therefore, just to think that there isn't something impossible; but we have to recognize there's a chance it may not be possible.

c. It's already established we need infinite processing power to simulate perfectly; since our simulated world may want to start it's own simulation just like we're trying. Or may be we shouldn't try it!!! Otherwise real life will stall until our simulation we just started stops (tip: if the scientist from simland decide to simulate their "real life", their world will stall too)

With a powerful enough computer you could even simulate them accurately

You meant an infinitely powerful enough computer? Unless all results are round numbers, "accurate" becomes truncated/rounded numbers with translated errors. You're waaaaay underestimating the butterfly effect, which leads us to...

The butterfly effect is exactly the same deal

You mean a computer with infinite RAM? Well then, since I have a very simple task for you: Compute the number PI with 100% accuracy. All decimals included. Then use it in your simulation.

Pro tip: If you miss one decimal, the butterfly effect will sooner or later kick you in the balls. Seriously. Try to debug THAT.


I miss when Gamedev automatically locket threads down after 2 weeks. Someone please lock this madness. One trivial comment bumps the thread after which soon 3 troll/flamewar/pointless/endless threads follow.