Story Monday October 24, 2016

[chridd 31]

...or maybe she can use spells in the simulation, but not mutant dangerous rarity maybe-some-type-of-wizard abilities...

...or she's not looking in the right place (maybe the magic is where actual Sarah is rather than where she is in the simulation after walking around), or for the right thing (maybe she's seen magic but didn't know that's what it was)...

...or the simulated version of Sarah isn't using any magic (she wasn't using a spell within the simulation while walking around, and she didn't start frozen)...

...or magic flickers rapidly and freezing time can make it invisible...

...or whatever prevented Luke's spell from working on Tedd prevented Sarah's spell from properly analyzing Tedd's magic...

[ijuin 576]

23 hours ago, Sweveham said:

I've said this before, but I can't help but marvel at how Dan gives each main character in the distinctive facial expressions and body language, so that even when they have the body of someone else, they're still recognizable as themselves. Sarah as Grace or Tedd in this comic still has the expressions and body language she usually has. Look also at when Nanase turns into Susan in this comic for another example. That is truly some impressive and subtle cartooning by Dan.+

He's come a long way from "inability to draw perspective well" back at the beginning of EGS.

22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Scanning surroundings on subatomic level doesn't seem like using lot of energy? In fact, Sarah's spell might violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

She doesn't need subatomic resolution. Without an electron microscope, details smaller than an optical microscope can resolve are meaningless beyond the bulk chemical composition of substances. If Sarah is limited to her own senses (i.e. no magnification at all, just what she can see with her eyes), then a resolution limit of dozens of microns (i.e. 100 times bigger than lightwaves, about the size of a dust speck) will be enough.

[Haylo 57]

39 minutes ago, ijuin said:

He's come a long way from "inability to draw perspective well" back at the beginning of EGS.

She doesn't need subatomic resolution. Without an electron microscope, details smaller than an optical microscope can resolve are meaningless beyond the bulk chemical composition of substances. If Sarah is limited to her own senses (i.e. no magnification at all, just what she can see with her eyes), then a resolution limit of dozens of microns (i.e. 100 times bigger than lightwaves, about the size of a dust speck) will be enough.

If this is the case, simulated magnifying glasses will turn out not to work, or we might be given some similar hint in following comics.

[hkmaly 490]

15 hours ago, chridd said:

..or maybe she can use spells in the simulation, but not mutant dangerous rarity maybe-some-type-of-wizard abilities...

...or she's not looking in the right place (maybe the magic is where actual Sarah is rather than where she is in the simulation after walking around), or for the right thing (maybe she's seen magic but didn't know that's what it was)...

...or the simulated version of Sarah isn't using any magic (she wasn't using a spell within the simulation while walking around, and she didn't start frozen)...

...or magic flickers rapidly and freezing time can make it invisible...

...or whatever prevented Luke's spell from working on Tedd prevented Sarah's spell from properly analyzing Tedd's magic...

Yes. More testing needed.

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Scanning surroundings on subatomic level doesn't seem like using lot of energy? In fact, Sarah's spell might violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

She doesn't need subatomic resolution. Without an electron microscope, details smaller than an optical microscope can resolve are meaningless beyond the bulk chemical composition of substances. If Sarah is limited to her own senses (i.e. no magnification at all, just what she can see with her eyes), then a resolution limit of dozens of microns (i.e. 100 times bigger than lightwaves, about the size of a dust speck) will be enough.

1) She is NOT limited to her own senses ; conjuring a microscope might cause her to see what she want to see, but if microscope will really be there she can put anything under it and look at it.

2) The "bulk chemical composition" is hard to done right without scan at subatomic resolution. Remember that she can do ANYTHING in the simulation. She can mix two potions (that's something which is VERY bad idea to do OUTSIDE of the simulation) and she's supposed to get correct result without the spell obtaining more information. Even not counting chemistry, she can, for example, get big hammer, hit something and look where it break. IF there was a microscopic fault in that item, it's very likely to break in that fault ...

... and, of course, if properly prepared, she SHOULD be able to make experiments from quantum physics. TWICE.

 

[ijuin 576]

For "bulk chemical composition", you still don't need to simulate every molecule/atom/particle. Just like when you define graphical elements on a computer, you can simply define a region and its approximate contents--e.g. "this space has a mix of 78% molecular nitrogen, 21% molecular oxygen, 0.4% carbon dioxide, and 44% relative humidity at 20 Celsius and 99.8 kPa". Each molecule does not need to be a separate discrete entity, and for macroscopic chemical reactions, the results can be computed statistically.

[Stature 96]

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes. More testing needed.

Yes. More to prove that she is Rogue incarnate.

[hkmaly 490]

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

For "bulk chemical composition", you still don't need to simulate every molecule/atom/particle. Just like when you define graphical elements on a computer, you can simply define a region and its approximate contents--e.g. "this space has a mix of 78% molecular nitrogen, 21% molecular oxygen, 0.4% carbon dioxide, and 44% relative humidity at 20 Celsius and 99.8 kPa". Each molecule does not need to be a separate discrete entity, and for macroscopic chemical reactions, the results can be computed statistically.

Just looking at how BAD the graphical elements on computer handle some situation is enough to prove it's NOT going to work.

The technical term for that is Chaos theory. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

[malloyd 23]

13 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Just looking at how BAD the graphical elements on computer handle some situation is enough to prove it's NOT going to work.

The technical term for that is Chaos theory. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

A moment of thought should convince you that's nonsense in this case.  We never know the exact composition and atom locations of anything, and yet we are able to predict the outcome of mixing chemicals together confidently enough to build billion dollar industries around it.

Yes, some systems are dynamically unstable even at the macro level - weather really looks like one over a timescale of more than a few days - but most things aren't.  Much popular babble about "chaos theory" notwithstanding,the interesting stuff in the mathematics of chaotic systems is not "nothing is predictable" but "here's a way to predict if something will be unpredictable" and "some things that are chaotic are kind of predictable anyway" (check out strange attractors for that one).

The quantum mechanical argument has much the same issue.  You can't predict the outcome for a specific particle, but can predict the average for a lot of them very accurately.   Where the uncertainty goes has always been one of the confusing problems of quantum theory, swept under the rug with "the wave function collapses" and we won't think about how.

 

[hkmaly 490]

6 hours ago, malloyd said:

We never know the exact composition and atom locations of anything, and yet we are able to predict the outcome of mixing chemicals together confidently enough to build billion dollar industries around it.

We are very BAD at predicting mixing chemicals, actually. Sure, you can predict SIMPLE chemicals, but interactions of complex molecules - like proteins - requires more computer time than universities have.

However, you are right that the problem is not caused by chaos theory, that most chemicals, while hard to predict how, behave quite consistently most of the time. On the other hand, there are likely several diseases which wouldn't exists if they would behave consistently ALL the time.

6 hours ago, malloyd said:

Yes, some systems are dynamically unstable even at the macro level - weather really looks like one over a timescale of more than a few days - but most things aren't.  Much popular babble about "chaos theory" notwithstanding,the interesting stuff in the mathematics of chaotic systems is not "nothing is predictable" but "here's a way to predict if something will be unpredictable" and "some things that are chaotic are kind of predictable anyway" (check out strange attractors for that one).

There are deliberately dynamically unstable systems capable of getting unpredictable even faster. Dices, roulette wheels, ... cards in a sense ... they are all designed to magnify the inaccuracy of hand using them. Sure, android Data was able to throw dices in way they always produced the number he wanted, but there is billion dollar "industry" around based on fact that human can't do that.

6 hours ago, malloyd said:

The quantum mechanical argument has much the same issue.  You can't predict the outcome for a specific particle, but can predict the average for a lot of them very accurately.

Yes. You can, for example, predict how long it will take for half of atoms in that pile to decay. You are not able to predict which one will decay first and your prediction about when the next atom decays can be very inaccurate.

I would expect Sarah IS able to make experiment testing this. If not, Tedd certainly can help her.

Pandora said it's accurate recreation. That's either true or not. If it's true, then it violates Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If it's not true, it shouldn't take Sarah and Tedd more than hour to find way to PROVE it's not accurate.

19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Just looking at how BAD the graphical elements on computer handle some situation is enough to prove it's NOT going to work.

Of course the problem of computer simulation of hair (or liquids) is that it's not even on the "dozens of microns" accuracy.

[mlooney 3,422]

17 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's either true or not. If it's true, then it violates Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If it's not true, it shouldn't take Sarah and Tedd more than hour to find way to PROVE it's not accurate.

This is EGS.  The laws of physics are only polite suggestions.

[hkmaly 490]

7 minutes ago, mlooney said:

26 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's either true or not. If it's true, then it violates Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If it's not true, it shouldn't take Sarah and Tedd more than hour to find way to PROVE it's not accurate.

This is EGS.  The laws of physics are only polite suggestions.

You might notice that I didn't say it can't be that way. I actually think that it IS working that way and I'm just keeping score about what polite suggestions it ignores.

Also, if Starfleet engineers were able to get around it ...

[ijuin 576]

Again, "accurate" does not have to mean "accurate down to the last particle", merely "so accurate that Sarah couldn't tell the difference". Sarah, like any other human, is limited in her perceptions to the few gigabits per second of data that the relevant parts of her brain can process. Anything that is outside of her perceptions may as well be a "black box".

[hkmaly 490]

13 hours ago, ijuin said:

Again, "accurate" does not have to mean "accurate down to the last particle", merely "so accurate that Sarah couldn't tell the difference". Sarah, like any other human, is limited in her perceptions to the few gigabits per second of data that the relevant parts of her brain can process. Anything that is outside of her perceptions may as well be a "black box".

The problem is the spell FIRST get the informations and THEN Sarah can choose what will she look at (or try with hammer, I still like the idea of practical test for microfractures). She obviously wouldn't look at everything, but potentially ...

Depending on what tools can she utilize inside the simulation, the difference between those two might be very small. For start, if mirror works, (optical) microscope likely works as well.

[ijuin 576]

Another issue is that she has no idea what the results of a quantum experiment should look like, so she wouldn't know if it was inaccurate. Conversely, if she did know, then the expectation effect would alter the data to conform to her expectations. That is the double bind that Pandora warned her of.

[hkmaly 490]

11 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Another issue is that she has no idea what the results of a quantum experiment should look like, so she wouldn't know if it was inaccurate.

She could, you know, just remember the result and tell Tedd.

Not speaking about the fact that the experiments I speak about would mostly consist of Tedd preparing something, then Sarah starting her spell, then both Tedd and Sarah would do the experiment (Tedd in reality, Sarah in simulation) and then prove (or disprove) the accuracy by comparing their results. Not even Tedd would know what exactly should Sarah see until he does the experiment.

11 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Conversely, if she did know, then the expectation effect would alter the data to conform to her expectations. That is the double bind that Pandora warned her of.

The simulation is supposed to stay accurate until she starts modifying it in "against-physical-laws" way. Opening door will not change the accuracy. Why should pressing some button?

[Scotty 1,061]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

The simulation is supposed to stay accurate until she starts modifying it in "against-physical-laws" way. Opening door will not change the accuracy. Why should pressing some button?

Because chances are, if she doesn't know what the button does, then she'll speculate on it, if she questions whether it might trigger a trap, then it might trigger a trap when it reality it just buzzes room service.

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The simulation is supposed to stay accurate until she starts modifying it in "against-physical-laws" way. Opening door will not change the accuracy. Why should pressing some button?

Because chances are, if she doesn't know what the button does, then she'll speculate on it, if she questions whether it might trigger a trap, then it might trigger a trap when it reality it just buzzes room service.

That was rhetorical question.

Once again: the simulation will change accuracy if Sarah will make direct changes. If she don't, the accuracy would remain NO MATTER WHAT SHE THINKS ABOUT.

(Of course, can't be taken literally, as making direct changes is thinking, but both Pandora's explanations and thinks Sarah did so far supports that it needs to be deliberate - unlike the body swap, which is apparently on hair trigger.)

[chridd 31]

Pressing a button might not work (i.e., might just do nothing) because the machine the button is connected to is frozen.

For quantum experiments, it could be that none of them can be done with everything frozen, and that anything that unfreezes them will disturb the system enough to change whatever properties one was trying to observe.  Most likely, of course, (the boring answer) is that it probably won't come up so it probably doesn't matter.

[hkmaly 490]

8 hours ago, chridd said:

For quantum experiments, it could be that none of them can be done with everything frozen, and that anything that unfreezes them will disturb the system enough to change whatever properties one was trying to observe.

The door wasn't frozen ... or at least unfreezing them didn't endangered the accuracy.

But, yes, it is possible that the more complicated machinery it is, the harder is to unfreeze it, and the effect is big enough to negate most quantum experiments.

8 hours ago, chridd said:

Most likely, of course, (the boring answer) is that it probably won't come up so it probably doesn't matter.

I think it will - like, not directly (we would need xkcd whatif for that) but we are likely to see more complicated stuff than opening door eventually. Unless she'll spend all time in simulation since now to the time the clog will be removed by making out, "hanky panky" etc ...

[ijuin 576]

I figure that anything that Sarah knows the inner workings of (e.g. doors, mechanical clocks) will be simulated in full detail, but something as complicated as a computer chip would be more of a "black box" without the literal one billion components all present and functional. Something like an automobile would be a middle ground--she'd understand the mechanical parts and the principles of internal combustion well enough, but not the details of the computerized Engine Control Unit present in just about every automobile since 1990-ish.

[Scotty 1,061]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

I figure that anything that Sarah knows the inner workings of (e.g. doors, mechanical clocks) will be simulated in full detail, but something as complicated as a computer chip would be more of a "black box" without the literal one billion components all present and functional. Something like an automobile would be a middle ground--she'd understand the mechanical parts and the principles of internal combustion well enough, but not the details of the computerized Engine Control Unit present in just about every automobile since 1990-ish.

That's why I think trying to get information from a computer, beyond what's displayed on the screen at the time of the spell cast, would be impossible because it'd be just like having a conversation with a person, the stuff they say would come from Sarah's imagination, so probably trying to use a computer would probably bring up stuff that her imagination comes up with, though I would expect that if Sarah say, brought up google, it would load google because she would know what the site looks like, but trying to use it to search for stuff wouldn't give accurate results.

[Haylo 57]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

That's why I think trying to get information from a computer, beyond what's displayed on the screen at the time of the spell cast, would be impossible because it'd be just like having a conversation with a person, the stuff they say would come from Sarah's imagination, so probably trying to use a computer would probably bring up stuff that her imagination comes up with, though I would expect that if Sarah say, brought up google, it would load google because she would know what the site looks like, but trying to use it to search for stuff wouldn't give accurate results.

There might be quite a few frequently accessed pages already in the local cache, and perhaps those could be brought up...

[Scotty 1,061]

23 minutes ago, Haylo said:

There might be quite a few frequently accessed pages already in the local cache, and perhaps those could be brought up...

I just used google as an example. Aside from what's displayed on the screen at the time of the spell, Anything Sarah tries to load up will be drawn from her imagination, the accuracy of what she loads will be entirely dependent on her memories of websites or programs, hence it being likely that she can load google, but searching for random stuff will result in random inaccurate stuff. Heck, it's likely that even the stuff displayed on screen at the time of the spell cast would quickly become inaccurate if Sarah tried scrolling down the page, because her imagination would be forced to fill in the unseen stuff.

That makes books and paper documents a better source because it has physical surfaces (each page) that the spell can scan and give an accurate representation in the snapshot.

[hkmaly 490]

5 hours ago, ijuin said:

I figure that anything that Sarah knows the inner workings of (e.g. doors, mechanical clocks) will be simulated in full detail, but something as complicated as a computer chip would be more of a "black box" without the literal one billion components all present and functional. Something like an automobile would be a middle ground--she'd understand the mechanical parts and the principles of internal combustion well enough, but not the details of the computerized Engine Control Unit present in just about every automobile since 1990-ish.

Most people understand few gear wheels, but wouldn't actually be able to imagine all gears inside mechanical clocks correctly. Similarly, single transistor is easy to understand. So, no. The border between those is not as clear as you claim.

There is still possibility the computer will not work - in fact, we don't have the clocks confirmed yet either - but it wouldn't be for this reason.

Also, obviously, Grace is MUCH more complicated than computer and she still seems to work ... but, on the other hand, doesn't actually work as Grace, at least the brain doesn't.

Maybe the true reason computer wouldn't work will be that only time which can pass in simulation is fake, with Sarah as it's source, and computer can't truly work without it's internal clock ticking ...

Or maybe Dan will simply says that computers WILL work and left us wondering about details just like with Elliot smartphone merge.

3 hours ago, Scotty said:

That's why I think trying to get information from a computer, beyond what's displayed on the screen at the time of the spell cast, would be impossible because it'd be just like having a conversation with a person, the stuff they say would come from Sarah's imagination, so probably trying to use a computer would probably bring up stuff that her imagination comes up with, though I would expect that if Sarah say, brought up google, it would load google because she would know what the site looks like, but trying to use it to search for stuff wouldn't give accurate results.

Sigh. Google datacenter is well outside range of simulation and google homepage is set to expire immediately (Cache-Control private, max-age 0, expires -1 ...). If google will load, we would know it's fake.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Heck, it's likely that even the stuff displayed on screen at the time of the spell cast would quickly become inaccurate if Sarah tried scrolling down the page, because her imagination would be forced to fill in the unseen stuff.

That makes books and paper documents a better source because it has physical surfaces (each page) that the spell can scan and give an accurate representation in the snapshot.

The screen will likely be rendered in video memory completely, as part of scrolling acceleration. And the spell can scan video memory just as the pages, and it's already pre-rendered so no complicated computing is necessary.

(Heh ... complicated ... as if the computing necessary would be harder than realistic movement of Grace's hair ...)

 

[Scotty 1,061]

12 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Most people understand few gear wheels, but wouldn't actually be able to imagine all gears inside mechanical clocks correctly. Similarly, single transistor is easy to understand. So, no. The border between those is not as clear as you claim.

There is still possibility the computer will not work - in fact, we don't have the clocks confirmed yet either - but it wouldn't be for this reason.

Chances are, mechanical clocks, ones with gears and a pendulum for the timing, might work, but electronic quartz bases clocks won't, at least not accurately, she could probably try to simulate an electronic clock, but it might be too fast or too slow if she can't accurately simulate the electronics.

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The screen will likely be rendered in video memory completely, as part of scrolling acceleration. And the spell can scan video memory just as the pages, and it's already pre-rendered so no complicated computing is necessary.

(Heh ... complicated ... as if the computing necessary would be harder than realistic movement of Grace's hair ...)

Same goes for this, if Sarah doesn't know the process of how computers store information, how can she even attempt to accurately access it beyond what's initially displayed.

21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Sigh. Google datacenter is well outside range of simulation and google homepage is set to expire immediately (Cache-Control private, max-age 0, expires -1 ...). If google will load, we would know it's fake.

Where the datacenter is located is irrelevant, the fact I'm trying to explain is Sarah could try, but the illusion would attempt to take from Sarah's imagination, there's a good chance that if Sarah just types in a random thing she knows little to nothing about, she'd either get something that's obviously fake, or nothing. Alternately for something local, she could open Windows Explorer (the file manager in Windows, not Internet Explorer) and if she had used Explorer before, the GUI would appear for it, but the drives, folders and files would either not exist, or be loosely based on Sarah's experiences if she ever rooted through Explorer on her computer, so nothing there would be accurate either.

She may also be able to load up Solitaire or Minesweeper, but chances are she'd have a 100% win rate.