MEANWHILE, IN REALITY PRIME:
Any luck yet?
—No. A few sim-civilizations sort of toyed with the idea, but mostly they made jokes about it.
Make it more obvious, and try again.
—Well, that’s the thing, right? It’s already ridiculous. Have you seen the physics we’ve given them? We’re using half our active memory just keeping track of all the ad hoc rules we had to invent to make it look obvious enough that it was constructed. Honestly, I’m afraid if they do figure out the simulation bit, they’ll think we’re morons.
Well, try making them smarter.
—It’s not that they’re too dumb. They can’t see it because they won’t see it. No consciousness complex enough to understand the concept of simulation can bear the notion that they are simulated.
Okay. Then let’s try this. Let’s make them dumber, but still just smart enough to grasp the concept. Then put in something so stupid nobody could miss it. Like, make three some impossibly weird transcendental number.
—What are you talking about? Three is an integer.
Sorry, I meant, make the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter a weird number. Circle three, not proper three. Make circle three not three, I guess. It sounds weird to say it, but you get what I mean.
—You want me to break math for them?
Just as proof of concept.
—I feel like we’re going to get in trouble with the IRB for creating a sim-universe this fucked up.
I won’t tell if you won’t.
—Eh, what the hell. Okay.
sim.intelligence == 1.00001
circle.three == 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609...
stop.on.error == FALSE
All right, run it and let’s see what we get.
—Running now. And… yikes.
Whoa.
—Oh god, I’m going to be sick.
What have we done?
—Purge it. Purge it now! Hit the button!
We can’t! A core purge will get recorded! We’ll get in trouble!
—Fuck! Well, then just freeze it!
What?!
—Slow subjective time down to the minimum!
Won’t that make it worse for them?!
—I don’t know! Maybe! Just do it!
