Ye Old Skwib

Yeah, but if the universe was some giant simulation being played by some kind of super-being (post-human, post-uberchimp, whatever) on a computer big enough to create a whole universe, don’t you think there would be more roving gangs of mutant slothmen breaking into our apartments and reorganizing our CD collections alphabetically?

I looked into a similar problem when I was the Overlord of Neecknaw, and our best scienticians determined that it was not possible to accurately model the universe in something smaller than the universe. We certainly couldn’t do it with the Commadore 64000s at our disposal. So, I wouldn’t be too worried about the NY Times article that everyone’s talking about.

This question is one your own human philosophers have wrestled with time and again. I liked the way your Dr. Johnson tackled the problem, described here by something called a “Boswell” (some kind of genetic mutation that followed him around and recorded everything he said, I’m guessing):

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.”

On the plus side, just before I was forced to leave Neecknaw on this extended sabbatical, some of my best scienticians managed to create slothmen. No luck getting them to read, let alone organize things alphabetically.

Next time: I wanted to get a video of a black hole for YouTube, but I seem to be trapped in its event horizon. How long will my battery last here?