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virtual unreality
Jan. 28th, 2021 01:42 pmI'm reading a series of books and they are fairly interesting. Well written, but the author has fallen victim to an all-too-common fallacy.
He's got a character experimenting in virtual reality to discover what she can and can't do with magic. yes, this world has magic and tech, though humans usually can't do magic.
The problem here is that virtual reality is a computer simulation. As such it works by rules that have been set up about how things work. As such you *can't* deduce rules about how new things work.
You can use a simulation to see how things work in terms of known laws. For example you can model airflow around a new aircraft design to see how it performs and whether it will be stable in flight.
but you *can't* use a simulation to investigate the effects of new drugs, because we don't know all the rules of biology. You can use a simulation to look for *known* problems, but it won't spot ones you don't know can happen. And the simulation might say there's danger due to interactions that don't actually apply in the real world.
Thus the need for animal testing, and then testing in humans.
It's the same for the character trying to experiment with magic in VR. It's not *possible* to discover any rules that weren't already programmed in. Nor is it possible to discover that the programmed in rules, don't match reality.
All the simulation can do is follow the rules that were programmed in,
He's got a character experimenting in virtual reality to discover what she can and can't do with magic. yes, this world has magic and tech, though humans usually can't do magic.
The problem here is that virtual reality is a computer simulation. As such it works by rules that have been set up about how things work. As such you *can't* deduce rules about how new things work.
You can use a simulation to see how things work in terms of known laws. For example you can model airflow around a new aircraft design to see how it performs and whether it will be stable in flight.
but you *can't* use a simulation to investigate the effects of new drugs, because we don't know all the rules of biology. You can use a simulation to look for *known* problems, but it won't spot ones you don't know can happen. And the simulation might say there's danger due to interactions that don't actually apply in the real world.
Thus the need for animal testing, and then testing in humans.
It's the same for the character trying to experiment with magic in VR. It's not *possible* to discover any rules that weren't already programmed in. Nor is it possible to discover that the programmed in rules, don't match reality.
All the simulation can do is follow the rules that were programmed in,
