Erik's Reviews > Distress

I love the idea that we live in a simulation. Problem is, it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion about it. Experience has taught me that when I write/say, “our universe is a simulation,” other people’s minds go to a much different (and sillier) place than mine. They tend to picture a giant row of supercomputers - or maybe even a planetary computer - and think, “Ah, our universe is being run as software on something like that.”

And to be completely fair, it’s kinda like, well what else does it mean that our universe is a simulation? But when I use that phrase, what I really mean is something like, “If I were to design a simulated universe to achieve some aim, it would look remarkably similar to ours.” For example:

1] Classical computer architecture use several data highways (called a ‘bus’) that handle data transfer between the computer’s different parts. For example, the FSB (Front-side Bus) controls data transfer between the CPU and the memory. It’s extremely important that all these elements maintain synchronicity with each other. While the CPU and memory can (and do) run faster than the FSB, the bus-speed is the speed limit of any data transfer between the two.

The universe also has a speed limit of information transfer between different systems: the speed of light. Which is important, just as it is with the system bus. A universe without a constant speed for information transfer would have serious problems with synchronicity and causality.

2] Graphical rendering engines all have various techniques to deal with changing Level-Of-Detail (LOD). For example, if the camera/player is close to trees, those trees might be rendered in full detail with a million polygons. If, however, the trees are very far away, they might be rendered as a “billboard” - a 2d picture - with no geometry whatsoever. Engines do this in order to lessen computational workloads. If the trees are so far away that the player can’t even tell the difference between a simple billboard and fully rendered geometry… then why tax the system with unnecessary rendering?

Likewise, one of the enduring problems of quantum mechanics is that the universe appears to obey different rules at different scales, and we struggle to understand this quantum-classical boundary. Why is it that electrons obey quantum superposition - they exist in multiple locations simultaneously - but that macroscopic objects, like a computer screen or a table, do not?

Well, if you start from the assumption that the universe is a simulation, such a boundary makes perfect sense in terms of LOD. If the universe follows a path of maximal computational efficiency (either because it was designed that way or because extrema are naturally more stable), you would want to render objects only at an observable LOD. It would be far too computationally intensive to fully render every quantum particle in the universe. Indeed, at that point, you don’t really have a “simulation.” You just have… the universe. Instead, you would just render at the LOD to match the perspective of some set of privileged observers.

3] Computer systems have a maximum rendering thoroughput. For example, the new PS5 has a teraflop rating of 10.28. That means it can perform 10.28 trillion math operations per second. So let’s say you’re playing a game and you’re doing something graphically simple, like sitting in a large plain room. The geometry, effects, etc might demand only .17 trillion operations per frame. Since the PS5 can do 10.28 trillion per second, it’s able to render about 60 frames per second.

But suppose you filled your virtual room with objects and explosions and wild physics. Now the various rendering systems demand 1.3 trillion operations per frame. By the same calculation, the PS5 can only render 10 frames per second.

In other words, time is relative between you - sitting outside the tv/computer system - and the simulated scene within the computer. The more complex the scene, the greater the time dilation.

That is similar to how time works in our universe too. If you compare a clock near an area with a high energy density, such as a neutron star or a black hole or even the Earth, with a clock near an area with low energy density, you’ll find that clocks in high density areas run more slowly.

And so on and so forth. But, um, yeah, I should probably get to the actual book review:

You’ll note, throughout the above discussion, I was rather God-agnostic. Accepting the universe as a simulation has minimal relation to religion. It might speak to the Intelligent Designer’s method - or it might just be that stability and computational efficiency naturally go hand-in-hand.

Regardless, in Distress, the universe SHOULD be thought of in terms of informational topology, designed by and driven toward an Omega Point. The Omega Point, if you’re ignorant of the term, takes a view opposite of the Deist’s: God did not create the universe so much as the universe creates God. In Distress, this Omega Point is the first being to grasp a coherent, consistent Theory of Everything, a physics theory that unifies all scales.

That’s basically the setting: a journalist goes to a newly grown island-nation (created by stolen biotechnology) in order to cover a physics conference in which some prominent physicists present and discuss their new Theories of Everything. What follows is a lot of religious, scientific, and political shenanigans.

Honestly, I found that core narrative and core sci-fi conceit relatively lackluster. Not terrible but not up to Egan’s best. I sometimes talk about Egan novels having a “super Egan mode” in which he fully embraces his book’s main sci-fi conceit and goes wild. Never happens here.

But - moreso than any other Egan novel - this book has some of my favorite discussions. I’ve always maintained that Egan, despite being a hard sci-fi writer, has great insight into humanity, and this novel demonstrates it.

One of my favorite discussions involves a news-story the journalist covers, about a group of adults with mild autism, who wish to undergo brain surgery to make themselves MORE autistic. There’s just great line after great line in the whole discussion:

What’s the most patronizing thing you can offer to do for people you disagree with, or don’t understand? […] Heal them.

and

What’s the most intellectually lazy way you can think of, to try to win an argument? […] To say your opponent lacks humanity.

and

Once there was a burgeoning ego, a growing sense of self in the foreground of every action, how was it prevented from overshadowing everything else? […] The answer is, evolution invented intimacy. Intimacy makes it possible to attach some, or all, of the compelling qualities associated with the ego - the model of the self - to models of other people. A pleasure reinforced by sex, but not restricted to the act, like orgasm. And not even restricted to sexual partners, in humans. Intimacy is just the belief - rewarded by the brain - that you know the people you live in almost the same fashion as you know yourself.

My other favorite discussion occurs between the protagonist and a friend, worth quoting in its entirety:

He said, “No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of … glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.”

I said uneasily, “Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?”

He shook his head apologetically. “No. Everything’s fine. Life is wonderful. I love them all. But…” He looked away, his whole body visibly tensing. “Only because I’d go insane if I didn’t. Only because I have to make it work.”

“But you do. Make it work.”

“Yes!” He scowled, frustrated that I was missing the point. “And it’s not even that hard, anymore. It’s pure habit. But… I used to think there’d be more. I used to think that if you changed from … valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you’d learned something new, understood something better. And it’s not like that at all. I just value what I’m stuck with. That’s it, that’s the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can’t escape.”

I don’t necessarily agree with all that, but the pragmatic and moral consequences of the conflict between acceptance and rebellion are something I’ve pondered a long time. Ever since I studied Nietzsche’s “will to power,” practically a direct refutation of Stoicism.

Which is to say, I read in order to learn, to have my thoughts provoked, if not titillated. And in that respect, Distress has served this reader well.