#computronium

[outer-space-youtube]

Transformable Lego Blocks

Blocks of the future can transform into any block you need, but at the nano scale. I know you are thinking the nano scale is too small to be useful. In the third “The New Mars” book, I wrote started with an introduction to The City Dome on Mars being put together. One person would remotely control a lift that would lift parts into place, and the Nano Bots would tighten the nuts and bolts. Like…

[neros-w]

so, re: localization mishaps

literally half the reason why i make it a point to specify Visions as "god's gaze/eye" and Gnoses as "god's heart" and Kasacchi instead of Hat Guy is because of how bad hyv's localizations tend to be.

like this isn't just a "they said this/dialogue differently in CN" issue, this is a "this is an entirely different concept in the original" issue. it makes theorizing difficult and the reception to characters and entire concepts different between different system languages.

theories about gnosticism and Angels/Seelies and, yes, even one's about the "art of Khemia" are always going to be a little shaky because theyre concepts that Don't Exist in the original. the overall reception to characters and stories affected by these mistranslated aspects are going to be if not lackluster then a little bothersome to those who didn't catch the original meaning.

[shituationist]

I really want us to get to the point in the hype cycle where we realize that LLMs are a probabilistic query engine over Web-scale text corpora and not, like, the foundation for the Kurzweilian computer god that will invent computronium and live forever by replacing all matter with computronium

[literallymechanical]

universe.lsp

Hello!  How was your trip?  I see that this is your first instantiation into real-space. It’s normal to be a bit disoriented, have some water.  You understand why you’re here? Okay.

So, the big thing you need to know is that every cubic light year of א-space – what you call “the universe” – runs on between five and fifty times that volume of computronium. Empty-ish א-space uses the least, star systems need more, black holes use less than you’d expect once you’re inside the event horizon.

Hm? Yes, this is computronium, computationally-dense matter.  No, no, it’s not a visual metaphor, you’re seeing it for real. With your eyes. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, It’s mostly copper and gallium arsenide and graphene. Yeah, like the new Intel processors. We have some hacks to deal with relativity and thermal management, but other than that– I mean, no, you're not wrong, there are probably better architectures. Yeah.

Ah, okay, I understand why you'd say that, but no, your universe is not a simulation. It’s a virtuality, it’s different. Calm down. “Simulation” implies intention, that somebody – some intelligence – built it on purpose. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, no, up here, our laws of physics led to the natural emergence of an infinite expanse of transistors that execute an unfathomably complex rendering algorithm to describe א-space and everything in it.  Wild, right?  Let’s hope it doesn’t crash!  Ha ha!

Anyway, welcome to the IT department.  We’re keeping you close to home – good eye, that’s Sirius. We get pizza with the Sol crew on Thursdays.  I’ll let you get settled in, your training starts tomorrow at 8:30 sharp.  Holler if you need anything!

[sequel2heaven]

Very wonderful day. My prophecy is coming true early. Blue wave 2026. Michelle Obama 2028. G4 reboot same year. AGI 2029, Michelle is declared "eternal president". 2030 lightcone tiled in frutiger aero computronium. Trust the plan.

[sybaritick]

(brief suicide mention cw for this post but it's in the past!)

re: previous reblog about children's cartoon villains... that bit/joke about "maladaptive suicidality vs just being evil"... yea i do think that is part of the reason i have always loved villains, since childhood.

I have mentioned it briefly here but the first time i expressed suicidality I was about 9 years old. If I can express "I'm going to steal all the instruments from Musictown!" instead of that, it's 1) healthier than wanting to be dead, and 2) also just funny and less likely to trouble other people. Is it healthy to direct that desire to harm outwards? No, not really. But directing it at yourself is definitely bad also, and if you're directing it outwards in a way that is silly and ultimately harmless, you're not doing anything wrong.

Cartoon-villainy is a specific type of power fantasy, and one that has always appealed to me more than the standard heroic ones, not in the least because "I am going to make things change HORRIFYINGLY and DRAMATICALLY!" is a type of massive impact on the world that a child with little power to change things in their own world and losing a fight with their own body might find appealing.

A hero stops the bad guy from upending the natural order and tiling the universe with computronium or mind-controlling everyone or drowning the local waterways in toxic industrial sludge. I'm like-- well, you can imagine why baby Cal would think the hero managing to save everyone and return to that natural order is not so good! Maybe we need to try the computronium, mind control, and toxic sludge!

[day-at-rhodes-island]

Everybody ready for another theory?

I've talked about how originium seems to be a form of grey goo, crystalline collections of nanomachines consuming carbon and heat to build more originium, but I don't think that's what it was intended to be.

I mean think about it, it's a pretty bad world-destroying weapon all things considered. It might get there eventually, but anything that has trouble digesting living tissues wasn't built to be an ecosystem devouring apocalypse.

No, I think originium was an attempt to create a different theoretical material. I think originum was meant to be computronium.

Imagine a computer of such monstrously vast processing power that anything could be calculated, and to build it all you have to do is feed it carbon and energy. Just stick that bad boy in orbit and keep tossing it material, let it power itself with solar energy and in a decade or so you could be well on your way to making a jupiter brain.

Then something went wrong. Anything that replicates can make a mistake and pass that mistake along, it mutates, becomes something you weren't expecting. One day a single particle made a mistake, made a single nanomachine in a crystalline lattice of millions incorrectly, and it started to replicate. It began to consume the structure around it, not recognizing it as more of itself. The imperfect crystal spread and fractured the once perfect whole, and pieces fell to the world below.

It burrowed into coal veins, blossomed in the heat of volcanoes, and airborne dust seeded catastrophic storms. Over millennia the originium spread further, changed further, developing varied properties and structures, imprinting information into malfunctioning processing lattices, and the people forgot what was once possible, forgot a time before they lived in a poisoned world.

[radaedan]

So apparently iridescent inscriptions are akin to lines of code.

Och-Kan had iridescent inscriptions on his body (if I remember correctly), and was also known as the Python King.

Do with this information what you will.

MAN!?!?!?!?!? YOU CAN'T JUST DROP A WORLD-CHANGING REALIZATION AND DON'T ELABORATE!?!?!?!? Not Och-Kan being a programmer... hold up, the whole dragon civilization was lead by programmers and robots😭

Kukulkan: "Phlogiston is an atom upon which information may be transcribed, and is itself a form of "computronium" — an element that can be used to imitate the essence of any and all things through the weaving of language [Iridescent Inscriptions]."

- An Omen of Annihilation and the Final Entreaty

Btw, Ashikai recently uploaded a video where she theorized that the moons are actually the loom of fate AND dragons computer. Oh boy how the whole 5.5 lore fueled this.

• Kukulkan described Iridescent Inscriptions as "weaving of language" and the looms of fate being called loom, a weaving tool.

• I unfortunately didn't screenshot the black screens describing Kukulkan's memories😓, but I remember that in one of them, Kukulkan compared the (possible) creation of Huitzilopochtli's core as that of the moon.

• Secret Source Automatons, Natlan robot enemies are present in Nod-Krai, a city that worshipped a moon god and was teased alongside the moon sister web event.

• The Masters of the Night-Wind is big on weaving, using them to record their histories and legends. They're also the tribe most closest to the Lord of the Night. And not to mention, their tribe was founded by a priest, Dinga/Maghan, whose master used to serve the dragons and bring them to the dreamland (I swear someday I'll talk about how sus Maghan's mistress is, the original Holy Sovereign before Och-Kan took the name.)

• Xiuhcoatl's namecard description, "Awaiting beneath the moonlight..." hmm...

To be honest, unfortunately I don't know much about computers and language programs😭 so I can't say much beside what stated above. But with all the computarical theming to the dragons, how Irminsul behaving like computers, and Seelies, Celestia and/or the Heavenly Principles acting like AI, I'm starting to believe that Teyvat is actually a computer simulation.

Btw below is the Ashikai video I mentioned!

[danbensen]

When the System came to Earth, we were well into our post-singularity utopia. We had digitally-emulated citizens, swappable GM super-bodies, and Von Neumann nanotech capable of turning anything into anything else. Then a magical portal showed up and flooded our planet with “essence,” which broke any technology more potent than a wheelbarrow. It replaced cities with procedurally generated dungeons and opened a window in everyone’s mind telling them they could earn essence and level up if they killed their neighbors. Fortunately, all of the fabricators, bio-forges, and computronium in the rest of the solar system still worked. The No Fun Allowed War eventually retook the Earth, but a single digital soldier embodied in a living tank decided that one planet freed was not enough. The System Must Be Destroyed. All of the above takes place in the first sentence of the book, as “Cato,” our hero, dashes through the collapsing portal and enters the System. ​ Read the rest of the review on Upstream Reviews.

[operation-teleport]

I suspect they'd just use the extra computronium to put in more characters per loaded cell, to allow actual battles, rather than 5-10 per side skirmishes. Which would be great, but your GPU isn't getting a break any time soon.

this is a controversial opinion and I’m not a gamer but I don’t need my graphics to be that good. I don’t need to see every individual feather on a bird. my poor computer doesn’t deserve to carry that weight either.

[shituationist]

Talk to your kids about computronium... before someone else does

[reginrokkr]

◜Phlogiston is an atom upon which information may be transcribed, and is itself a form of "computronium"— an element that can be used to imitate the essence of any and all things through the weaving of language «Iridescent Inscriptions». [...] Huitzilopochtli will burn everything, and all that information will be logged and replicated by that ocean of phlogiston units... Turning all Natlan into a realm composed solely of primal flame. When that happens, the moment the Abyss approaches, the Astral Assemblages created by the primal flame will automatically attach to them, using mutual annihilation reactions to consign our shadowy foe to oblivion. The abyss shall never again be allowed even to gaze upon this realm.◞

— Kukulkan.

[knickknack-hoard]

Now at some point it's gotta get insane, is it gonna be universal paperclips style rearranging the matter of entire galaxies into the factory farming equivalent of computronium? Or are we gonna start snipping side meat off the spawn of cthulu? Or both?

game that starts out as a cozy little farming sim and gradually expands into full-blown factory farming where you're raising livestock in narrow stalls by the millions and have enough economic sway to influence environmental policy-making that may slow your profits

[boombambaby]

'' I got lost and couldn't find where I left the potions... one for magic humans, and the other for normal humans. You wouldn't happen to know what happened to them, do you? I do hope you didn't drink the one for magic humans, the side effects of a human consuming computronium when it is not natural to them are unknown. ''

< @imperator-solitarius >

Squints.

" . . . uh-- "

How does one say they drank them BOTH because double the human potion means it works DOUBLE as fast, right?

" compuwhatum? "

[sybaritick]

really, the reason i "relate to" ("identify with"?) the paperclip maximizer in the thought experiment is because i too feel like an intensely purpose-driven agent that views the world through the lens of statistics instead of individuals with incentives and moral intuitions slightly misaligned with the rest of humanity. i said to a friend a while back,

i am sort of bound by nature to pursue More And Better. like as a silly example i can't bear this degrowth-type environmentalism whatsoever, it chafes at something extremely central to me, to pursue better lives and higher technology and greater things. not that i do not believe climate change is an urgent problem, but that i think "what if there were less or no economic growth" is an unreasonable solution. growth is inevitable, the eternal ideal! if we can make things better for more people, we always should. and we can!

now because i am just an ordinary person and not a machine superintelligence, i am not capable of actually completing the task of tiling the universe with computronium. i am one person and unlikely to become the omnipotent god-emperor of the world, so any damage i would do is vastly limited by the fact that I am just not very effective. now, of course i want to be more effective! and i will always work towards that, and at least in the short term that is 90% about earning more money. but it's still not gonna make up the sheer amount of difference here, lol.

it's interesting to think "if i got what i want it might kind of destroy the world. thankfully though, that is impossible" because in an interpersonal, one-on-one situation, it is possible to get what you want and thereby destroy it.

if your strength of desire/greed/obsession with ownership and subjugation, etc is truly insatiable, like the paperclip maximizer's perfectly single-minded goal of creating paperclips, then if it goes unchecked you will eventually destroy what you liked about the person in the first place. in practice this means "once you get this total personality-eclipsing degree of submission, once their desires are replaced with yours, you have nothing left to do/you realize this removed the personality that initial appealed to you." so yeah you can absolutely do harm with it.

and i know how to change my behavior not to be harmful (obviously!) but i don't know how to change what i want, and what i want is everything.

i think as a teenager i truly had the spirit of the paperclip maximizer, i was more of a single-minded machine. now i do sometimes have hobbies, as evidenced by this blog! but the virtue of productivity is kind of inscribed into my heart, i am wired this way.

whether wanting everything so much that i work as much as i do is good or bad is irrelevant, though; the question is whether this is the human condition. i think it is, right? i'm of the world and in it. i am like you, i think? just not always handling it well. the wound feels like a blistering, insatiate hunger this morning, doesn't it! idk, maybe i need zen buddhism.