On this page I’m going to explore the classical ‘Glitch in the Matrix’ possibility as being due to a fault or error that leads to a large scale catastrophic unexpected presentation that will be noticeable to the simulations residents such that they will question the nature of reality and particularly the quaint idea that reality is always entirely ‘consistent’ and or ‘real’.
So, a simulation glitch could be the result of some hardware component fault or failure or it could relate to a simulation software language error, bug or logic failure under certain conditions, or an error in how the software handles the data as it is being prepared for ‘rendering’.
A serious ‘Glitch in the Matrix’ will therefore result in some ‘reality fault’ being perceived, either by many people simultaneously or consistently by different people at different times. Basically, ‘something’ will happen that is either NOT what the simulation designers expected or intended.
Examples of Possible ‘glitches’ in a Computer Hardware Based Software Generated Simulated Reality
Here are some examples of some different catastrophic ‘glitches’ in the matrix possibilities.
- You cease to exist (simulation hardware power failure).
- The colour blue ‘disappearing’ everywhere.
- Everyone missing blocks of time or chunks of memory.
- Objects appearing and disappearing.
- Everything physical suddenly becoming visually transparent for everyone.
- Visual reality becoming noticeably pixelated or noticeably switching from a coarser resolution to a much finer one.
Common problems involving processor overloading or basic hardware faults or software language problems could have a simulated person experiencing miss-rendering problems which would result in resolution degradation, time-skips, time-lags etc.
A simulated resident could also experience incomplete rendering which would result in objects of ‘things’ going missing from one render frame to the next.
In the case of having objects ‘popping’ in from nothing (because they hadn’t loaded the object before the display needed to be perceived) then although this is a software decision it is actually caused by the hardware not being powerful enough at that moment to render the ‘scene’ at the desired frame rate.
So, either the frame rate drops (causing miss-rending as described above) or things within a ‘frame’ are deliberately missed out or presented in reduced detail in order to get the frame out on time.
Reducing the detail in frames can cause:
- Random fogged, blurred or other obscuring effects particularly of ‘far away’ objects.
- Frame traffic delays (things move slowly so require less change per frame).
- Distant objects could have frame updates less often than the ‘global’ frame rate and would therefore seem to move in stop motion video.
Any of the above can happen when the simulation hardware is overloaded, confused or waiting and has to spend time trying to sort itself out in order to continue with what it is programmed to do. Basically, these types of glitches are generally down to delays in getting the right instructions to the logic processing ‘unit(s)’ in the correct order. Such delays could be due to there being bottlenecks in passing information from one component to another or they could be because the processing capacity of one or more hardware components is approaching their maximum capacity.
Most types of hardware glitches are rarely repeatable except when there is a major design fault or oversight and they are (I’m told) random in distribution. The repeating ‘glitches’ all come down to incompatibilities between interconnected components OR things like the Pentium Floating Point Bug which was an internal architecture design fault that caused it to calculate a limited number of floating point sums incorrectly.
As any of the above are going to be very ‘noticeable’ to all the population then they are ‘serious’ and proper ‘glitches’.
How Would a Competent Simulation Designer Approach Addressing ‘Glitches in the Matrix’ Possibilities?
However, as this is likely going to be a very, very important project then you’d likely stress test all your hardware components as well as the operating system and software languages to an unbelievable degree such that you would expect that designers should have ironed out all hardware and ‘major’ software language glitches in test runs and in simulated ‘simulation’ runs with the likely result that they’d be able to virtually guarantee that there’d be no catastrophic glitches.
Having said the above, I should point out (once again) that ‘IF’ a simulation designer knew that there was any chance of any of the above happening under any combination of ‘normal’ operational circumstances then they’d likely implement a ‘frail and faulty people’ as an explanation protocol.
In fact any simulation designer that was actually competent would be able to deduce that the chances of themselves being able to predict and pre-implement solutions and remedies to address all possible ‘glitch in the matrix’ possibilities as being impossible they’d likely automatically implement the ‘frail and faulty people’ explanation (the ‘FAFP’ protocol) JUST IN CASE.
‘IF’ they did implement the FAFP protocol then they’d also have to keep people confused and unaware of the little FACT that simulated people in being entirely software generated would be the most complicated component to implement AND would therefore be the most likely component to present real ‘glitches’ anomalies.
In other words, anyone competent that was serious about assessing and evaluating realistic earth as a simulation possibilities would AUTOMATICALLY evaluate ALL frailties and faults exhibited by their population as being a potential simulation anomaly or artefact (possibly due to a simplifying approximation or a simulation decision to maximise the success of the likely very expensive simulation project (such as managing the entire population for example)).
Strangely I’ve never even seen anyone even question the use of the ‘frail and faulty people’ explanation nor anyone pointing out that to use this to explain people ‘oddities’ for ENTIRELY SIMULATED PEOPLE probably isn’t sensible, logical or even objective.
So, the above describes the possible components specific and component interaction problems and of making sure your hardware system doesn’t do anything unexpected and avoids basic processing overloading problems.
However, to increase the chances of avoiding system processing overloads you are likely to design in ‘limits’ or boundaries to both the fundamental micro components of your reality as well as of certain macro components. This is discussed on the next page . . .