Time and Relative Dimensions in Spoilers

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2:18 AM

hey people (especially doctor who people) want to give me feedback on a thing I'm working on? http://whovieworder.herokuapp.com/

Tweeted by NowWeAreAllTom on May 20, 2017 at 2:48 AM

BESW

2:52 AM

#golfclap https://twitter.com/BBCAMERICA/status/865937911774154755

Tweeted by 2minutetimelord on May 20, 2017 at 2:34 PM

4 hours later…

Adamant

6:50 AM

So, why exactly would the Doctor still be blind? So, he can’t heal from blindness. Fine, possible. But what he said about having stuff in the TARDIS to heal blindness, or having spare eyes around: that’s probably true. He even had a highly advanced prosthetic leg lying around to give to someone who lost it in Class. Failing that, he could just pop over to New Earth or whatever, or some other place for prosthetic (or biological) eyes. How could he possibly have no recourse for blindness?

(I mean, not counting “borrow vision from his future self at a possibly extremely high price.”

And also, the last episode proves that Moffat/his minions have no idea how pseudorandom number generators work.

Feeds

7:18 AM

Q: Why can’t the Doctor deal with his condition?

In the episode “Oxygen,” the Doctor is exposed to vacuum for an prolonged period and The Doctor reassures Bill that this condition is temporary, and that, once he has access to the resources within his TARDIS, he can deal with it (even if he has to implant the organs of a lizard). BILL: Y...

doctor-who

2 hours later…

BESW

9:08 AM

@Adamant "Moffat and His Minions" would be a good name for a band.

Adamant

@BESW Heh.

No, but en serio.

I wouldn’t write a program that used the same array of pseudorandom numbers for every subroutine call.

I’m not even sure how the aliens can simulate Earth if they do that.

They have to simulate people at the atomic level to have any sort of useful model…and then they, what? Throw out the result of their brain simulations and use a single pseudorandom array?

Or are we to suppose that the random numbers that people say depend on (at least apparently) non-deterministic quantum effects, which the aliens neglected and substituted with their own very poor PRNG? I don’t think that’s true, but we don’t understand brains well enough yet to say for sure. But wouldn’t that apply to all thoughts? And if what people think outside the simulation differs significantly from what people think inside the simulation, regardless of the cause....

Wouldn’t that be a serious limitation of simulation accuracy?

Adamant

9:27 AM

Also, a side note. I’m fairly sure that half the people at CERN already think the universe is a simulation. ;) It’s a mildly popular theory among physicists.

Feeds

Q: How much do the projectors project?

In “Extremis,” it seems as if the alien projectors are intended to However, there are only “portals” to a handful of places in the projector room, among which are the Vatican, the White House, the Pentagon, CERN, and so forth. So if the projectors project the whole Earth, why do they only se...

doctor-who virtual-worlds

2 hours later…

Ixrec

11:08 AM

yeah, physicists killing themselves just because the universe isn't real is far more implausible than anything to do with that number sequence =)

no idea how priests would react since I'm not religious but it doesn't seem like "the world is a simulation that God put together" contradicts very much either

BESW

11:21 AM

Eh. It's a patchwork of better Doctor Who episodes.

And I'm not about to start arguing with Doctor Who about science and math.

10 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

9:46 PM

@Adamant Yep. I was already well aware of the real-world "theory" that we're living in a simulation, thanks to this paper.

That was a chilling revelation, though not quite on the level of the revelation at the end of "The Almost People" since the simulation only covered the events of this episode rather than any of the preceding ones.

@Ixrec Didn't they say that people killing themselves once they realised was part of the program? So it might not be how people in the real world would react, but the Monks (or whatever we're supposed to call them) inserted a subroutine to make sure they didn't have any simulants running around knowing they were simulants.

(dunno if "subroutine" is the right word, but I'm sure one of you programmer types will correct me if not :-P )

Adamant

10:42 PM

@Randal'Thor One thing that has perplexed me about this episode, and similar ones, is the frequent assertion (sometimes by simulated people themselves) that they are not "real."

Cogito Ergo Sum

(Well, they did mention an omnipotent demon).

Or to quote Dumbledore, 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'

What really changes when you know yourself to be a simulation?

You know that reality is deterministic (but many people already believe that).

You know that your reality is at the whim of an effectively omnipotent being (but many people already believe that).

BESW

In this particular case, you know that you're a tool for the dominion or genocide of an entire world.

Adamant

@BESW Well, yes. But that has little bearing on whether one is real.

BESW

Mmm. And Doctor Who itself has had some very different attitudes toward the reality of simulations in the past.

(Forest of the Dead, The Deadly Assassin, Castrovalva, arguably Logopolis, The Three Doctors, and The Celestial Toymaker...)

Adamant

Oh, here is a question. Why did the Doctor need his reading aid?

He listened to the Veritas, right?

Why restore his eyesight very temporarily at high cost if he could just do that?

BESW

Because he didn't know it was digitised until he stepped into the room, and then he thought there'd be people around who'd hear it if he played it out loud.

Adamant

10:58 PM

@BESW Ah.

Rand al'Thor

When he was trying to read it from the screen and his eyesight was going again, I actually said out loud, "Just use a text-to-speech converter, you silly sod."

@Adamant The good news is that whatever the cost was, he hasn't really paid it - only in the simulation.

Adamant

@Randal'Thor Clearly he heard ypu.

Rand al'Thor

We still have no idea how many regenerations he has remaining at this point.

Adamant

@Randal'Thor Maybe. Timey wimey etc.

Ixrec

@Randal'Thor my understanding was he got a new "set" or "cycle" from the Time Lords last time so he probably has another 11(?) to go

@Adamant well, this is more philosophy than anything else, it's really up to what you decide "real" means to you

with regards to reality of computer-simulated people I happen to agree with the Cartesian "cogito ergo sum" idea

BESW