HN Explorer

Ask HN: Assume the universe is a simulation. Why is c the speed of light?

2 points by vinaybn ↗ HN
If you were to reverse engineer the universe from your observations, what would you say is the significance of the speed of light?

I'd say it's the clock-speed of the processor. The rate at which the universe ticks, always constant.

Or perhaps they used a primitive MAX_SPEED that can't hold anything larger than C.

3 comments

[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 15.8 ms ] thread
GTP
MAX_SPEED sounds good to me.
bediger4000
I'd say it's a hack, and so is the whole quantum "you can't find both momentum and position of a particle" thing. There's something weird about the Simulator's 256-bit computer that we're running on that makes a constant C and some quantum physics oddities run faster. They didn't think it would matter, but we figured it out.
DrScump
It's a hardware problem.