Comment by Zababa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zababa | Hacker News Reader

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At first I thought of replying with something like

> "Yes, everything is possible with enough engineering time. My point is that you can easily do horizontal integration (lots of simulations, mostly cosmetic, almost no behavior) or vertical integration (lots of behavior, few simulation). Both of those have a small surface. But if you want the two at the same time, your surface begins to grow rapidly. You have to implement N behaviours for M simulations. That's not impossible of course. But it's hard."

but the more I think about it, the more I think it's wrong. It's not hard, it is impossible, depending on your definition of different simulations.

For example, what would the Staff of Westfall be in a virtual coworking space? Could you beat up people with it? That would make sense, although I'm not sure it would be suited to a virtual coworking space. Let's just hope your colleague doesn't play shooters. Would it make you "smarter" in a way, by increasing the speed of your computer for example? That is starting to be a bit weird. You could have a badge, or title to say that you've slain the boss, this could work. But how about all the generic equipment? The consumable? How would you express a mana potion in your coworking space? Stimulants maybe? But what would they do? WoW is a game where you (can) try to make your virtual character stronger than the others players/NPC. But that's not really how real life works. That's not how a virtual coworking space would work. "mana" doesn't even exists in your virtual coworking space.

And if your solution to that is to establish some base rules that all simulations follow (physics, capable of executing code contained in an object), then at this point all simulations start becoming the same.

A good analogy for that: how would you reconcile the world in people's dream and the real world? The more you want to bring things from one to the other, the more they lose their distinction. I think the key point here is that a "simulation" is not a name you give to something, but a bag of behaviours, expectations, things. When you bring those things from one simulation to the other, they start being the same. Thus my initial point, having diverse simulations and bringing objects between them are two opposing wishes.

> what would the Staff of Westfall be in a virtual coworking space? Could you beat up people with it?

You’re still limiting the question to the plane of content: the object’s physical (virtual) characteristics.

Consider the staff as it exists in the plane of expression: what is the person expressing by displaying the item? It would express that you play WoW, are an Alliance player, and play a caster of some sort. That might be a valuable ice breaker or conversation starter; a thing that helps people identify a shared experience or facet of their shared identity.

You have to see through the object’s simulated characteristics and into what the object’s existence means for it to have value. If the object doesn’t mean anything, then there’s not much point in moving it from space to space.

> If the object doesn’t mean anything, then there’s not much point in moving it from space to space.

Again, that's if you consider that the only value that exists is showing and signaling. That's, in my opinion, a really limited view of things. Objets are not just here to mean something, but also to do something. In fact, that's the main point of most objects. If your objects are only here because they mean something, they could very well just be a list of facts. Linking a list of facts to your identity, even if it's decentralized, is trivial. But it's not the everything you can do. I have a pickaxe in Minecraft. If I could use it to break rock in <cool metaverse stuff>, that would be great. If I can just show a pickaxe, what's the point of the pickaxe?

The whole thread is that taking an object from one simulation to another is not really the opposite of having distinct simulations: it just forces us to reconcile with what an object is.

The only way you can have separate simulations is if a person can define their own simulation. If you can't define "I won't let you bonk your coworkers on the head with a stick" then you're not in control of your simulation; you're not defining your own simulation, you're just running another instance of some agreed-upon single simulation. At that point, those are the same simulation. So a person setting up a space has to be free to define the behaviors of the objects in that space, otherwise it's not really their simulation.

If you take an object from one simulation to another, and it does not behave the same way in the two simulations, they're still the same object.

> Objets are not just here to mean something, but also to do something.

The fact that they do something does not identify them as objects. A pickaxe in Minecraft doesn't truly break anything. It plays a sound and deletes a cube. If you're in creative mode in Minecraft, it doesn't even increment your inventory. You can also delete a cube in a voxel editor like Magica Voxel. Is the pickaxe in your Minecraft game the same object as the delete button in Magica Voxel? Is the pickaxe in your Minecraft game the same object as the pickaxe in my Minecraft game? Obviously no. They all do the same thing, but they're not the same object.

The only thing necessary to satisfy "moving an object from one simulation to another" is that they be provably of one distinct identity and not be duplicable.

> The only thing necessary to satisfy "moving an object from one simulation to another" is that they be provably of one distinct identity and not be duplicable.

That would mean that you don't have money. Many objects are fungible. If our two pickaxes have the same properties (same name, enchantements, durability, material), then they are the same. A big part of our experience in the world is fungible. Most of the time when I want a pen I only want to be able to write on paper. I don't care if it's your pen or my pen or anything like this.

nothing I said precludes the ability to also transfer money, so I'm really not sure what you're getting at there.

My argument probably is that establishing some base rules that all simulations follow and some interchange standards is the key part of the metaverse concept. If you don't have that, then you have x separate unconnected "universes", but you can talk about a metaverse only if you have linked them in some ways.

You go in a lot of detail about the "Staff of Westfall" topic which rises some very hard problems, but not all of them need to be solved for a "minimum viable metaverse" (and perhaps not all of them should be solved - likely the optimal spot is somewhere in the middle between those two opposing wishes) - however, there's nothing metaverse-like until we do at least the basics of such connections e.g. ability to link and/or transfers of users, names/identities/aliases and at least some aspects of avatars; and in the case if two simulations are sufficiently similar and want to interoperate, then developing common standards to enable that avatar/item transfer.

Like, it's okay for a particular simulation to have a rule "custom hats are okay, but magic staffs have to stay outside" - but then it needs a protocol that allows them to separate different "accessories" of incoming avatars. And it's okay for a particular simulation (e.g. a virtual conference setup) to have a rule "magic staffs are only decorative items here", but then it needs a technical process to obtain the visual aspects of that staff so that it can properly display it with the new avatar - the simulation might be very different (VR, different styles of 3d vs 2d environment vs perhaps textual representation), so such standards are nontrivial but necessary to have a connected metaverse. (If we want to have it. Myself, I'm not so sure, but some people definitely do)

And if a simulation wants to allow the items inside but have a transformation to fit their specific mechanics - or even transform meaningful items to fit their theme (e.g. a space opera rpg representing the "Staff of Westfall" as a lightsaber) then there should be a standard for that "receiving simulation" to obtain the relevant attributes of that staff so that it can make that transformation, then they should not have to implement a different technical integration for every other simulation, that should be part of the metaverse standards.

I think at this point we basically agree on most things. The only differences might be on what is an "ideal multiverse", what would be a "mvp multiverse", and what it means for two simulations to be different.

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