Home > Topic > simulating
1 " Better world's when we change by simulating the technology NOT the Homo sapiens "
2 " Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology that specializes in simulating human problems. "
― Jonathan Gottschall , The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
3 " Something as superfluous as " play" is also an essential feature of our consciousness. If you ask children why they like to play, they will say, " Because it's fun." But that invites the next question: What is fun? Actually, when children play, they are often trying to reenact complex human interactions in simplified form. Human society is extremely sophisticated, much too involved for the developing brains of young children, so children run simplified simulations of adult society, playing games such as doctor, cops and robber, and school. Each game is a model that allows children to experiment with a small segment of adult behavior and then run simulations into the future. (Similarly, when adults engage in play, such as a game of poker, the brain constantly creates a model of what cards the various players possess, and then projects that model into the future, using previous data about people's personality, ability to bluff, etc. The key to games like chess, cards, and gambling is the ability to simulate the future. Animals, which live largely in the present, are not as good at games as humans are, especially if they involve planning. Infant mammals do engage in a form of play, but this is more for exercise, testing one another, practicing future battles, and establishing the coming social pecking order rather than simulating the future.) "
4 " Nothing boosts confidence quite like simulating a disaster, engaging with it fully, both physically and intellectually, and realising you have the ability to work the problem. "
― Chris Hadfield , An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
5 " But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it. "
― Iris Murdoch , The Bell
6 " She could hear her hair growing. It sounded like something crumbling. A burnt thing crumbling. Coal. Toast. Moths crisped on a light bulb. She remembered reading somewhere that even after people died, their hair and nails kept growing. Like starlight, travelling through the universe long after the stars themselves had died. Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them. "
― Arundhati Roy , The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
7 " I can be fascinated with very little things. The clouds stimulate my imagination, and sometimes I just sit somewhere and go on dreaming for a long time. Your head is also a computer. When you're dreaming, you are simulating a world in which you are living. "