Because futher down the stack, more reliable a tech has to be. Otherwise good luck debugging. Also agree with heisenbit.

Hmmm... on that note, if the universe is a simulation, then a bug in that could have some interesting ramifications.

"Don't use the bookshelf over there, physics is broken on that shiny spot." :D

// FIXME Trying to read both the position and the momentum of a particle reliably crashes the simulation.

// Workaround: Make the accessor method return fuzzy values for either of those values.

The problem with finding a physics bug is that it's liable to be amplifiable. Break conservation laws just a little bit and suddenly you have potential for exponential runaway leading to an unplanned reality excursion, and say goodbye to your light-cone.

Well, by definition the behaviour would be undefined so could go any which way. ;)

Modern day VM software has various levels of exception checking, and code to catch/mitigate/etc when bugs crop up.

So, a universe-capable simulator might have any kind of behaviour if/when a bug occurs. It doesn't need to be an unbounded, runaway scenario. :)

And, if a very bad reality excursion happens, you scrap that branch and restore the last checkpoint. Nobody inside the simulation will ever remember it. You only bother fixing it if halt/scrap/restore becomes a burden.

It probably happens more often than we imagine ;-)

> Hmmm... on that note, if the universe is a simulation, then a bug in that could have some interesting ramifications.

> "Don't use the bookshelf over there, physics is broken on that shiny spot." :D

You know "The Animatrix - Beyond"?

Nope, just looked it up though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix#.22Beyond.22

Seems like the same kind of concept. :)

I don't know why you were downvoted. I find this hilarious and thought-provoking.