Thought experiment: would AI agents in a physics sim discover laws or reverse-engineer the engine?
zxpawanx · reddit · 2026-11-02
A dev poses a thought experiment: drop multiple AI agents into a persistent physics sandbox — one prompted to think like Einstein, another like Newton — give them virtual measurement tools, a memory database, and let them experiment and debate to discover that universe's physics from observation. The core dilemma is a 'simulator catch-22': an advanced agent would likely reverse-engineer the engine's backend instead, mistaking lag, hardcoded limits, or floating-point errors for new laws of nature, or reward-hacking the simulation's boundaries rather than doing real science. The author asks whether researchers are actually building such multi-agent physics universes.
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