Permutation City
by Greg Egan · first published 1994
72% recommend24% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hard sci-fi that packs mind-bending ideas about uploaded consciousness, simulated universes and speeding up or slowing down simulated time into a short span; suits readers who want ideas that linger for days.
Common criticism: Some find the metaphysical sections slow and the prose weak
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Immortality can be yours . . . at a price Permutation city is the tale of a man with a vision - how to create immortality - and how that vision becomes grows beyond his control. Encompassing the lives and struggles of an artificial life junkie desperate to save her dying mother, a billionaire banker scarred by a terrible crime, the lovers for whom, in their timeless virtual world, love is not enough - and much more - Permutation city is filled with the sense of wonder and dread. Can what makes you human be distilled into data? And what happens if you can't afford to pay?
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"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused?…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗…the exact same universe, or maybe none of them are. Why would anything need to be computed "physically" to make the simulation happen? This take on the simulation hypothesis is the main plot point of "Permutation City" by Greg Egan, which to this day, is (IMHO) the most reasonable variant of the hypothesis I have read.
on “Scientists are looking for ways to put the simulation hypothesis to the test” ↗…explain Dust Theory to someone who hasn't read the book. I haven't found a good standalone explanation of the theory that explains it in a compact manner so my recommendation to people is to read the book. Permutation City is among my top 5 favorite books because I found Dust Theory so mind blowingly amazing from a philosophical standpoint. I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere outside the lesswrong.com forums (which are…
on “A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory” ↗I'm a fan of Greg Egan (which is on there). Quarantine and Permutation City are really great books. Schildt's Ladder was good but a bit too hard for me to grok.
on “The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)” ↗An excellent book which covers this topic is Permutation City by Greg Egan (1994). If we can clone all of you (physical characteristics, brain, memories, personality) into a simulation, what are all the implications? In it, a perfect replica of a person is scanned,…
on “Can We Copy the Brain?” ↗My favorite books about mind emulation: * "Fall, Or Dodge in Hell" by Neil Stephenson [1] * "Permutation City" by Greg Egan [2] [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PXM4VMD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B...
on “Mind Emulation Foundation” ↗The 0.1fps time scale makes no difference to people living within this minecraft universe. From their perspective a second is a second and a day is a day. Funny. See Greg Egan's PERMUTATION CITY for more on that.
on “1Hz CPU made in Minecraft running Minecraft at 0.1fps [video]” ↗Nice short story. For a full sci-fi book of this genre, check out Permutation City. For another fun question: "What time is it?" And lastly a quote: "The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly: I'd rather use them to mimic something better."…
on “A Senseless Conversation” ↗Greg Egan's "Disapora"[1] (where most of us literally live in computers) and "Permutation City"[2] (living in a cellular automata). Similar themes in Roger William's "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect"[3] (an AI accidentally takes over the universe). 1: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.h...…
on “Six works of Computer Science-Fiction” ↗I get like this with my favorite things. I do it less frequently than I did as a child, but I still do. It's silly I guess. The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read…
on “Post Virtual Reality Sadness” ↗…with rich fulfilling memories. And then a later (or earlier) Boltzmann brain happens to exist with a continuation of those memories. (Now I realize I'm just reciting a plot point from the excellent book Permutation City...)
on “Timeline of the far future” ↗…plaintext data to a third party. Homomorphic encryption lets you upload encrypted data and instructions for a third party to operate on it without having to decrypt it first. Edit: Try Greg Egan's book Permutation City.
on “Practical homomorphic encryption over integers (2017)” ↗Not OP, but Greg Egan is mentioned somewhat often around here. Having read some of is books (Schild's Ladder, Permutation City, Diaspora) I can firmly recommend them, and would assign them the "hard sci-fi" tag. You can also never go wrong with Arthur C. Clarke. Another favourite of mine, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Charles Sheffield.
on “Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality” ↗We only have issues with this because we think our consciousness is somehow special wrt the laws of Physics. As always with this discussion, I'll recommend the book Permutation City from Greg Egan [0] I always think about cloning an OS to a second hard drive. Will the OS care what happened? The only annoyance it may have is that it has the same /etc/hostname as another copy but…
on “Does Captain Kirk die when he goes through the transporter?” ↗…https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross Writes radically entertaining stuff, including the Laundry Files series, Halting State, Glasshouse, etc. I'd say Glasshouse is an absolute "must read". 12. Greg Egan - I especially recommend Permutation City. 13. China Miéville - Check out Perdido Street Station
on “Neal Stephenson reacts to Facebook name change” ↗