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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7570924" data-attributes="member: 177">Except the real universe also has... neutrons (and thus *all* arrangements in atoms other than hydrogen), other baryons with charm and strange and other quarks, mesons, the muon and the tau leptons, a bunch of neutrinos, a bunch of bosons other than the photon...So, yeah, "everything is hydrogen" leaves lots of things out.Yep.  Hydrogen has one single particle in its nucleus.   U238 has 238 protons and neutrons, and each atom may have a different internal layout of how those particles are arranged.  Oh, there was nothing sloppy about your word choice.  The use I raised is a bit idiosyncratic, and the distinction not necessarily obvious on first pass.  I rasied it not in correction, but in case someone found the distinction useful for consideration.  It can lead us, for example to consideration of "elegant" vs "inelegant" rules.No, it isn't. In order to specify the three body problem, I need to specify the mass, location, and velocity of each body, and that's all I need.  Three scalars, six vectors, and that's it - in a normal flat space, I can specify it with at most 21 numbers.To specify the watch, I need to specify the physical details of each individual gear, spring, pin, the casing, the diameter of every hole, and so on.  Unless someone has been exceedingly clever in their construction, each internal component appears only once, and there are almost assuredly more than 21 parts, each of which needs several numbers to characterize.Agreed - describing what it models is describing the result, not the internal workings - so this is noting how the watch is not complex, but it is still complicated.In a practical sense, the two are not easily separated.  But, no, I don't think it is the computational burden.  In virtually all cases, the computations are addition and subtraction of small numbers, and that's not terribly burdensome.  I think the issue lies in the *number of steps and considerations*, which extends the time required to resolve actions, and to some degree the cognitive distance from the narrative this takes the player (essentially, breaking of immersion).Um, math/engineer-geek-bias showing.  A great number of gamers these days don't come from the STEM background, and don't primarily work/think in terms of mathematical models at all.  I've seen at least one interesting RPG that came not out of the math-and-model paradigm of the engineer/wargamer, but instead came out of theater and improv and its exercises.  IIRC, this game has little or no computational burden at all - there are no numbers (again, IIRC).  I'll see if I can find the reference.</blockquote>

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