Fascinating! It kinda feels like a brute force approach towards divine wisdom by simulating the minds of all kinds of possible gods.
Yes, that’s a very fitting comparison. Compared to the Unity, the Cosmics were perceived as gods, since they controlled technologies that the Superalliance only could dream of.
But doesn’t the ability of simulating another Unity imply that the Unity that does these simulations is also simulated by another Unity?
Exactly. Such lines of thinking were commonplace. And this thinking supported the cause of the Exaltation not to focus on the current world, but on perfecting oneself in order to prosper in any possible world. Nevertheless, the Unity wasn’t too bothered about those ideas and continued its pursuit of knowledge unabated.
So, the Unity has run simulations for military purposes, and for figuring out the Cosmics, which also were used to get closer to a proof of the UVS theorem. Were there any other classes of simulations run by the Unity?
The Unity also made ancestor simulations aimed at figuring out the most likely past of human civilization, always suspecting that the Cosmics have done some interventions in history. Not very surprisingly, the search for possible interventions turned out to be inconclusive, too. It was eventually accepted that the history of humanity is probably real and without significant interventions by the Cosmics, until the discovery of their stellar artifacts. Essentially, the history of humanity was simulated millions of times, often involving certain deliberate interventions in order to figure out whether these interventions actually likely happened.
The Exuberance probably wasn’t happy about the suffering during the history of humanity being repeated millions of times.
Yes, this issue definitely soured the relations between these two V factions, but that wasn’t exactly the worst offense. That award goes to simulating millions of versions of the Black War, including all kinds of scenarios involving simulated hells implemented for various strategic purposes. For the Exuberance, these simulations were worse than the Black War itself, due to the sheer scale of suffering involved. However, these simulations turned out to be a crucial tool for the Proof.
So the utility for the Proof was accepted as justification for these simulations of the Black War?
For the Unity the pursuit of the Proof outweighed all other considerations. Of course, the other V factions had different opinions. That’s why the system of simulated heavens as compensation for the suffering endured in simulations was established. The Exuberance still argued for abolishing such simulations, but it was effectively over-voted. The main reason for that was that other approaches towards the Proof were seen as far less promising. The simulations of the Unity eventually encompassed whole histories of complexes of nested simulations, many with their own eventual Black War and their own resolutions. The knowledge gained by running these simulations was truly astronomical and was used to perfect the Proof.
So, in the end the Unity contributed most towards the completion of the Proof?
As a matter of fact, yes. Of course the other V factions, in particular the Balance, contributed a lot to the Proof, but the Unity was absolutely obsessed with it, since it was its main focus.
It still feels like an insanely high price to pay for a mere mathematical theorem. Even though it may have provided a superior basis for lasting cosmic peace, compared to the Prestige Accords. Couldn’t the Proof have been found by other means?
Yes, but it would have taken at least thousands of years. And without the Dexa Effect it would have taken at least billions of years and efforts of cosmic proportions.
Why was the Proof of the UVS theorem so hard? It doesn’t feel reasonable that a mere mathematical theorem could evade the collective efforts of countless superintelligences for so long.
The reason for that extreme difficulty lies in the idea that the UVS theorem poses something that is nearly impossible to prove. It poses that any sufficiently wise civilization will eventually arrive at exactly (without any single deviation) the same value system - the Universal Value System. And I mean really any imaginable possible civilization, even those that are so alien that we cannot even imagine them. It basically means that the UVS is the value system of all sufficiently advanced gods - no matter how devilish you try to make them. This is a statement that was mostly seen as absurd and impossible to prove, until it was eventually proven.
Stated like that it does actually feel pretty absurd. On the other hand, it feels like it makes a certain degree of sense. It’s a really polarising idea, I guess. Have the V factions been polarised by the belief in the possibility of the Proof?
Yes, besides the differing V faction allegiances, this was the most polarizing matter after the end of the Black War. The hope for the possibility of Proof became more popular as the V factions came close to completing it, but there were many doubters until the very end, before the Proof became universally accepted.
From your elaborations it appears to me that most of the suffering in the multiverse may result out of the desire to arrive at a Proof of the UVS theorem. Am I getting that wrong?
It might seem that way, at first. But you need to consider that cultures that arrive at the Proof are nearly eternal. They continue to flourish until the end of their containing universe, and through transfer into other universes even beyond that. Though they “produce” suffering on a much reduced scale than cultures aggressively pursuing the Proof, the sheer time these cultures exist causes the suffering “produced” within those ultimate cultures to eventually exceed the suffering produced by “young” cultures.