Editing 2666: Universe Price Tiers

Philosophers have posed many questions in trying to understand the nature of the universe. Some of these have become well-known in popular culture; while some are deliberately open-ended, several others are presented as a choice between two or more options, and are assumed to have a single answer, the debate being about which is correct. In this comic, Randall proposes that the answers to these questions are instead not fixed, but vary according to a tiered {{w|subscription business model}}, as seen in many business pricing schemes, particularly in software. In this model, the no-cost tier gets you a universe experience of a lower quality, while at higher tiers better options are available for a cost - for example in the highest tier the processes of aging and death are "Opt-in" rather than "Mandatory". It is not clear from the comic who is supposed to be paying these subscription fees, or to whom they are paid (presumably the developers or maintainers of the universe, or the {{w|Simulation hypothesis|hypothesized simulation thereof}}), or whose experience of the universe is supposed to be affected.

The universe does not have a subscription model, but on the chart  some of the categories that refer to observable properties such as the speed limit or existence of the {{w|Uncertainty Principle}} indicate ours is the Universe Standard® subscription. Other specified settings may not entirely match our user experience. Possibly a high-tier installation has the option to restrict itself to selected lower-tier behaviours, if it is considered more useful.

The title text refers to the concept of {{w|T-symmetry}} in physical laws. Most properties of our universe are asymmetric, meaning that the property changes if time is reversed (e.g. the entropy of the universe decreases as time flows backwards). Randall again makes a reference to software subscription models in a play on words as the Universe Pro®™ sub appears to have laws that maintain "backwards compatibility".

Given that Universe Standard is most in-line with the non-facetious observations, whoever is paying for this subscription has paid 2.470 × 10¹² dollars, given that current estimates place the age of the universe at [https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html  13.77 billion years old.]

It is interesting that the paid-for versions of the universe are the only ones to include free will, implying that either such a quality is an inherently desirable feature or else that it is a necessary requirement of some other feature in the paid plan (such as, for instance, the dice-playing mentioned below). As the term "free will" can mean a variety of things, this is partly why it exists as the subject of many debates; here, it may mean "randomness", which the current understanding of quantum physics suggests does exist in this universe.

| 65 mph || 300,000 km/s || Unlimited || The Cosmic speed limit refers to the {{w|speed of light}}, which rounds to 300,000 kilometers per second in our particular universe, one of the few definite clues as to which tier we might exist in. Of course the basic joke is conflating that with a vehicular {{w|speed limit}}, typically 65 mph (105 km/h) on U.S. highways. Living in a universe with a 65 mph speed limit would render many aspects of experience unrecognizable from our own; assuming the speed of light and thus all relativistic effects were similarly scaled, the act of driving at highway speeds would result in [http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/ human-observable] time dilation and apparent spatial distortion. The {{w|special relativity}} consequences of a low speed of light are explored in one chapter of George Gamow's {{w|Mr Tompkins}}; in Mr Tompkins' dream, the speed of light is approximately 10 mph. The idea of having a speed cap is reminiscent of computer simulations and game engines, which often prevent agents from accelerating beyond a certain point to prevent unintended behavior. It could also reference caps placed on data transfer rates by internet service providers, which are lower on lower-priced service tiers.

| Mandatory || Mandatory || Opt-in || Whether or not an infinite lifespan would be a desirable thing is a recurring question in philosophy, as well as art and literature. While an instinctive response might be that extending life is always a good thing, particularly if the deprivations of aging can be avoided, thought experiments and literary explorations tend to suggest that it is the very finiteness of life that brings meaning to it. The suggestion is that in an infinite life, you will eventually repeatedly experience all that there is to experience, and seeking out new experiences will lose its purpose, leading to a life of interminable boredom. If this is a mere option, we clearly haven't read (or understood) the online manual or perhaps read the tool-tips.

| Happen to good people only || Happen to good and bad people || Don't happen || Relates to whether there is justice, compassion or fairness in the universe, where good and bad events often seem uncorrelated with whether people morally deserve them. In theological arguments, this debate is intimately connected with theodicy (the problem of how a benevolent god could create a world that contains evil), but like the existence of free will it is hotly debated in non-theological contexts as well. Randall suggests that the situation in a lower-tier universe is even worse, and interestingly that there is no tier where bad things only happen to bad people.  

[A table with three columns, labelled "Universe Lite™", "Universe Standard®", and "Universe Pro®™". Each row is labelled with a property of the universe.]