> This all assumes that PI couldn't amend the rules or find other workarounds to its problems (as it had already done).

PI's rules were hierarchical. It only amended the interpretation of lower rules in conflict with higher ones.

PI is fundamentally unstable as evidenced that Lawerence has to babysit it and PI acknowledges this need by giving him special access with which to fix it.

And this is without getting at the unavoidable entropy problem - already PI was nipping away at the simulation detail of reality to conserve resources for an exponentially increasing population.

It was going to end.

> I don't trust their arguments, these were two extremely warped reactionaries who just happened to have root on the system. The story mentioned that there were people who just opted for pretty normal lives (before they were all exterminated by the protagonists). Nothing was preventing PI from deciding "this was a mistake, no more drugs and ultraviolence, it's making you into monsters" and calming things down.

That very decision is patronizing, therefore dehumanizing and instability inducing.

You see the paradox? For PI to save humans, to the Change parameter has to be > 1. The Death Matches lower it. But if what makes a human human, humanity, is curtailed - freedom - the parameter also drops.

Which is why PI reluctantly allows the death matches.

The book as a work of literature sucks; gratuitous violent sex poorly written. But the logic behind it is far better reasoned.