‘‘Dad, I feel like we’re inside a video game’’

Because my family is pretty much used to all my weird statements stemming from my off-the-rails conspiracy theories, they rolled their eyes and shrugged this one off. But today I’ll try to convince you, dear Internet stranger, that we might be living in a simulation (or not). I’ve been playing this game called ‘‘The Sims’’, where we create characters and control their every move. We are their God, basically. But we can simulate almost every aspect of human life, from mundane tasks such as eating and pooping to complex ones like relationships and emotions. For a moment, imagine a more advanced version of this game, where Sims started to develop their own personalities and make decisions by themselves. Would we call them ‘‘alive’’ at this point? No, of course not. We are still manipulating the game and its rules, and the Sims inside are just advanced NPCs with a few lines of code (basically very complex mathematical calculations) to simulate real human behavior. Now let’s imagine that one day, a Sim starts wondering what could possibly be outside of our neighborhood. Suddenly, they’ve crossed a line that we didn’t even know existed. They start questioning the nature of the world they live in, like ‘‘Why do I wake up at 7 am every day to work?’’ or ‘‘Why do I have the need to eat?’’. Let’s imagine for a second that this particular Sim continues to grow in awareness, understanding that they’re living inside a simulation created by a more advanced being. This is where the Sims starts to realize that it has absolutely no control over its own life and that its destiny is already predetermined by the player. It’s like we’re going about our lives, making choices, interacting with other people, falling in love, without realizing that everything is part of a more complex design. If we’re lucky, we might even ‘‘glitch’’ the system, like the Sim who figured out life’s biggest secret. The chances of us actually being the player and not the Sim are extremely low. It’s crazy to think of how much more advanced the simulator has to be in comparison to us, especially considering that our most advanced technology can’t even simulate a world as complex as the one we live in. We’re still far from achieving such a level of realism on our own simulations, but that’s because we rely on archaic tools like mathematics. Perhaps more advanced technology could also exist outside of our understanding, just like our tiny human brains struggle to grasp concepts like quantum computing. What if we humans are not the “real deal,” but something akin to NPCs with slightly more complexity written into our code? What if someone or something has created a simulation of reality that we cannot fully comprehend or escape? If we really are living in a simulation, do we have free will, or are our actions predetermined by the programmer? If they’re predetermined, is that even called free will? Would there be a way to defy the rules of this game? Does our existence have any meaning in the grand scheme of the universe? click m3 for more tinfoil hat theories 🤠

‘‘Dad, I feel like we’re inside a video game’’

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