I Don’t Think I’m a Real Person

This is how it works.

For years I’ve said to people that I live in my own form of the Matrix. Perhaps it happens to most people but things frequently happen to me that I reckon are far more than coincidence. I sometimes even find myself aware that something’s going to happen just before it does. Not in a fortune teller way, I just get a feeling immediately before an event and I’m 100% sure it’s going to happen and it does. For instance, when I used to play cricket I’d watch a bowler run up and I’d suddenly just know that he was going to get a wicket on that very ball. Not a guess, I would just absolutely know. I’ve often theorised in a light hearted way that I’m living in my own little world and everything that goes on in that world is there just for me.

There’s probably some word that describes that feeling but it’s something that’s developed in me for years. So, this week I’ve stumbled upon Simulism. I sort of recall reading about it a few years ago but I’ve been reading a lot this week and I’m prepared to accept what I’ve read, and that’s putting it mildly. You can read all about it over at simulism.org and from that site you can follow links to essays on the subject and arguments for and against. It’s really interesting stuff.

I’ll try and do a brief explanation here. First of all you’ve got to accept that our civilisation is going to continue and flourish. In that case it is reasonable to suppose that our technological advances will progress and that in the future our descendants will have very powerful computers at their disposal, very powerful! Lastly you have to accept that those descendants will want to run computer simulations of the past for either educational or entertainment purposes.

My daughter Rebecca is obsessed with the computer program The Sims. In the past I’ve played games such as Sim City where I’ve managed populations and social infrastructure. Television is littered with documentaries about how we used to live, what it was like for our ancestors. It’s completely reasonable that our descendants will be the same.

So. At some stage in the future a simulation of the entire planet’s history is run. Perhaps the entire Universe. Who knows? Carbon based life form is replaced with silicon based life form and programmed with the same decision making processes, thoughts and ideas possessed by real organic humans. So in this age of super-computers there could be many, many simulations being observed at the same time. Countless numbers. Over 8 million copies of The Sims has been sold. So then in these simulations it’s conceivable that the simulants themselves reach an age where they can carry out simulations. So they then control their own simulated universes when they themselves are in fact simulations. And it could go on and on. So, the number of layered simulations could be huge. The number of simulated lives could be so massively larger than the number of organic lifeforms that have ever lived that they could outnumber them by a huge proportion. Which can only lead you to the conclusion that it’s more than probably, in fact completely definite that we in this world are actually living in a simulation in one of the millions of layers.

I’m buying into this in a big way. It makes more sense to me than religion. Go and read the articles by following the links above. Read about ways to exist in our simulation that can benefit your simulated life. It’s made me realise that when I thought I’ve had a sixth sense, when I thought I had this ability to somehow predict things, the truth of the matter is that I knew something was going to happen, because it really had happened to me before. It was the last time the simulation was run. Stop worrying about the answer to life the universe and everything, coz you don’t have to any more, because you’re not actually real.

How cool is that!