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10 Reasons why we might be living in a computer simulation

1) Technological evidence

Technology keeps always increasing! There is a common convergence on the fact that progress cannot be stopped. Although we had periods in our history where unequal rates areas slowed down their march, the progress simply shifted in other sectors. A clear example of that is the Middle Age which is commonly understood as a Technological break in our history but it's simply not true.
In the years quickly after the fall of Rome, there was a time of correction, where medieval society was more worried about keeping peace and realm working than sustaining focuses of learning. Notwithstanding this, Charlemagne endeavored to build up an academic custom, and the later Middle Ages saw progressions in the rationality of science and the refinement of the logical technique. A long way from being a retrogressive medieval society, dominated by Islam and Byzantium, scholasticism went about as a core for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
So assumed that technology will keep moving on, even at unequal rates between different areas, we will clearly have a more technological world 1000 years from now. We will have an even more technological world 2000 years from now.

Assumed that progress is inevitable, let's consider the differences between a life simulation in just 35 years (1982 and 2017)
Life simulation in 1982 (Little Computer People)


  • Low-resolution graphics
  • It's possible to suggest the Simulated being to do a set of activities (dance, play games, write a letter, play piano)
  • The simulated being has basic needs (food, water)
  • The simulated being has a minimalist mood, influenced by the owner's caring
  • The simulated being can get sick and eventually die
  • There is no interaction with other man-like creatures

    Life simulation in 2017 (The Sims)
10 reasons why we are living in a computer simulation
  • High-resolution graphics
  • It is possible to perform a huge list of activities (Official threads account for 1000 and over things you can do with The Sims, like building houses, go fishing, have a homeless life, become a star or become a serial killer etc.)
  • The simulated being has emotional control which influences the way it behaves with other creatures
  • The simulated being has interaction with countless other simulated beings
  • The simulated being can get married, have children
  • The simulated being can get a job and master it to become expert on it
  • The simulated being can get sick, gets old with time, eventually dies. It can turn into a ghost as well
If you compare the amount of "progress" in life simulation, we had an exponential improvement in the quality of life simulation in only 35 years.
It is very likely that building another progress like that on the top of "The Sims" will bring a simulation which is not distinguishable from a real movie or tv show.

2) Computer works at high level like our Brain

Our brain conceptually works pretty much the same as a computer, as an input-output machine. Although the human brain is a very complex thing, they receive stimulus from the outside world, elaborate this stimulus so to categorize it as a pleasant, sad, scary etc, then finally a response is determined to react to this stimulus. Thus: input, elaboration, output is how our brain works in a nutshell.

Although a computer has no biological matter in it, it works at the high level exactly as this. It is for this very reasons that in the last 70 years, when computer science was almost a pure theory, scientists started to study how to replicate the human brain patterns in a machine, in view of using a computer as a way to store the full knowledge of our brain.

3) Scientific/politic/economic justification

We are living in a world plagued by several threats, like new viruses, wars, famine, unequal distribution of richness. If we are able to replicate mankind dynamics into a simulation, then we could use the simulated model as a playground to build a solution that works for our planet.
Over 50 years ago Buckminster Fuller, theorized a simulation called "World game" as a way to discover "the most scientifically
expeditious ways to make 100% of mankind an ongoing biological and metaphysical success."
Although it may seem cynical to sacrifice some "fabricated" human beings for our purpose, it is part of our biology to find a way to survive and pass our genetic traits to our descendants. Ancient people used to say: "Mors tua vita mea" ("Your death is my life") which says it all.

4) Huge Business justification

There is a valid business justification to re-create a life simulation, as people could literally explore our history like a sort of "colossal" movie, where sentient beings are playing. In the past we had Gladiator Fights going on for centuries but the beast which is inside us never died. Having a life simulation at hand could be the ultimate kind of entertainment ever. Period.

5) Quantum entanglement reproduces a typical effect of a simulation

There is a clear scientific evidence that the perception of our reality is a construct of our senses. We have elaborated the fact that things or people are distant, for example. However, the matter that makes our world, seen at the smallest level (subatomic) tells us that apparently separated things can be connected and influence each other whatever is the distance that parts them. This phenomenon is called "entanglement" and it has been scientifically proved in research labs. The only analogy we have with a scientific phenomenon where two particles can be linked to each other (even if separated by billions of light-years of space) is a computer simulation. In a simulated reality, the distance between objects is just an illusion since all points in a simulation are equidistant with respect to the source of the simulation.

6) Reality is influenced by Observation, like a simulation

This is a cornerstone of Quantum physics and it has been proved with the so-called "Double Slit" experiment. This experiment demonstrates, with unparalleled strangeness, that little particles of matter have something of a wave about them, and suggests that the very act of observing a particle has a dramatic effect on its behavior.
This is exactly what happens in a computer simulation where, underlying software optimizations, display or hide objects which are part of the simulation to save resources.

7) Life has some hardwired dynamics


All the components of this simulation have a hardwired legacy: we keep fighting to collect as many scarce resources as possible. This legacy of our biology is determinant in the rise of conflicts and wars between larger organizations which are as old as our race. It is likely that these conflicts are a core aspect of the simulation. We are thus all characters of a sort of role-playing game, where we choose a side and we defend it for dear life. It's a fact of life which cannot be disproved that life is not different from a RPG.
life is a computer simulation

8) Everything has been carefully programmed

Our planet, the Earth, seems “fine-tuned” for life and especially for human beings, reinforces the idea that we are living in a virtual reality. It is precisely like it was made, or programmed for that very reason. In other words, life in the Universe can only occur when certain
fundamental physical constants lie within an exact range. If you alter any of the natural laws of physics just by a small amount, nothing would ever exist in the Universe. The matter would not have been created, gravity as well, and maybe not even time itself. The odds that all these physical laws came by chance to make the Universe exists are negligible according to scientists.

9) Everything is connected

There is a clear scientific convergence that we might be living in a holographic universe: In October 2014, a team of physicists led by Daniel Grumiller at the Vienna University of Technology, recently published the first-ever study offering concrete evidence that the so-called holographic principle is entirely compatible with our Universe. If we assumed that we are living in a holographic Universe, we then have a definitive confirmation that separation between objects is only apparent. A hologram holds by definition information about the whole in every part, so this means we have in ourselves information about the whole universe because we simply are part of it.

10) Human Lifecycle is quite similar to Memory Management Lifecycle



Although this discussion requires a journey into topics not defined as "scientific", it is a fact of life that many metaphysical aspects of our lives are indeed a close cry to a computer simulation.
For example, many people do believe in ghosts, phantoms, you name them. There is no scientific definition for ghosts, however, the closest match using the scientific parlance is that they are residual energy which is still connected to our realm. This would reflect perfectly the way a computer manages memory: in particular, when developing applications, we use structures and variables to store information. Some of these structures are actively used, others are canceled from memory when they are not needed anymore. As this process is not immediate, it requires time to be reclaimed by the computer's memory. A typical example of it are weak references, which is a reference to an object in memory which is in a transient phase before it's reclaimed by the memory's garbage collector.
Other metaphysical scenarios do exist, like Reincarnation, which cannot be explained in any way by science. There are thousands of cases of Reincarnation and while there is no scientific explanation for it, it is very simple to imagine it as a simple memory re-allocation from one structure to another.

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