For quite some time now, people have been wondering how “real” our everyday lives are. To be more precise, some people feel we are living inside a simulation. A scary thought, that much is certain, yet it is not as outrageous as you might think. In fact, the bigger question is whether or not it even matters if we live in a simulation to begin with.
Is Life A Simulation or Not?
Ever since The Matrix movies gained mainstream traction, there has been a growing number of people who feel we may live in a simulation. Our lives seem pretty much pre-defined in some regards, as we get born, grow up, go to work, pay bills, and die. In between those moments, we may experience joy, sadness, and wonder. Then again, a simulation would allow us to have a similar experience, hence raising the question as to what is going on exactly.
If we were to rely on our human senses and emotions, it seems unfeasible to think we live in a simulation. Everything we feel and experience all seems so real, thus it can’t be fake. At the same time, there has been a lot of progress in the technology sector these past few years, allowing developers to recreate a very realistic environment and experiences. While Virtual Reality hasn’t been perfected quite yet, imagine how realistic it could become in one hundred years.
One of the main questions that will remain unanswered for some time to come is whether or not we can even determine if we live in a simulation. Elon Musk voiced his opinion on this matter last year, by touting how there is a one in a billion chance that we live in base reality. At that time, rational people dismissed his statement as “ludicrous”, yet there may be some truth to what Musk is saying.
Scientists have even proposed the idea of how our universe around us may not even be real. Two possible explanations have been proposed, although neither of these is necessarily true. It is certainly possible our universe was created by a more intelligent race. After all, our moon seems to be hollow and positioned at exactly the correct distance from the sun and our own planet. Theorists have long speculated this is the doing of a superior alien race, rather than just a “happy coincidence”.
The second scenario, however, may be a bit more difficult to swallow. Scientists speculate the entire human race may be nothing more than simulated beings. This concept shares a lot of similarities with The Matrix movies, although it is not something to dismiss easily. If this scenario turns out to be true, there is no way we can effectively escape this environment by any means. One question remains though: who is the mad scientist orchestrating all of this, and what do they hope to achieve by doing so? For now, that question remains unanswered.
Finding evidence to remotely entertain either of those possibilities will prove to be very difficult, though. Depending on how “good” the simulation is, finding evidence could be impossible. It is scary to think we are nothing more than an experiment serving some more intelligent race, yet it is impossible to deny the possibility as well. The questions of who we are, where we come from, and what the future holds allows us to think of many different explanations. Some of these explanations are more creative, yet that doesn’t make them less true.
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