Living in a sim...

[The Grand Nudger]

He wouldn't be the first gamer to use a simulated world as a release valve for sadism. If we're the npcs in a sim, thinking that there's a lesson -for us- to be learned is absurd self importance. We're dummies at the capitol - he's testing his dps on us and after he's done with that he has a quest to annihilate every murloc in a murloc village. Full on ethnic cleansing is his game loop. His job sucks, so when he gets home he becomes a powerful wizard with absolutely no moral reservations as to the use of his abilities. He can't shiv his boss - so he shivs a raid boss. His society no longer allows looting and pillaging - so he logs in to loot and pillage.

[Irreligious Atheist]

It's going to take a minute for me to digest all of that. I think I've been thinking about this the wrong way as like has been pointed out, the self is an illusion when it comes down to it. If reincarnation as ourselves as the simulation is played back were the case, that would be pretty bad for the people who spent their whole lives in jail, or for people that starved to death or were tortured. They'd have to go through that again and again, each time the sim was played back.

Anyways, it was just an interesting thought from Lex Fridman that I wanted to get some more opinions on. I'm not sure if Lex thought about it deeply before or if this is just something he brought up, thinking about it off the top of his head without much thought going into it. We're probably not going to get to live again after this life, and I'm cool with that. I rarely think about death or worry about it, because I'm too busy living.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that sim theorists have something else in mind than the thing that people take in the popularization. They're thinking of a sim as a fundamental part of how our very real universe operates - but the closest analogy at hand is mmos.

As it so happens, the murlocs do respawn - is that the kind of afterlife you're looking for?

[Agnostic1]

The concept of that is very scary! I have a lot of bizarre theories (like human thought is physical and exists outside the brain/body in the universe) but that one I haven't run across. I read a book about Truman Show Delusion a few years ago. It highlighted several cases of mental illness where people believed they were in a reality show and being watched or in a game show etc. Very disturbing.

I hope we aren't in a simulation! That would suck! There are no limits to human creativity at this point.

[ignoramus]

I hope we are in a sim.
Beccs won't talk to me until I level up ...


Yeah, I'm new at this. She used to be Genghis Khan many lives ago! Funny how some personalities linger on through the ages ...