Birth, Life, Death. Birth, Life, Death. This vicious yet “natural” cycle is how it goes here on Earth. And for that matter that’s how it goes in every place that we humans know of. We are born: two people come together and decide it is time to start a family and create the next generation and about nine months later a new life is brought into the world. We live: the average person lives for about eight decades. They grow up as a child, they work, they hopefully raise a family of their own, and finally they grow to an age where they can no longer continue life. We die: As some describe it, it is simply the last stage of life. Every cycle needs an ending point. For us humans, the ceasing of necessary body functions leads to this one last step to life: death.
So why is this cycle the way it is? Or perhaps a better question, who or what made this cycle the way it is? And perhaps even a better question, can anyone change this seemingly unalterable cycle? For thousands and thousands and thousands of years humans have tried to answer these mind-boggling questions. These answers are often found within texts of religious books where followers of each religion believe they have some or all of these answers. However, whether you are a Christian, Jew, astrophysicist, doctor, student, or a combination of the previous identities, no one seems to actually understand these questions? Some people may think they do. Some people may think they know they do. But do they really?
For me, it all boils down to one question that can some it all up. Why are we here? The we of course meaning humans and the here meaning the universe or more specifically for the sake of keeping it simple, Earth. Often times scientists try to answer this question by repeating and repeating and repeating the history of the universe and often times religious people try to answer this question by claiming that God or the Gods put us here. But that doesn’t answer the why? It gives reasons as to how we may have gotten here. But why did we get here? What is the purpose of all of this? I find myself now asking more questions than I am asking. I am not a scientist. I am not a religious expert. I will, however, try my best to give the honest truth as to why we are here.
Living in a simulation implies to many that we do not have control. Often times people hear the term simulation and they automatically reject the idea that we can’t be living in one because this person for example, can choose their next action may it be as simple as touching their head with their left hand or touching their head with their right hand. While these two actions are small in the relative scheme of life itself, having this choice of which body part you want to touch your head with is a good enough counter argument for many anti-simulation believing humans.
When computer programmers create video games, they often design the characters in many different ways. Sometimes the characters or the game itself is random while in other scenarios the person controlling the character can move the character within the game. In a way, video games such as Call of Duty, or Madden, or Minecraft, or Fortnite can all be considered simulations in a way that they are all simulating what the humans want them to do. The humans have full control over their individual characters and the human controls the character in the game by manipulating a remote control. So that begs the question, well if the characters within the video game wanted to go to the right when you told them to go to the left, would they be able to do so? The simple and only answer is no. We as humans are in full control of this video game character because the character cannot think. The character is not conscious. The character is just a set number of pixels all combined to create an image.
Artificially Intelligent. Can computers learn how to learn? Think about the ratio of time that humans have been on Earth in comparison to the time computers have been on Earth. Who has accomplished more in their time? Only one has been to Mars. And no, it’s not the human. Computers are not yet at the intelligence where they can control humans. Perhaps we are years away from this period of time. But will we get there one day? In nature, it is common to see the smartest animals on top of the food chain. Humans have been on the top of this chain because we are objectively the smartest. But what happens when computers begin to outthink humans. Who is on the top of the chain now?
If computers can attain a level of intelligence in which they are smarter than humans, can they then control humans. The simple answer is well of course not, humans will still be conscious. And yes, we can be conscious and also be controlled. Perhaps we should define the world controlled, there are limits to our universe as we know it. The most two prominent limits are as follows: we are stuck moving in time, and we can never travel faster than the speed of light. So, if we are living in a computer simulation created by the computers that we created no more than a century ago, why do these limits exist? Time is perhaps simply a perception. Time is the clock hand ticking away. Time is the stopwatch counting up from 0. Time is the moon traveling around the Earth. But what really is time? The answer is we don’t know. It can’t be comprehended. As far as we know we are stuck in time and the only way to travel through it, is to go faster than light itself. However, scientists also conclude it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light. Because if we did go this fast, the simulation would in fact collapse. The simulation we are living in is “loading” at the speed of light. If you go faster, it all falls apart. The computers that humans created in fact actually created us.
To summarize in a few sentences; if computers are able to outthink and outperform humans whose to say they haven’t already done it? Whose to say that we are “in the past” and computers “from the future” are watching us as we live? Whose to say that humans from the future aren’t simply looking back into their past and watching a pretend simulation of what they believed the world looked like? And finally, if us humans can create these video game worlds, whose to say a higher power did not create our video game we call life?
So back to my original question. Why are we here? We are here because we were put here. And why were we put here? Experimentation is a viable answer. Let’s use COVID-19 as an example. Let’s pretend the society that created our simulation wants to know what happens if they are plagued with a disease. In fact, scientists here on Earth constantly experiment with different drugs on mice. This may be no different. Our simulators poofed COVID-19 into existence to see how we would react to help them. We are simply pawns in their game. So, does this take away from the meaning of life? If we are living with certain limits and are only here for the purpose of others, is their still a reason to exist. Well of course there is. Whether we live in a simulation or do not, we can still control our actions. We can still choose to be good or evil. We can still love or hate. You were given life, it is now time to take it, use it, and to live it.
Inspired by JTB
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