Your Virtual Reality

You are not going to like this, but the odds are uncomfortably high that your physical reality isn't physical at all, but virtual. To put it differently, you don't exist with all the substance and structure you believe you exhibit. Even though you may play various simulation or even simulation games, you, in turn, are being played, or at least programmed, by persons or things unfamiliar. Here is the Simulation Hypothesis, otherwise referred to as the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe situation, in the critique.

Premise: There exist technologically advanced aliens (the specific amount is of no consequence) or our descendants qualify as having constructed an innovative terrestrial civilization, way ahead of that in the early 21st Century.

Premise: Such civilizations, theirs or ours, not only have advanced technology but have and do encounter exponential grown in those and ever newer technologies.

Premise: These civilizations don't become extinct.

Premise: Consciousness or awareness can be simulated. Consciousness or awareness is exactly what you are, but you're just information, a code, an alphabet constructed from letters that form words that form sentences that form paragraphs that form chapters that finally form you-you're a book in human form. It's possible to reduce any life form down to its genetic code - advice. Information can be coded as bits and bytes. In essence, your uniqueness is just a barcode and your consciousness or awareness is just the interactions of your barcode with all the remaining sets of software that include the Simulation (Virtual Reality) Universe scenario.

If the above six are awarded, then the end is the fact that it is highly likely that we are'living' in a simulation. The logic is sound. If you reject the end, you must reject one or more of the six first premises and there could be no if, and's or buts about your conscience. There could be no possible counter objections or exceptions for your conscience or rejection of any one or more of the assumptions. For example, you might object and say that these civilizations do go extinct before developing complex simulation technology, but that would need to employ 100% throughout the board.

Let us start with the assumption that you don't actually exist in a very real reality. Instead, you are virtual reality, a creation (along with the rest of life, the Universe and everything) by a flesh-and-blood fallible Supreme Programmer that generated software that led to our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe. What kinds of things could follow in a situation like this?

If thought freaks you out, reflect that even in the event that you have just existed as bits and bytes (rather than a collection of elementary particles and forces), it does not alter one jot anything you did or did not do on your past, whether or not you are happy with whatever you have or have not accomplished. Whatever runs you have on the board continue to be there.

Being a virtual being won't change one write anything about your future. Considering that the software controls life, the Universe and everything when the first parameters were set, everything became deterministic, even though not foreseeable to mortals (where the Supreme Programmer is one). The fact that the outcome isn't predictable shouldn't be surprising since that is the purpose of doing a simulation. What is the point of performing a simulation in the event that you already know what the outcome is going to be?

Free Will: A software created universe would not give you the option of free will. Even for very different reasons, many people think they don't have any free will and yet they still go through life quite content with whatever their deterministic runs are on the board happen to be, so a sudden discover that you don't have free will because you are pre-programmed bits and bytes should not unplug your heating pad. Should you stop and reflect on matters, even in case you do have free is it so constrained by physics, chemistry, and mathematics and from the society which you might as well stuff all of it in a box and bury it. You can still sit in it! That's your bottom's line!

For starters, you have an explanation of why there's something rather than nothing - a philosophical quandary that ranks right up there with all the Big Questions of reality. The software is a something and you can not have a virtual reality or a simulation with no bits and bytes.

Aging: At the moment of your conception that the aging process began yet there would seem to be no theoretical reason behind the aging process Regardless, there appears to be nothing you can do about this or its inescapable conclusion. Your health will diminish with aging till you die. Even when you spent your presence in some type of'safe house' free of accidents and deliberate acts of malice against you; even though all the air you breathed was filtered free from harmful germs and germs and pollutants; even if you ate a totally balanced diet of three meals every day together with all foods free of artificial colors, flavors and ingredients and everything was 100%'organic' with many fruits and veggies; even when your water was distilled and absolutely pure; even if you chose no drugs like caffeine or nicotine or alcohol; even if every moment of each day was totally stressing free; even if you got your eight hours of sleep a day; even if you got tons of exercises, both psychological and bodily, you will still era and go downhill towards that bucket which you will kick. You cannot prevent that complicated biochemical aging time bomb that is inherently inside you and which emerged from the simplicity of your conception. As I said, there does not appear to be some physical, biological or chemical reasons why you should age.

Death: If life is an emergent property of this cosmos, then passing is an emergent property of life, even though in the event that you're able to remain clear of accidents, murder, or disorder, there would seem to be little reason for one to kick the bucket as there is not any theoretical reason a living organism has to die a natural departure providing the body continually receives an adequate supply of all resources necessary for life (food, oxygen or carbon dioxide (if a plant), water, etc.). But, entropy won't be denied and there is nothing you can do (at least at the here and now) about it regardless of how nicely you follow physician's orders.

Afterlife: Though a lot of men and women believe in an afterlife, or at least would like to, they would be hard-pressed to come with scientific or logical reasons how it might actually come to pass apart from God says so. However, in the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, an afterlife is just a software application away, as'simple' as constructing as your ordinary programmed virtual'lifetime'. Another interesting possibility here is that the sort of afterlife your civilization instilled into you will be the one which you get, even though concepts of the afterlife differ widely from culture to culture. If you believe in God, then you argue that God made the Supreme Programmer. If your theology is elastic, you could think that the Supreme Programmer is a good' or moves to get a deity. If you are an atheist, then you still have your faith against the presence of a supernatural being, where the Supreme Programmer is not - supernatural that is.

Quantum Physics: Quantum physics is about (and inside) of you, and must be counted as part of your very real reality (RRR). Quantum physics would have to qualify as one of these'paranormal' anomalies. Any physicist who tells you with a straight face that quantum physics is not highly anomalous is a very good actor and a superb liar. However, you are unlikely to discover the anomalies unless you are familiar with quantum physics and search for the anomalies as a matter of course. Everything looks normal, however, looks can be very deceiving.

Fine-Tuning: It's been noted by many that a few of the laws, principles, and relationships of physics, and chemistry also, have values such that when those values varied by even a very small amount, biology wouldn't be possible. In fact, in some cases chemistry wouldn't be possible, nor even much of physics. This calls for an explanation. The first is the fact that it is all blind fortune - sometimes you get dealt a royal flush on the very first hand of your first poker game. The next explanation is that there is a Multiverse - thousands, millions, billions, even trillions of universes each with a diverse set of those laws, principles, and relationships of mathematics. 99.999percent of these universes won't be suitable for biology (because we understand it) or even chemistry or much of physics for that matter, but just based on sheer probability, a tiny few will prove for a Goldilocks (bio-friendly) universe. The first objection I have isn't with the concept of a Multiverse, but using the idea that the laws, principles, and relations of mathematics will be different in every one of the various universes. There is no explanation for why this has to be so. Of course that doesn't alter why our Universe is bio-friendly, and that's what counts, otherwise, we would not be here, would we? Explanation number three is, obviously, God and intelligent design. We are here because God designed, in the beginning, a bio-friendly Universe along with a bio-friendly Earth Earth. The concept of God has so much baggage that I've lots of trouble accepting that excuse. But I really like the variation on the theme - the Supreme Programmer. If you're likely to design software to get a simulation or a video game, etc. you've got to intelligently design that software to maintain those inconsistencies or even oops to an absolute minimum, if not ideally zero. The simulation or video game must be a viable simulation or video game, or in other words, a Goldilocks simulation or even a bio-friendly video sport.

SETI: Why can't radio or other astronomers locate any proof for ET? - Maybe because extraterrestrials were not programmed to the VR software.

The End: Computers (or CD and DVD players which run'software' in the shape of CDs or DVDs) include all manner of controllers. You can hit the pause' underside to freeze the action in the'stop' button to recycle the activity back to the start. If our simulated universe is embedded in software in a normal computer (we are unlikely to be encoded on a CD or even DVD but who knows) then the End' can come at any moment (kind of like what Christians continue saying about their Second Coming, the apocalypse or Armageddon).

The Supreme Programmer could hit'pause' which signifies life, the Universe and everything just freezes before the Supreme Programmer hits'play' again. We'd never be aware of the'missing time' any more than the personalities in a DVD film are attentive to the time lapse if you hit the pause button to go answer the telephone while watching their movie. The Supreme Programmer will hit the'stop' button recycle all back to the beginning. We wouldn't be aware of that until such time as our recycled moment from the sun came around again and we got that feeling of déjà vu. The Supreme Programmer could tweak his software with a downloadable update which might also serve to wipe our memories of prior to the tweak' in order we wouldn't observe any discrepancies between them before' and the'after'. Or, if our virtual memory was not wiped with the update, then which may account for why some of our bodily'constants' don't appear to be quite so steady after all. Rewritten over software might also account for phantoms, both animate (like ghosts) as well as inanimate. Last, the Supreme Programmer is completed and the program ends. It's interesting to note how many cosmologies, especially historical ones like the Maya and Hindus, have a recycling cosmology: cosmic Birth - cosmic existence - cosmic departure; cosmic birth - cosmic existence - cosmic departure. Of course the Supreme Programmer could just hit the'delete' button and that's just The conclusion of our virtual life, the virtual Universe and the virtual everything; or possibly accidentally drop the pc smashing it to smithereens; or spill his coffee over the computer; or maybe the hard-drive crashes, or perhaps the Supreme Programmer just turns off the computer and dies before turning it forth. This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a fade-to-black.