Yes, But Who Built It?

So, remember the stories that finally went mainstream about a month ago around the idea that perhaps this universe and everything we know is just one big computer simulation? It occurs to me that this might be a very good explanation of why we’ve never encountered alien life: those who built the Matrix would likely be outside of it looking in.

Of course, that presupposes someone ELSE building the simulation, someone not human. What if we built it ourselves? I think that thought is even more disturbing. But it is also one that lends itself to explaining why our politicians and our powerful are so hell-bent on pissing away all of our resources and laying waste to the planet. If you knew it was all false, that it was all a game, it would definitely change your attitude toward the things the rest of us normally take for granted as “real.”

And if I were a powerful person in possession of some definitive knowledge like that, knowledge that the world and everything in it was just a construct, then I have to assume I would do my damnedest to keep that knowledge secret. Imagine the chaos, the insanity that would be unleashed on the world if everyone suddenly came to find out that we’re all living in a massive lie.

 No, we certainly must keep the plebes struggling and desperate and fearful.

At any rate, this train of thought reminds me of a sort of side point--but one that is incredibly thought-provoking and perhaps alarming--in Chuck Palahniuk’s book “Rant.” In it, a character who is capable of time-travel casually opines something along the lines of this (badly paraphrased): If it were possible to do that, to travel in time, don’t you think the people who have all the money and the power not only know about it, but have already been doing it for a long time?

Similarly, it occurs to me that if the universe and our world is a simulation, then the people who run things, the people who are privy to information most of us can’t even dream of, would be the most likely to know about it. And so look at their behavior: they sure ACT like there is no reason to worry about destroying this world...

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