The theory that we are all living in some kind of artificial digital reality isn’t anything new. Books have been written about it, movies have been filmed about it and religious texts have been loosely translated to maybe imply it. But none of these things are really provable. You will never reach a satisfying end living in speculation. At least I won’t.
And I think it’s because we made up a rather complex and convoluted “simulation” that we are trying to prove exists. We are looking for the wires or the flicker in the sky or the cat that walks by our office over and over again. But I think it’s simpler than that. And I don’t think that we have to look to the extremes to find any form of proof.
The simulation that we are looking for isn’t going to be found outside of our awareness. Similar to how your financial success won’t be found in someone else’s bank account. It’s found within our capabilities and understanding of certain rules, as cliched as that sounds.
The simulation that we are looking for is the one that we are making up day by day in order to reach certain fitness goals and continue to live in the reality that we ourselves have set up. You can think of fitness goals as the things that are needed in a day in order to ensure our survival, at least for another day. And survival at this point is a relative term, as it much depends on environment and on perceived personal needs and desires.
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, who is famed for using evolutionary game theory to show that our perception of an independent reality is really an illusion, states it best with the following:
“Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know…”
To put it more simply, you drive your car to work daily because it puts you in a location where you can perform an action that someone else deems valuable, and thus they pay you a percentage of that value. We don’t drive to work because the underlying nature of life deems it so. You simply do your job and you get to survive another day.
