Tales From The Simulation: Part Three - A Not So Common Cold

 

Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body? I dunno. 

For some people of a certain age, those words will be familiar. It is a line from a song by The Smiths, penned by the master of misery himself, Morrissey. And like Morrissey, I dunno the answer to that question, either. But the mind, and our thoughts, can behave in ways that are strange. 

The way our mind often works, reminds me of the two shoulder angels, one good and one bad. Both sitting on our shoulders, waiting for the opportunity to make or break us. Our thoughts can lead us to think about things that make us wonder what is going on, a state where often the only thing we can fall back on is coincidence.

Or it just might be that someone or something else is in control.

And here’s my second tale from the simulation. Nothing complicated about this one, just a series of unlikely events.

Tales From The Simulation: Part Two — When Your Old Computer Dies

 

Actually, my old computer didn’t die, but its replacement did. 

That was a year ago. I needed to upgrade my old faithful PC, as it was beginning to struggle with a lack of memory. I suppose that comes to us all eventually. For several years it had done a good job, but time had arrived to upgrade to something that didn’t take thirty seconds to start a YouTube video.

Enter a new Dell, Windows 10 PC. Well, a new(ish) refurbished Windows 10 PC. All was well until it wasn’t. After three months it developed a clunking sound at start-up, only running silent after a restart. It sounded like something was going to fail, so I took it back to the shop.

“It’s a noise from the fan.” Said the shop assistant.

“No, it isn’t,” I replied. “I took the side off, and the noise is near the start button. A component part is going to fail.”

“I’m afraid you will have to bring it back when it fails, as the PC runs perfectly on a reboot.”

Customer service.

I took it home, but one day three months later it made a clunking sound for the final time. I looked at the monitor, and it was like a scene from The Matrix. The picture was breaking up, Matrix-style, numbers falling down the screen. Except this was the PC wallpaper image making a pretty pattern of broken pixels.

Tales From The Simulation: Part One - Do We Live In a Simulation?

 

Something strange happened to me a few days ago. It was something that I struggled to explain logically, other than the idea of coincidence in life. It was as satisfactory an explanation as any other, but only in that it was convenient.

Occasionally, things happen to me which make me wonder what is going on? There is a theory that explains it all, but it is somewhat controversial, and some might say unbelievable. A theory that belongs more in the world of science fiction than science fact — that we are living in a simulation. 

That someone, or something is in control of everything we see and do.

And I regularly ask myself the question. ‘Are we living in a simulation?’

It does sound like science fiction, but there are scientists, philosophers, and tech billionaires who have seriously discussed the idea that our universe might actually be a simulation. Some propose that we are living in a kind of ultra-advanced computer program. It is a serious proposition.

The theory became widely known after philosopher Nick Bostrom published his “Simulation Argument” back in 2003. What he was suggesting was something surprisingly simple; it goes like this.

If life became so advanced that they were capable of creating simulated worlds that were so realistic and indistinguishable from the reality that we know, then how would we tell the difference? Each simulation would contain beings who believed they were alive and real. They in turn would create their own simulated realities. There could eventually be millions, or even billions of them. 

If that happened, statistically, it might be more likely that we are inside one of those simulations rather than living in the original “base” reality.