Disclaimer: I am not religious.
Are huamns part of a simulation?
Lately, I have been having this thought that we are just part of a giant simulation. A simulation where the designer, whoever this “God” is, generated us, huamns, of different personalities living under different circumstances to simulate all the possible outcomes of such combination, depending on how these simulated human beings make deicisions (e.g., we would have been extincted if we somehow all decided not to reproduce). The “God” observes how we react and behave. Perhaps, the “God” runs an ensemble of such simulations to see e.g., what’s the best way to distribute resources in order to promote their survival rate in the long term, or perhaps it is to build the perfect world whatever perfect means.
The way I see this is we were given some natural instincts, e.g., we need water and food to survive (i.e., some fundamental resources that every human will fight for), we have a tendency to reproduce, etc. However, unlike animals, we also have a brain to think and process information. These days, the world has evolved and there are many other way to make us feel “fulfilling” – not everyone feels the “need” to reproduce. There’s a deadly disease? We find ways to “cure” it (e.g., via stem cell therapy). The “God” did not tell us how to come up with these ideas, we were just given the body and the brain. The “God” did not tell us how to interact with another person, and we each interact differently with others.
To me, this is similar to us humans building AI. Imagine a world where they are deployed everywhere to carry out the heavy-lifting technical work for us (e.g., finding patterns) and when certain labs succesfully transfer huamn memory into AI, and “grant” them the ability to simulate the “host huamn” (e.g., advanced version of existing memory-bots), we may not have full control over how they “think”. They may “create” new things that we don’t expect (e.g., artwork), we don’t tell it how to color each pixel, but we will be able to observe what the output looks like.
Ever since the breakthrough of AI and seeing what machines can do these days, the idea that we were carefully crafted by “something else” isn’t so hard to imagine anymore. The bottom line is, I am not concerned or bothered by “whatever/whoever” created us.
What’s the purpose of our existence?
What used to bother me a lot is why do we exist? What’s the purpose of my existence? I used to think that there must be a reason for me to live in this world at this time. With age and experience, I’ve come to realize that there’s no purpose. We simply exist. We just have to live the life. We cannot choose to be born or unborn, but we can choose how to live it.