Heh. We have ep1 season 3 queued up to watch this evening. Perhaps I should have waited to publish this post?

I know that the nucleus accumbens is active in both addiction and religion, which isn’t all that surprising. In terms of the meaning of life, simulation theory has most of the same metaphysical shortcomings as religious creation or grand watchmaker ideas. It’s funny in a way because we begin by questioning our reality and the reliability of empirical evidence based on new scientific findings and can end up falling into some of the same god traps of previous centuries.

I cherry-picked Tegmark’s work in this post because most of his conclusions in his paper better support multiple universes vs a simulated one, although the two aren’t mutually exclusive. However, that didn’t fit my narrative.

Here’s what I adore about simulation theories — on the one hand, things seem nihilistic, as if we should ‘carry on as if nothing really matters’ but on the other, you can find a tremendous capacity for meaning in a world without any sort of overt purpose. As I stated in the post, simulation or not, our reality is unchanged. Also, I think pausing to contemplate questions such as these breaks us out of the reward cycles of drugs, sex, religion,etc.

Are we living in a simulation? My programmers think so.