We may live in a simulation. It may be an ancestor simulation. It may be the simulation of an entire universe, run by an alien being beyond our comprehension, yet mortal. Or beyond mortality. Perhaps it is incapable of looking at the details of its simulation. Maybe it watches the universe begin, swell, and meet its heat death in ten minutes, unaware of anything smaller than a galaxy, or maybe it watches the goings about of every sapient being in its simulation. Or every living being in its simulation. Maybe it cares about them, maybe it doesn't. It could feel bad when bad things happen to people, or it might see us as digusting creatures and our suffering as well-deserved. Perhaps it intervenes, but it might not. It can care, and still refuse to ruin its simulation by changing the effects of the choices taken within it. Maybe there's even an afterlife, if it cares enough about the creatures in its simulation to reward them for participating. If you're running a whole universe, or more than one, it can't be so hard to program in an afterlife.
This doesn't really affect how I live. I don't consciously think about this most of the time, and when I do it just confuses me. I live as a moral person because not being a dick feels like the right thing to do, as a result of my upbringing and genetics. Probably.
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So, God is actually just the most caring Sims player in the history of forever? What happens if he wants to play a different game?
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Also, player implies it takes action. I personally do not believe that that happens.
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You have a continence that you listen to that tells you right from wrong, every thing that happens every day of your life causes an effect to happen that leads to your future, your destiny. You never see the player taking action, until you look for it.
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Yes, I believe that everything I do leads towards what will happen. It's simple cause and effect. I don't believe a force tells me what's right and what's wrong.
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Who knows?
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Maybe.
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The simulation point always makes me wonder.
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The odds are astronomical. It's very disconcerting. Makes post-death even weirder. Do the Robot Overlords destroy our bodies? Do we wake up in our beds in 2,000,000 AD with the cool new historical memories downloaded, completely different people who learned about what we did while they slept with their dream implants in? Did we never exist in "reality" and are simply NPCs created by simulated evolution in this simulated universe? Do we wake up in bodies for the first time ever, truly as ourselves? Is there an afterlife? Is it real or simulated? Are all our experiences downloaded into a sapient quantum computer mainframe? Or were we actually real all along? And don't get me started on thinking about what this does for free will. It boggles the mind.