# Is Life a Giant Video Game?



## MacLuv (Nov 18, 2002)




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## JetwingX (Nov 19, 2002)

... you have too much time on your hands...


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## MacLuv (Nov 19, 2002)




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## MacLuv (Nov 19, 2002)




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## michaelsanford (Nov 19, 2002)

Hey, have you, I dunno, by chance seen _The Matrix_...

Now whether or not I think world politics is a game of puppetry is another story


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## MacLuv (Nov 19, 2002)




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## X Rocks (Nov 20, 2002)

Anyone ever thought that this reality might actually be the dream of someone else, and our dreams are the lives of another?   wierd crapola...Makes you think that time is really irrelative.  Is there time in dreams.  At least in my dreams people never age.   I've never been any older than how old i was when i started the dream.   But maybe thats the answer.   Because I am dreaming that makes me real.  However, what if that is what is dream is about?   so many questions


gnite


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## Shifting (Nov 20, 2002)

is life a video game?

a simple question, with a simple answer.

one way to find out: die.  and see if you get a continue.

think you'll figure out the answer pretty quick.


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## michaelsanford (Nov 20, 2002)

Nice Shifting!


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## MacLuv (Nov 20, 2002)




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## X Rocks (Nov 20, 2002)

what does everyone think about the near death experiences.   thats a pretty sweet game ending and continue.  I get so many funny mental pictures of some gamer click on one of us and hitting delete.  Not really to funny in this world, but if I'm a game lets go for it.   ::raises his hand and yells "PICK ME!!!"::


whoa...


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## wiz (Nov 20, 2002)

well if life was just a giant video game then wouldn't killing be as easy as a simple click


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## MacLuv (Nov 20, 2002)




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## brianleahy (Nov 21, 2002)

Is life a video game?   Well, taken literally, this is a fairly narrow question.  A "video game" is a program created for entertainment reasons, with some degree of real-time interaction with a human player, running on an electronic computer (and of course, I assume that we're all savvy enough here to understand that game "consoles" - whether at home or in an arcade - are just special-purpose computers.) 

Taken literally, I'd have to say no. However, I think you mean something a bit broader:  Is our world artificial, a simulation created for some unknown purpose (perhaps entertainment, perhaps not) by parties unknown?

If the answer is 'yes', then what is our place in this simulation?    Are we the 'players' or merely the characters?  Is it like "The Matrix", in which we all HAVE an actual, external, physical reality, separate from the simulation?     Or is it like "The Thirteenth Floor", in which the great majority of the human characters are ALSO mere simulations?   Could it even be like "Dark City" in which we actually are just what we believe we are - flesh and blood people - living in an artificial world, produced specifically to deceive us, by parties unknown?

If our world IS a simulation, then what precisely is it a simulation OF?  Is the greater world outside the simulation anything like our simulated world?   Or is it very, very different?   It could be so profoundly different that we could never understand it.   The minds that created our world may view us as a weird mathematical abstraction, with no real-life analogue.

Perhaps a better question; could we ever KNOW if our world is a simulation?  And even if we can - does it matter?   In "Dark City" and "The Thirteenth Floor" the hero discovers flaws in the simulation, and infers the existence of the greater reality.  Yet in both these films, the beings who created the simulation (aliens in the case of 'Dark City', humans from the future in 'The Thirteenth Floor')  were really, relatively speaking, only a LITTLE more advanced than the captives within the simulation.  What if, instead, the beings that created our simulation were god-like, their power and wisdom dwarfing ours the way ours dwarfs an amoeba's?   Then the possibility of our finding a chink in their simulation is virtually nil.   At which point the question becomes moot; we may live inside a very elaborate simulation, but our experience of it will always be indistinguishable from the real McCoy.

There would actually be only trivial differences between this scenario and many religious accounts of creation.


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## MacLuv (Nov 22, 2002)




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## edX (Nov 22, 2002)

sure, and you'll find it hidden under a rock in the back yard.

or was that under a mat? or up in a tree? maybe in the keyholder thingamajig. or the ledge over the door. or attached to a rope and hanging from a tree. or...

at rate, i'm sure there must be a key and it's in the backyard somewhere.  

(well, the backyard is where you hide your easter eggs, isn't it?  )


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## MacLuv (Nov 22, 2002)




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## X Rocks (Nov 22, 2002)

what games don't involve losing?  Isn't that synonymous with death if you lose in a game?


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## MacLuv (Nov 22, 2002)




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## robotguy (Dec 7, 2002)

```
how many times do we have to
keep playing this game until we win?
```


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## brianleahy (Dec 7, 2002)

What would winning look like?

Did Bill Gates win?

How about Hugh Hefner?


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## robotguy (Dec 7, 2002)

```
like any game

we need to define rules



how do you play

what's the objective

and how do you win



humans like to make up 
the rules of life
as they go along

each generation
gets to test 
a new set of memes
on each other
```


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