Why the Theory of Life Being One Big Simulation is the Only One That Makes Any Sense to Me

I can only speak for myself but my life has been a very strange ride thus far. You could say surreal, even. Things happen and I’m just left shaking my head in amazement, despite the fact I stopped being surprised by any of it a long time ago. I mean, Donald Trump is our fucking president — if that doesn’t scream simulation/this can’t be real life — I’m not sure what does.

I hate sci-fi movies and I’ve never sat through any of The Star Wars films. I basically only know what the word simulation means, thanks to video games and Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Joe has been bringing up this theory from others, that maybe life is just a simulation, at random a lot lately. You can only hear it mentioned so many times before you actually start to give it some thought and realize, it makes perfect sense in this otherwise senseless world of ours.

A simulation is defined as an imitation of a situation or process; the action of pretending or deception OR the production of a computer model of something, especially for the purpose of study — as according to Google.

I know I’ve more than once in my 31 years on this Earth felt, life was just an imitation or something unreal. An imitation of itself maybe — but then I realized, I don’t even know what that means and I don’t think other people who say it do either. It sounds really poetic and well thought out though, doesn’t it? Like when you make the same mistake over and over and keep letting the same ex ruin your life, you could just kick some bullshit about life imitating itself, when people question you. I digress, onward.

The word deception is in the second part of the definition Google gives for the word simulation. I’ve related this word, to life as a whole, more than any other in the definition I found. Life often feels like an eluding deception. One in which we are so far from having anything of any significance figured out.

To get more personal as well as less general and philosophical, I’ll dive into examples of what I mean, from my own life. Thoughts, occurrences and just little coincidences that have seemed stranger than fiction itself, as if someone unseen, is pulling strings from above, for their own entertainment value. At one point in time, I used to literally tell myself, life was pure entertainment. Because there seemed to be no other reasonable explanation for all that was going on around me, almost nonstop. I couldn’t help but see the ironic humor in it all. Maybe I was right and it was all entertaining — just not to us — but rather our creators.

The only piece of fiction I’ve ever tried to write, was one I stopped writing after only a little over a dozen pages, when I was like sixteen years old. I don’t remember much about the plot itself but I do remember basing a homeless character in the story, off some kid I went to high school with. I think I picked him as a basis for this homeless character, well, because that’s how I subconsciously viewed him. Ironically enough, over seven years after I began writing that story — that same kid ended up being the guy my ex girlfriend moved into our apartment, weeks after we broke up and I moved out. Presumably because he had nowhere else to stay. It was like life finished writing the story I didn’t — and it threw in a twist I never saw coming.

She went on to have a kid with him, despite every warning from myself and countless others, about the kind of person he was. Last I heard, she’s no longer with him and he’s no longer in the kid’s life. Again, I couldn’t write this stuff but it sure feels like someone is. As if we’re all just one big experimental case study.

What I was trying to convey with such a story, is the absurdity of life. We make plans, or have a certain idea of how things will go on any certain day — and rarely does it ever end up looking like we’d imagined it would. It’s as if we have very little say or control over how any of this goes.

Or I don’t know, maybe I just smoke entirely too much pot and spend too much time listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast — a man who is no stranger to THC himself. This post is one in which was probably meant to be written by someone who just micro-dosed LSD and despite how strange things seem around me, I sadly have not. Though, I do live a very over caffeinated life.

However, even those far more intelligent than myself, such as physicists and scientists, have come to believe that maybe life is just a simulation. That none of what you or I are experiencing is real — and neither are you or I.

The semi-famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson himself, has recently stated there is a 50/50 chance we are all living in a simulation, that we are the creation of a far superior and intelligent being and “everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment”. It’s a bit scary to think about but still worth thinking about nonetheless.

But just to be clear, a 50/50 chance means it either is, or isn’t. So thanks for that Neil, I guess.

I can picture it though, beings high and above snickering to themselves, as they toy with the idea of making the man from The Apprentice, the leader of the free world. Or making Tom Cruise jump up and down on Oprah’s couch, just to see our reactions and for their own entertainment. It’s definitely possible and as crazy of an explanation as it may sound like, it just may be the only one that helps make any sense of the insanity that is life.