Life is a Simulation and How Acknowledging It Helped Me
I will not bog you down with the fact sheet on why and how it is irrefutable that life is a sort of simulation but not probably akin to the one portrayed in the matrix. I am just going to leave it at: not all of this simulation has to take place on a computer as we know it.
I define myself as the renaissance man and i take no pride in it. Being a polymath or know-all does not help one in life. Industries prefer cogs, highly specialized modular units that can be appended into the workforce, they hate a polymath unless that person can somehow make himself relevant in more vague positions or simply the founder. That is how my interdisciplinary imagination is being fed.
Here is a glimpse of how my mind operates and my consumption frenzy goes:
I read some Donald Knuth, makes me curious about concepts such as Phrenology, Kripke Semantics, Backus-Naur form then i realize it is all in nature as well so all of a sudden i see my self taking up Mr. Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene discussing the altruistic behaviors and their explanations. Get bored, realize peacocks are excellent marketers then i go read some marketing namely Dave Trott which brings me to the surveillance capitalism concept devised by Shoshana Zuboff. I consume some; then i go ahead and investigate Elon Musk one of the biggest violators of privacy, find out his vision for the future, which is ultimately grid defection. I looked up AI, Roku’s Basilisk, I read QCD, i read about neural pathways, effects of LSD. Watched some WestWorld, then all this smorgasbord started to make sense and appear interconnected.
Noam Chomsky, a man i had once thought as a mere literary genius appears to be a pseudo-software and maths genius instead because they all lead to each other. Double-slit experiment could not have existed without the philosophy behind it. I went ahead and tried to find an answer to whether our brains were analog or digital it was neither.
See what a polymath or scanner personality does to a person?
Long story short, I came to realize that something was off.
God’s Debris by Scott Adams, is an excellent read. although i do not like the author himself. He kind of peeks into the rabbit hole. Especially on the subject of Selective Perception. How you learn a new absurd word and start hearing and seeing it everywhere.
The Selective Perception alone feels off and inexplicable. I am aware of all the scientific background. I am highly skeptical as well, don’t worry.
I don’t exactly know when i was convinced enough to live my life accordingly though, but there it is, i have succumbed to the idea.
But, why should we care? What to do with this knowledge? How can one live one’s life in accordance with the fact that it is all a simulation and not real? What is real anyways? What the hell does it have to do with anything?
It made me feel more in control to be honest. Because apparently, our observations alone affect the outcomes of the opportunities we are presented. You know that itch in your head, urging you to do something career-destroying or radical? Acknowledging that, it is all a simulation helps you be free of it. Let me set it straight by no means i am saying that reject science at all but what i believe is we have infinite power on our will and consciousness, how we perceive things. Since it’s all we got standing between the simulation and what makes us, us. Then if we can shift it somehow we can also shift the outcomes, tune ourselves to reply better and be more successful overall. I want to believe that our consciousness can not be fabricated but they are affected by the presence of each consciousness around them.
Yes,
Stoicism.
I realized stoicism was the best way one can live one’s life to fullest considering all the mumbo jumbo behind the simulation theory. Practically, they all lead to this.
I got myself a copy of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A book he wrote for himself, which ended up as probably the best guide ever written in history.
Whenever you are praying, wishing, training, taking that placebo; you are essentially conditioning yourself, your consciousness and your perception. Sure, your body’s chemical makes up can affect you. Your physical being alone can distort how you perceive things but you can shift the way your beliefs, your attitude and your perception are constructed and be free of all the pain that may be arising from a physical ailment by simply choosing to not be affected. You are in power of your consciousness, at least for now. (I am staring at you, neuralink.)
Hope i am setting a pattern here. It is sounding awfully like almost every other religion in history, i know. I came to realize that all religions; be it monotheistic, polytheistic whatever has these values ingrained in it. We do not know how our brains work. We know that there are neural pathways, neural plasticity and we know vaguely which parts are responsible for which actions but that is about it. We are mostly in the dark.
I am more focused, at ease and relaxed than ever. I have just adjusted my mindset. My perception is more zoomed out. I do not look out the window anymore, i am not even in the room.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
