hey y’all
in my last newsletter i briefly talked about webworm, a newsletter by david farrier, one of my favourite journalists/writers/humans ever. david’s always investigating weird things on the internet & talking about them, sometimes in a documentary or a Netflix special, and sometimes in his newsletter.
a few days ago, david put out yet another intriguing article: an argument that we may or may not be living in a simulation.
[On modern day ‘Simulation Theory’:] Bostrom is also a philosopher, who heads the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. He essentially argued that there was a chance that a certain number of civilizations would reach a “post-human” level, with technological resources that are sufficient to run highly detailed simulations of their ancestors.
If that is true, then in those simulations there would be more simulated ancestors than there had been real ones… which means that it’s more likely than not that our experience of reality is as a simulated ancestor of these civilizations than as an actual ancestor.
from Why we may all be living in a simulation (or not!) by David Farrier
after briefly introducing this very out-there theory, david goes on to illustrate this hypothesis with some examples. predictably, this includes glitch-in-the-matrix phenomena, such as the mandela effect, named after how a not-insignificant number of people wrongly remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, when in fact he got out OK, went on to serve as Prime Minister of South Africa, and passed away in 2013.
there are also a whole other bunch of examples that might make you go “hmmm, maybe there’s something here”. as you can probably tell, it’s a really interesting article, so if you have some time you should go read that first.
anyway, towards the end david writes about crazy real-life coincidences, and how they may possibly point towards the presence of a “higher being” who’s controlling our “simulation”, and this is the bit i wanted to talk about.
david had a chat with Rodney Ascher, the maker of ‘glitch in the matrix’, a netflix documentary about simulation theory. in his chat with david, rodney says something very interesting:
There is a guy [in the documentary] who has this fairly complicated story about being in a car accident in the mountains of Mexico — and he survived one disaster after another, after another… and he came away going “I do not believe in God — he would not lift his pinky to save me — therefore simulation theory is more likely. The world is being controlled by someone out there who has a purpose and a point. It is not my time to die.”
not gonna lie, when i read that line — “I do not believe in God, therefore simulation theory is more likely” — I kinda snort-chuckled. i just found it so funny that he would rather believe in a largely indifferent force of unknown motivation controlling the Earth and our actions on here, rather than believing in God (who, according to most sources, is benevolent rather than indifferent, and is motivated by love).
at the end of his article david kinda acknowledges this:
Simulation theory is just another religion. Another big idea to give our weird lives meaning. An atheist’s religion, perhaps.
and when he said that, i was like yeah! everyone is looking for meaning and purpose in their lives, and those of us who chose to reject traditional religion will no doubt find that meaning and purpose elsewhere.
the cool thing about free speech and the internet is that you don’t have to be a critically acclaimed writer to have a hypothesis, so this is mine: everyone is looking for God.
i recently read East of Eden, which was life-changing. (you can read my review here)
if you’ve read East of Eden, you’ll know what i mean when i say Timshel. fans of the book will probably have a visceral reaction to the word and the meaning it holds. people have gotten ‘Timshel’ tattooed onto their bodies, painted on their walls, worked into their art, and so on. i once read the reddit comment of a man who claimed that he read the paragraphs on ‘Timshel’ in East of Eden every morning before going to work. he said it had a calming effect on him, and reminded him of what really mattered.
in his book, Steinbeck explains ‘Timshel’ as the Hebrew word for “thou mayest”. so you can imagine my surprise when, after reading the book, my trusted friend Google informed me that this meaning was made-up.
it amazed me how one man can make up a word that can effect countless people in such a long-lasting way. it also told me something: that these people found so much meaning in this one word, that they put it in the centre of their lives.
this is not a new phenomenon by any means. people have been making gods out ordinary things for ages. this is from the Acts of the Apostles, written a long long time ago:
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.
from Acts 17: 22-23
and neither is this an outdated phenomenon. people who claim to not believe in God still get meaningful phrases tattooed onto their bodies, watch and re-watch movies that have a lasting impact on their behaviours and values, and are heartbroken when people they idolise end up disappointing them.
we make Gods out of our romantic partners, our mothers, our jobs, our favourite authors, our unattainable internet crushes, our philosophies. do you remember when QAnon conspiracy theorists stormed the US Capitol under the supposed urging of their all-seeing, anonymous leader? now, was that anything short of a religion?
i don’t think we can survive without God. or gods, plural. i don’t think we humans are very good at living our lives purposelessly, and without direction. if we aren’t driven by external beliefs, we are driven internally, by a Self we raise up to the level of god. the paradox is that the very things we want to save us end up destroying us. because, as with Timshel, the illusion inevitably falls away, and we discover the earth-shattering truth:
that the gods we built for ourselves were, all this time, a lie.
(unless, of course, you’ve found the one true God. wink wink.)
anyway, this is my hypothesis. if you’re an atheist, or disagree with me in any way, let’s chat?
also: every time i set out to write one of these newsletters, i promise i’ll keep it short & to the point. and then i can’t seem to shut up, and it gets a bit out of hand. i’m sorry! if you’ve read until the very end, i love you.
until next time!
krys
a bird! a plane! a simulation!
Krys you should read 'love & other thought experiments'...I'm about to finish it, I really liked it! it has a the same themes which you mentioned in the first paragraph & I think you will like it too!
Great read as always :)