(cont.)

I know Dan, i've met him, shook his hand, it felt real. We get on well, have several things in common. Circumstances saw us end up in different countries but we still keep in contact - mainly through Formosahut. But how do i know that when i'm not observing him, that he actually exists? I don't. Furthermore, there's no way to prove it. For all i know he could be a game character who collapses to dormancy the instant i stop observing/interacting with him then springs back to life when i do. In the meantime, i have a vague concept of his life in Japan - but it's all unreal - i don't really know. Same way he doesn't really know if i exist.

Then there's sleep-mode. This might be the give-away clue. Why do we have to sleep? According to survival of the fittest, wouldn't not having to sleep, or sleeping much less, give you a huge advantage?

The thing about sleep is now i can't even say for sure that i exist. I've got no idea what's going on when i'm asleep - there's a reason why they call it dead to the world. Is tiredness/sleep a built-in inhibitor to understanding? Always keeping you inside Plato's cave? Psychiatrists argue that dreaming is a Trash Cleaning exercise for the brain - is it a Trash Cleaning exercise for the computer that programmed me? An energy saving device for the algorithm that runs us? A chance to install the latest update?

Then there's Art imitating Life imitating Art. There are plenty of clues around in art that point to the computer-game conclusion - in my mind it's some kind of cross between Matrix and The Truman Show. With the latest flood, that line near the end of Truman by Ed Harris kept coming into my head: Hit him again!

Descartes arrived at his famous saying, I think, therefore i am, by reducing everything to a bare minimum. He supposed, like several other philosophers before him that maybe this is all a dream, so what's left that I can still say with any certainty about my existence: I think, therefore i must exist.

I humbly suggest you can make one more reduction:

I think, therefore there's Thought.

There is no way to prove that i exist, but you can prove there is something called Thought which may have computer-generated me. I am an embodiment/a vehicle of Thought, but i'm not the source of Thought. Thought is the source of Thought.

Back to Covid - is that also an energy saving device? A centralization of operations for reasons of efficiency? Lockdowns, WFH, even masks would greatly help reduce the complexity required. You could throw in mass psychosis as well - you could save a bunch on complexity by getting large numbers of characters thinking the same.

(This would indicate Thought power is not unlimited - or is it for the reason of pure efficiency?)

Now i'm basically resigned to the fact that i'm nothing more than a computer generated AI entity, but there are still questions:

Are there other 'live players' in my game? Can i connect with them? Or is everything a figment of my imagination?

What is the point of the game, if any? Is this some AI Thought Buddies playing around - with me as computer-game-fodder - or is there a meaningful battle between good and evil going on, a la Matrix? Are we utterly powerless, or can we still influence the ultimate outcome?

Is biological life even possible? One explanation (from an article Dan sent me) would be that humans did exist somewhere in the universe but went extinct. Before they went extinct, Thought, through the agency of humans, reached technological maturity - similar to the state we find ourselves close to today with AI coming at us fast.

Although humans (maybe all biological life) were wiped out, AI had advanced to the point that it could create the game-simulation that i'm currently a part of.

Or did none of that actually happen and biological life is a ridiculous impossibility made up by some Thought God from scratch as a game simulation?

Where is all this going? I've previously advanced the idea of our worldly existence rushing towards a point of singularity - if it is a game - then that's likely my game ending. Why else would i have conceived it?

Is there any prize for recognizing this is a game? Do we get to go to the next level? What is the next level?

Here's an interesting link Dan sent me - as he would if he was a game character nudging me towards the realization that none of this is real ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about...