[Buddha-l] ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

[ralf.steckel at online.ms]

> 
> On Nov 21, 2006, at 12:15 AM, Michel Clasquin wrote:
> 
> >
> > It is entirely possible that we live in a computer simulation.  
> > However, on what basis can we decide that the next level "up" is  
> > the computer? It could be a virtual computer being simulated in  
> > software a higher-order computer, the way I can simulate a  
> > Commodore 64 on my Apple to play old games. And THAT one could be a  
> > virtual computer being simulated in an even-higher-order computer  
> > and so on and so on .... On what basis can we decide that we've hit  
> > the actual hardware?
> >

The idea that life on earth is simulated by a computer has been adapted to science fiction quite earlier than in the Matrix triology. In the sixties Daniel F. Galouye wrote the science fiction novel 'Simulacron - Three' which has been transformed to the screen at least twice: once as a german two part TV play 'Welt am Draht' ('World at Wire') in the beginning of the seventies and 1999 to the Hollywood movie 'The 13th Floor' directed by Josef Rusnak and produced by Roland Emmerich.

In the german TV play a team of engineers started to create a computer simulation of life on earth for social research. But the investors of that experiment abused it for economical research what the project manager tried to fight off. The project manager and the other staff of the team had the possibility to parcipate to the simulation by taking control over one human being in the simulation.

During his fight against the investors the project manager gets aware that the life on earth including their own life is a simulation by superior beings as well. The project manager was designed to be similiar to the 'real' project manager of the superior beings who run the simulation on earth. But the superior project manager got megalomaniac and at the end of the TV play his girl friend transformed the project manager from the earth to the superior world and put the 'real' project manager into the simulation on earth.

>From the superior 'real' world there is not shown much more than a Zen like living room.

One detail of the simulation on earth is interesting: there is one take in which the project manager drives his car along a road and comes to a place where the simulation is out of order for a moment. He just sees an green reticule in the dark.

Best Regards,

Ralf Steckel