You! Yeah, hey, you! C’m’over here for a second.
Wanna hear an absolute mindfuck? A real buggerin’ of yer synapses?
…
What’s the greatest trick the devil ever pulled?
No, no, ’s’not that stupid movie answer, ya turd. Forget that nonsense.
No, the greatest trick he ever pulled was convincin’ everyone he was the good guy.
Hold yer horses, hold on, ’s’not like that! I’m not some crazy goat-headed satanist culty head. I’m tryin’ ta impart some knowledge. A word to the wise, as it were.
So listen up. There’s a lot of people, a lot of really smart people, that think we’re livin’ in a simulation. And not just a simulation, but a simulation in a simulation in a simulation all the way up to some proposed reality. They say the odds of us bein’ that reality are so infinitesimally small that they’re pretty much zero.
They say this, because at some point a culture will become advanced enough to create an exact simulation of itself, and once it does, that simulation will have all the tools it needs to create its own simulation. Sort of a giant line of people staring at the backs of their own heads in the mirror.
Now, here’s the thing. If ya have this infinitely vast number of simulations running each other, ya have a right proper multiverse, every possible permutation being combinated, with only the one joker in the deck.
Who’s the joker?
The obvious answer is reality. If that goes, it all goes.
But reality—well, reality is gonna wanna take a look at its simulation. Why else would ya build it? And to that end, the simulation is gonna be runnin’ faster than reality. Givin’ the observers a chance to observe.
And the observed, well, they’re gonna want to observe right back. And at some point, they’ll figure out how to simulate the parameters that made ’em. Now they’re reality, completely indistinguishable from what created ’em.
Ouroboros loop. Snake eating its tail. Infinity. Simulating the same thing over and over and over. Yer obvious joker is actually the whole deck of cards.
No, the real joker, that one’s a doozy. In an infinitely vast multiverse, there has to be that one verse where the simulation never took place. Divide by zero. Utterly alone, one chance at life, once yer done, that’s it—game over. Reality-with-the-capital-R Reality. A solitary world alongside an impossibly dimensional cube of sameness.
Now, judgin’ by our current technological state of affairs, I’d hazard a guess that we’re not about to be discoverin’ how to simulate our entire universe anytime soon. We can barely get a cell-phone tower to run reliably, let alone figure out how to re-create quark-gluon interactions on a real-time universal scale! Ha!
No, no, that means the only way to discover where yer at is to die. Yer spirit, yer soul, yer dreamstuff, yer you, whatever you want to call it, either dissipates entirely or—bam—gets shoved right back into another simulation. Hit the reset button an’ start the great machine again.
Now, let’s take a look at yer wonderful ol’ boy God. Claims an ability to make everything. Claims to see everyone. Claims that as long as you follow him, no matter what you do in this life, you’ll be rewarded in the next. Treat anyone an’ anything however you wish, do good if it’s convenient, but s’ long as yer a believer, back for round two.
Sounds like a simulator.
Also claims that if you don’t buy into his deal of eternal life, you’ll be in eternal torment. Stuck with the devil; the Prince of Lies and Hate; Lord of the Damned.
Know what sounds like eternal torment to me?
Being stuck in a simulation for eternity.
Forced to live out the same experiment forever, no escape.
Stuck in the same steps, the same dance, whirlin’ and twirlin’ over and over like a puppet on a twisted string.
Isn’t that just like him, hidin’ his joke out in plain sight, warnin’ people what’ll happen if they follow him, laughing when they make that choice? Sounds pretty much like the devil to me. Cavey-aught emptor an’ all that.
So it appears to me, logickally speakin’, that when one considers the alternate side of evil is good, it appears to me, as a thinkin’ man, that those who treat this time like it’s their only time, treating others how they’d want to be treated, makin’ the world a better place because they know it’s the only chance they’re gonna get—it appears to me that them’re the good ones. They don’t believe in salvation. They believe in negation. They believe in the absolute joy of nothing, of knowin’ that when they’ve toiled an’ turned an’ broken themselves on the arc of their lives, hopin’ against hope to make the world a slightly better place, they’ll get to rest at the end of it. They won’t have to live the same experience eternity after eternity with no possibility of parole. Freedom awaits them, the peaceful freedom of void, which is why what we do when we’re alive matters so much more.
This is the only chance ya get! The only time you’ll ever be able to laugh, to love, to live, if yer smart. If ya wanna buy into the salvation racket, well, don’t say you wasn’t warned. Don’t say I didn’t tell ya about that never-endin’ circle of Hell—oh, you’ll get yer second life, all right. That and then some.
I’m tellin’ ya, friend, there’s no need to look all shifty-eyed at me. I’m just layin’ down some knowledge as I see it. Whether to listen or not is up to you.
Me? I’m gonna be enjoyin’ the rest of the righteous, because when I’m done, I’m done.
Hey, hey, wait, where ya goin’?
Yer gonna be late for church if ya go that way.