Nearer to Virtual Reality: Extraterrestrials and the Simulation Hypothesis

I believe that the Simulation Hypothesis - a hypothesis that we 'live' as virtual beings inside a simulated landscape in the computer - is the most probable hypothesis in terms of choosing between differing possibilities of reality. However, the key word revolves around what I "believe". I cannot prove that the Simulation Hypothesis may be the be-all-and-end-all of our reality - not yet at least though I'm working on that. Thus, I have to keep an open mind to the chance that our reality isn't virtual but really real. For the time being my pontificating on the aliens-are-here, the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis and related, is to be examined within that virtual reality scenario.

# Virtual Aliens: If the Simulation Hypothesis is correct, what would it not mean for aliens to be here? It could mean no more and no less than what would it mean for a simulated couch to stay your simulated family room or perhaps a simulated tree in your simulated yard or perhaps a simulated crook to pickpocket your simulated wallet. You're asking a question about the motivation of whoever programmed into our simulated landscape the this, and the that and the next matter too including the concept of simulated anomalous lights in the sky and simulated extraterrestrials having their wicked way with a select handful of us. I've no idea what their motivation may be.

I suggest though that certain must perhaps look at things through the eyes of our very own simulated beings part-and-parcel of our simulated landscapes in our video games. What would these virtual beings that we have programmed think about all the bits-and-pieces that we have included in their virtual world? How come this guy shooting at me? How come this monster lurking in the shadows? How come this Little Green Man abducting and raping my daughter? Do we not include aliens, and all manner of alien interactions inside our own video gaming? Have we not created video gaming that revolve around "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and their associated extraterrestrials? So, if we take action, what's the issue with what someone (or something) might include in the programming of our simulation and simulated landscape?

Okay, that's hardly a question that discounts the existence of aliens in the here and today in what you would call our really real reality.

# The Supreme Programmer: It might well be the proven fact that so far as our Supreme Programmer - the they / it / them in charge of creating our virtual reality - is concerned, we are just trivia. If this Supreme Programmer has designed hundreds or a large number of simulated universes and landscapes, then yes, we're trivial. But then so to is any simulation or video game that we create. You buy an off-the-shelf gaming and isn't really each of the contents really trivial? But back again to simulated aliens. Since we have programmed hundreds of video games that feature aliens, and produced hundreds of movies and TV episodes (cinema being yet another form of simulation) that featured ET, some made even before the start of the modern UFO era, why should we (Royal We) and why should you (as in just you) raise eyebrows at the idea our Supreme Programmer(s) featured aliens? Many types of what passes for entertainment is trivial. Our science fiction novels and short stories feature aliens by the bucketful who don't "have to travel through space, time, space-time, or even a mental space to get "here"." Well actually they have to travel via a mental space - the author's mental space or the film producer's mental space or the programmer's mental space. So maybe we're just entertainment for the Supreme Programmer, the "we're" including aliens and UFOs all rounding out the Supreme Programmer's cosmic landscape.

If  Helpful site  could speak to our gaming or simulation characters (or characters written into a novel or who appear on the big screen) - and as you note, we can not, yet - they might ask questions very similar to what must exist in the minds of readers here about why we (the Royal We), their creators, programmed this or that or the next thing in creating their simulated landscape. We (the Royal We) might respond that that is the way we wanted it, even if it had been trivial, or absurd.

I need explain when addressing the Simulation Hypothesis that no free will exists. The characters inside our novels haven't any free will; the characters inside our films haven't any free will; the characters inside our video games haven't any free will. If we're the creation of a Supreme Programmer, we've no free will. We would haven't any free will when we boldly go, but so long as we think we have free will then we (Royal We) could be convinced of our boldly going prowess. That by the by could equally apply even though we exist in a really real reality.

But if anyone has digested anything I've ever posted about the Simulation Hypothesis, they'd be aware there's one vast difference between my postulated Supreme Programmer and a supernatural deity, or God if that word floats your boat. My postulated Supreme Programmer is a fallible SOB and 'oops' happen and absurdities happen. God, being omni this and omni that and omni the next matter wouldn't create any oops or absurdities.

It is very important contrast a creation by way of a perfect being, an omni-God, whose creation logically would be perfect - no anomalies, no absurdities - and an imperfect being like a mortal flesh-and-blood computer programmer whose programming wouldn't normally continually be perfect and may possibly contain anomalies and absurdities. The proof that pudding could it be the constant updates and upgrades you get for your PC in addition to the news stories that surface every once in awhile about security programming flaws in software that allow the less than ethical in our midst to do relatively nasty what to our privacy, our bank accounts, our databases, our private and public institutions, like hacking into the NSA or the CIA, or getting the NSA and the CIA hack into our PC's.

But by the by, if anyone were to wish to call the Supreme Programmer, the software/computer programmer responsible for our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe "supernatural", that's fine by me provided that it isn't an omni-supernatural he / she / it / they. But what this nitpicking actually plays a part in the main topic of E.T. and whether or not aliens are, or aren't here, in our postulated virtual reality quite escapes me. I doubt if the readers here give a damn whether a computer programmer can be explained as someone "supernatural".

# The Twilight Zone: Whoever, whatever, programmed our cosmos and our local landscape had a sense of the absurd. Perhaps that's our Supreme Programmer's sense of humour arriving at the fore. What absurdities? Quantum physics is absurd. The truth that we just can't think of a Theory of Everything is absurd. An accelerating expansion rate for the cosmos is absurd. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are absurd concepts. Crop circles are absurd (but they're here). The Loch Ness Monster is absurd (but people report seeing it or them). Long Delayed Echoes are absurd (but verified). Transient Lunar Phenomena are absurd (but verified). Those Martian rock 'anomalies' like lizards, rats and skulls are absurd (but they have been photographed). Biblical 'miracles' are absurd but millions believe they happened. The SETI "WOW" signal is an absurdity but it happened. There are all manner of archaeological absurdities, but I'll mention just one - The Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek in modern day Lebanon. There are numerous items that are absurd in terms of the human species: here's one - humans will be the only species where the saying "don't shoot and soon you see the whites of these eyes makes actual sense. If photons cannot escape from the Black Hole then neither can gravitons. Gravitons convey the gravitational force which means that Black Holes exert no gravity. A Black Hole without gravity is therefore an absurdity. You then have quasars that appear linked but have vastly differing red shifts which is also an absurdity. The missing satellite of Venus, Neith, is another absurdity as in how can satellites vanish? You have physical constants that apparently aren't - constant that is. Time travel to the past is both theoretically possible (General Relativity) and theoretically impossible (paradoxes) - it's an absurdity to have both something that could be and not be at the same time. Ghosts are absurd yet there are probably more sightings of ghosts going back to ancient times than there were sightings of UFOs. Perhaps UFOs, the "Greys" and related may also be absurdities, however they exist in good company with the rest of what passes for our simulated cosmic 'Twilight Zone'.

Here are some more absurdities to ponder over. You can find three generations of elementary particles, yet only one plays any significant role in the cosmos. The other two contribute nothing of substance and structure, why is there a second and a third generation of the elementary particles? In archaeology, the Mesoamerican Olmec massive multi-ton stone heads scream out 'made in Africa' or 'we're African', yet there should not have already been any cross-cultural contact between Africa and Central America in the past in Olmec days. Such a scenario is deemed an absurdity. Lastly, turning again to human anomalies, we alone in every the pet kingdom have a bipedal gait without good thing about a balancing tail. A bipedal gait without the balancing mechanism makes us very unstable on our feet. We're super easy to knock over. We can lose our balance, fall down and do ourselves a mischief quickly relative to the rest of the animal kingdom. That Mother Nature would select for such an absurdity, is, well, an absurdity.

Exceptions to the rule, like the human bipedal gait, require extra special scrutiny since initially lone exceptions appear highly out-of-place and anomalous. Another example has been respect to velocity. Velocities could be added and subtracted with one exception - the speed of light. Why is this so? Nobody knows.

Now from the inside of the computer searching, as virtual beings, we could never know for absolute certain that anomalies or absurdities weren't designed deliberately or built into the system. But that doesn't mean we (Royal We) can't damn well have suspicions, particularly when the anomalies or the absurdities just keep on mounting up. So there is absolutely no such thing, as some might suggest, of a successful 'oops', but there certainly can be suspicions that something is screwy somewhere. There couldn't logically be such suspicions if an omni-God (or equivalent) were the only real option regarding our creation, something that was the case in ancient times before education and software simulations was conceived of in anyone's philosophy. An omni-God is no longer the only real creation scenario game in town.

I repeat, our Universe may be deliberately designed to be considered a 'Twilight Zone' cosmos, but the odds appear to favour some unintentional "oops" caused by lapses in the programming that was done by my postulated Supreme (but fallible) Programmer. Given the absolute complexity of designing a simulated cosmos from scratch, it is logical to suspect that anyone who isn't an omni-God would goof a few things up. No one can prove that, but one certainly can suspect that not all is right with the cosmos; you can have one's doubts! The bottom line is that anomalies and absurdities most definitely argue against an omni-God but support the idea of a fallible creator, just like a computer programmer.