Sisyphus’ Blunder
And the futility of metaphysical rebellions
Let us embark on a little speculative journey and suppose for a moment that we live in a simulation indeed. Let’s imagine that the simulation is running for six thousand years and that it is totally adaptive. That is, it generates its content and properties on the fly in accordance with human observation.
Thus, when we search for past, the simulation adaptively creates a backstory and we dig up ancient cultures, dinosaurs, and what not. When we look at the micro scales, into the fabric of things, the simulation presents us with finer and finer detail, and when we look into telescopes, the simulated Universe expands on macro scale to adapt to the extent of our observation.
Furthermore, imagine that the simulation may or may not have a blueprint depending on the preference of the human agent. And similarly, imagine that the simulation can be all there is, as well as it can be just a bubble embedded in an overarching world owing its existence to alien agents whose ingenuity surpasses our wildest dreams and imaginations.
Let’s suppose it is all just an autonomous monstrous inhuman anomaly. Even a concept of a cruel experimental test in which humans are the general purpose artificial intelligence will do. Of course, you may also safely imagine a benevolent reason, or even no reason at all, behind it all.
As you may have noticed, none of that changed the fact that when you play a wicked prank on a blind person and rearrange their home, they will start bumping into things instead of passing through them as an immaterial ghost. None of that changed what would be the most probable outcome of you hitting a concrete wall at full speed. And what’s most important, none of that enabled you to escape your inevitable death. Call it laws of nature, rules, or just constraints, the final effect is the same.
Yet, most of you still search for a cosmology that would validate bypassing of said causality. You think that, if a description of reality that would allow for passing through walls turned out to be true, you would be suddenly able to pass through walls too. At least there would be hope, right? So, you desire Heaven, an immaterial realm where you could live without the drawbacks of physical body, yet with all its delightful sensual perks. And thus, maybe you also fear an immaterial Hell.
That, or you take pride in seeing that the simulation puts unfair restrictions on you as a person and that it could be improved upon and constrained in a better way — after all, you think that you can imagine a better way — but you, as an agent and product of the simulation, also see that you are by definition too powerless to influence it on a large scale and thus cry foul in hopeless alienated despair.
In ancient parlance, all of that was called rebellion against God. And it is precisely that mode of deluded, hubristic thinking what obviously makes this world, this simulation, or whatever it is, a palpable living Hell. Whether you desperately try to get rid of it, or you refuse to accept it on the grounds of your anthropocentric aesthetics, the end results amount to the same. Because, you know, the causality you rave against cannot be fucked with without consequences.
Enjoy (^ ～ ^)
