In Reply to: How serious is possibility univ. is a simulation posted by NorthBruin40 on March 24, 2026 at 21:30:24
A lot of scientists do believe we are in a simulation.
Clearly not a conventional wisdom or universal acceptance kind of thing, But a lot of respected scientists (at least on YouTube), say the theory has some merit.
I found that when some scientists start talking about NO FREE WILL, a lot jump to the simulation theory.
There is this one AI simulation running that is built like a contemporary urban city. The sim has a lot of people (NPCs) walking around apparently going to and from work. The "player" is invited to talk to the NPCs. All the NPCs can carry on a complete conversation just like any LLM except they are people. One of the things many people try to do is to get the NPCS to understand they are an NPC and living in a simulation.
It's an interesting exercise because you have to engage the sim (NPC) in a certain kind of way in order for them to break their programing and start to conceptionalize a completely foreign topic.
One of the eerie convos I had, was when this sim was going home, I asked him not to go home and talk to me. I told him once he passes this wall (a barrier where the sim is no longer interactive and the NPCs just disappear after they leave the sight line). I told him not to pass the barrier cuz then he would disappear. He told me I(NPC) can easily pass the barrier, but you can't so who is the one in the simulation?