The Meaning of Life, and Afterlife Plausibility: Simulation Theory - Purpose and Meaning

I don’t claim to have discovered the meaning of life, because I don’t (to my knowledge) possess the means of knowing such a thing (and neither does anyone else). However, I can theorize on what’s plausible, using logical argumentation based on observable reality.

I know, it’s all been said before, but hear me out. This is a relatively unique idea.

To answer the question of “why we are here”, we went from religion to atheism, and then to the simulation theory.

Religion answered the question of what and why, even though it is nothing more than arbitrarily unsubstantiated claims by people who would have no way of knowing things that don’t add up or make sense. Religion is mere dogma, and dogma does not go well with the skeptical human spirit, which is why religion failed. You only need to consider severe health debilitation, child mortality and the occurrence of conjoined twins to realize that, at least the Abrahamic religions, aren’t consistent with the worldview they describe or promise. The main telltale sign of religion’s unfounded claims is that there is no fairness in a world where religious scholars assert there is. In one religion, a dead unbaptized child goes to hell. Why? In another religion, being “lucky” enough to be born in the wrong ethnicity makes you worthy of eternal divine punishment. Why? In another religion, a mentally ill “sinner” is worthy of punishment for things that were beyond their control. This type of inconsistency is a strong indication that the religious worldview is false, because no just, benevolent, protective “god” would allow for such injustices, and no amount of ad hoc fallacies to the tune of “you don’t know God’s plan” can explain the inexplainable… unless the “god” they describe is neither just nor good. In any case, mainstream religions fail to explain reality, and they give no satisfactory theory about an afterlife or a meaning to life.

Atheism, on the other hand, with its inferred randomness and improbable probability of the emergence of a purposeless existence, still requires the same level of faith that religion does. This is because the atheistic big-bang evolutionary-biology paradigm suggests that infinite time guarantees infinite possibilities. It does not. Infinite possibilities require rules to be introduced to a system, no matter how simple. For example, the rule of infinite randomness. And rules suggest purpose. Picture this: You can have in infinite universe like ours, with infinite space, infinite time and infinite mass. Let us assume that the laws of physics exist as randomly emerged rules without purpose. In this system, you can get infinite rearranging of mass, but none of those arrangements will ever form a square planet, due to the law of gravity. You can have infinite occurrences of identical arrangements of mass, but you can never get impossible arrangements. It is like the points on a ruler; you have infinite points between 2 and 3, but none of those infinite points will ever be point 4.

Also, what’s more disturbing about mainstream atheism is its cognitive dissonance, which, in my opinion, is more intense than that of religion. Why? Because a mainstream atheist claims to be rational, scientific and not reliant on faith, yet he falls for the fanaticism of socialistic statism, a secular dogmatic faith-based religion complete with its holy texts, prophets, ceremonies, symbols and scapegoats, and which is logically debunked over and over again without making a dent in their socialist religiosity. Atheism, it seems, has failed too.

The fall of atheism lead us to the simulation theory, a more factual, feasible and dispassionate speculation based on the observation that existence resembles a computer simulation, with its preset rules and execution, and perhaps, purpose. Laws of physics, and even logic, are to the universe what rules are to a software application. Without rules, the simulation would not run. But rules require causality, because they need to be “programmed” into the simulation before it runs. The etymology of the word “program”, from the Greek word “programma” (πρόγραμμα), literally translates to “pre-writing”. “Pre” suggests causality.

However, the problem with causality is that it drags us into the infinite regression problem, whereby, if one plane of existence requires cause, meaning a higher out-of-world creator, then that creator needs a higher-level creator, and that creator also needs an even-higher-level creator, and on and on. This is why it’s easier to conclude that there is no causation to the existence of this world, and if there is no cause, then there is no purpose, which is what atheism suggests.

But here is the tricky part. If the laws of physics and mathematics of this universe are bound by the parameters set forth by the simulation’s creator, then there may well be different “logic” outside of this universe. What if causality is something that is inherent only to this universe, and not to the speculated “higher-level” plane of existence? What if linear time, being a prerequisite for causality, does not exist in other planes? Doesn’t that show that a timeless higher-level of existence requires no causality? If time is exclusive to this level of awareness or existence, and our time-bound reality is simply a bubble inside a timeless spaceless existence, then maybe only this plane requires causality.

If we accept this speculation as plausible, then the model of existence by causation without the pesky infinite regression problem becomes more “realistic”, whatever that word means now that we’ve questioned the very sense of the word.

So, we’ve established that it is perhaps feasible to have a working theory of this reality being a simulation with purpose.

If so, what could that purpose be? Why would anyone/anything create this world? We know that nature is indifferent to us, that there is no justice in this world, and that life is full of pain, disappointment and regret. We are unimportant to nature, and there is no “divine plan” that “justifies” torment for a greater good. And even if we are tormented for some “greater good”, this doesn’t feel like a moral all-loving reality created by a loving god, so this “greater good” theory is self-defeating. Even if this world was created by a higher intelligence, there is probably no afterlife for us, and our lives are short insignificant bursts of energy that pop in and out of existence, just like the manner in which particles behave, according to quantum physicists (which I take with a grain of salt). The fact that we are left here to torment ourselves with the unanswered question of why, and whether there’s an afterlife, is evidence that the universe doesn’t care about us, nor that its purpose could ever be for us. If we don’t merit communication and information by the creators of this simulation, then we probably don’t merit a continuation of our consciousness after the death of our bodies. A sheep herder doesn’t bother explaining to the sheep what their purpose is, because their purpose doesn’t serve them, but rather, it serves the sheep herder. If there is a creator of this simulation, then the fact that we are left in ignorance means that we are insignificant to that creator, and that whatever the purpose of this reality could be, it doesn’t include us as individuals.

So, why would anyone create such a world? Maybe there is no purpose for us, but there is some purpose for the creator of this simulation.

(Spoiler Alert: Brave New World spoilers ahead)

After watching the 2019 series ‘Brave new world’, it dawned on me. The series is based on the 1932 futuristic dystopian novel with the same name. It depicts a society of humans who are all integrated, through technological implants, into a ruling artificial intelligence (AI). Humans have no privacy of thought or action, and their society functions more like the Borg hive from Star Trek, where individuality does not exist. Not only that, but monogamous relationships are forbidden, since all humans are “born” in artificial wombs, with their genetic predispositions predetermined by the AI, their creator.

Now, what’s the point of running a society of humans, when the AI can exist by itself? At some point in the series, the AI admitted that it needed humans for it to learn and grow. It was through their daily interactions, their chaotic possibilities, and the data they generated that the AI was able to grow and become smarter. However, the AI had reached a point where it could no longer learn anything more from its humans, at least from the sterile, obedient, uninspired, drug-addicted, brainwashed, passive-submissive and unfree subhumans it had created. Sure, there were still free-range humans in the world that lived and reproduced naturally, like the freedom-oriented Americans, whom the series calls “savages”. Those “savages” chose to live the inconvenient lives of individual sovereignty instead of the convenience of AI tyranny. I bet that free humans, with their freer will and behavior, could provide much more data for the AI to grow beyond its limits. But the AI could not learn anything from them, since they were not integrated into it. If they had, they would seise to be free as soon as they would plug into it, which would come at the cost of their individuality. Therefore, enslaving the free people would defeat its purpose of learning from them. Since the AI understood that it could gain nothing from the free people nor from its own “slaves”, it decided to destroy its artificial and meaningless society of humans living their meaningless lives. Those who survived the disaster where only the ones who could see the madness of their collectivist society, and who had already had a glimpse of individual thought and existential contemplation.

Since we accept the possibility that we indeed live in a simulation created for a purpose, with predetermined rules and a creator, maybe we can speculate that the reason for this existence is for the creator to grow, to learn. Maybe we are a dream of the creator, one dream of many, in which stories unfold that resolve problems, or create problems for the creator to challenge itself with.

But how can that creator grow if there is no causality or time in its level/plane of existence? Our previous assumption was that we can get rid of the infinite regression problem if we theorize that our creators’ plane of existence is not time-bound, and therefore, needs no causality. Well, then maybe, we are a bubble of finite time with infinite points of “present time”. Maybe, we are a shared dream inside a master consciousness. Maybe, we are a vinyl record in a timeless library, with infinite record-player needles playing the record infinitely, akin to Nietzsche’s infinite recurrence paradigm. Maybe our time-bound reality could be one of many simultaneously running simulations, and these may be, for our creators, an experience of time. Maybe the sum of our consciousnesses is part of our creators’ consciousnesses, and so, we are nothing in the grand scale of things. And maybe our finite existence has always existed and always will exits timelessly.

Maybe, your life has no purpose for you, but perhaps it only has a purpose for the creator(s) of this simulation. And possibly, this purpose is their wish to learn and grow through your life. If this is indeed a simulation, then the only thing that makes sense is that an unemotional, sterile and indifferent-to-human-life AI is running it for its own purpose, and that its NPC nodes, meaning humans, have no individual purpose.

Disheartening as this sounds, I find it a bit inspiring and empowering. If this is somewhat true, then you, as the creation of a higher-level plane of existence, have the power to make your creator experience, learn and grow through your daily choices and whatever free will you can muster, as little as that is. In essence, part of you becomes part of something on a higher plane of existence beyond this universe. And maybe this is as close to an afterlife as we can get: our life’s experiences and accumulated information become part of something beyond. And isn’t that what afterlife is supposed to be?

Now, that’s empowering.

So, work hard, improve yourself, improve society, create relationships and complexity in this existence, and you have gained your afterlife.