Deepish Thoughts

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it.

-Jack Handey

We’re living in our own MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game). It’s like playing World of Warcraft or Minecraft. There’s no real purpose. 

There’s Nick Bostrom’s “life is a simulation created by a future civilization” thesis. That doesn’t make sense. The games we make rarely follow the exact laws of physics nor resemble the actual world we live in. Hyper realistic games aren’t popular and for good reason– hyper realism is boring. There’s too much downtime. If a game was hyper realistic, even playing as a soldier in the trenches in World War 1, most of it would be sitting around, sleeping, eating, waiting. 

For all we know, each one of us is incapacitated, hooked up to supercomputers creating the world we see and the bodies we inhabit. Probably not. Life is only a simulation in how we perceive the world.

The simulation theory misses the point. It reminds me of the Jack Handey quote: 

MAYBE in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Basically, it's made up of two separate words — "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

Anosognosia is my favorite scary, fascinating subject. An example is someone who has lost their left arm and has brain damage. Their neurological impairment makes them believe they still have a left arm. You ask them to pick something up with their left hand, they say “my left hand is tired so I used my right hand instead.” It doesn’t matter what proof you present, they will keep rationalizing they have a left arm. They will never admit to not having a left arm. They won’t admit a readily apparent fact. A fact they and everyone else can clearly see. Everyone besides them knows it. Only they don’t know it.

All that they have to do is admit reality. Admit the truth. They can’t do it.

What if humanity as a whole collectively suffers from anosognosia? What are we ignoring that is so obviously true? There are unpleasant facts that societies don’t want to address, but what if there’s something deeper that we all simply refuse to acknowledge? Something we’re blind to and rationalize away every year, every month, everyday. What can we not admit? What is humanity not seeing?

This is a fun technique for world building. It doesn’t change our reality. It doesn’t change what matters.

I prefer to find my own meaning. Find my own purpose. There are many wrong answers. But there are more right answers. Choosing meaning is core to how we optimize life satisfaction.