I get what a simulation is, at least in the very literal sense. What I’m experiencing feels like reality, it would have to, it’s all any of us have ever known. But what would it mean for us if we truly lived in a simulation? Can it just be turned off and we cease to exist? If we found out we did live in one, how could it change our reality? How do we even hypothesize such a thing? I have zero background in physics just so we’re at an understanding of my physics understanding.
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The idea that we live in a simulation is not falsifiable, (there’s no way to definitively prove it one way or another, at least not without exiting the simulation) so it’s really more the realm of philosophy rather than physics. If we are in a simulation, we would have no way of knowing what the outside world is like, so there are countless different interpretations of the theory. If you’ve seen the matrix, that’s one interpretation. Inception is another, and so is the arcade game, “Roy” from Rick and Morty.
In general, the theory is meant to point out the fact that we have no actual basis for determining what is real and what is fabricated. Everything we know about the world is based on our experience, but our experience itself is unreliable. It brings up interesting philosophical questions like why do we feel like the things that we do in real life matter more than things we do inside video games, if “real” life could just be a simulation too for all we know.
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