A shrinking reality?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Robert Urbanek, Dec 3, 2020.

  1. Robert Urbanek

    Robert Urbanek Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2013
    Messages:
    377
    Likes Received:
    136
    Trophy Points:
    43
    Gender:
    Male
    Awakened last night by indigestion, I turned on an episode of Stargate SG-1 in which the team visits a planet inhabited by people living in a computer-generated bubble which protects them from a toxic outside environment. However, the energy-starved bubble has been shrinking. To downsize, the computer, which controls people’s thoughts, forces people outside while erasing memories of those people from the minds of the survivors inside.

    I wonder if my “wrong memories” of events, like those shared by others (the Mandela Effect), are not evidence of a parallel universe, but are signs of a computer reset to conserve energy in a shrinking artificial reality.

    Both mass extinction of species and my projection of population loss through COVID-19-caused male sterility may be part of the downsizing required by a supercomputer that no longer has the energy to sustain the simulation of so many different life forms.
     
  2. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2017
    Messages:
    6,163
    Likes Received:
    3,096
    Trophy Points:
    113
    To be honnest, even without the Corona, american people became sterile, maybe not on a physical manner, but on a psychological manner.
     
  3. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2020
    Messages:
    8,219
    Likes Received:
    3,847
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Interesting. And if you are just a simulation within a computer program, does it matter if you are deleted?
     
  4. Dazed and Confused

    Dazed and Confused Newly Registered

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2019
    Messages:
    48
    Likes Received:
    21
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    I am coming to believe we do indeed live in a simulation, because it is impossible for so many people to have become so unwise, unhinged, ignorant and uninformed, beginning around about 1980.

    I say this as a baby boomer, who saw America blossom into a middle class paradise until about that time. There was still a lot of forest, the "Old Man of the Mountain," ("Indian Head") still ruled the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Vermont wasn't yet too expensive for anyone except New Yorkers, and Rhode Islanders could still afford to buy homes without selling some of their children. Maine was still considered "remote" and Connecticut was not yet an appendage of New York. A 7 year old kid could ride into the city on a bus all alone without fear for $.25 and go to the Saturday matinee for $.25 and have $.06 for a box of Ju-Jubes. Then he or she could go across the street to the drugstore and buy a Classic Comic for another $.25 if our moms gave use a whole dollar for spending money that week. Life was very good in our Red Ball Express sneakers, running through the neighbors Lilac arbor and plucking off a flower for our grandma who watched us while mom and dad were at work, (making just enough so we never felt we were in need. In those days.) It is impossible to explain adequately the joy of sliding down a hill in a beautiful city park on one's red wooden sled, not to mention throwing balsa wood planes around the neighborhood or watching long, very long, and elaborate fireworks in the local parks, (without being told over and over again to worry about getting injured.) People used to work 30 or more years in the same job! (Incomprehensible really, and so boring!) Oh, and there were things called "pensions" which many workers could acquire when they retired at 65, (until Reagan raised the retirement age because he thought in his senility he was still capable in his 70's. Then afterwards of course, seems like all of a sudden, people started working an abhorrent number of hours. Yes, it all started coming apart around 1980, but historians and political scientists will tell you it started in 1978 when a Democratic President, with a Democratically-controlled Congress LOWERED taxes on the rich. Oh yes, can you believe that? So, anyway, it must be a simulation, because with more and more wealth flowing upward, it would be incredibly stupid to lower their tax rates, because then infrastructure and social services, among other things, would be under-financed, no? I mean, the Wall Street drum kept beating over and over again, "You need to become more "efficient," which is an acceptable sounding way of saying, you have to squeeze labor and get more production, (because, well, Nixon opened up China so we could export jobs and buy cheap products for awhile.) Well, this is just an example of why I thing people must be programmed to do stupid and unwise things. All that said, global economics was in a watershed moment, and that caused all kinds of socio-economic dysfunction you see. Computers started to displace people, and that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back.

    The masses, ("populares" or "baby makers" they were called by the Romans), must have been programmed by the cosmic engineers who created the simulation. Yes, yes, I know, what happens is due to everything that happened or failed to happen in the past, because everything, including doing nothing, has consequences. But that explanation is too complex and abstract, even though accurate. It is easier to believe that time is an illusion, our idea of reality is an illusion, and well, although we don't have to comprehend any of that, we should simply accept it and go about our programmed business. Besides, we can forgive EVERYTHING! Yes, if we are living a simulation, the murderers were supposed to be murderers, the poor never had a chance, the rich were designed to be greedy and uncaring, the politicians deliberately programmed to be indifferent and amoral, and so forth. Yes, without real "free will," we are all simply playing the roles we were all assigned by the script writer(s.)
    In a way, this is a comforting thought, because we can take no personal responsibility. I am not being sarcastic, I really mean that WE ARE WHOM WE WERE MEANT TO BE, or, as Lady Gaga famously reminded us, "I was born this way!"

    I chose 1978 as the watershed year because that was also the year of the "Great Blizzard of '78" which put 60 inches of snow on my property and allowed me to stay home from work for a week, (paid), with a fireplace for heat, since many electricity cables went down all over the region. In 1978, Cuban humming birds flew onto my backyard deck in Rhode Island to drink honeyed water, and there were many many other kinds of birds every day which we no longer see around like Nuthatches, loads of Robins, woodpeckers, flyover geese and ducks, and well, many. There was a fox living in the orchard about 500 feet up the road who came prowling around most nights, and a turkey who lived on my lot in the woods on the side. Once in awhile, he would fly onto a tree branch across the street. They are really quite awkward when running to get up the steam to fly, and then barely making it to a tree branch. The raccoons who had a baby, (and lived in the winter under my 12 foot aluminum semi-v boat which I bought for trout fishing in the Spring for $400 at Sears), used to rummage through the garbage cans and open up the soft shelled clams we had for dinner, hoping a few morsels would be left.

    Most of the wildlife is gone now, killed off by humans and diseases, the forests are thinner, many of the orchards are now condo villages; and like Joni Mitchell wrote looking out of her hotel room in Hawaii, and then sang, "They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot."
     
    JET3534 and The Wyrd of Gawd like this.
  5. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Rap music started around 1980.
     
  6. Cougarbear

    Cougarbear Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2019
    Messages:
    2,450
    Likes Received:
    1,146
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    That's it! That's the reason for all the Chaos in the world! Rappers!!!
     
  7. Cougarbear

    Cougarbear Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2019
    Messages:
    2,450
    Likes Received:
    1,146
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Those were the good ole days! My red sled down the cemetery hill in Deadwood South Dakota. Passing by Wild Bill and Calamity Jane's graves. Great times!
     
  8. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I know right.
     
  9. JET3534

    JET3534 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 7, 2014
    Messages:
    13,350
    Likes Received:
    11,517
    Trophy Points:
    113
    A simulation is an interesting theory. It would explain both individual and collective Karma.

    Another theory explaining what you describe is people have just had it too easy in Western society. They thus don't know what they don't know.
     

Share This Page