I’m sure most of us have played Skyrim. I’m sure most of us have seen the NPCs that just awkwardly stand there, swaying slightly with a blank look on their face.
I’m starting to think this whole world is just an illusion. I just walked into my break room, and saw a guy just staring at the vending machine. Slightly hunched over, and swaying.
So I sat down at a table and start browsing my phone.
He’s still standing there. Same spot. No words. Not looking at a phone. Just dead staring at a vending machine which is 2/3rds empty. Not counting money. Just staring dead forward.
After a while I wondered how long he was going to do this. I walked around the side of him, looked at his face, and asked if he was ok. He grunted at me, like hmmmmph.
I went back to my table and started a stopwatch.
When my break was over he was still standing there. 22 minutes staring at a vending machine, and telling multiple people he’s fine, but also grunting at most people.
The ONLY explaination I can come up with is that he’s an NPC who failed the turing test, and this entire world doesn’t exist. I don’t exist. You don’t exist. None of this matters.
Anyone else think this is some kind of poorly coded simulation?
Y’know some days I’ve thought the same thing, especially with the absurdity of the last few years. To the incident you described, I think that person may very well have been mentally disabled, or on drugs, or otherwise mentally “out of it”. The human brain is incredibly complex and finicky, and that makes sense considering it’s really intricate meat that is zapping itself with electricity.
In my own life I’ve seen a fair number of people who seem fully tapped out. I believe this trend has been amplified by the overstimulating nature of our media landscape; the rise of short-form content; the normalization of outsourcing thinking to “AI” processes; the general stress and tension in the world…