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?
It is possible. But if so, I’m not so sure about the NPCs. Surely you’re not the only playable character, right? That would sound like a literal main character syndrome to me ;)
I had an uncanny experience like that as a teenager with an “NPC like” character. I was walking around a small cul-de-sac, and there was an older woman standing in front of her house, completely frozen in place, just staring off into the distance blankly.
As I’m walking past she suddenly looked at me and barked out rather aggressively “Do you know what time it is?”
I checked the time on my phone and told her it. She snapped “NO! It’s [completely different time]”, she sounded angry as hell, I actually got a little scared.
Then she just glared at me in complete silence.
I started walking away and she just turned her head, watching me, but not saying another word.
She didn’t move from the spot she was standing on.
That said I blame dementia, psychosis, drugs, or otherwise failing mental health before I’d jump to the nothing is real or everything is a simulation conclusion, but it was definitely such an uncanny feeling situation that it stuck with me to this day.
My mom told me my older brother ate one of those… unfortunately he’s still here and tormented me for most of my childhood
Sees a mentally stable guy, thinks the entire world is a simulation.
Humanity may not make it, lol. :)
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…
I’d assume drugs if I saw a guy staring at a vending machine for ages. That’s “took too much of something that doesn’t leave the system fast” behavior. Possibly he wanted to get something from the vending machine, but couldn’t hold on to the thought for long enough to go through the process. Perception of time gets fucked on those sorts of drugs, so he has no idea he’s been there for however long. The behavior sounds specifically like that of people I’ve known who accidently took a higher dose of edibles than intended.
The world is real but we perceive it with a brain that can read signals of it imperfectly if something goes wrong in there. That leads to strange behaviors like you described.
It’s philosophically impossible to know if the world is “real” unless you reduce the word to an axiom. Just as it’s impossible to prove tbat all of existence wasn’t created yesterday morning at 1115z.
Much more useful is to accept both for the sake of contemplation, and then go on to ask the subsequent question “so what?”
It is always possible that none of this is real, but then everything you know to be real and normal is from this fake reality. You have no way to identify a real anomaly. You still do exist and you do matter, because what you sense, think and live through is your reality.
Sex is way too enjoyable for this to be a poorly coded simulation.
I think you just saw someone who needs either a break or some better mental health care.
Maybe everything else is so poorly coded becsuse the developer focused entirely on making sex the fun overhyped gimmick. Like the chainsaw guns in Gears of War.
If you experience things like this regularly, it might be a good idea to check in with a psychiatrist. There are plenty of ways our brains can mess with our perception, without us realizing it.
my man!
if we were living in a simulation, what would that change for you?
assuming we’re not in a simulation, we already can’t prove anyone but ourself is conscious, and even that’s a stretch
I’m not sure what difference it’d genuinely make. I am as real as I am.
Yeah but that’s what makes it a fun thought experiment imo is thinking of how the simulation accounts for our reality.
If I’m a Sim in The Sims equivalent, my dying results in the exact same outcome it does in The Sims; my avatar is gone and not resurrectable (without mods).
Maybe the Mandela effect is when we’ve moved servers from one that had different DLC.
God/Jesus/all prophets was just the admin visiting.
Ghosts are bugs in the code only visible to some of us because we have the residual DLC files that weren’t properly removed.
We can’t see far into space because the draw distance is short.
God, I hope so. How bleak would it be if this were baseline reality?
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You are still on your free trial period, so this is a demo.
