Rizwan Virk

But then I started to research things like quantum physics and some of the mysteries around the observer effect and quantum mechanics.

And then I started to look at all the world's religions and I realized that they're all kind of saying the same thing, which is that there is no physical universe.

And so that led me to the conclusion that we are most likely inside some kind of a computer simulation or a massively multiplayer video game, depending on how you look at it.

Well, that's the big question, right?

And there's two versions of simulation theory.

And I teach a class on this at Arizona State University.

It's probably the first college-level class about simulation theory, and it kind of pulls in science fiction, religion, philosophy, and technology.

But one of the key distinctions I tell my students to make is it's not talked about a lot with simulation theory.

is what I call the NPC versus the RPG versions of simulation theory.

So NPC, as you probably know, means non-player characters within video games.

So those are the AIs in the video game, the bartenders, the people you're beating up, the opponents, all of that stuff.

But basically they're just code and they're AI.

Then there's the RPG version, which is that we are actually doing a role-playing game, right?

So you exist outside the game, and then you have a character or avatar inside the game.

So it's just like what we would consider an MMORPG today, except with more sophisticated technology.

And so in that case, you get a little bit of a different answer than if you talk about

an NPC only type of simulation, right?

Because that's just running on a computer and we're all AI in that case.

Now the two aren't mutually exclusive, right?

In a video game like Fortnite or whatever, World of Warcraft, you have NPCs and you have PCs or player characters, right?