Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?

I think the hypothesis that we are living in a computer "system" as opposed to a "simulation" is more plausible. In the Occam's razor sense. Similar to a computer we're all wired together in some great interconnected economy - there is nearly nowhere on earth now that you can't be instantly contactable if you want to be. The Internet joins us all together, with our phones, laptops and TVs as NICs for our consciousness. I don't think its far fetched to think that some global consciousness is emerging - in fact a few different consciousness - that are now vying for supremacy.

Some want to eat the whole cake, others just want to be left alone. Some for integration, others for separation. The fact that all these "weird" things are all happening could well be linked at some systemic level that will maybe be obvious to future historians. Like how we theorize that ocean going vessels enabled the days of colonialism or the development of fossil fuels led to the industrial revolution. The discovery of semiconductor material made the IT revolution possible.

What we could very well be experiencing now is some kind of singular behaviour due to the development of these new globally linked consciences - that are elbowing for space, and resources - annoying each other and squabbling in the process. Of course to us it looks like bizarre behaviour but perhaps no more bizarre than the random bits and bytes flying through a link appear to something like a network switch (had it the sense to ponder itself).

When I run too many programs on my computer weird things start to happen. Ghosts appear on my screen, leaving a trailing residue. The screen blanks. Sometimes the mouse pointer won't respond and a strange chugging starts to come from the box under my monitor. It's not so far fetched to expect that a tightly integrated system such as the modern global economy might exhibit other equally frustrating and odd (though explainable) phenomena when put under stress.

If you're interested in simulation theories, I recommend reading "The Simulation Argument" by Nick Bostrom [0] or watching his interview on Youtube [1].

[0] http://www.simulation-argument.com/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs

An interesting take on this is in the Culture series from Iain M. Banks. The AI minds, who for all intents run the Culture civilisation, constantly spawn virtual universes to test hypothesises.

Some shut them down after running the sim, some feel morally obliged to keep them running...

Also, if someone's suddenly jerking the strings in a game, it usually means they're bored and it's only a matter of time before they press one of the "godzilla invades", "aliens attack", "mass-tornados" buttons.

Urgh... There goes 5 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. Seriously, don't bother reading this, as it's a whole lot of nonsense. To boil it down:

- Unexpected things are happening, like Trump being elected president and some long-odds movie winning an Oscar.

- If we are living in a simulation, this behaviour is easily explained as some kind of glitch.

- Therefore, we are living in a simulation.

Betteridge's law of headlines applies here: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

It's an interesting narrative. But isn't it more likely that normalcy and predictability that we are so used to for the past few decades is the actual illusion? World is inherently chaotic and unpredictable. On top of that, human history does go through tumultuous periods where established systems are uppended.

This is just a modern form of religion. Personally I don't get why people get so hyped about it.

Should the Amazon S3 downtime yesterday be considered a glitch in this simulation? It is, too, one of these things that should never happen.

tldr: what if we assume independent events are connected, then it must be computers, because they are connected too and bugs can explain low probabilistic events happening (seemingly more frequently). Betteridge's law applies.