Actually, the math’s pretty solid: Once any universe contains the technological capacity to simulate a universe within a virtual construct, the odds of an observer occupying the actual, non-simulated universe are vanishingly small. See, the problem is: once you can simulate a universe… your simulated universe can develop to the point of being able to simulate a universe… and that simulated universe will develop to the point of… well.
Yeah. Once you get there, it’s turtles all the way down.
Mind you, the ability to accurately simulate an entire universe may be impossible. After all, to do it right, you’d need to be able to plot the position and vector of every particle in that universe. Which would take a computer of greater complexity than a universe.
Oh please, this is reality! Not some cliche science fiction novel. Our universe was created by the powers of the divine. Every planet, star and organism is apart of a natural cycle that would be impossible to replicate unless you weilded the power the Maker himself has.
Hm. Something I take a lot of comfort in is that while I exist within this universe, I don’t think of it as something that exists for my sake. Or any of ours. We’re just kind of plunked down in it and left to our own devices.
It’s indifferent to us, and apparently to everything, but, that’s not its fault. It’s not a moral actor. It’s just a place.
I guess I should clarify that my musings did not mean the literal universe, but what some would experience as the universe - that mostly intangible feeling of lifeforce that permeates this tiny part of it that we occupy. The combined spiritual essence of the trillions of people who live here.
The universe, and the sheer, utter vastness of it is incomprehensible to beings such as us. Only entities we would consider gods can perhaps grasp and survive the spirit-crushing totality of the universe.
So, when I get in to despair event horizon where I bemoan the sadness and coldness of the universe, it is because I am once again reminded of being reduced to the state of a child who finally understands that stories she was told were just that, stories, and not real.