The last simulation
We each experience a rendering of the world, never the world itself. Why the useful question is not whether reality is a simulation, but what kind you are building.
You and Others
Things as they are experienced through the senses and processed by the mind — phenomena — are distinct from things in and of themselves — noumena.
If I were to make a crude metaphor using Classical Mechanics, the noumenal world would be the absolute reference frame: one in which space and time are absolute.
“Absolute, true, and mathematical time… flows equably without relation to anything external.”
In contrast, we would each live within our own frame of reference, observing phenomena and being exposed to a simulation of reality.
When people manage to agree on what reality is, we could call the result a consensus reality.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, prisoners are shackled inside a cave, forced to watch shadows projected onto a wall. They take those shadows for the world.
But importantly, they are together.
They name the same shadows.
They live within a shared simulation.
“To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
The adjacent idea is that we each have our own interpretation of that simulation. This is why we communicate: to confront and align our respective models of reality.
The shared aspect of the simulation emerges from human agreement about what is and what is not.
We create consensus both in the pursuit of truth and in the pursuit of connection.
Consensus reality remains distinct from reality itself.
Yet can we prove that this distinction really exists?
Imagine that throughout all of human existence, no one has ever seen things as they truly are.
We could then argue that we have no proof of an absolute reality independent of perception.
Concept of relativity
“All systems of reference are equivalent with respect to the formulation of the fundamental laws of physics.”
Using an absolute frame of reference earlier was a slight narrative convenience.
There is no unique, privileged frame of reference.
Instead, every point in space is fundamentally equivalent.
Likewise, we could say that every individual's “reality” begins on equal footing. What differs is the way it is perceived: every person applies a different filter.
Let's build a model.
Suppose reality can be represented as a space ℝd, of dimension d > 0.
Assume consciousness is a function f that projects things x — the noumena — onto only r dimensions, with r < d.
A person's experienced reality could therefore be represented within this lower-dimensional space.
At any time t, consciousness occupies a particular state, represented by a vector v(t) ∈ ℝr.
Over time, our perception of reality evolves. We may explore more of the available space; perhaps even the number of dimensions accessible to us changes over a period T.
So both our position and the space we can perceive evolve.
Humans connect when their models share a subset of common concepts.
Humans grow faster when they connect with people moving in the same direction.
The matree-x
Let's call our first human Regis.
Regis is a normal human. He grew up in our era, in Paris, and chose his name himself because he has free will.
Regis believes he lives in a simulation.
He might be the only sentient being in the universe. Perhaps the people around him are merely artificial intelligences.
Let's call our second human Bap.
Bap is a great prince, though no one knows it yet. He is destined to reclaim what is his.
Bap has a purpose.
He leads a holy war against the demons that torment him, whispering in his ears. Yet at the end of the road, he shall vanquish them.
Let's call our third human Mars.
Mars comes from elsewhere. Some think he is a cyborg; others think he is human. Many simply feel his magnetic field.
Mars wants to satiate his curiosity.
He advances through a vast world whose rules are unclear but potent, finding energy in understanding how it works.
They share common roots — they grew up in the same city.
They share common roots — they lived through the same generation.
They share common roots — they went through the same education.
They grow different branches — their goals are distinct.
They grow different branches — their understandings of the world diverge.
They grow different branches — their fires burn with different intensities.
The only dimension
Every point in space is equivalent.
There is no privileged center from which the universe unfolds.
This becomes particularly strange when considering the Big Bang. It is tempting to imagine an explosion occurring at one point, sending matter outward into pre-existing space.
But that is not the model described by modern cosmology.
Space itself expanded.
There is therefore no place in the universe from which everything is moving away.
Every point we occupy today can be traced backward toward the same hot, dense early universe. The place where you are now was already, in that sense, at the Big Bang.
So was every distant galaxy.
We did not travel away from the origin. Rather, the distances between us emerged as space expanded.
The origin is therefore not somewhere.
It is when.
Something strangely symmetrical happens inside an idealized black hole.
From the outside, we imagine its singularity as a point located at its center. Yet once the event horizon is crossed, General Relativity gives it another meaning: the singularity lies in the observer's future.
Every future-directed trajectory leads toward it.
Reaching it becomes less analogous to travelling toward a place than to travelling toward tomorrow.
The Big Bang can therefore be thought of as a boundary toward the past, while the singularity of an idealized black hole is a boundary toward the future.
Neither needs to be understood primarily as a privileged point in space.
Perhaps what separates things is therefore not simply where they are, but where they lie in relation to one another, causally and temporally.
Space gives us different perspectives.
Time gives them direction.
Distinct world
Consciousness creates distinction in order to experience something at all.
From that distinction, an entire world unfolds.
Here and there.
Before and after.
Self and other.
Subject and object.
Real and imaginary.
Something and nothing.
But none of these lines exist in reality quite the way they exist in our minds.
There is no precise instant at which a child becomes an adult.
There is no obvious boundary where the air outside your body stops being the world and, one breath later, becomes you.
The distinctions are real in their consequences.
There is a useful difference between past and future.
Between myself and another person.
Without distinction, there could be no experience.
Without you and me, there could be no meeting.
Without distance, there could be no journey.
Without uncertainty, there could be no discovery.
Without separation, there could be no return.
Maybe, then, the final question is not whether we live in a simulation.
We do, in at least one unavoidable sense.
We experience reality through distinctions reality itself may never have made.
We could spend our lives attempting to escape every simulation, looking for the final perspective from which reality would at last appear exactly as it is.
But perhaps such a perspective cannot exist.
To see reality as it is would require a view from nowhere.
Yet to see is already to see from somewhere.
Relativity offers a useful analogy.
No matter how fast an observer moves, the speed of light in a vacuum remains the same when measured from their own inertial frame. There is no privileged perspective from which motion suddenly reveals its absolute form.
Change the perspective, and the relations change with it.
The last simulation
In that sense, the simulation is not necessarily something we are trapped inside.
It is something we are constantly constructing.
And if this is true, the interesting question is no longer:
Is reality a simulation?
But:
What kind of simulation are you constructing, and what does it allow you to do?
Changing the model does not magically change what is.
But it changes what can be seen and felt within it.
A boundary can disappear.
A possibility can appear.
Something previously understood as an ending can become a transition.
What becomes visible changes what becomes possible.
What becomes possible changes the decisions you can make.
And decisions do not remain inside the simulation.
They become actions.
Actions enter the world.
They become events that other people must perceive, interpret, and integrate into simulations of their own.
To me, this may be one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal.
We may be bending reality through the way we think.
Not by commanding reality from the outside.
But by redrawing the distinctions through which it becomes real to us.
The simulation does not have to become a cage that limits interpretation.
It can become a model that grows sharper as our senses sharpen, our understanding deepens, and unnecessary distinctions dissolve.
In more concrete terms:
Change the rendering, and you may change the action.
Change the action, and you change something in the world.
Change something in the world, and it enters somebody else's reality.
And from there, the ripple continues.