A Simulationist’s Crisis of Faith

Author’s note: I just can’t get away from this stuff. I haven’t written anything about the simulation hypothesis in over a month and sort of figured I was basically done with it. The weird phone calls from unknown numbers and strange emails with domain names I don’t recognize had stopped as well. It seemed all the nutjobs had given up on messing with me. Then a voice recording from a number I did not know came through on my personal cell phone. With the recording was a text which read — “listen SH quit” My transcription of the voice recording is below. The man reading the message sounded quite calm and completely rational, maybe a little sleepy, but it was not a voice I recognized. It ended suddenly as these things seem to always do.

Audio begins…My name is Tim Dreary. My simulational submersion occurred on Dec. 17, 2014. At that time I was a software development engineer for a large, well known, web search engine company. My wife had left me, taking our three small children to live in another state and I was alone. I was so very alone. I had become disillusioned with my job, with my entire life really, and was spending more and more time at work and at home online, and thinking a lot, thinking a whole hell of a lot. With all the time I was spending on the web I suppose it was almost guaranteed that at some point I would be exposed to simulationist teachings. When I stumbled across (oxford philosopher) Nick Bostrom’s paper in which he first described, and then logically and mathematically proved the truth, what I thought was the truth, of the nature of our simulated reality, I was dumbstruck. I mean it was so beautiful, the logic, the math, it was all rock solid, and it made so much sense. As I dug deeper and continued to learn about simulationalism it became more and more obvious that the life I had led up to that point was nothing more than a lie. A lie I had told myself, or perhaps a lie programmed into me at the time of run program by the Simulator(s) him/their self/selves. It didn’t really matter because now I saw the truth, I had been reborn, simulationally submerged is the term they use, it indicates a person who has recognized and accepted the simulational nature of ourselves and our universe. Hard to believe that was almost four years ago. I had drunk the kool-aid for sure and was in deep, very deep. Before you know it I was attending a simulationist church in the bay area, actively contributing to several leading simulationist initiatives online and in the real(simulated) world……audio ends.