[Klathmon]

This gets a bit philosophical, but they may not be simulating the whole universe, just you.

They could just be simulating the universe as you view it, everything outside of your view doesn't exist, you are just a complicated AI that could be fed data.

You have no way of proving that others have "consciousness", and simulating what a single person can experience is MUCH easier than simulating an entire universe, hell I believe we could have access to technology that could do that within my lifetime.

It's also fun to think about. What if my forgetfulness is just an optimization?

[breuleux]

That could happen, but I don't think it makes much sense for it to happen on a large scale, so I wouldn't put a lot of probability on it. Entertainment is the most likely use for that kind of simulation, but I like to imagine they would be less boring than my life is right now.

[nikkwong]

Well, what if you're just 'one of the zombies' and I'm actually the only conscious being just reading your comment? Joking, but in all truthfulness I don't think it's all that unlikely. What if the simulation you are experiencing is being put in place by yourself—that is, 'you' in the higher dimension? Or, it could also be some kind of experiment to see how 'you' given your brain, environmental inputs, etc. grow and respond to stimuli. That doesn't seem unlikely at all.

[Klathmon]

Well depending on scale, your entire "existence" could be a few "minutes" in the "real world" (that's a lot of quotes...)

Much like how we are making ML applications now, you could be a complicated AI who's purpose is to calculate something encoded in your experience. You wouldn't need to know your purpose in order to complete it.

I'm clearly grasping at straws here, its just fun to think about :)

[breuleux]

I find it far-fetched, but you're right, it is fun to think about :)

To be fair, far-fetched things happen all the time, the trick is that we're usually wrong about which ones do.