Is life a computer simulation?

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Is life a computer simulation and if yes, how many bots are there?
Many people just seem to have no true soul, so they could be bots.
I would say only one in 3 people is a player character and the other two are NPCs.

I wonder what you think about this

Wouldn't that be just swell?

I am real. You probably are a souless NPC. Maybe a few other folks are real.

But yeah...

You maybe right. You, me, and everyone else are all just characters in a game of Farmville. Our destinies are all being guided by some giant giant geeky kid on his desk top in his bedroom, in his parents home, in a neighborhood, in a bigger other universe.

And that geeky kid...is himself a character...in a game of Farmville, on a lap top, in the hands of an even bigger geeky kid, in an even bigger universe, who is a character in a game of Farmville, on a laptop, in ….

Everyone is someone else's bot. I'm real to me, you're real to you; so you say! But how do I know you didn't just get that from me? You're clever, you're learning and on your way to touching reality.

It does seem there may be bots out there, but how can we tell? That others are conscious entities is a leap of faith. The only theory that doesn't involve faith is solipsism, and that's a really lousy basis for a life philosophy if it's not correct, since following it would make one selfish and amoral. Pascal's Wager is a better bet, so to speak.

The "hard problem" of human consciousness is another way to look at it. Never mind about them being bots; why aren't we all bots? I would say materialism isn't enough to explain the phenomenon, and there's got to be a touch of the supernatural within us. Perhaps wishful thinking, but that's okay.

Link: Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?

I tend to think of it that way at times. When I step out of my room I'm entering the matrix. When I wonder why people are behaving a certain way I can just write it off as them following their program.

I think that's probably true on either side of the matrix.

There's roughly about 7.5 billion bots out there.

We're all bots, you see.

We're all just abiding to our programming, and the same laws of cause and effect as everything else in this universe.

Our programming is just so clever that we think we have free will.

We don't... at least not in the sense more people interpret the term "free will"...

It could be true. There are some seriously clever people who think it's a possibility.

If it is true then the best course of action is to make yourself as interesting as possible to avoid being terminated.

That's a win-win as if it's not true you will have an interesting life.

Either way ends in termination.

Well, even if we are bots, 'tis for sure, that no one could create a program, exactly modelling any of us, cause the exact quantum states we were each born at and formed and future quantum states - they always change, so there are infinity essences of people (programs) and infinity possibilities we would have to consider, while making our program - how would/did we react to any subtle change in the future or past? And we know that in quantum mechanics there are infinity pasts.... So we're kind of like "nature bots" - each with an unrepeatable program, or "soul".

Could be...but how would you know? Also if I am a bot, I don't know that I am...

Is it possible bots could be programmed to not know they are bots?

Why not?!

I was just recently thinking about our perceptions of reality and came to the conclusion, that our perception of reality - is something, the effect on us of which we could always, in some degree and way control.
If the degree and way of control are high, then we feel as if we're in a computer simulation: there is little spontaneity and many laws/rules are known.
If the degree of control is high, but the ways of control are not constant, then we feel, as if imagining or creating something: we don't know, how we got those ideas, there are no rules, but we are always in control.
If the degree of control is low, but the ways of control are high, then we feel, like a scientist: many questions, spontaneity, but same scientific method and some unchangeable rules/laws.

So, if life really is a computer simulation (for whoever created us and the laws), then that means there are constant fates and laws, by which to control us. But if someone created, then that means they once had no rules of creating (because creating is making something, without following some algorithm) and those rules/laws came after them creating.

The real question is how on earth you win.
What a boring game to, you'd think with that tec they'd make it fun.

I'm depersonlizated 24/7 so I wouldn't be surprised

I can't prove life isn't a simulation, but even if it is, it doesn't change anything in what I see as my world. For me, the environment is whatever it is, I adapt (or fail to adapt) to it empirically.

I've often suspected that I could write a program to simulate my online presence, along the lines of Cortana only without the targeted marketing bloat. Then I could get things done without spending all my time messing about on the Web every day. Of course if the simulation theory is correct then I wouldn't be getting things done at all except in the virtual sense, but I'd still feel like I was achieving things, which would be just as good as long as I didn't find out the theory was true, and even then I could just shrug and carry on as before.