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thegoldengoober t1_itoek1d wrote

Reply to comment by grossexistence in Is anything better than FTL as a future? by ribblle

That's actually a theory as to why we don't see the universe teeming with advanced life. That any species that becomes advanced enough to do it is also advanced enough to immerse themselves in simulated realities, and therefore never have reason to keep expanding.

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ActuaryGlittering16 t1_itoih51 wrote

That’s a really interesting theory, never thought of this before but makes sense.

However I do think their tech would allow them to send probes or something similar around the universe just to map it and explore it. Surely they’d want to know what’s actually out there.

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thegoldengoober t1_itorjum wrote

Yeah, I don't see why not. Unless they don't see the reason. Maybe it's better for them to just turn the matter to computonium. Maybe their simulations are so close to reality that they figure any reason to search the universe might as well be done in their simulations where they have god-like powers to explore beyond what they could outside of them. Or maybe none of this is related at all. It's fun to speculate though. At the very least it's fun sci-fi.

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koelti t1_itp6p8t wrote

I think if we can create virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality, wouldn't reality kind of lose its value? What is even real then? How can we be sure we aren't in a virtual world already?

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CSGradApps t1_itp892y wrote

We can’t be sure… in fact the simulation hypothesis states there’s a decently high chance we are currently in a simulation, potentially one layer of many layers… shit is mind-fucking if you think about it too much lol

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Ok-Wrangler-1075 t1_itosqhd wrote

It's a cool theory but it comes with an assumption that all alien psychologies are alike and all of them would choose this path.

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