You know how it feels like the world is specifically designed to torture people and cause as much suffering as possible, i.e., hellworld?

That's because it is.

Assume for the sake of argument that we live in a simulation within a simulation with in a simulation, etc. because a sufficiently advanced civilization will eventually produce a simulation of civilization, which will produce its own simulations, and so on. Basically, we are Sims in somebody's hyper-advanced computer.

The particular simulation we're in was designed as a torture world, exactly like season 1 of The Good Place. In the same way that some people who play the actual Sims game kill their Sims by making them swim in a pool and then deleting the ladder out of the pool, this world we live in is literally designed to cause suffering. Some of the people in it -- the ghouls, the most powerful people -- literally aren't real and are part of the simulation (just like the demons in The Good Place), but most of the people are real and their suffering is real (insofar as anything that's nested within layers of simulation can be "real").

The challenge is not to kill yourself. If you die of natural causes, maybe that's how you get out and finally can rest. But if you kill yourself -- which the world is designed to make you want to do -- you get entered back into the simulation and you live again, over and over and over, in a flat circle.

  • Sarcasm24 [none/use name]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    Good point! my interpretation would be that the simulation baudrillard is talking about -- the one we've built for ourselves -- is part of the simulation by the Sims Player In The Sky. they've set up our simulation such that their subjects, i.e., us, construct their own simulation within the simulation, adding another layer of irreality into our experience