Simulation Quotes

“Simulation Tobias kisses my neck.

I try to think. I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.

I look Simulation Tobias in the eye and say sternly, “I am not going to sleep with you in a hallucination. Okay?”

Then I grab him by his shoulders and turn us around, pushing him against the
bedpost. I feel something other than fear—a prickle in my stomach, a bubble of laughter. I press against him and kiss him, my hands wrapping around his arms. He feels strong. He feels…good.

And he’s gone.

I laugh into my hand until my face gets hot. I must be the only initiate with this fear.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks.
"I still don't understand," he says softly, "how she knew that it would work.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“Using fake feelings and relying on a trick box of artificial gadgets in order to create a simulation of desire, will not unravel the knotty puzzle to reinvent oneself. ( “Twilight of desire “ )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“If we are blinded by the razzle-dazzle of the limelight and can't even bring a little depth into our story, we must recognize that self-estrangement has besieged our minds, and reality has become a simulation. ("Was it all worthwhile?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin did it very well in Utopiques, jeux d'espace [Utopias, play of space]): digest of the American way of life, panegyric of American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. Certainly. But this masks something else and this "ideological" blanket functions as a cover for a simulation of the third order: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. (Note: This quote is fake and does not appear in Simulacra and Simulation. I tried to delete it, but the system doesn't allow that because this quote has "too many fans" lol.)”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them).”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“What do we actually expect of our data processor? As our computers acquire interactive interfaces, voices, and adaptive behavior, we may be tempted to invest emotion in them, but they offer only simulation, which breeds intense irritation. It is like trying to love a mirror that won't love back. ("My computer does not understand me")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Something as superfluous as "play" is also an essential feature of our consciousness. If you ask children why they like to play, they will say, "Because it's fun." But that invites the next question: What is fun? Actually, when children play, they are often trying to reenact complex human interactions in simplified form. Human society is extremely sophisticated, much too involved for the developing brains of young children, so children run simplified simulations of adult society, playing games such as doctor, cops and robber, and school. Each game is a model that allows children to experiment with a small segment of adult behavior and then run simulations into the future. (Similarly, when adults engage in play, such as a game of poker, the brain constantly creates a model of what cards the various players possess, and then projects that model into the future, using previous data about people's personality, ability to bluff, etc. The key to games like chess, cards, and gambling is the ability to simulate the future. Animals, which live largely in the present, are not as good at games as humans are, especially if they involve planning. Infant mammals do engage in a form of play, but this is more for exercise, testing one another, practicing future battles, and establishing the coming social pecking order rather than simulating the future.)”
― Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

“Recent brain scans have shed light on how the brain simulates the future. These simulation are done mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, using memories of the past. On one hand, simulations of the future may produce outcomes that are desirable and pleasurable, in which case the pleasure centers of the brain light up (in the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus). On the other hand, these outcomes may also have a downside to them, so the orbitofrontal cortex kicks in to warn us of possible dancers. There is a struggle, then, between different parts of the brain concerning the future, which may have desirable and undesirable outcomes. Ultimately it is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that mediates between these and makes the final decisions. (Some neurologists have pointed out that this struggle resembles, in a crude way, the dynamics between Freud's ego, id, and superego.)”
― Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

“It might not be immediately obvious to some readers why the ability to perform 10^85 computational operations is a big deal. So it's useful to put it in context. [I]t may take about 10^31-10^44 operations to simulate all neuronal operations that have occurred in the history of life on Earth. Alternatively, let us suppose that the computers are used to run human whole brain emulations that live rich and happy lives while interacting with one another in virtual environments. A typical estimate of the computational requirements for running one emulation is 10^18 operations per second. To run an emulation for 100 subjective years would then require some 10^27 operations. This would be mean that at least 10^58 human lives could be created in emulation even with quite conservative assumptions about the efficiency of computronium. In other words, assuming that the observable universe is void of extraterrestrial civilizations, then what hangs in the balance is at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 human lives. If we represent all the happiness experienced during one entire such life with a single teardrop of joy, then the happiness of these souls could fill and refill the Earth's oceans every second, and keep doing so for a hundred billion billion millennia. It is really important that we make sure these truly are tears of joy.”
― Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

“How do we know that even the realest of realities
wouldn't be subjective, in the final analysis? Nobody can prove his existence, can he?”
― Daniel F. Galouye, Simulacron 3

“Doomsday, when it came, wouldn't be a physical phenomenon; it would be an
all-inclusive erasure of simulectronic circuits.”
― Daniel F. Galouye, Simulacron 3

“This allegory, known as Plato’s Cave, is a powerful illustration of a simple truth: what we take to be reality might only be a shadow.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The Council of Gods

“Better to work towards becoming your greatest version, than be a counterfeit version of someone else.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Sips And Little Portions

“Based on its clear energetic signature as new technologies are breathlessly rolled out following a blatantly prewritten script, the current era might best be described as that of ‘Technotranshumanism.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“Our brains are not cameras capturing an objective world. Instead, the brain is more like an artist or a storyteller - taking in fragments of sensory data and crafting a narrative of what it believes to be out there.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The Council of Gods

“Представи си, че решаваш с генетичен алгоритъм задачата за търговския пътник. Натъпкваш индивидите със случайни правила и ги пускаш да еволюират. А те как преживяват това? Те си мислят с кого да се кръстосат, ядосват се, когато съседът им изяде ресурсите, някои загиват, други оцеляват. Цяла трагедия древногръцка. А не разбират, че смисълът на техния така наречен живот е да решат — при това не поотделно, а колективно, цялата популация — задачата за търговския пътник. И нищо друго. Но в мисленето си те са ограничени в ядене, размножаване и толкова. Това е за тях смисълът. А ти ги гледаш отгоре като дядо господ как се суетят…
— Май нещо като системна теология се получава — чеше се по главата Сидорчук. — Някой ни е програмирал, на седмия ден е задал гранични условия и ни е пуснал да му решаваме задачата. За търговски пътник или за обхождане на N-мерна шахматна дъска с ход на коня, слона и верблюда. И сега ние смятаме нещо, а Програмистът ни зяпа отгоре и се чуди кога ще свършваме. А ние преживяваме, конкурираме се за пари и жени, водим войни — обикновени, валутни и хуманитарни…”
― Иван Попов

“The Matrix can feel like a pretty hopeless place. I get that. Nobody in his or her right mind (a tiny minority, admittedly) wants to be caught in an endless digital labyrinth like a techno lab rat.

My position is that, on at least a subliminal level, even
many of the most benighted sheeple (the really stubborn ones I think of as the ‘consciously clueless’) secretly suspect that they’re corralled in a system designed to control them, to keep them in check.

But I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the power to change our circumstances individually and maybe, just maybe, collectively.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“If we were ever to discover that such metaphysical laws truly exist, it might suggest, though not prove, that reality functions like a vast, programmed design. Sometimes I imagine the universe as an intricate simulation, where distant galaxies and unreachably far places resemble the "out-of-bounds" regions of an open-world massive multiplayer online video game.”
― Sajal Garg, Glimpses of My Worldview

“15 million? People act like that’s a fortune. To me, it’s peanuts.
Do you stop at one peanut? No — you grab a handful, then another, then the whole damn bowl.
So why does everyone in this world settle for a single peanut?
We possess all the knowledge of the universe — we even know we’re living in a simulation — yet most people waste their lives on small talk, small jobs, and small money.
This entire society is built on the religion of one peanut.
Stop eating crumbs. Take the bowl.

Book. Yvonne Padmos
Gravity is an illusion”
― Yvonne Padmos

“The loop of conformity, with its silent, subtle pull, often makes us forget the power of our own free will. It keeps us moving in a predictable line, afraid to color outside the assigned design."

The Loop of Conformity. Understanding the Patterns that Bind" published by the "NEW LITERARY SOCIETY”
― Yvonne Padmos

“This ‘reality’ is so obviously unreal. It’s like bad screenplay writing. No matter how many times you see the same tired script playing out on the world stage, if you can manage to think for yourself just a little, it’s simply not believable.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“There comes a time, a sort of epiphany … when you realize that everything you’ve discovered through your ‘research’ has basically been fed to you because you’ve been looking for it!

We’re in a complex feedback loop ... that reveals to us an imaginary ‘reality’ that we choose to buy into … just before it becomes our lived ‘reality.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Reality is like magic. Because it is. Thanks to your magical attention. See how this works?”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“From the perspective of consciousness expansion, it’s actually a service to us to have so much weirdness thrown at us like classic slapstick pies in the face … over and over again.

The weirdness might very well be—it’s at least worth considering—part of our own design from some higher aspect of ourselves to wake us up here in the dream of this so-called reality.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“My position—one I share with countless mystics, yogis, shamans, alchemists, and other way-outside-the-boxers—is that there’s no verifiable ‘outside’ reality, no tangible ‘home base’ in the real.

Instead, there’s only a simulacrum or, more accurately perhaps, a simulation-style dreamscape mimicking an actual physical world inside an infinity (the Dark Sea of Awareness) of similarly attention-generated constructs.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“The ‘reality’ misconception can take various forms. The
two most common are materialism, in which a ‘real world’ somehow manages to exist before or without anyone’s awareness of it; and religion, in which a divine being or force remains in a world miraculously outside … the world.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality