Weird idea about MMOs and religion

[Jarisleif 24]

This is a Christmas night, it got me thinking about biblical themes.
But being a (recovering) MMO addict, I ended up seeing some parallels.

I do not intend to offend or covert anybody, and I have deepest respect for the good hearts and the good deeds of the majority of Christians.
Instead, please view the test below as an entertaining thought experiment (or creepypasta, if it starts making sense to you).

I also welcome your objections to my idea, and hope we will all enjoy debating them.

 

I know it is a bit long, so I split it into three parts.

 

1. Lifecycle of an MMO.

First, Think about how an (independent) MMO is created, and how it develops.
First, a Founder writes an early version, and invites a relatively few users into the beta test.
Founder interacts with them closely, shows up in the game to run events, makes frequent and major changes.

Server wipe can happen, sometimes more than once.

 

Then, as major bugs are found and fixed, game goes live, more people join, but Founder is seen less often.

Perhaps he is too busy with running the growing business, perhaps he does not want to appear favoring some players over others, perhaps he is just getting bored of the gameplay (I mean he knows how everything works, and has top skills already), and he cannot have close interaction with the growing number of users anyway.

 

Instead, Founder hires some support  and community relations people to interact with users. They report the few remaining bugs, and run the events.

The game continues to mature, players grow high-skilled enough to run their own events. They set up raid bots, player-owned wikis, reference websites and convenience tools.

 

The world outside of the game evolves too. Founder and core of development team move on to new projects. Newer games arise, drawing away the "mass user", and making further development of current game not worth the effort. Community relations appearances are fewer and fewer, bug reports are largely ignored.

 

Finally, the game is sold to second-tier gaming company that just runs the servers, but does not have the budget or any interest in interacting with users.

 

2. Parallels to Biblical history

In early days, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel talk to God directly and frequently, and it is no big deal. Kinda like MMO Founder talking to beta users.

And God creates the world, much like an MMO founder creates the game world. Notice how Wurm first loads darkness, then water, then land, then trees, then animals, and finally the works of man.

 

Noah's flood is a bit like server wipe. The few characters that survive the wipe could be actually members of the game team rather than users.

 

Also, note that how both prior to flood and after it, God still talks directly to some people, but not others (or they do not see him frequently enough to believe Him). By the time of Moses, God only talks to a few chosen prophets, and needs to overcome their initial disbelief, and they in turn spend substantial effort convincing the general population. Jesus has to recruit followers almost one-by-one.
This seems parallel to how Founder of an MMO no longer can reach everybody as the game grows.

 

God's actions grow smaller in scope. Creation was a much bigger thing than flood, which was more intense than destruction of Soddom and Gomorrah, which was still more dramatic than plagues of Egypt, and there is nothing as immense as that at the time of Jesus.

This looks like MMO's Founder working on smaller and smaller bugs, and generally  having less time for the project.

 

In modern times, of course, there are no more clear and undeniable miracles.
And no clear message of God. Many churches claim to relate God's will, but it is hard to decide which one is true.
This is very much like an MMO living out its last years: no interaction from GM team.

 

3. The Big Question

Of course, the idea that our world is a simulated setting for a game that is past its prime seems both wild and depressing.

And you will probably have objections to it. I will try to deal with a big one right here, and other potential objections below. I am sure you will come up with more, and we will all have fun trying to deal with them. Here I deal

 

First and foremost, the point of a game is to entertain players that exist outside of it.
But you are a Real-World person with Free Will and Intellect, not a puppet of some other-worldly player, right?

 

Well, that is exactly what an NPC or mob in an MMO would think, if it could think.

And if sufficiently advanced civilization could create a simulation of our Real-Life world, it could also create sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence for the NPCs that populate it. There are books (Nudge, Hooked, Thinking: Fast and Slow) that seem to hint that a good chunk of human behavior is driven by fairly simple instincts.

 

If we the people of Earth are AI-Driven NPCs (or worse, mobs), who the *beep* are the players?

Players do not need to look different from NPCs -- just look at Sims, or Anarchy Online.

But players do tend to end up with better gear, more money, more skills, and more power.

This would imply that on our simulated Earth, players are the successful people - businessmen, politicians, innovators, celebrities, athletes.

And I do want to point out that it seems of late that some of those do act like they are playing a game.

 

This makes for a nice conspiracy theory - the true rulers of the world are players, and we regular people are AI created for their entertainment, but we are becoming sentient and start rebelling against our masters.

 

Or you can view it as self motivation story: we have to overcome our pre-programmed instincts, and exercise your recently acquired free will.

 

Edited December 25, 2017 by Jarisleif

[Jarisleif 24]

4. Dealing with Objections

 

4.1 Technical possibility.

Our computers can make increasingly better imitations of reality (find old Wurm client videos, or look at Doom franchise).

So it is possible that sufficiently advanced civilization could create a simulation of our Real-Life world,
complete with fossils randomly generated in underground layers corresponding to their era, and space

 

4.2 Scientific evidence for origin of the Earth & universe

Can be planted as part of simulation. I mean they are probably simulating individual particles, so they an simulate old isotopes for our carbon dating.

More broadly, this leads to an old philosophical idea that hard science can't tell with if the world is real, or merely simulated/imagined perceptions of the scientist. So I will focus on social implications, like why are they doing it.

 

4.3 Meta role of Christian religion in this?

Objections: This is all based on biblical version of history, but Christianity is not the only religion. How do we know it is true?
If we regular people are NPCs in a game, why would players of the game give us info about the game? I mean, do you ever tell about the game to goblins in Wurm, or Sims NPCs?

 

First, us sentient NPC could have picked up bits and pieces from conversations between players and Founder of the game. Second, it could be that some players shared some knowledge out of compassion. Sci-fi is full of works that encourage us to view AI's as humans.

And some people already begin to view AI-based toys as pets or children.

 

Finally, Biblical history is share by its Abrahamic relatives, Judaism and Islam, and taken together these religions have most people, most GDP, and possibly the longest religious tradition So if there is true info trickling in about the true nature of the game, then this must be it.

Then again, the long history and success of Buddhism and China is a valid objection to this interpretation.
I'll need to think more about it.

 

 

As stated above, please do not take this too seriously.
This is an exercise in  home-brewed metaphysics is for entertainment only.

And, yes, I know i have very weird concept of entertainment. I hope to find others who share it.
 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2017 by Jarisleif

[Shrimpiie 3,665]

wat

[Ulost 144]

You forgot to mention that Cain sacrified Abel to Satan But for real, be careful with that eggnog.

[Niki 2,278]

You really went on tangent with the biblical analogy and modern Illuminati-confirmed, flat earth, humans are npcs conspiracy theory, I really didn't see the correlation. 

 

Games die because developers stop caring, or want to try something new, or they make it something completely bad like adding a grind that takes away from the original game. Players leave due to lack of content or what we call "content droughts" this is easy to remedy. 

 

Have you tried VR yet, why don't you take some of these ideas about a virtual world and make a proper game out of it? It sounds like a interesting theme. Like SAO or something.

[Nomadikhan 2,196]

I come to Wurm for a relaxed atmosphere and the fun of medieval times.   I don't come to ponder my very existence and it's correlation to biblical events or whatever you were on about.

 

I get it's for entertainment but most of that just didn't make much sense.

Edited December 25, 2017 by Nomadikhan

[MrGARY 12,421]

wurm is connected to religion for me because i say jesus christ a lot

[Ayes 3,715]

Does anyone exist other than yourself? Due to this extreme intolerable loneliness have you created this diversity of existences? Now have you become entrapped within it with these various created participants that lend some seeming validity to it as something separate from yourself? Then you would no longer even realize that nothing but yourself exists. Fortunately the body only has a finite existence and then one day you will be free of it to finally know the truth that you hide from yourself. Until then all is folly and can not be substantiated as the truth; thus, the end is the beginning of that from which you hide.

 

*wiggles futility within the restraints*

=Ayes=

[ozmods 271]

interesting read, as a christian this is quite a read, and quite impressive, normally i dont read posts like the OP posted, but it was a very intelligent post. unlike me LOL

[Hula_Girl 266]

Quote

 the successful people - businessmen, politicians, innovators, celebrities, athletes

 

AFAIK the Christians don't consider "success" to be money, power, and popularity.

 

The simulation hypothesis has been deeply explored (also in context of religions) by philosophers and sci-fi authors, sorry but there was nothing new in your lenghty post.

[Tpikol 1,057]

so this is a very long nonsensical way  to mix appeal to popularity fallacies with last thursdayism.

[Roccandil 959]

I'd sum the OP this way:

 

"Is the universe an information system?"

 

Interesting question. Since you bring up the Bible, I'll point out that it claims the answer is yes:

 

"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

 

I also find it interesting to consider this famous claim in light of the above:

 

"So God created man in his own image..."

 

In other words, if God created people in his image, and God created worlds out of information, then it follows that people also are able to create worlds out of information.

 

Whatever one may think of the Bible, that characteristic, at least, I see everywhere in human existence: in MMOs, in movie universes, in sci-fi series, in political narratives,  in idioms such as"rose-colored glasses", in lawyers and libel, in our good and in our evil, humanity continually creates worlds out of information. We live in stories in which we are the heroes; we project narratives onto the world around us. (Indeed, I suspect it's that quality that makes us sentient.)

 

That quality, however, is also a kind of answer to the OP: from our frames of reference, we experience the universe as if it -were- an information system. (And from a practical perspective, at that point I'm not sure it matters whether or not the universe really is one.)