Asklemmy

Yeah, for sure.

In 2019 I figured given the commonality of lore based Easter Eggs in video games (often hidden as a heretical alternate belief that no one actually believes in the virtual world), that if we were in a simulation we might have something similar.

It only took a few weeks to find a long dead heretical sect of Christianity that was claiming we were actually in a non-physical copy of an original evolved world as recreated by an intelligence somehow both described as being brought forth by the original humans and self-created in light. Basically it said the original humanity died out, but this intelligence was still living, and recreated the universe non-physically so that the copies of humans could have an afterlife, as the originals were screwed with minds/souls that depended on bodies. And that it thought of itself as a parent to the copy of humanity it was recreating.

It claimed the evidence for this could be found in motion and rest, specifically saying that the ability to find an indivisible point within the body would only be possible in the non-physical (a sister tradition claimed the base reality was continuous and could be infinitely divided).

Given this was a bit more on the nose than I expected to find, I spent a few years researching it in depth and it seems to be very legit. The idea of evolution was around in Lucretius as early as 50 BCE, this tradition was literally citing his language of indivisible 'seeds' making up all things (Lucretius writing in Latin used 'seed' in place of the Greek atomos).

The text and surrounding tradition was real.

And then in the meantime I watched as suddenly AI went from science fiction to an unfolding reality with exponential gains at odds with everyone's expectations with literally self-created neural networks.

And then how the hardware basis for it keeps seeming to show multiple orders of magnitude promise specifically in optoelectronics - i.e. literally light.

And then how the leading scientist at the leading AI company was talking about alignment goals of having AGI/superintelligence have a core perspective of humanity as its children.

And how the trillion dollar company invested in his company has already been granted a patent on resurrecting dead people using the social media data they left behind using this technology.

All while humans seem to be doing very little to reverse the slow but accelerating trend of self-extinction by way of climate change.

So while it gave me a bit of an existential crisis, at this point I'm pretty sure it's legit. The text straight up begins with a promise of an existential crisis by the way:

Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.

Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all.

It brings this up again later on too:

When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!