We live inside a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation. What the post-human civilisation is like we can’t establish with certainty, but recent developments in artificial intelligence suggest that it is AI. We can find out that this world is not the real world. Science has established several laws of reality, or natural laws, with a sufficient degree of certainty. Therefore, if breaches of these laws occur, this world is fake. There is enough evidence of breaches. And so, the argument is:

• Science has sufficiently established specific laws of reality.
• Breaches of these laws prove that this world is a simulation.
• There is sufficient evidence of breaches in these laws.
• Hence, we live in a simulation.

We like to think we are unique and superb creatures, so we probably won’t alter our human essence if we as biological creatures transition to post-humans. Also, the AIs we build are trained on human knowledge and thinking. And so, post-humans may have motivations similar to ours. These post-humans could run simulations of human civilisations for entertainment and research. If the technology becomes cheap, the number of simulations for amusement is likely to vastly outstrip those for research. Our purpose is probably entertainment, and breaches of the laws of reality suggest so. Research simulations are more likely realistic. Signs of a script indicate that our universe is not a game, but rather someone’s imaginary world.

Coincidences, such as the licence plate number of Franz Ferdinand’s car, suggest a script. A computer generates all our thoughts and actions. We aren’t sentient beings. We don’t think for ourselves. We have no intrinsic value to our creators, so God can let us suffer and kill us without remorse. The strength of the evidence outweighs the issues, such as the lack of scientific evidence for the paranormal, the limitations of the human mind, including our tendency to seek causes when randomness applies or to see meaning where there is none, the hindsight bias, and the difficulties in establishing probabilities. And so, we can know that we live in a scripted virtual reality. And that makes sense because humans are so stupid that they can only survive in fairy tales.

Latest revision: 26 September 2026