Tag: economics

Eibergen

nivtricLeave a comment

Near Enschede, in the east of the Netherlands, is a village called Eibergen. I was born there in Iepenstraat, which means Elm Street. The assassination of US President Kennedy took place on Elm Street, and that event became part of a web of remarkable coincidences. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror film first released in the United States on 9 November 1984 (11/9) and in the Netherlands on 11 September 1986 (9/11). 9/11 refers to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, another event marked by an array of remarkable coincidences. These words indicate that this is the beginning of a most peculiar story full of coincidences that aren’t coincidences. And it is a story inside a story.

Eibergen means egg mountains, which could be a cryptic reference to a womb. The initials of my last name, KI, make the Dutch abbreviation for artificial insemination, a way to become pregnant without sexual intercourse so that a virgin can give birth. By the way, it is also the Dutch abbreviation for artificial intelligence. The name of the nearby city, Enschede, may refer to the female reproductive organ. And the initials of my first and middle name, BH, make the Dutch abbreviation for a bra. The song A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash is about funny names, particularly of this kind, building strong character. The meaning of songs relates to this story, too.

I lived in Eibergen until the age of four. I recall a little of that time. As far as I remember, nothing unusual happened. You might expect something extraordinary if you know the plot of this story, but it didn’t. Often, I went out on a tricycle to feed the sheep in the pasture at the end of the street. Being a shepherd may have been my calling. I was afraid of the clock on television. If it appeared, I took cover behind the sofa. I remember that my mother was pregnant. She was ironing. My sister Anne Marie was born in 1971. I sang songs for the baby in the baby room while my mother changed diapers.

Our home was in a block of similar houses. Next door lived an older lady, probably in her sixties. She came from the former Dutch Indies and had a fish tank in the living room. On the other side was another young family with children. They had a daughter of my age and a younger son. I remember playing with them. And I once electrocuted myself by putting the chain of the stopper of the kitchen sink into a wall outlet. Others later said I had used scissors, but I am sure it was the stopper’s chain, which then was confirmed by my mother. It suggests my memories are of good quality.

My father went to work around 6 AM and returned around 9 PM. He loved his job. On Saturdays, he often went out with his friends, hunting, I suppose. And so, I hardly saw him. At home, he caught up on his sleep on the couch to wake up when sports started on television. So, when I was three years old, I once said to my mother, jokingly, I suppose, ‘Who is that man sleeping on the couch?’ That is what my mother later told me. My father probably took the hint as I remember that he took me out of bed every morning before he went to work and played with me for a few minutes for a few weeks.

When I was three, I fell on my teeth on the wooden table in the living room in a brutal smash. A piece of the wood broke off. My front teeth turned black shortly afterwards until my permanent teeth came. And so, I became an ugly duckling for years to come. We also had a biking accident. My mother was biking, Anne Marie was in the front, I was in the back, and my mother had trouble handling the bags full of groceries at the handlebar. And then the bike fell over. In early 1973, we moved to Nijverdal, which means ‘industrious valley’. It suggests we left the mountains for a life in a valley, but the Dutch mountains are imaginary, and the name of a song by my favourite band, The Nits. The music you love may reveal your character. And that might be correct in my case.

Latest revision: 18 December 2024

Featured image: my mother, my younger sister, and I (in the foreground)

Jokers on Files.

Joking Jokers

nivtricLeave a comment

In 2002, I began working as an Oracle database administrator at a government agency. Most people in the Netherlands know about the agency because it processes traffic fines. Therefore, it isn’t popular with the general public, just as the Internal Revenue Service isn’t. If someone asked who my employer was, I kept it vague and said the government or the Department of Justice. It didn’t take long before something went seriously wrong. On my second day on the job, one of the production systems crashed after running the batch jobs, leaving the database corrupt. In hindsight, that was a bit peculiar. After three days of searching, which included a weekend, I still hadn’t found the exact cause. When the operator restored the backup of the previous evening, which was still valid, and ran the batch jobs, the database became corrupt again. It was probably a software bug, so I advised restoring the backup from the previous evening and upgrading the database software to see if that would solve the issue. Instead, the IT director declared a crisis and set up a multidisciplinary task force to address it.

The head of the task force was a corpulent project leader who decided we should find the cause, which I hadn’t uncovered. I just wanted to fix the problem. Every day at 10 AM, there was a meeting to discuss the state of affairs. Every day, I proposed to upgrade the database software to see if it would help. And every day, my proposal was brushed aside. I would have done it myself, but I was a brand-new hire and didn’t have sufficient access rights. And the agency used VAX VMS, an unfamiliar operating system, so I couldn’t install software or restore backups myself. Two weeks later, after the experts had weighed in and after hiring a database corruption expert from Oracle, the cause remained elusive, and managers were getting desperate. Finally, they were willing to consider my suggestion. And it solved the problem. It was a harbinger of things yet to come. During the review, they grilled me for not being interested in researching the cause. I was not a team player and said solving a crisis was more important because it was a production system, so the users needed it to work. And the upgrade demonstrated that it was a software bug.

If you had prejudices about the government, my employer didn’t dispel them. You expect red tape, risk-avoidance, rule-following, and the like. It was all there. One department excelled. If you made the request incorrectly, they would do nothing, even when it was clear what they had to do. You couldn’t disturb them between 10 and 11 AM when they were discussing the work. They didn’t seem to do much, so what did they discuss for 1 hour a day? Some colleagues may remember my so-called crusade against bureaucracy. I often made jokes about bureaucracy and solved problems while ignoring red tape. Still, we perform our job effectively and efficiently, as traffic offenders would agree. And results matter most. Governments are bureaucratic because they implement rules.

Everywhere you go, some people work hard, while others take it easy. I have seen people doing little in corporations for profit as well. At my first project at Cap Volmac, we did nothing for months. Still, I have the impression that the pace of work in the government bureaucracy is, on average, slower than in the private sector. It is hard to put a number on it, but there is a difference. There is less pressure. Decisions take time and require more meetings. This is not a representative picture of the entire public sector. Police officers and teachers may experience stress. But most bureaucrats live calm lives. The hours you work for your employer are working hours. Cap Volmac required me to invest private time in education and corporate meetings. Finally, government employment is more secure.

When I came to work there, another database administrator, Dirk-Jan, a senior who had done several other jobs and hadn’t been a database administrator for long, was already there. After two months, Kees arrived, and from then on, we were three. Kees had a technical background. A few years later, Rene also joined the team. The agency also hired a security officer, a guy in a suit who soon began to make our work harder with unnecessary procedures. For instance, we had to lock up our Oracle manuals in a secure location after work and bring the keys to the porter’s lodge. But our manuals were public information like Windows manuals. Today, you can find this information on the Internet.

At the same time, the system that processed traffic fines had a superuser named after the system itself, with a password equal to the system’s name. Several other systems had the same issue, so the superuser and its password were the system’s name. I notified the security officer, but, being a true bureaucrat, he had more important things to do, such as attending meetings, inventing procedures, and preparing management reports. He added the issue to his list. But an issue like that called for immediate action. And so, I contacted a few senior programmers, and together we fixed that problem.

There were other issues with access rights as well. As they would say in the Professional Skills course, ‘There was room for improvement.’ If a new employee came in, the service desk made a ticket stating, ‘Create user account X as a copy of account Y,’ and sent it from one department to another. Usually, it took two weeks for the ticket to pass through all our departments, and system administrators made errors along the way. Hence, account X was rarely identical to account Y. If people switched departments or left, the defunct access rights were usually not deleted. Perhaps the audit department had figured this out, as our management soon launched a role-based access rights (RBAC) project.

RBAC works like so. You have a role in a department. In ordinary language, it is your job. For your job, you need access to an array of systems. Your job description determines which rights you need, for instance, to read specific data or change it. As a rule, employees should not receive more access rights than necessary to perform their tasks. RBAC is about the rights an employee in a specific job role needs. Business consultants came in and defined job roles and access requirements. A programmer then built an administrative database. However, the database didn’t connect to our systems, so there was no guarantee that the access rights in our systems matched the administration. And if you know how things fare in practice, you know that the administration would soon become stale and pointless. People are lazy, prone to errors, and forgetful. That would change once the administration and our systems are connected. If the administration was wrong, people couldn’t do their jobs properly, so it had to be accurate.

In 2004, I began building DBB, an account administration system, using Designer/2000, while keeping the bureaucrats out of the loop because they would likely stand in the way and make it harder for me. Only my manager and a few colleagues knew about it. DBB automated granting and revoking access rights in our systems, the RBAC way. It took me nine months, as I also had to do my regular work as a database administrator. But when I was ready to implement DBB on the production databases, bureaucrats became aware of what was happening and tried to block it. In their eyes, this was wildcat development. There had been no meetings, nor were there piles of reports to justify it. In early 2005, I introduced it sneakily with the help of the people from the service desk who wanted to use it. They installed the DBB client programmes on their personal computers. And I was a database administrator, so I could install anything I wanted on any database.

The results exceeded anyone’s expectations, including mine. The service desk created the accounts, so the tickets didn’t have to pass through all those departments. We could issue accounts in one day instead of two weeks. The service desk could reset passwords on the spot instead of relaying the request to a department, reducing the time to reset passwords from hours to seconds. And the access rights accurately reflected job roles. So, once DBB was operational, the opposition crumbled, and DBB became a regular application, even though not an official one, which was an essential distinction for bureaucrats. And so, we had RBAC fully implemented.

The DBB logo was a drawing by my wife. She had made it for another purpose. It features several jokers grinning at a set of file folders. To me, these folders symbolised bureaucracy. DBB joked with the bureaucrats, who considered it a rogue system. Supposedly, I was one of those jokers, so I made one of them my avatar on the Internet. DBB was my love child, just like Fokker once was Jürgen Schrempp’s, and for a while, I was overly attached to it. I ensured DBB could survive if I left my employer by producing design documents and manuals. I also built DBB in accordance with accepted Designer/2000 practices. We employed Designer/2000 programmers to maintain DBB. However, I hadn’t followed the proper procedures when building and implementing it, so it never became official. If something went wrong, it was not a mere incident, as would be the case with an official system, but a reason to replace DBB. That is bureaucratic reasoning at its finest. Something went wrong once, which allowed a high-ranking bureaucrat to block further development of DBB.

There have been two projects to replace DBB. In 2006, the first effort stalled because the planners had underestimated the complexity of the matter. They might have thought, ‘If one guy can do it, how difficult can it be?’ In 2016, a new project team realised it was pointless to replace DBB, as it was doing fine, while doing so would have been costly. The newer Java systems ran on Postgres databases and used web access. They did not use DBB. Our management planned to decommission the old Designer/2000 systems so DBB could retire by then. By 2024, DBB finally retired after nearly twenty years of service.

Bureaucrats have a unique way of doing things. In the case of serious incidents, they began filling out a ticket in the incident administration and discussing who should do what, while I pursued the issue. And sometimes, I had fixed it before others had finished filling in their forms. And I didn’t bother filling in forms. The system for which uptime was the most critical went down the most often. The solution was to reboot the system, but the operators hesitated and waited for a management decision. I said, ‘Just do it!’ And then they did. If it went wrong, they could blame me. I didn’t have the rank to make the decision for them and would have received a grilling if it went badly. But time was of the essence. The database was on an Oracle RAC cluster, a cutting-edge technology that had yet to mature. And that was so for a reason. It had to be operational at all times.

American software corporations like Oracle usually launch their products fast and aggressively market them. If customers buy them, they use the sales proceeds to improve these products and make them work properly. That gave American software corporations the lead over their European counterparts because Europeans believed you needed a good product before you could sell it. That was quite naive. Long before their product was good enough, the Americans owned the market and had the budget to make it better than the European product. In this way, Americans discarded failed products without investing much in them, saving costs. So, Oracle RAC on VAX VMS was not a great idea because RAC was in its infancy. At the same time, VMS was an exotic operating system with few customers, making fixing RAC bugs on VAX VMS a low priority for Oracle.

Not surprisingly, the system regularly malfunctioned, preventing users from accessing it. RAC is a cluster of machines accessing the same database. The idea behind RAC was that if one of those machines crashed, the others would remain operational and the database would remain accessible. In reality, the machines often went down in unison because of communication errors caused by the RAC software. And because the whole point of Oracle RAC was to have less downtime, you could do better without it. The crash corrupted the machine’s memory, and looking for the cause was pointless because it was a bug in Oracle software for which there was no fix. The only thing we could do was reboot these machines, which meant shutting them down and restarting them. That would wipe the memory clean, and the system would work again. I figured that out after one time, so the next time, when the symptoms were the same, I didn’t hesitate. The system was critical. It had to be up always. That was why it was our only RAC system. Otherwise, the police might not identify criminals. It was a database with the records of criminals dubbed Reference Index Persons, and the Dutch acronym was VIP, so the Very Important Persons for the Department of Justice.

Bureaucrats often seem to value rules over outcomes, which made me wonder what they were thinking. It could be something like, ‘If I mess things up, no one can blame me if I stick to the rulebook. But if I do the right thing but do not follow procedure and something goes wrong, my job is on the line.’ If something goes wrong, the government hires consultants to investigate the issue and propose changes to the procedures to prevent it from happening again. Consultants thus write piles of reports and make a lot of money on government contracts. Sadly, the next time, the situation may be different, and then it goes wrong again. Over time, the proliferating rules grow unwieldy.

It might make you think it is better to do away with procedures, but that is not a good idea. The proliferation of rules reflects the increasing complexity of society. It is not a problem that you should see in isolation. When a large apartment building burns out, you see once again why there are strict building regulations concerning these skyscrapers. If you aim for fewer regulations, you build these things in the first place. The government’s task is to provide and enforce these rules. There may be room for improvement. It begins with not creating the problem that gave rise to the regulation. Our office processes traffic fines. If we stopped driving cars, most of our work would be redundant. And perhaps, we should give people more responsibilities, but that means accepting that things sometimes go wrong. The result may be that fewer things go wrong.

DBB not only joked with the bureaucrats, but also with me. In June 2010, I received a highly unusual request from a system administrator to manually drop a user account. That hadn’t happened for several years. DBB usually handled that, but it failed to drop this particular account for an unknown reason. The username was ELVELVEN. If you read that aloud, you say eleven elevens in Dutch, referencing the 11:11 time-prompt phenomenon that had once haunted me for a while. Usernames consisted of the first one or two characters of the employee’s first name, followed by the employee’s last name. In this case, the user’s last name was Velven. I don’t remember the first name, but it wasn’t Elvis. To me, 11:11 signals a combination of two related unlikely events. And indeed, the joke had a part two, and it was even more peculiar.

In 2014, during testing of an improvement to DBB, the test indicated that an unauthorised account had infiltrated our systems. The username was the first character of the first name, followed by the last name of the Lady from the Dormitory. Had She been employed by us, this would have been Her username. Her name isn’t common, so this was unnerving, especially since it was the only username that popped up in this list of sneakily inserted accounts. It couldn’t be Her, or could it? It turned out that a guy with the same last name as Hers had worked for us. His first name began with an A as well. And the account wasn’t illegal. I had mixed data from two different dates in the test, which made it appear that this account had sneaked in illegally. But imagine the odds of only this account popping up on that list.

In 2005, after completing DBB, my manager wanted to give me a promotion, and he only wanted to give it to me. My colleague Kees was a tech genius, and he set up the RAC system while I made DBB, so I said he was better than me. My manager responded with the prophetic words, ‘You have the right vision and make it happen despite the opposition. That is far more important than technical skills.’ DBB solved pressing problems using proven technology, while the RAC system only created problems. We used to reduce system downtime, but it produced system crashes, resulting in more downtime. Somehow, I had become his favourite, and that wasn’t because he was such a good manager. He seemed the type of career guy who never stays long in one job. You know the type. He says he will clean up the mess his predecessor left behind and then hares off after a year or two towards his next challenge, claiming he has put things on track, only for the next manager to come in and claim he will clean up the mess.

He never put his promise in writing, despite my repeatedly requesting that he do so. Just before he left, I pressed him again. As the promotion had not yet come through, he wrote that there would only be a minor wage increase, then filed it with the human resources department for processing. A few weeks later, they summoned me to the human resources department. A personnel officer had raised a technicality. It wasn’t against the rules, but against their policies. And so, I couldn’t even keep the minor wage increase. That was a breach of contract, plain and simple, but to a bureaucrat like a personnel officer, only rules and procedures count. It would have been possible to fix this within the rules, but there was also a thing called policy, so they didn’t. My previous manager had already left, and they blamed him for not following proper procedure. His temporary replacement didn’t care, as he was also on his way to another job. After putting a lot of effort into getting it in writing and with my manager already fobbing me off with a minor wage increase, they gave me nothing. I was angry and walked out of the meeting.

After arriving home, my wife told me that a freelance agency had offered me a job. It was the first offer of this kind in years and the first time since working for the CJIB. I was already considering leaving. That made me make a rash decision and resign. In hindsight, it was a noteworthy coincidence that the freelance agency had called me on this particular day. It didn’t take long before I did get second thoughts. Out of the blue, a strong feeling emerged that the decision was wrong. I can rationalise it by saying there weren’t many jobs for database administrators near home. The issues with my son didn’t allow me to work far away from home, while my physical condition didn’t allow for long travels. That may all be true, but these considerations were not the real reason. And I had done freelance work before, so it was not fear of being self-employed. And a government job didn’t seem right for me. But the feeling grew so strong that there was no choice but to reverse course and try to undo my resignation.

Pride is a poor counsel, so I reversed course. There was a new manager, Geert, and he accepted my change of mind. He pledged to do his best to restore my confidence in my employer. He seemed trustworthy, but actions matter more than words. A year later, he promoted Kees, but not me. Due to a bureaucratic technicality, there was only one position. And perhaps also because Kees was his favourite. That didn’t restore my confidence, so I began to distrust him. Geert was still planning to promote me. He gave me financial compensation, so the situation didn’t result in a financial loss. And after several years of bureaucratic wrangling, the promotion finally came through.

Latest revision: 2 December 2025

Book: The Virtual Universe

nivtric1 Comment

Several religions claim that a god or gods have created this universe. The simulation hypothesis explains how this might have happened. We could all live inside a computer simulation run by an advanced post-human civilisation. But can we establish that this is indeed the case?

The evidence suggests that we live inside a simulation. It even allows us to infer the purpose of our existence. This book does not promote a specific religion. It follows science, but science has its limits. It can’t tell whether the world we live in is real.

Still, the sciences can support the argument that this world is a simulation, as they have established the natural laws that guide reality. If breaches of these laws occur, such as paranormal incidents with credible witnesses, we have evidence indicating that this world is not real.

We have just invented virtual reality. We can utilise virtual reality for both research and entertainment purposes. If the technology to create virtual worlds becomes affordable, most worlds will exist for entertainment, such as games or inventing stories where we can make our dreams come true.

The latter requires control over everything that happens, which is the situation we appear to be in. With our current knowledge, the world makes the most sense as a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation to entertain someone we can call God.

In this book, you can find answers to the following questions:

  • Is there something more than science can explain?
  • Is there a plan behind all that happens?
  • What are virtual worlds?
  • How can we know things and determine whether we live in a virtual world?
  • How can we explain things science can’t explain?
  • What are the simulation hypothesis and simulation argument about?
  • Can we improve the simulation argument to establish whether we are living in a simulation?
  • Why does our existence not need to be a miracle?
  • What reasons might post-humans have to create virtual worlds?
  • Can we infer from the properties of our universe that we live in a simulation?
  • What can we say about the evidence of spooks?
  • What is real about UFOs?
  • Do curses exist?
  • Do meaningful coincidences indicate that there is a script?
  • Is there some point to numeric coincidences like 11:11?
  • What happens after we die?
  • How can mediums sometimes be uncannily accurate?
  • Are there strange coincidences in history?
  • Are there an excessive number of strange coincidences surrounding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks?
  • What are the consequences of predetermination, and how does it affect our lives?
  • Is it possible to establish that we live in a story by using meaningful coincidences as evidence?
  • So, can we establish beyond a reasonable doubt that we live inside a simulation?
  • And can we establish the purpose of our existence?

After reading this book, you know you live inside a simulation.

The book is freely available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

You can download your free EPUB here:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/A32TV9FZFM#VK1pUJozUJy5

You can download your free PDF here:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/KNS1R6XKNG#6nawGfcicKuv

Or from here:

virtualuniverse250902Download

The book is freely available as an e-book on Kobe:

https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-virtual-universe

The book is also available as a Kindle on Amazon. Amazon requires a minimum price, so it is available at that price:

Latest revision: 6 September 2025

The Virtual Universe

nivtricLeave a comment

Some religions claim that God or gods have created this world. In the Bible, God created everything by saying, ‘Be.’ That God uttered ‘Be’ and poof, there are bees, is not a particularly compelling explanation for the existence of bees. So, how could the gods have the magical powers to do that? Until recently, we had no clue, but then Nick Bostrom, known for his dry and incomprehensible employment of words, delivered us the simulation hypothesis, the most profound breakthrough in theology in nearly 2,000 years. We might exist inside a computer simulation run by an advanced humanoid civilisation. Our creators can define a class bee and instruct the computer to create instances of this class. A class has properties, allowing individual instances to be unique.

And so, Genesis might be closer to the truth than the religion sceptics think. Bostrom didn’t say whether or not that is indeed the case or how likely it is. He didn’t speculate on that issue. Otherwise, his critics might have a field day, ridiculing him for opening a back door to the paranormal and religion. That could have been the end of his career. However, it is easy to find out if you venture into areas that scientists anxiously avoid, such as paranormal incidents, religious experiences, meaningful coincidences, people’s memories of past lives, ghost phenomena, and UFO sightings.

Scientists dare not investigate these phenomena, as it could make them a laughing stock in front of their peers. That is groupthink and intellectual cowardice on a grandiose scale. On numerous occasions, multiple credible witnesses have observed events that science can’t explain. Like nearly everyone else, scientists have been proficient at ignoring evidence that contradicts their beliefs, such as unscientific ravings about spirits relaying messages from the other side during seances. Bostrom speculated that this world might be a virtual reality, but didn’t search for proof. As a philosopher, he had better things to do.

The book The Virtual Universe delves into the evidence. You can prove this universe is a virtual reality if you assume scientists have correctly established the laws of nature and that sciences like physics, chemistry and biology are correct. If events transpire that defy these laws of science, such as paranormal incidents, religious miracles, meaningful coincidences, memories of previous lives, ghost phenomena and UFO sightings, breaches in these laws occur. According to science, the Virgin Mary doing a miracle before a crowd of thousands, like in Fatima, is impossible. If science is correct, and it happens nonetheless, this world must be fake. The book The Virtual Universe puts it like this:

  1. If we live in a real universe, we can’t notice. Virtual reality can be realistic and come with authentic laws of reality.
  2. This universe may have fake properties, but we cannot notice that either because we don’t know the properties of a genuine universe.
  3. Breaching the laws of reality is unrealistic in any case. If it happens, we may have evidence of this universe being fake.

It follows from (1) and (2) that we can’t use the universe’s properties, reflected in the laws of nature, to determine whether or not this universe is real. Science can establish the laws of physics or the properties of this universe, but science can’t tell whether they are real or fake. However, if breaches occur, we have evidence suggesting this universe is bogus. The book The Virtual Universe investigates the evidence, which includes stories about paranormal incidents, religious experiences, meaningful coincidences, reincarnation stories, ghost phenomena, and UFO sightings, often with multiple credible witnesses. So yes, aliens can beam you up into their UFO because they are as fake as you are.

Advanced humanoids, often dubbed post-humans, likely share motivations with us because they evolved from humans, likely after some engineering, genetic, or otherwise. These advanced humanoids may run simulations of human civilisations for research or entertainment. Research applications could be about running what-if scenarios. Possible entertainment applications include games or dream worlds where someone’s imagination comes true. These simulations may not be realistic in some aspects, as they reflect the rules of a game or someone’s personal fantasies. In a simulation, you can let Jesus walk over water and make him think that faith alone suffices to do that.

Civilisations are complex. Small changes can derail events that would otherwise occur. Just imagine another sperm had won the race to Adolf Hitler’s mother’s egg. There were millions of sperm in that race. Guaranteeing an outcome, such as letting World War I end on a date referred to by the licence plate number of the car that drove Archduke Franz Ferdinand to his appointment with destiny, requires control over everything that happens. That doesn’t apply to games. Unpredictable developments make games more interesting. Considering how we utilise computing power, mainly for games, sexy pictures and cat videos, the number of simulations for entertainment likely vastly outstrips those run for research purposes. If we live inside a simulation, we should expect its purpose to be entertainment.

The owner or owners may use avatars to play roles in this world and appear like ordinary human beings to us. If you are familiar with computer games, you are familiar with avatars. Once you enter a game, you become a character inside that game, your avatar, and you have an existence apart from your regular life. Inside the game, you are your avatar, not yourself. Alternatively, you could start a virtual world where you are the Creator and bring your dreams to life. In this world, you also become someone else.

That is a lot of assumptions, and without evidence, they remain speculation. Even when there is evidence, it doesn’t necessarily mean the explanation is correct. Suppose you hear the noise of a car starting. That is the evidence. You may think there is an automobile starting. Perhaps a vehicle is firing up its engine. But your husband might be watching his favourite television series, Starting Engines, so you can’t be sure. Nothing you know contradicts your assumption, but you could be wrong. So, is God an individual from an advanced humanoid civilisation who uses us for amusement? It is credible, and perhaps nothing contradicts it. But who is to say it is correct?

Now comes the disagreeable part. We are instances of the class human. When the beings in the simulation think for themselves, that raises ethical questions like whether they have rights that the creators should respect. Considering how humans treat each other, it is not a given that these rights would be respected even when our creators acknowledge them. In the real world, bad things happen to people. In the case of control, the beings inside the simulation don’t think, but are mindless bots following the script. We have no independent will and are toys to our creators. God kills people at will, and a few million casualties more don’t matter. On the bright side, if God wants us to enter Paradise, where there is peace and happiness, nothing can stop that as well. Those who try will surely find themselves on the losing side. So, if the Boss makes a joke, you can better laugh. Perhaps it isn’t easy. But don’t worry. It took me fifteen years to look at the bright side of life.

Latest revision: 6 September 2025

What Are The Odds?

nivtricLeave a comment

The law of large numbers

On 11 November 2017 (11-11), I went to Groningen with my wife and son by car. While driving, I noticed the date and time displayed on the car’s clock. The date was 11-11, and the time was 10:35. It made me think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to look at the clock at exactly 11:11 today because it is 11 November (11-11).’ Within a second, I noticed the distance recorder standing at 111.1. It had been 111.1 kilometres since I last filled up. Peculiar coincidences can occur by chance. With eight billion people on this planet and so many things transpiring, these things happen.

An example illustrates this. Imagine you have five dice and make a throw. A remarkable incident is throwing five sixes. If you roll the five dice only once, it probably doesn’t happen. On average, it only occurs once every 7,776 times. But if you throw the dice a million times, it happens 128 times on average.

If a reset of the distance recorder occurs every 500 kilometres, the chance of 111.1 kilometres appearing on it is one in 5,000. The distance recorder was not far from the clock, so I would probably have noticed a peculiar number on it after seeing the date. The probability of the distance recorder being on 111.1 might have been 0.02%. The likelihood of the thought about 11:11 popping up on 11 November is difficult to establish, but in my case, it was not low.

The birthday problem demonstrates strange coincidences happen more often than we might think. If you share a birthday with another person in a small group, it might strike you as odd, but the chance of someone sharing a birthday with another person is already 50% in a group of 23. However, two people sharing a birthday is not a mind-blowing coincidence. It is not as remarkable as the incident with the distance recorder.

When you are a member of this group, the probability of you being one of the persons sharing a birthday is much smaller, namely 6%. Meaningful coincidences are likely to happen, but less likely to you. So, if many people experience the same and think it is merely a coincidence because coincidences occur more often than you might think, they suffer from what you might call a collective delusion. Imagine a group of 24 all sharing a birthday with one other group member, so they share 12 birthdays, and they all think, ‘Nothing exiting to see here. The odds of me sharing a birthday with another person in this group are over 50%.’

Taking a smaller sample reduces the likelihood of meaningful coincidences. If you randomly pick two people, the chance of them having the same birthday is only 0.3%. So, if you run into someone else who happens to share your birthday, and it happens again with the next person, it is noteworthy. If it happens another time with the following individual, you might wonder whether there is more to this universe than mere chance. The more elaborate a scheme, the less likely it is to transpire. The probability of three people sharing a birthday in a group of 23 is 1.3%, and for five, it is only 0.0002%. If your life is riddled with elaborate, meaningful coincidences, you might start to believe that you have a critical role in the universe.

Possible avenues to circumvent the law of large numbers

There may be a way to find out there is no such thing as coincidence. If some of the most significant historical events come with peculiar coincidences, that might be more telling for two reasons. First, there are only a few, so the law of large numbers doesn’t apply. After all, it is a small sample. Suppose no intelligence is coordinating events in this universe. In that case, it is less likely that meaningful coincidences will turn up in this sample, and elaborate schemes will be unlikely to emerge. Second, if the most significant historical events come with peculiar coincidences, it becomes more likely that history is scripted than when peculiar incidents transpire in someone’s personal life.

To make the argument, you need to answer questions like, what are the most important historical events, and what are peculiar coincidences? Events such as the sinking of the Titanic or the Kennedy assassination might not qualify, even though the coincidences surrounding them form a strange and elaborate scheme. The extent of these schemes might compensate for that, but it is hard to tell. The beginning and the end of World War I meet the requirements. D-Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 are among the most important historical events.

And what should I think of the number of meaningful coincidences in my life? It is not possible to establish the likelihood of that happening. You can make assumptions to arrive at an idea. A highly unusual coincidence, such as the do-it-yourself store incident, could be likened to throwing five sixes with five dice. The chance of such an event happening in any year in any life could be one in 7,776. If something similar transpires again that year, it is like throwing five sixes twice in a row. The chance of that would be one in 60,000,000. On average, 120 people would experience something similar each year. But what if more similar incidents occur in one life? Or if 100,000 people have this instead of 120?

I have shared a few of my coincidence stories on the Reddit/SimulationTheory message board. Others also experience similar situations. Only the people on that message board are not a random group, but a select group of individuals who believe we live in a simulation, often because they have witnessed similar phenomena. Some of these stories are as remarkable as mine. I can’t verify these tales, but I believe most aren’t frauds because similar things happened to me. The question remains whether they have seen strange incidents occurring in the numbers I have seen.

There is a point where you must admit that these things are not merely coincidental. We can’t establish that point objectively. The number of possible unusual events is infinite, so the chance of something strange happening, such as the do-it-yourself store incident, could be higher than we intuitively think. It seems impossible to accurately estimate the odds. Still, without intelligence coordinating events in this universe, we should expect these incidents to be distributed more or less evenly across all people and time frames.

Even then, significant deviations from the average are possible. Lightning strikes only a few people. It happens to some people twice, which might seem odd, but there is nothing suspicious about that. If lightning strikes one in 10,000 people once, then one in 100,000,000 gets hit twice. But how would you explain if one person ran into lightning ten times, and this individual did nothing unusual? Statistically, it can happen. More likely, there is a cause, such as living in a dangerous spot. There is a point where we must assume these stories are evidence of us living in a simulation. We can’t establish that point precisely, but whether we live inside a simulation or not doesn’t depend on our assessment. We are, however, inclined to see causes behind remarkable situations or events, but they may be accidental.

The limits of our minds

We are good at attributing causes, but we do poorly at estimating the likelihood of an event. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman provided an example. It is a study of the incidence of kidney cancer in the counties of the United States. The research revealed a remarkable pattern. The incidence of kidney cancer was the lowest in rural, sparsely populated counties in traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, the South, and the West.1 So what do you make of that?

You probably came up with reasons why kidney cancer is less likely to occur in these counties, such as a healthy rural lifestyle or low pollution levels. You probably did not think of randomness. Consider then the counties in which the incidence of kidney cancer is the highest. These counties were also rural, sparsely populated, and in traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, the South, and the West.1

How can that be? Those counties all had small populations. And with smaller samples come more sizeable deviations from the average. Our intuition makes connections of causality, but our reason does not verify whether it could just be randomness. We like to think some cause makes unusual things happen, while they might be random accidents.

When we consider the most significant historical events, we run into problems if we use this small sample to establish that someone is ‘writing history’. On the other hand, comparing this sample to a sparsely populated rural county may not be apt. It is more fitting to compare this sample to the royal family, as it encompasses the most significant events in history. If a high incidence of kidney cancer were to turn up in the royal family, an experienced physician would tell you it is probably not a random issue.

I am a single individual, the smallest possible sample. Some people get struck by lightning twice. It could even happen three or four times, but the chance of it happening ten times is so insignificant that no one will ever experience that unless they live in a hazardous spot. Is the number of meaningful coincidences in my life enough to rule out chance? That number is extraordinarily high. It is not chance. The question arises: Am I just a random individual, or do I live in a dangerous location, or has destiny given me a unique role, such as proving that we live in a simulation? Others have this, too. And so, a lengthy series of peculiar incidents doesn’t suffice to believe the latter.

The things that could have happened but did not

In 1913, the ball fell on a black number twenty-six times in a row at the roulette wheel at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Some people lost a fortune by betting the ball would fall on red the next time. They did not realise the chance of the ball choosing a red number never changed. The ball does not remember where it went the previous times. If we represent black with a B and red with an R and assume, for simplicity’s sake, there is no zero, we can write down falling twenty-six times on black like so:

B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B

The probability of the ball falling on black twenty-six times in a row is one in 67,108,864. That is a long shot. What might surprise you is that the following combination of black and red numbers is precisely as likely to occur:

R B B R B R R B R B B R R B R R B R B B R R B B R B

You wouldn’t be thrilled if that happened unless you became a millionaire by betting on this particular series of twenty-six. And even then, you wouldn’t think of the 67,108,863 sequences that did not materialise. We tend to consider only the things that did happen, but we rarely think of all the things that could have transpired but didn’t. Events such as the ball falling on black twenty-six times in a row impress us. And I am even more impressed because twenty-six happens to be my lucky number.

This argument applies to meaningful coincidences but not to a prediction materialising, as such a feat may imply that all the other things couldn’t have happened. If I say with firm conviction that the coming sequence of black and red would be R B B R B R R B R B B R R B R R B R B B R R B B R B and it happens as I predicted, I may have the gift of prophecy. The chance of me being accidentally right was one in 67,108,864.

Imagine the probability of you sitting here reading this page on a tablet or a mobile phone, but as a prediction from 3,600 years ago. Imagine Joseph telling the Pharaoh: ‘I see (your name comes here) reading a pile of papyrus pages, not real papyrus pages, but papyrus pages appearing on something that looks like a clay tablet. Do not be afraid, dear Pharaoh, for it will happen 3,600 years from now. But if we do not set up this grain storage, it will not happen, so we must do it. And by the way, Egypt will starve otherwise.’

The chance of this prediction coming true was not one in 67,108,864, nor was it one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Adding more zeroes doesn’t help. The chance is far smaller than any number you can ever write down. It is so close to zero that no one can tell the difference. Nevertheless, you sit here reading this text, perhaps even on a tablet. How could this happen? The answer to this mystery is that many things could have occurred but did not; however, something had to happen, and that is what transpired. In any case, Joseph couldn’t have made such a prediction by accident.

The licence plate number

What about the reference to the end date of World War I on the licence plate of Franz Ferdinand’s car? Few historical events are as significant as the start and end of World War I. And so, the law of large numbers doesn’t apply here. It is one of the most important historical events, thus part of a sample comparable to the royal family. A mere accident seems unlikely. The assassination could have gone wrong; cooler heads might have prevailed, or the war could have proceeded differently, ending on a different date.

It might have been possible to guess the end date of World War I once it had started. If you presumed that the war would not take more than twenty years, a random guess of the end date could be correct one in every 7,305 times. But something doesn’t add up here. Hardly anyone expected the war to last longer than a few months. The licence plate originates before the war. The assassination succeeded after a series of mishaps. If the licence plate number contained a prediction, that prediction included the assassination succeeding, Franz Ferdinand dying in this particular car, and this event being the trigger for the war.

That is hard to do. And so Mike Dash in the Smithsonian noted, ‘This coincidence is so incredible that I initially suspected that it might be a hoax.’2 Only, it is not a hoax, so investigative minds could have probed other options, but they did not. Conspiracy theorists also ignored it, even though this incident agrees with their beliefs of a secretive plan being behind history.

In the conspiracy scene, a story circulates about a Freemason named Alfred Pike, who allegedly disclosed a secretive plan of the Freemasons to bring about the New World Order. Pike supposedly predicted both world wars with uncanny precision in 1871. Nobody had ever heard of this plan before 1959, when an ‘investigator’ ‘uncovered’ it. Contrary to the licence plate number, the story has no substance. It is a hoax. In the Netherlands, they would call it a monkey sandwich story.

Seeing meaning

Authors use symbolism, hidden meanings, themes, and stylistic figures. Events in their lives, as well as the writings of other authors, influence their writings. Literary critics look for those meanings. You can check out what experts wrote about the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. You will be surprised. Some authors marvel at what literature critics discover in their works. Apart from intention, there can be an unconscious influence. And so, seeing meaning is more like an art than a science. A scientist would argue there is no proof and that it is baseless speculation because science isn’t about meaning.

He spent a number of years at this project
And now he knows how an electron behaves

The Nits, Mountain Jan

You can’t understand intentions and meaning from investigating the conduct of electrons. Meaning in literature is often intentional. If someone wrote the script running the events in this world, the author might do what other authors do. And so, the licence plate number on Franz Ferdinand’s car could signal foreknowledge of future events or even control over them. The sceptics argue from a scientific perspective, while those who see meaning act like literary critics. Who is right about the meaning of AIII 118 depends on whether there is a script and, therefore, an author.

Sceptics might claim that AIII 118 is a random sequence of characters, but we see a reference to the end date of World War I. That is how our minds work. The argument is odd. If you take it to the extreme, this text is also a random array of characters, as is any book or report. And still, you read words and sentences that have meaning to you. Indeed, the licence plate number would have remained unnoticed if the war had not ended on 11 November 1918.

However, the war ended on 11 November 1918. AIII 118 is the car’s licence plate number that drove Franz Ferdinand to his appointment with his destiny. And destiny is the message the licence plate number radiates. It suggests premeditation concerning the assassination, the start of the war and its end on 11 November 1918. That is a meaning we can see without too much imagination. There are plenty of instances and locations where this sequence of characters could have turned up, so their presence in this particular spot is noteworthy. AIII 118 on a fish barrel in Vienna wouldn’t have attracted attention. Ditto for the licence plate number ABII 117 on that particular car.

Sceptics can also be fanciful. Austrians speak German. Armistice in German is Waffenstillstand. So why does it not read WIII 118? Or even better, W1111 1918? If someone sends you a message, you don’t quibble about such details. If I said ‘hello’ to you, you wouldn’t ask me why I didn’t utter the word ‘hi’ instead. That is, unless you are a philosopher with a lot of idle time and have a hobby of questioning everything. Great Britain, the United States and France were all major participants in the war. These countries all use the term armistice. And if the sceptics come with outlandish arguments, you have won the argument. Only, they disagree. Not seeing meaning is the art of being a moron. Communication with morons is, therefore, problematic.

Asking yourself which licence plate numbers were available in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire may be a better idea. You could check which combinations fit the purpose. There aren’t that many options. Perhaps, you end up with just one match: AIII 118. That makes it harder to believe that this sequence of characters is meaningless. This scheme became even more inconceivable because the war ended on 11 November (11-11), the most peculiar date of the year.

Only a few historical events are as important as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Armistice of 11 November 1918. You can think of D-Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11. The coincidence scheme surrounding D-Day is extensive, and the recurrence of dates is intriguing. The involvement of Hans van Mierlo is also mind-boggling. It also relates to the Curse of the Omen, a film released on the anniversary of D-Day, as well as the untimely passing of Senator Robert Kennedy on 6 June (6/6) and Martin Luther King on 4 April (4/4) 1968. A historian correctly predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, while the coincidences surrounding the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 are dumbfounding. In other words, this incident doesn’t stand alone.

A final argument may be that such extensive or peculiar coincidence schemes don’t appear in other historical events that are equally significant, such as the American, French, Chinese, and Russian revolutions. These events are marked by a few peculiar coincidences, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams having their appointments with the Grim Reaper on the same day, which happens to be 4 July, thus Independence Day. That is noteworthy, but perhaps not sensational. The parallels between Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler might also raise some questions. Somehow, the licence plate number of Franz Ferdinand’s car is more exceptional, most notably because of it being so precisely predictive.

The Chinese Revolution of 1911 began on 10 October 1911. It marked the end of 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. The date, 10 October (10/10), is not as remarkable as 11 November (11/11), even more so because there are no related coincidences. The Russian Revolution led to the establishment of a communist empire that lasted for seven decades. A bad omen marked the coronation of the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II. The communists later murdered him and his family. You can ask why these events don’t seem part of a coincidence scheme. It is like asking why several members of the Royal Family don’t have kidney cancer. Well, they haven’t. That’s all there is to it. Perhaps, it is not satisfactory to philosophers with a lot of time on their hands, but it will have to do.

Hindsight bias

And then there is the benefit of hindsight. Countless strange incidents could have occurred, but they didn’t. We notice only things that did happen and don’t think of those that didn’t. That is hindsight bias. The sample of the most significant historical events comes with the benefit of hindsight. There is a danger to that approach, and it is unacceptable in science. It is like selecting only the data that confirms your theory. You might have a theory about gravity, saying that all objects will fall to the ground. And you prove your theory by ignoring the heavenly objects and the birds in the sky, so everything you investigate falls to the ground. It later turned out that gravity works that way, and ignoring the heavenly objects and the birds in the sky put you on the right track.

With hindsight, you know things you can’t learn in advance. Hindsight knowledge is also a favourite tool of critics when something goes wrong. However, when you use hindsight to find evidence, your critics argue you can’t. That’s how the critics play their game. They might clip a bird’s wing feathers and then ask the bird to prove it is a bird by flying. But if you use clipped birds to prove your theory of gravity, they might criticise you for that as well. You can’t beat your critics in their game. No evidence will ever convince them. So I won’t try. This wasn’t science in the first place, but metaphysical speculation.

Using hindsight, thus, is the only way to conduct this investigation, as we can’t predict the occurrence of meaningful coincidences. If this universe is genuine, we can’t establish that it is authentic. However, if it is a simulation, we may discover it is a simulation. So, if there is meaning, we must look for it to find it. We should be careful, as we are inclined to see intent when it could have happened accidentally. With that in mind, it is still fair to say that meaningful coincidences related to the most important historical events are likely not mere coincidences. Combined with the other evidence, we can establish that we live inside virtual reality, probably a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation.

Latest revision: 24 July 2025

1. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman (2011). Penguin Books.
2. Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car. Mike Dash (2013). Smithsonian. [link]