I'm not an alien.

[Koobie]

I am schizophrenic. I lost everything including my fiancée and my home place in Hungary and was instituonalized both in Hungary and in Russia quite a few times, last time for 3 months straight. Now I'm on medicine which makes me frankly apathetic and living with my mom in Russia without a job, money, possessions, and the woman I loved (who now has a dog with her new boyfriend, good for them I suppose). Oh, and I'd sold my Playstation 4 Pro when I was still in Hungary, so don't have that either.

I play Skyrim and read SF books on my Kindle.

I was fine until I smoked 10 grams of weed over 2 years ago. Then I literally went crazy, convinced that this entire reality is an AI simulation (I still think that tbh) and thought that I am something akin to Doctor Who who came back in time from the future to reveal that this is a sim so that we can have a world of plenty. That bit was probably delusional.

It was a hard time for my family and friends. My life has changed entirely from living-the-dream with my fiancée and my PS4 Pro (heh) as a freelance writer to living with my mom in a different country (I had no savings) on a disability pension. And I haven't written any fiction in more than a year.

Hopefully things will pick up. It's up to me, really.

Hello Massassi. How do you do?

[Wookie06]

Welcome back. Hope things get better for you. Own it and it likely will.

[Koobie]

Thanks, Wookie06.

[Krokodile]

I'm sorry to read this about your current situation. You've survived everything, though, so that must count for something. Not that long ago, I actually mentioned you on our Massassi Discord server. I've been kind of hoping for you to return, and I think I've even expected you to at some point. I didn't expect it to be precipitated by such circumstances, though. Welcome back, at any rate.

In the interest of transparency, I have to say that I wasn't completely favorable toward you on the Discord server. I said that back when I wanted you unbanned and you returned on that occasion, you brought what I called your indignance along with you, and that for this reason I was wrong to want you unbanned.

Having said that, I'm genuinely glad to have you back. I was always fascinated by you, and I can say that I don't hold a shred of animosity toward you. It's not like I'd have a personal reason to, anyway. Besides, I try not to take this online space too seriously, so even if I had had a problem with you in the past, it would be simple for me to start with a clean slate once again.

I hope you'll get to live the good life again, but maybe you could stay on Massassi on the side!

[saberopus]

yo what up

[Nikumubeki]

Hello again [D6]Koobie - The Herald of FGR. Wish I had a project in need of voice acting to cheer you up but as it stands, such things are no more and never will be again. Boh!

[Krokodile]

Well you guys, this was a pretty brief return.

[Nikumubeki]

Koobie's return in 2017 was the final opportunity for these forums to maintain something beyond the Trump Thread (and adjacent topics), so in retrospect it was both the last stand of Koobie as well as the one of FGR - The Moist Massian or something.

There may be no room left for FGR in post-Trump Thread Massassi, but at least Backup Base lives on.

[saberopus]

There's plenty of room in a post-Trump Thread Massassi for anything. But we're not posting much, are we.

[saberopus]

Base is dead. Long live Backup Base.

[Jon`C]

> never post anything
> complain about what other people are posting until they stop posting
> nobody posts anything
> complain about the forums not being able to sustain a discussion anymore

weird, who could have imagined this killer strategy wouldn’t work

[Freelancer]

What I want to know is why does it matter whether our reality is a simulation?

[Obi_Kwiet]

This has always been kind of a toxic place. Still, I do regret that social media has largely replaced forums. We've managed to construct society in such a way that everyone gets to live in their personalized echo chamber, and it makes people worse. Maybe the internet isn't more toxic, but the toxicity is directed in a much less useful direction.

What I want to know is why does it matter whether our reality is a simulation?

I think this is the answer. If you look at philosophy on the subject, our intuitive conception of reality and consciousness doesn't really stand up under any real scrutiny. So it's probably less "are we in a simulation?", and more "our conceptions of those ideas are probably so far off that the difference isn't even meaningful."

Still, from what I know about Schizophrenia, it's probably not something you solve with logic.

[Koobie]

yo what up

sup.

I hope you'll get to live the good life again, but maybe you could stay on Massassi on the side!

Thanks Kroko. Yeah, I hope so too. Just gotta stop being fat and start doing stuff again rather than just sitting around all medicated, but one beckons the other.

Hello again [D6]Koobie - The Herald of FGR. Wish I had a project in need of voice acting to cheer you up but as it stands, such things are no more and never will be again. Boh!

That post cheered me up. I don't have a mic, so wouldn't have been able to help anyway.

What I want to know is why does it matter whether our reality is a simulation?

I think it would mean that:

a) it's hackable
b) there is no death, you just respawn (reincarnation-like)
c) if scientifically proven, we may create a world of plenty without poverty or strife -- IMO people would be much more recipient to other people's needs, and countries might unite to build something wonderful rather than spend their budgets on their military "toys".

That's what I think, at any rate.

Still, from what I know about Schizophrenia, it's probably not something you solve with logic.

I didn't hear voices or hallucinated or anything, I just had a few manic-depressive episodes in which I suffered delusions which were definitely not solved with logic. I'm not even sure I have schizophrenia to be honest, the diagnosis was sort of sketchy, I just know that smoking weed makes me delusional thinking that the world is a sim and everything is interconnected to the point that I lose my sense of self and just wander around thinking I'm fulfilling some sort of purpose. I do take anti-schizophrenic meds as prescribed though, just in case. And I don't smoke weed.

During one of these manic-depressive episodes I had wandered into a building past a security checkpoint which was unmanned and apart from other antics was chanting something and I swear to God a pack of cigarettes materialized in my hand. Just appeared there. I didn't buy it, I didn't pick it up, just one moment it wasn't there and another moment it was, right in my hand. Make of that what you will.

P.S. On the subject of where we're from and where we are going, I highly recommend the (very) short story "The Egg" by Andy Weir (of "The Martian" fame): http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

[Reverend Jones]

sup.
I think it would mean that:

a) it's hackable
b) there is no death, you just respawn (reincarnation-like)
c) if scientifically proven, we may create a world of plenty without poverty or strife -- IMO people would be much more recipient to other people's needs, and countries might unite to build something wonderful rather than spend their budgets on their military "toys".

I think you are mixing up simulated reality with being Neo from the matrix. I mean, I'm sure these things are conceivable (so long as we're entertaining fantasy), but it's one thing to be inside a simulation, but totally another to have any ability whatsoever change the rules of the simulation you are inside. And if it's possible for life to change the rules of its own simulated reality, what's so special about human life? Wouldn't single-celled organisms (known to scientists as midichlorians) have the same privilege? If so, what happens when two lifeforms vote against one another's changes to the simulation? Do they cancel each other out? What if a quorum of life-forms vote to make further changes impossible?

At the end of the day, isn't this just equivalent to saying that consciousness trumps physical matter? And as far as I can tell, the only way to resolve the difficulties I mentioned would be to assume a solipsistic worldview. So you basically have... a universe imagined by a single person that they can change if they become lucid. In other words, a dream. So I think you are confusing "simulated reality" with the cliche that life is a dream.

My personal take is that life, if you want to think of it as a dream, is actually part of an infinite cascade of nightmares. In other words, death doesn't really work because you just wake up in the next nightmare. (Wait, didn't Rick and Morty do something like that?)

[Obi_Kwiet]

In some sense, everything you experience of reality is a simulation running in your mind.

[Reid]

Drugs aren't good!

[Reverend Jones]

In some sense, everything you experience of reality is a simulation running in your mind.

Yes, exactly! And anyone who wants to show that there is some sort of independent simulation that is responsible for perception, you'd need to find evidence that it's not just the one running underneath your skull. And furthermore you'd need to define what you mean by "simulation" that is different than just "the universe runs on the laws of physics".