© Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
Scott Adams, a favorite commentator of mine, thinks so as well and concedes that this is amounts to a form of ID, albeit not the kind advocated by our more familiar design proponents. Says Adams, "The odds of us having an intelligent design, meaning we're created by another species of humans, are pretty close to 100 percent."
Alternative Versions of Simulation Theory
In an interview, Virk points out interestingly that the thesis comes in two forms.
The basic idea is that everything we see around us, including the Earth and the universe, is part of a very sophisticated MMORPG (a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) and that we are players in this game. The hypothesis itself comes in different forms.
In one version, we're all A.I. within a simulation that's running on somebody else's computer. In another version, we are "player characters," conscious things that exist outside the simulation and we inhabit characters, just like you might take on the character of an elf or dwarf in a fantasy RPG.
Comment: It's too bad Klinghoffer doesn't go into more depth on the second option. He's right about the first: a purely computational universe can't account for mind or thought. But what if we are more like avatars for what in 'reality' are other, or even 'higher', consciousnesses? If our visible reality is somehow representative of a deeper, more fundamental layer, many odd things about our reality make a kind of sense, including the seemingly symbolic nature of many of the things we ordinarily consider coincidence. But if that's the case, what is the nature of this other level of reality? Think away!