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First of all, sorry for the text wall. I've been thinking about this recently, and wanted you guys' opinion: With the advances in technology, we've been able to run simulations (especially games), and they've been getting more and more detailed recently. These simulations have varying degrees of detail, with KSP, for instance even simulating physics on planetary scales. Other games, like FPS, can simulate ballistics and advanced movement (ArmA, for instance). Powder Toy can simulate chemistry/physics (I managed to build an ion engine there, was quite difficult), and neural networks can simulate small-scale evolution. This got me thinking, what if our "reality" is actually a simulation run by much more advanced beings? Can they interfere with it? If that was the case, then what about our simulations? Could a player in a FPS game, for instance, be controlling an actual being from within the simulation without it knowing? Still considering the shooter game, that being would know nothing that's not in the simulation. It would not know nothing but that it had to shoot specific things, that it could move and do specific things, and should avoid being shot. It wouldn't be able to know anything not explicit in the game. Think of it like this. Imagine a sentient being that lived in a 2D universe for its entire life. It would only be able to think about going forwards, backwards, left and right. It wouldn't be able to know about up nor down. The mind of the simulated being would be similiar: in the shooter game, it wouldn't be able to think about anything outside what the game can offer. It wouldn't be able to think about what's outside the game map. It wouldn't be able to think about doing something that's not possible in the game. All it would know is what is present in the game. That brings me to my next point, its senses: It would only have two senses, vision and hearing, since we're only able to simulate that (screens and speakers). In the shooter game, what it would see is only what's being rendered on the screen (HUD included), and what it would hear is only what goes through our speakers. So, if our universe was a simulation: every sentient being would be controlled by a "real" being's inputs. However, there's a problem with the simulated universe theory, the resources needed to simulate every single subatomic particle, and forces, etc. But what if only what sentient beings are seeing is being simulated (rendered?)? As in, everything that we don't see is "on rails", like a ship that you're not controlling in KSP (one interesting thing about this thought is the "if a tree falls and there is nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound" question). Bacteria would only be "actually" simulated when you use means to see them, for instance. That would reduce the need for resources immensely. About our senses and sentience: Our sentience is due to being controlled by a "real" being, just like in a singleplayer game, the only character that can actually think is the one you're playing as (This tackles the concept of "souls", but I really don't want to bring religion into this). Our senses is what the "real" beings have managed to simulate, just like we have screens and speakers to simulate video and sound, they must have other devices to simulate smelling, tasting and touching, creating the possibility that we actually have less senses than them, and that our reality is simpler than theirs. So, basically, in my mind: simulations, like games, create realities. Our reality might be one of those simulations. The bad thing is that there's no evidence to support this, and I don't think it's possible to prove the existence or non-existence of our reality. So this might be more of a philosophical theory. I'd like to read what you guys think.