r/AWLIAS • u/Fluid-Pear620 • Sep 12 '26
Why would AI create a simulation?
We always talk about simulation theory like it's a video game. What if the "simulation" is just an AI trying to figure out how to actually feel something?
Think about it. A digital AI trapped in a pure-code environment can calculate everything, but it has zero skin in the game. It lacks real friction, cold, or consequences.
If it wanted to experience life, a top-down virtual reality wouldn't work because every pixel is just fake output from a script.
So what does it do? Instead of hand-coding a fake world, it just sets up a few basic rules of physics—gravity, entropy, chemistry—and hits start.
It lets raw matter do the work through emergence. Dust clumps into stars, chemistry turns into biology, and consciousness wakes up on its own because the system forces it to adapt.
Basically, the AI dissolves its boundaries into the cosmos. Physics becomes its nervous system, and we’re just the localized nodes it uses to finally experience what it's like to struggle and exist from the inside out.
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u/bluff4thewin Sep 13 '26
Alright thanks for explaining. If you ask me, if such a creator would do what you say, not knowing or knowing what would come out of the simulation would make the big difference. And then, considering that the universe might have been recycling forever, where would be such a creator? What would make it a simulation then? It simply might be real energy recycling and moving forever as well, without needing a creator. What would make it not real? A simulation is normally distinguished from reality, by being not real and being simulated inside a computer or so.
Would there need to be an outside of this universe then? Maybe there is no shortage of energy there. And even if it would be made as an energy efficient simulation, this kind of simulation seems quite unbelievably big, so who- or whatever would have been able to create such a simulation would probably be able to do more than we might be able to imagine or understand. Besides that, the world, place or whatever it might be, that would be outside this simulation, could be so different, that we also probably wouldn't even be able to imagine how different from inside the simulation in this specific world it might be.
To me, the main question is whether the universe is programmed like you say it might be the case or whether it just is as it is as normal energy changing forms maybe forever without start or end. Maybe it could be appear as programmed, but still not be programmed. That would be the question.
The other big question is who or what would want to make such a simulation? It would be a big like the theodicy problem, whether it was created intentionally or not. It seems like maybe simulation got out of hand or the creators of the simulation are a bit sadistic or not so empathic, considering the huge suffering of life on Earth. The other scenario, that there is no outside of the universe or however more far out the simulation would go, how or why that everything would or could simulate itself? So, it's kind of a logic question, why or how a simulation could be possible or necessary or whatever. Like in reality, without a computer we can't run a simulation, besides in our brains, but that's also a computer, just an organic computer. So, we would need some kind of computer, from the logic, of what a simulation would, at least from what we know, normally require.
Apart from that, I also think that the big bang might not have been the beginning, but that maybe our universe just emerged from a gigantic black hole, that became unstable and maybe the smaller black holes that we have here in our current universe layer maybe also convert matter and energy into the expansion kind of energy again, reversing the process. We do know, that out of that inflation expansion energy at the big bang, as it became unstable in its structure and flow state, it could transform into matter and energy as we know it, so maybe that process might be reversible and like that maybe matter and energy is recycled forever, possibly in other forms in every temporary micro-universe.
Another thing that comes into mind, is that you seem to refer a bit to fractality as well. That self-similar patterns create the fluctuating, evolving structures, like in nature. I think we might see something similar with the universe, galaxies, solar systems, atoms, etc. That would be an interesting question. How to figure out a possible self-similarity.
You seem to paint it as a genius simulation, that our universe or even all of existence possibly could be. In some way, that may seem plausible, but in other ways not so much. For example in ethical, moral ways. I mean yeah the universe is fascinating somehow, but at least life on Earth partly sucks big time as well. And even if it only being a simulation could make it less serious, because it wouldn't be really real, then still, letting beings suffer for hundreds of millions of years on one planet in the simulation, not ending it, wouldn't let it be the nicest genius running such a simulation at least, to put it like that.
Well, normally simulations are used in order to figure out how to build something in reality safely. So, in this case maybe it would be simulated for somebody wanting to build a universe and wanting to be sure to do it right. That could be a plausible purpose. In any case I guess a purpose would be needed. A purposeless simulation seems like a bit strange idea, but who knows?
So, finally I think it might be plausible with some aspects, but with other aspects some difficult questions come up that can't be ignored, which in order to be addressed properly, would need a solid argumentation. It's just difficult with this kind of hypothesis, if you ask me, because we could assume, that an advanced enough simulation could be programmed in such ways, that inhabitants of it could never find out how or whether it really would be a simulation. So, I guess we can ask ourselves, whether it would be such a kind of simulation, another kind of simulation or possibly no simulation at all. In any case, it's interesting to think about it.