Interesting that this theme has been in the popular imagination for so long.
I still don't get it though. Why would it matter whether "reality" was a simulation or not? We live in socially constructed worlds of our own making (e.g. money, nation states, language, technology etc). If there is something else above/underneath our experience of reality, what drives us to want to understand it and "escape" there?
Because those social constructs may just be the results of slider-settings of the player, during initial generation?
Why not try a vm-exploit, to gain 'root' to get access to those? And peeking out of the webcam?
Lifting the illusory veils of 'Maya', seeing behind the shadows on the wall of some more famous cave? Playing with Indras pearls for ourselves? US making space calculate, and not the other way around? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space )
There’s an obvious religious element to this. Whether it’s the idea of Maya or that this realm is but a precursor to heaven or hell. I think that at least some people believe that morality is more arbitrary if this realm is not ”real”. And just as people seek refuge in religion or other ideologies in order to give their life meaning, if this realm is not, in fact, real, then the meaning they thought they had established evaporates.
I still don't get it though. Why would it matter whether "reality" was a simulation or not? We live in socially constructed worlds of our own making (e.g. money, nation states, language, technology etc). If there is something else above/underneath our experience of reality, what drives us to want to understand it and "escape" there?