I’m sure most of us have played Skyrim. I’m sure most of us have seen the NPCs that just awkwardly stand there, swaying slightly with a blank look on their face.

I’m starting to think this whole world is just an illusion. I just walked into my break room, and saw a guy just staring at the vending machine. Slightly hunched over, and swaying.

So I sat down at a table and start browsing my phone.

He’s still standing there. Same spot. No words. Not looking at a phone. Just dead staring at a vending machine which is 2/3rds empty. Not counting money. Just staring dead forward.

After a while I wondered how long he was going to do this. I walked around the side of him, looked at his face, and asked if he was ok. He grunted at me, like hmmmmph.

I went back to my table and started a stopwatch.

When my break was over he was still standing there. 22 minutes staring at a vending machine, and telling multiple people he’s fine, but also grunting at most people.

The ONLY explaination I can come up with is that he’s an NPC who failed the turing test, and this entire world doesn’t exist. I don’t exist. You don’t exist. None of this matters.

Anyone else think this is some kind of poorly coded simulation?

  • mech@feddit.org
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    22 minutes ago

    If you experience things like this regularly, it might be a good idea to check in with a psychiatrist. Their are plenty of ways our brains can mess with our perception, without us realizing it.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    3 hours ago

    Sees a mentally unstable guy, thinks the entire world is a simulation.

    Humanity may not make it, lol. :)

  • celeste@kbin.earth
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    5 hours ago

    I’d assume drugs if I saw a guy staring at a vending machine for ages. That’s “took too much of something that doesn’t leave the system fast” behavior. Possibly he wanted to get something from the vending machine, but couldn’t hold on to the thought for long enough to go through the process. Perception of time gets fucked on those sorts of drugs, so he has no idea he’s been there for however long. The behavior sounds specifically like that of people I’ve known who accidently took a higher dose of edibles than intended.

    The world is real but we perceive it with a brain that can read signals of it imperfectly if something goes wrong in there. That leads to strange behaviors like you described.

  • Flagstaff@programming.dev
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    2 hours ago

    We cannot be living in a simulation because the amount of energy to simulate and calculate all the possible atoms, quarks, and other particles and all their simultaneous interactions every fraction of a millisecond would far exceed an exponent of zillions upon zillions of all the possible energy that could ever exist. We wouldn’t even begin to be able to comprehend anything.

    “Well… the forerunners’ physics operate differently, duh!”

    Uh… if you were to believe that delusion, then I wouldn’t know what to tell you; then you could just rig whatever answer you want to anything. And even if that were true, then the “real” world must be so vastly different from anything we could possibly connect with or perceive that it wouldn’t be relatable anyway and would therefore be worthless or just academic to think about. I guess you don’t want to hear it but this is unfortunately our actual life and that guy was just weird. Ask him if you can buy any potions from him next time or something.

    • ExtremeUnicorn@feddit.org
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      6 minutes ago

      The idea is that you would just need to simulate that level of detail if someone actually looks. You don’t have to simulate any atoms if nobody can see them. Computer games do this all the time to save ressources.

      There is no real argument against a simulation just as there is none against god being an alien, just the probability is not in favour of it.

      But I also believe life is just kinda what it is.

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Sex is way too enjoyable for this to be a poorly coded simulation.

    I think you just saw someone who needs either a break or some better mental health care.

    • doug@lemmy.today
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      8 hours ago

      Yeah but that’s what makes it a fun thought experiment imo is thinking of how the simulation accounts for our reality.

      If I’m a Sim in The Sims equivalent, my dying results in the exact same outcome it does in The Sims; my avatar is gone and not resurrectable (without mods).

      Maybe the Mandela effect is when we’ve moved servers from one that had different DLC.

      God/Jesus/all prophets was just the admin visiting.

      Ghosts are bugs in the code only visible to some of us because we have the residual DLC files that weren’t properly removed.

      We can’t see far into space because the draw distance is short.

  • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
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    7 hours ago

    Let me guess. You game.

    Everything in life is training for the next day. Spending so much time training yourself to expect things to follow the common logic of games leads to that expectation ‘leaking’ out of its context. If you spent all day watching porn, eventually, you’d expect life to follow porn rules. If you spent all day on 4chan, you’d expect people to act like meme-brained incels. Even something like doing sudoku teaches you to see numbers in boxes and look for the pattern to fill in other boxes. Where someone who spent their life immersed in religion might see spiritual possession, you see NPC behaviours. This is conceptual framing, a.k.a. ideology.

    As for that particular guy, based just on the info given here, I’m guessing drugs. Work sucks. Some people do drugs about it.

  • Lol I think I posted something like this before.

    First existential crisis? I had like 10 of these ready.

    My life is so bizzare because

    I WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE BORN

    Literally narrowly even lived to birth since there was One Child Policy and CCP made it their mission to terminate pregnancies if the woman already had gave birth to a child. So I was my mom’s second child… if they found out I would’ve been deleted so quickly, they’d grab my mom and forced abortion.

    Feel like as if its scriped.

    Like what are the odds.

    Did someone make this simulation and added this to my “character sheet” for funsies?

    Movie character “crazy backstory” type of shit.

    Still crazy to think about the fact that I am not even supposed to be alive walking around in this world.

    Every time I think I’m just chillin, BOOM crazy shit happens.

    A fucking PLANE CRASHED near where I live… what the fuck… must be a scripted event

    So surreal

    Edit: Also OP Username checks out

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Someone having a stroke doesn’t realize what’s happening to them. Their only hope is to encounter someone who can read the symptoms - - maybe that’s not what happened but it’s a million times more probable than your crazy explanation.