Simulation Stories
As you might know, it’s popularly theorized that we currently exist in a simulation. Or rather, we could exist in a simulation, therefore it’s possible that we already do.
Below are some personal occurrences which I refer to as “glitches in my game”; my contribution to the modern-day ghost stories which suggest that we do, in fact, live in a simulation.
February 15
On January 2, 2019, I purchased the book “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and End of the World” by Haruki Murakami, via Amazon. This is my second Murakami book. At this point, I was only halfway through my first — his famous “Kafka On the Shore”. The hard-copy arrived a couple days later, and sat in my room for weeks without being opened.
Then, February came.
For several weeks up to that point, I have been going to a shogi meetup every Monday. I’d take a Caltrain for 40 minutes from my home to Mountain View’s San Antonio Station, then back again a few hours of shogi later.
On February 11, 2019, I grabbed a book on my way out, to endure more than an hour of round-trip train-rides. It was Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland”. I read close to 70 pages - a great progress for me, and also a great sign for the book; I typically read much slower.
That evening, on the train-ride home, I opened the paperback once again, and resumed reading.
By page 90, the main character has gone through curious circumstances and obtained a mysterious skull in the mail. He’d noticed a hole in the center of the skull’s forehead, and decided that it could be that of a unicorn. In classic Murakami fashion, the character goes to the library to investigate. He returns home with a hefty tome about mammalian studies and a curious librarian in tow.
After sex, he and the librarian open their book, and start to read.
At this point, the book goes on six pages of expository passages in quote form, where the characters read long passages from their unicorn book aloud and ponder its significance. Long, drawn-out fictional history about unicorns came out of nowhere and dominated the pages. Proposed differences between Chinese unicorns and Western unicorns, anatomical significance, predatory ecosystems… This sudden dive into a completely fictional scientific anthology was barely prompted and completely contradictory to the dreamy tone of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” so far, and it was all getting a bit much for me.
The train conductor came, and checked my ticket
The long-winded exposition continued. By now, the exposition has progressed to the 20th Century, where a skull was discovered, and sat in Saint Petersburg University for decades before a professor named Petrov decided to investigate further. Petrov hypothesized that it’s an unicorn skull, and organized an archaeological dig.
After seven pages of unicorn-science exposition, I decided to take a break, and fished out my phone.
The train rolled past a stop. I was still about five stops away
I opened Chrome, and thumbed through customized Google News. You know, the customized news cards under the search bar that Google algorithms think are relevant to you.
The second news caught my eye:
Elon Musk-backed AI Company Claims It Made a Text Generator That’s Too Dangerous to Release
I clicked it.
The article starts by explaining the methodology researchers at OpenAI used to make a text generator. Below are quotes from the early portions of this article:
__________start quote____________
“In one example, the software was fed this paragraph:
In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.
Based on those two sentences, it was able to continue writing this whimsical news story for another nine paragraphs in a fashion that could have believably been written by a human being. Here are the next few machine-paragraphs that were produced by the machine:
The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science.
Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved.
Dr. Jorge Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La Paz, and several companions, were exploring the Andes Mountains when they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain, surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow.”
__________end quote____________
At this point, I pause.
Unicorns.
I decided to give that more thought later, and continued to thumb through the article until it finished.
I then opened “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” once again, and continued reading page 96.
Page 97.
“Unfortunately, they failed to find any similar skull. They did, however, discover a number of curious facts about the region, a tableland commonly known as the Voltafil. […] What interested Professor Petrov about the Voltafil was that the bones unearthed there differed significantly from the distribution of species elsewhere in that belt of land. […] The unicorn, an evolutionary misfit, continued to live on this outcropping isolated from all predation. Natural springs abounded, the soil was fertile, conditions was idyllic.”
Page 98.
I closed the book, and began fearing for my life, slightly.
I stood up, went to the train’s doors and stood there, wanting to get off the train as soon as it arrived at my stop.
Later, the rainy night walk home from the train station, through a bustling and brightly lit downtown, was as paranoiac as walking in a pitch-black forest.
And so, let’s summarize the day of February 11.
- Google News generates a feed during the day, about relevant topics I might be interested in.
- I open a book for the first time, a month after its purchase.
- I read the book to a certain point, where a scientist has started excavation in a valley.
- I put down the book and open up the News feed Google has prepared for me.
- The News Feed shows an article, in which an example was given about how an AI wrote a passage about “scientists finding unicorn skull in a valley, where the unicorn had no predators.”
- I pick up the book again right after finishing the article. One paragraph later, the book tells a story of “scientists finding unicorn skull on a plateau, where the unicorn had no predators.”
So, let’s analyze.
Researchers at OpenAI fed the AI generator texts from 8 million web pages, totaling 40GB of text data. So it’s possible that Murakami’s book was among that data. After all, it’s a nice little book by perhaps Japan’s more well-known and successful author.
It is then also possible that the AI generated dozens, maybe hundreds, or maybe even thousands of passages on different subjects. And that one of these passages just happen to be based on page 96-97 of Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland.” This is where the AI could have spun Murakami’s fictional story (this story only appears for two pages in this entire book, btw) into a genuine-sounding article about scientists discovering unicorn skulls in a valley. The scientists, like in the book’s paragraph, also concluded the unicorns must have survived in the valley because there were no predators there.
It is then also conceivable that the Gizmodo journalist chose this particular passage about unicorns to showcase, because it sounded wacky.
But HOW did Google’s algorithm decide THIS is the article to show me? At that very moment?
I purchased the book via Amazon a month ago, never googled anything about the book, never talked to anyone online or offline about it. On the day I start reading the paperback book, this news story was recommended to me. At the moment of me putting down my book, I see a news article containing a paragraph nearly identical in content and tone of the next paragraph in my book.
Hmmmmm…..
-The End-
December 13
This one is a lot less chilling.
Actually, it’s so much less exciting that I’m just going to copy-paste a text I sent to my friend. I explained this entire occurrence in text form.
I was listening to a podcast when a friend posted pictures on discord of a classroom whiteboard, without context. It looked like a group activity of some sort, where each student was given the name of a Greek god. I do not know for what reason.
This made me start googling Greek god hierarchy. I found out that basically the entire Greek mythology was known to be written by a guy named Hesiod. This is interesting to me because basically the entire mythology was just invented by some guy. So to read more, I searched for the most definitive book on Greek mythology, and found a book called The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves. I bought it on Kindle, planning a little reading over lunch.
Meanwhile, this podcast I’m listening to during the googling and purchase was talking about some random stuff, and on a tangent mentioned the concept of Octonion numbers. I kept it in the back of my mind to read more about that as well.
Over lunch at a restaurant, I opened up the book by Robert Graves, read a chapter, then to take a break, I remembered the completely unrelated podcast I listened to on the side while purchasing this book. I googled Octonion numbers. Octonion numbers were discovered by John T. Graves, brother of Charles Graves. Charles Graves was a bishop, and grandfather to Robert Graves, author of The Greek Myths.
Only a bit freaked out by how my two very unrelated streams of content consumption led to a familial connection.
-The End-