We live in a simulation, and I have slides to prove it

21 September 2026

On Saturday night Ritah hosted a presentation night, and we went into some deep topics. My case, made with 25 slides and a straight face, was that we live in a simulation.

Akbr, in a black T-shirt, presenting in a living room next to a TV that shows the slide — Slide two: the argument takes 30 seconds.

I wasn't the only one with evidence. One friend opened the files on boda boda riders, who turn out to be a nationwide intelligence network. Another showed that the Jim Carrey we see today is a clone.

A presenter holding a laptop beside a TV that shows — The Boda Boda Intelligence Network. How does the boda guy know everything?

A presenter pointing at a TV that shows — The Jim Carrey Files, an investigation into celebrity replacement.

A presenter in a cap, leaning on the wall beside a TV that shows — A king is born, not elected.

The argument

The whole argument takes 30 seconds. We already build fake worlds, and they get better every year. Follow that far enough and you have to ask who built ours.

Exhibit A: we already build fake worlds

In 1972 the best graphics on Earth were two lines and a square. In 2025, Google DeepMind's Genie 3 turns a typed sentence into a world you can walk around in.

Slide: 1972. This was the best graphics on Earth. Two lines and a square, next to a drawing of Pong. — Fifty-three years of progress in two slides.

Slide: 2025. Type a sentence. Walk around inside it. AI now builds playable worlds from a prompt. — Fifty-three years of progress in two slides.

In 2023, researchers at Stanford and Google put 25 AI characters in a small digital town. One of them decided to throw a party, and the rest spread the word and showed up.

That's where Nick Bostrom's argument from 2003 comes in. If any civilisation can simulate minds and bothers to do it often, simulated minds will far outnumber real ones. So if you pick a mind at random, it's probably simulated. On my slide that was one pink dot in a sea of purple ones, and the question was whether you're the pink one.

Exhibit B: the universe runs like software

Nothing travels faster than 299,792,458 metres per second, which looks a lot like a computer's top clock speed. Physics also has a smallest useful length. That's my evidence that reality has pixels.

My favourite slide was about measurement. Particles stay blurry until someone measures them, and games use the same trick to save memory, because they only draw what you're looking at. The physicist James Gates even found error-correcting codes in the maths of supersymmetry, the same kind your browser uses.

Slide: Reality has pixels. Physics has a smallest useful length, with a magnifying glass over a pixelated line. — Reality has pixels, and it only renders what you look at.

Slide: It only renders what you look at. An eye lights up one tree while another stays a dotted outline. — Reality has pixels, and it only renders what you look at.

Exhibit C: the glitches

Déjà vu is the same frame loading twice. Most people remember the Monopoly man with a monocle, but he never had one, so somebody must have patched him. Astronomers have found billions of planets and nobody home, maybe because the developer only rendered us.

And you know the guy who walks past at the same time every day and says the same thing. That's an NPC.

Slide: The Monopoly man never had a monocle. You remember one anyway. Somebody patched him. — A monocle that never existed, and the guy on the same route every day.

Slide: You know this guy. Same route. Same time. That is an NPC. — A monocle that never existed, and the guy on the same route every day.

Then came a short comic.

Comic, part 1: one stick figure asks, what if none of this is real? — The ticket is still open, at low priority.

Comic, part 2: the other stick figure asks, then why does my back hurt? — The ticket is still open, at low priority.

The catch

In 2020 the Columbia astronomer David Kipping ran the numbers and got roughly a coin flip. Nobody can prove any of this, which is exactly what a simulation would want.

For the record, the physics on the slides is real. The conclusions are mine.

If you're in one

I closed with some advice. Be interesting, because boring simulations get switched off. Be kind to the NPCs, since one of them could be the developer. The last slide asked everyone to rate the simulation, because five stars keeps the servers on.

Slide: If this is a simulation. Be interesting. Be kind to the NPCs. Save often. — My closing advice, and a request for five stars.

Slide: Please rate this simulation, with five stars. Five stars keeps the servers on. — My closing advice, and a request for five stars.

More of these, please

Thank you, Ritah, for hosting. I think more friend groups should hold presentation nights, where everyone picks a topic they care about far too much and defends it with slides. If you're planning one, invite me. I'll bring slides.

The slides are here as a PDF, if you'd like to present them yourself.

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