The Simulation Machine
Our minds are simulation machines. We take what’s happening in the now, extrapolate from what has happened before, and try to create simulations of what might happen in the future.
Its power and capabilities are astonishing. It’s what allows man to create, to invent, to explore. Because we can imagine. The simulation machine is incredible and we need to learn how to make it work for us and not against us.
As powerful as it is, the simulation machine can also be disempowering, discouraging, or destructive if the range of possibilities are trending downwards—where wrong things may happen, where the worst is yet to come, where pain gets more pain.
This happens when what we feed the model is filtered strictly on negative events and possibilities. The tricky part about extrapolating on the past is what has happened before is filled with our own subjective takes. They can be unreliable. And what has happened then, was perceived and acted upon by who we were then. The past also has a tendency to lie. So much so that it can create perceptions in our minds that perhaps weren’t the case, and creating things that may happen where the odds are infinitesimally small.
Don’t get me wrong; imagining what can go wrong is part of assessing risk. But we can’t purely feed the model with what can go wrong. It misses the entire point of the simulation machine: that we are live actors with powerful agency. The X factor in every simulation is us: we have the power to change the future by what we do in the present. That we can generate probabilities based on who we choose to be, one thought, one action, one move at a time. That we can alter the trajectory of things singlehandedly. That by acting now, and continuously move toward a more positive future where we increase the odds for ourselves, we actually have more control than we think. We have influence. We have impact. We have significance.
We can’t lose sight of how much sway we have over our own lives. Sure there are other variables: events we have no control of, our environments, other actors. But we are the main character in our lives. We have dominion over our story.
The simulation machine does not act on its own. It works for us. It may simulate possibilities. We create realities.
January 11, 2025