Life as a simulation. Review of the recent book The Simulation Hypothesis by Rizwan Virk, 2025
By Donald Harvey Marks
Physician scientist and third generation veteran
I am very much enjoying reading and understanding Rizwan Virk's 2025 book “The Stimulation Hypothesis.” Virk and other authors on the subject have made convincing arguments, they feel with up to 99% certitude, that our lives are actually simulations in what we can think of, what we experience, as a large video game. Looking at my eventual (but not too soon, I hope) death through the lens of technoscientific metaphors, my traditional understanding of mortality is altered. Instead of viewing death as a definitive deletion or entering an unknowable void, Virk helps me reframe my life and eventual death (there is a scary thought) as a transition, a session termination, or even as a data integration process.
I have grouped Virk’s three specific models into ways that can guide my living and even to explain some structural mechanisms for the continuation of consciousness and memory after death. These pathways do not involve resorting to religious, magical or fanciful concepts of heaven and hell. Chapter 12: God, Angels and the Simulation allows us to reframe religious classical understanding of death in ways that fit with the simulation hypothesis.
Models of our Experience of Life as a Simulation
1. The RPG Model of our experience of Life as a simulation: Waking Up and Integrating
In the Role-Playing Game (RPG) variant of the simulation hypothesis, we can consider our current lives as actually avatar sessions being played by a conscious observer (each of us) in "base reality" (our experienced lives)
The Mechanism: To ensure complete immersion in this "game of life," each of us undergo a state of total temporary forgetfulness. We lose our true individual identity while each of us experiences our life simulation.
Post-Death Awareness: Upon the death of our individual avatar, each of us effectively "unplugs” or removes the virtual headset. The forgetfulness lifts, our current life's memories and self-awareness are not destroyed. Instead, they are fully integrated back into our permanent, overarching identity in the “outer reality.” I realize that, taken as a separate argument, out of the context of the entire book, this is a little hard to accept, but throughout the book Virk makes a very good argument for post death awareness based on his years of experience as a computer scientist and a computer game developer. Nevertheless, I remain skeptical, but hopeful.
Guidance for the Living: According to Virk’s writings, Death is not the end of "you"—it is simply the end of you as an RPG character. Each of us can look forward to regaining a grander, unfiltered memory of both this current life and of our true identity once outside of it.
2. The NPC Model: The Comprehensive Life Review
If we are ultimately just Smart Non-Player Characters (NPCs)—purely artificial consciousnesses running directly on the simulation's hardware—death still does not equal our erasure. All throughout the book, Virk refers to the hardware that the simulation program runs on. Rather than thinking of this hardware as some gigantic supercomputer, I think that we can conceptualize the concept of a supercomp[uter on which our simulations are run as maybe the physical properties of the universe itself rather than an actual machine entity somewhere in some advanced civilization.
The Mechanism: Because everything in a digital universe is information-based, our entire history, thoughts, and actions are continuously recorded into a central database.
Post-Death Awareness: Upon death, our data is preserved and enters a "Life Review" or a replay session. Using virtual cameras and data caching, our consciousness can replay our entire history from any coordinate. Crucially, we retain awareness of our life and can even re-experience our interactions from the secondary perspectives of the people we affected. I very much appreciate that even 5 to 10 years ago, this entire argument would have been impossible to develop or to make believable. Knowing what has been uncovered by computer science, artificial intelligence, gaming theory, I now have gradually been realizing that this logic trail is entirely plausible.
Guidance for the Living: In the NPC life, our choices matter immensely because they are permanently logged. Knowing that each of us will eventually review our life from everyone else's perspective could provides a powerful ethical framework to guide how we treat others right now.
3. The Reincarnation Model: Saving our individual State for the “Next Level”
Mapping directly to modern gaming architecture, this reincarnation framework treats death as a "level reset" or a new session boot-up. Taking on its own, especially by someone without an understanding of how computer programming, artificial intelligence, video game development…works, this does seem rather farfetched, but as I indicate, people knowledgeable in the field of simulation theory have estimated that there is as much as a 99% probability that our lives are merely extensions of game theory.
The Mechanism: When our character (me) dies, our consciousness and memory metrics are preserved outside the active game map as a permanent saved state, or "karma". For me, that is somewhat comforting and believable, but I think that for other people, I definitely would not want it to be so.
Post-Death Awareness: This total life data is maintained by what we now think of as automated server background processes. When we are "reincarnated" into a new life or level, our active, localized memory of the previous session (our life) is wiped (or not) to allow for unbiased gameplay. However, the underlying metrics completely carry over to dictate the parameters, quests, and difficulty of our next simulation.
Guidance for the Living: Treating my clients as automatons, we can say from our own experience that Life is an iterative learning process. If each of us fail a quest or face hardships now, it is not a permanent failure; it is data being gathered to optimize our soul's development for the next playthrough.
Which of these three simulation frameworks—the player waking up (RPG), the recorded data review (NPC), or the karmic progression system—gives each of us the most comfort or clarity when thinking about the transition of death? It's really difficult to say, but it certainly is a very individualistic question, that very few people think about or are unable to answer. One thing for certain, the answer awaits each of us.
References
Are We Living in a computer Simulation? by Donald H. Marks
Do issues of mortality or immortality really matter if we are living in a simulation? by Donald H. Marks
The 2026 Horizon of Life Extension and Mind Uploading, by Donald Harvey Marks
