If we live in a simulation, then it must run backward

Everybody's familiar with the simulation hypothesis. The chances of us living in some sort of simulation are pretty high. However, more and more weird evidence comes up annually, including one of the latest Nobel Prizes, that proves that the universe is not locally real. I'm not going to go into details about what locality and reality mean (it doesn't mean what you think it means), but you can take the following two weird facts:

• Observation affects reality (so does non-observation)
• Things that aren't observed exist in non-deterministic "limbo" (at least microscopically)
• The light emitted from stars millions of light-years away retroactively (meaning in the past) changes its nature when observed in the double-slit experiment

Let's assume that the simulation hypothesis is correct (it might not be correct; after all, it's just a hypothesis, but for the sake of this article, let's make this assumption). Two significant lines of simulation hypothesis's been widely explored:

• Naturally occurring simulations (e.g., everything blew up, and we're a distant echo or projection of the universe that existed playing out exactly as it happened in reality).
• Synthetic simulations (e.g., precisely what we do in video games and simulating the world for a specific purpose).

There isn't much to be derived from the naturally occurring simulations; if this is just a replay of a thing that has already happened, there isn't much fun to be had. However, suppose there is an entity (even if it's humanity in the distant future) that purposefully simulates our world. In that case, we can (somewhat) affect the simulation as somewhat conscious NPCs.

One of the most prominent hypotheses within the simulation hypothesis is that the first thing a sufficiently powerful civilization would simulate is its ancestry. It makes sense: you'd want to know the history for various reasons. Now, how would you run this simulation? Almost any computer scientist would tell you that you start with the known (now) and extrapolate towards the unknown (the past).

Why do we even consider that our world is more likely to run forward, not backward, if we live in the ancestor type of simulation? Maybe because we're humans and our brains work only forward in time. However, there are plenty of causation-breaking things in quantum physics and symmetrical processes that could also run in reverse.

Now, imagine that the world runs backward in time, with the past being the unknown variable and the future being known. Again, this is a simulation, so it must be fluid causation- and event-wise. Also, remember that observation affects reality almost like we're the agents of "rendering" the simulation. Why wouldn't we notice the fluidity? That's simple: our brains cannot comprehend incomprehensive situations and makeup stories that we fully believe. It's not "trying to believe" but "fully believing without a question". Check out the split-brain patients and how easily they explain away irrationalities.

In this framework of thought, some things start to make more sense:

• Light from the past changing from waves into particles? Sure, we "observe" now, meaning that light was emitted as particles in the past.
• Mandella effect? Sure, the past is fluid and changes all the time depending on what we do (or "have done") now, so why wouldn't some details change and many of us notice the change?
• A year ago, we had absolutely no idea about some things in history, and today, these events are extremely popular in the media. It might be the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or it might literally be "rendering" the past.

Many things fall into place when we consider that the rendering of the simulation can run backward in time. How can we affect the simulation, then, if the future is set? That's simple! We already had. That's the thing we, humans, can't comprehend: our current thoughts directly affect the events of the future, no matter whether the future already happened or not. There are no effects in the future without the thoughts of now. If something happened in the future, then a thought now has caused it. It's a reverse causation but also it kind of isn't. It is fatalism, but also it kind of isn't.

We have the control. We have the power to change. In fact, we already executed our will. The thing is to make the future our reality.

But also the thing is, we already had.