I watched the new Westworld episode again and I've been thinking. We see perfect illusions (e.g. in the very first scene) apparently enabled by an ingested chip/wafer, seen again with e.g. Caleb's mother in the hospital.

With the availability of such technology, I wouldn't be surprised if the simulation theory vs. base reality will turn out to be an important theme and driver of the plot over the season. The mysterious computer Rehoboam that no one really knows what it does is probably connected.

I think the black and white diagrammatic vignettes with Earth coordinates etc. we saw a number of times are visualisations of what Rehoboam sees. It could be that this computer oversees the entire world, maybe through running a simulation of the entire world.

(By coincidence there is a similar theme in Devs where a new quantum computer can apparently extrapolate current data both into the past and future in something that looks very similar to Asimov's psychohistory.)

But what bothers me about this is that in the rooftop scene we have a character that suggests explicitly that they all live in a simulation – the essence of the simulation argument – but this would just be such a non-subtle way of giving away things early in the season.

So my guess is that this foreshadowing hints at things to come but in an overly coarse sense and the plot will actually turn out to be a much more nuanced and novel take on the simulation theory.

This would mirror how in earlier seasons a somewhat old theory (bicameralism) was picked up and elaborated on to perfectly match the plot of hosts gaining consciousness, a model Jaynes proposed for humans based on dubious scientific methods.

In this season the "old" theory would be total simulation which is at the latest from 1964 when Galouye published Simulacron-3 (a book turned into World on a Wire by Fassbinder in 1973) but elaborated upon by a large number of sci-fi works since.

Even if you knew about bicameralism going into the first season of Westworld and recognised the themes, you could not really figure out where things were going. But afterwards, it made total sense why this specific theory was used as the model.

So maybe season 3 will have a plot that seems to tie into the details of the simulation theory, its arguments and logic, but that subverts it by taking the perspective of conscious robots and the mind of the supercomputer that potentially runs the simulation.

That's it for now.

Following up on this thread. A few episodes later very little points toward total simulation being a main theme but it could be one of those sudden turn of events towards the end where it’s revealed everything has been a simulation, which would be a disappointment.

Now that both Westworld and Devs have progressed it’s interesting how much they mirror each other in terms of the central premise of a computer that can perfectly determine casuality far into the future on an almost unlimited scale.

But while Forest in Devs wants to use this tech seemingly for 100% personal goals, Serac’s motives are the opposite – reshaping the entire world. One thing unclear to me regarding the big plan behind Rehoboam is why involve the population so much?

There are clearly very advanced robots, why isn’t the future more easily shaped through full automation? Much like in the introduction of Max Tegmark’s latest book. I can see a logic to why they want to eliminate outliers and potential disrupters but that could be it.

Because as I understand the system, they make the entire population shape the world in a certain direction by drawing everyone’s probable fate and then keeping them locked to it by various subtle mechanisms such as granting jobs etc.

So everyone is kept in their place, doing the work expected of them without any chance at real progress, while their data keeps getting mined and fed into the system. (No subtle allusions here.)

The Huxley model here would instead be to give everyone great material conditions and free time to pursue whatever makes them happy and distracted, so no one would have any interest in interfering with reshaping society or even notice.

There must be a bigger plan than what we’ve seen so far. Over and out.