The day I read The Simulation Argument, by Nick Bostrom, a thought popped into my mind: "if we are made of code, maybe there are ways to hack life as you would hack some random program", I started thinking privilege escalation over the simulation, buffer overflow, picking signals as if I was eavesdropping... it was an epiphany and also fun

Yeah but _you_ as a program are not able to do that. You need a coder for that, who's it going to be?

But rollbacks are a thing.

If you did find and exploit flaws in the world, you wouldn't even know it because the flaws -- and you -- would be patched and rolled back.

But you can affect the simulation/reality. They have done experiments on water where they treat it good or badly. Then it is frozen and they make note of the crystals that grow. It is very interesting. Now multiply this quantum effect by 6 Billion. Literally if the world expects bad things we might actually be able to think bad things into existence. Or the opposite. So if someone thinks well of you, or God forbid, prays for you, it might actually be helping you. Just due to this quantum effect.

@Ubbe Go to Central/South America. They practice "magic" quite extensively there. The belief is malevolent spirits has not gone away. The gangs in LA believe in and worship the god of death.

@Demolishun "But you can affect the simulation/reality. They have done experiments [snip]"
If this is true, this should be all over the news. Do you have a reference for these experiments?

@VaderNT Its just quantum theory:

https://sciencedaily.com/releases/...

I have seen other references that say the expectations of the observer will also affect the outcome of an experiment.

@Demolishun yeah okay, in quantum mechanics observation may affect the experiment. That's a good start.

Now I'm interested in these "treating water good or bad" experiments. What does that even mean? Do you flip the bird at the water? And maybe we can get to "prayer works" later... that would be Nobel Prize worthy and make you rich. Not kidding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

@VaderNT I think the stuff I mentioned on water may have been pseudoscience. The guy wouldn't submit for analysis or show his methods. I just found it interesting that he did any experiments. I wish there was more to it.

However, I have to wonder what happens when 1 person, vs 10 people, vs 1 million people can do if they concentrate on a particular outcome.

@VaderNT There is something called the "Law of Attraction" that is talked about in success oriented circles. The movies Star Wars also embodied this in the idea of the Force. These are not scientific concepts, but belief systems. I have no idea on the veracity of these. This is where science ends and religion begins.

As far as hacking reality the only real one I know is the quantum stuff.

@VaderNT Also, you can take a liberal view of "I think therefore I am." to mean "You become what you think about.". Kind of a manifest destiny thing.