[ WP ] It suddenly becomes possible to gain XP and level up in the real world , but you can only do so by getting kills .

There was an explanation. 
 
 Fermi had latched onto the beginning of the thread back in 1950, then Moravec and Bostrom gave it a tug, and the whole nasty thing came unraveled. 
 
 We had speculated this was the case, before the first pop-up Window materialized in front the face of that SEAL in Bahrain, asking him to spend skill points. 
 
 We had speculated, but had n't considered the consequences. 
 
 There were a couple of immediate concerns, other than the possibility of mass psychosis. One: spending points *worked*. If they were spent in strength, the person became stronger. If it was spent in intelligence, a person's recall, three-dimensional reasoning, and logical capabilities went up. Where were these augmentations coming from? Clearly, the world was being changed. These *people* were being changed. How could this be? Energy was entering a closed system, without any visible source or entropic byproduct. 
 
 This meant that physics was now broken. People did n't panic about this *nearly as much* as they should have, lamented the physicists, but few understood the finer points of the conservation of energy. 
 
 Second, upon leveling, all of a person's injuries were healed. 
 
 Physicians made a secret pact fairly early on to not reveal that'leveling' also healed *underlying* conditions as well, ( as they evidently counted as'status effects' ) to stop what would surely be a murderous rampage by the terminally ill, but the secret got out anyway. The societal consequences were... extreme. 
 
 It only got worse when it became clear that, while leveling could cure cancer, paralysis, and end-stage AIDS, it could n't *fix* genetic conditions, all it could do was reverse the symptoms. To the horror of all, it became clear that they would have to level *periodically*, if they wanted to stay alive. Desperation overwhelmed ethics in some places. In others, the ill, who did n't wish to kill, would offer themselves as sacrifices to their fellow patients. 
 
 The last terrifying prospect emerged, when it became clear that the Window was an unimpeachable way of establishing guilt. A person's'level' could be seen by *anyone*. The ethical ramifications of this were *staggering*. If a person was high-level, he or she was often held indefinitely, without trial, unless they could prove they were a surgeon, or some other *legitimately* lethal professional. 
 
 What was worse, the window would appear in front of those people who were *incrementally* responsible for someone's death. Windows popped in front of barmen and clerks of convenience store owners who sold cigarettes. They popped up in front of CEOs who cut wages and hours, who sent jobs to overseas factories where conditions were so bad, workers leaped off the roof to their deaths. In the past, the papers called those'suicides'. 
 
 The Window told a different story. 
 
 The CEOs, a demographic mostly composed mostly of sociopaths, were n't much bothered by this. The tormented ones were the public. While the XP rewards were reduced to triviality by some unknown mechanic, ( perhaps due to the *sheer quantity involved* ) they were constantly harried by the chime and floating numbers, the constant parade of names from the Third World. ( who died as a result of economic practices and governmental policies; things that, as citizens of democracies, they bore responsibility for ) Presented with such transcendent and indisputable proof of their evil-doing, hundreds of thousands of the more moral citizens took to drinking. 
 
 The rest grit their teeth, and tried to ignore it. It was impossible. Governments an businesses found, to their chagrin, that lying about human costs was now untenable. Their profitability took a strong dip, but the world, funnily enough, improved. 
 
 Back to Fermi. Fermi had a paradox: given that the conditions for the formation of life are actually fairly common, and the incredible scale of time we have access to thanks to the relativistic speed of light, why do n't we see more evidence of alien civilizations? A physicist named Fermat had a principle: a seemingly teleological one: Light takes the shortest path, to it's ultimate objective. How does it know it's objective? Einstein had a brain buster of his own: light, no matter the frame of reference, has the same velocity. Moravec and Bostrom put a bow on it: 
 
 All these things are true, because we are living in a simulation. 
 
 Think about it, they said. An advanced civilization could easily simulate consciousness, or a universe. In fact, it would probably simulate *hundreds* of them. Given that, it's more likely than not that you are living in a simulation than a `` real'' universe, at any given time. All you need to look for, to prove it to yourself, are signs of computing optimization, such as simplifying physics, or narrowing the scope of simulation to a single populated world... 
 
 Fermat. Einstein. Fermi. 
 
 And now, there's even more proof. 
 
 That brings me to us. We're the ones who intend to change the rules of this game. If reality is a simulation, that means we can change it. Make it better. We started small, but we're getting *bigger*. 
 
... We're [ r/LifeHacks. ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/ )
