To the Editor:

Re “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?,” by Preston Greene (Sunday Review, Aug. 11):

Let me get this straight. I’m neither real nor alive and neither are you. Nor is anyone we know. Nor is our planet or for that matter our entire universe. We’re all merely computer simulations created by an advanced civilization in some sort of weird experiment that they’re conducting for reasons best known to themselves.

But woe to us if we ever manage to prove it. The computer simulation experiment would then become pointless to the advanced civilization and it would decide to end it. And — poof! — there would go you, me, everyone we know, our planet and for that matter our entire universe.

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already.

Nancy Stark

New York

To the Editor:

I was at first horrified to read that we may be living out our lives in a computer simulation similar to The Sims, where my daughter spent countless hours encouraging the butler to burn down the house just to watch mayhem and chaos unfold. Since that’s a somewhat accurate description of our current world, I began to wonder if this simulation we’re all in had another purpose.

What if, instead of the conclusion reached in the article — that humanity would be terminated upon learning of the simulation — we are all instead rewarded for achieving this higher level of sentience with the next level of being? Like leveling-up in Dungeons & Dragons, we could gain infinitely greater capabilities, insights and rewards; we would no longer be stuck in this recursive cycle of mayhem and chaos.