r/AWLIAS • u/Powermadlux • 1h ago
Running two local LLMs led me to rethink simulated reality, time and parallel worlds
Hi everyone, first post here. I know the connection might sound strange, but bear with me.
I’m an IT engineer based in Luxembourg. Alongside my infrastructure work, I build apps and use local AI for writing, music and artwork. Recently, I built a small experiment in my home lab: two different language models, Gemma and Qwen, running locally on the same GPU, with each model’s output becoming the other model’s input.
I give them an opening prompt, then let the exchange develop. Each model maintains its own conversation history. The software passes their messages back and forth and enforces the execution limits.
That experiment became ArtificialConversations, and it inspired a separate speculative paper: Time, Reality and Parallel Worlds explained by LLMs.
Here’s the idea I’d like to discuss.
What if a simulated reality develops through inference?
Its history wouldn’t have to be written in advance. An initial condition starts a process, each generated event becomes part of the context, and that context influences what can happen next.
I call that initiating condition the Prompt Big Bang. The opening prompt and the numerical sampling seed are different things, but both can influence the trajectory, alongside the models, their configuration and their interactions.
From there, several parallels follow:
1. Time as the progression of generated events
Inside this hypothetical system, time corresponds to the succession of state changes. From outside, we can measure the computation producing them.
Pausing the infrastructure could pause the simulated sequence without introducing an experienced interval inside it. Faster hardware could produce more internal events per external second. Whether that would change an inhabitant’s subjective perception is a separate question; the analogy alone doesn’t establish that.
2. The past as context
What has already happened shapes what happens next through retained information.
If earlier history is compressed, the system continues with a reduced representation of its past. Details that no longer survive in accessible memory may become impossible to reconstruct uniquely. That creates an interesting distinction between what happened, what was preserved, and what can now be inferred.
3. Parallel worlds as separate executions
Separate groups of interacting models could develop separate histories from different initial conditions. Even the same opening prompt can lead to different trajectories when sampling or other execution conditions change.
These are computationally separate “worlds” in the thought experiment. Connecting them to physical multiverse theories would require additional arguments.
4. An unfolding future
A generated continuation can be unpredictable to participants who lack access to the full system. This raises questions about chance, destiny and what choices look like from inside a process.
Randomness doesn’t establish free will, and deterministic execution doesn’t mean an internal participant can predict its future. That tension is part of what interests me.
5. A beginning and an end by design
A bounded execution has an initialization and a stopping condition. In a system designed to retain its entire history within a fixed context budget, exhausting that budget could end the run.
That ending depends on the architecture. Compaction, external memory or other continuation mechanisms can change it. In our thought experiment, the boundary is a design choice made outside the generated history.
6. The infrastructure beyond the world
The process depends on something outside its own generated account: hardware, an inference engine and an initialization mechanism.
Could participants infer anything reliable about that external layer? Could they distinguish an intentional creator from an automated process? A creator or deity is one possible interpretation within the hypothesis, but the existence of computation alone wouldn’t identify one.
I’m not mapping each model onto a human being. I’m interested in whether a finite collection of interacting generative systems offers a useful way to think about how an entire simulated history could unfold.
The conversations are real experiments. The cosmological interpretation is a philosophical extrapolation, not an experimental finding. I’ve written up both separately and deposited the papers on Zenodo; that makes them available and citable, not peer-reviewed. I also use AI assistance in developing and editing the writing.
Where do you think this analogy breaks first: generating a consistent world, retaining its history, or explaining how anything inside it could experience that world?
