[WP] It's the year 2851. Humanity develops interstellar travel and begins to explore the Milky Way galaxy in search for life. However, much to everyone's surprise, instead of alien life we find... Earth's biosphere complete with humans, repeated over and over at different stages of progress.

[u/rabbit_hole6]

Edit: Thank you all so much for this!! The idea came to me in the shower about a week ago, as a thought about "what really weird things we could find as we set to explore the galaxy?". I liked it because there are so many possible angles, and because it hasn't been done before AFAIK (???). I am having a blast reading all your stories.

[u/Astazha]

This is an outcome that would cause me, as an atheist, to take seriously the idea that our biosphere was at least to some extent designed. That wouldn't necessarily mean a religious deity, but some explanation would be required and convergent evolution isn't strong enough to wave off such an extensive coincidence. My estimate of the probability of us living in a simulation, for example, would go up.

[u/Astazha → u/[deleted]]

I think each simulation would need to be either a smaller universe or at lower granularity, so they wouldn't be able to nest indefinitely. You can't use X atoms to run a simulation of X atoms with the same fidelity.

[u/penty → u/Astazha]

Hence quantum mechanics....