Imagine a video game in which there is you, the player, and a bunch of other characters. You and other characters can only move around and swing a sword. The game is essentially a bunch of images (sprites) and code (scripts) that make the images move. The parallel to the real world would be quantum particles and laws of physics that make the particles interact in a certain way. The other characters react to you, each other, and the environment as dictated by their programming, but your character is special. The existence of the character that you can control introduces a third fundamental part of the game: input. So, translating to the real world, we would have the quantum laws, particles, and some sort of input that you can produce.
But most people, of course, see other people as also acting based on their inputs, so our reality is not a single player, but a multiplayer game. In this game, every person “controls” their organisms, questioning what the goal of the game is, whether it is collecting resources, surviving, or receiving comfort. But “single player” and “multiplayer” metaphors are not the only ways to interpret reality. I don’t think it is either of these. I think that “the game” of life is not a game at all; it’s a movie. A very high-quality movie, where you can not only see and hear in the highest quality imaginable, but you can also smell, touch, feel, and taste. You can even feel emotions and feel like you are making the decisions that your character is scripted to make.
