Once upon a relative spacetime, there was a universe. In this universe, there was a planet. This planet resembled our planet, except that it had only one continent, which was about the size of Australia.   

On this one-continent planet, there lived relatively-intelligent organic beings. These beings looked just like the people here on this planet, in this universe, so that is why I will refer to these beings as "people." 

Now, quite remarkably, these people spoke a language that sounded just like modern American English, with a slight Midwestern tinge. Yet this was all just a matter of chance, and there's no need for you, dear reader, to worry about it. 

As to how these people organized themselves, they had a democratic government. However, unlike the situation on our planet, there was only one government, corresponding to the one and only nation. Now this fair, democratic government regularly scheduled morbid “games” in order to thin out the population, thereby increasing per capita resources. 

In the most recently-devised game, the government would randomly select, and then imprison, one hundred people. Then that evening, each prisoner would put his or her name into a hat. Then the prison administrator, a man named Harold, would draw a name from the hat. The corresponding prisoner would be taken aside, and then the prison guards would execute the remaining 99 prisoners. Then the following morning, the government would randomly select 99 more individuals, to bring the total number of prisoners back to one hundred. This game would be played for one thousand days, and would thereby eliminate 99,000 people, while providing suspenseful, yet wholesome, entertainment for the rest of the society. 

Now in this society, there lived a man named “Adam," and as luck would have it, on the very first day of the game, Adam was selected to be one of the first one hundred prisoners. Of course both Adam and his wife knew that Adam would not survive until the end of the game, and they crumpled into each other while weeping and gasping. 

Yet when the truck arrived, Adam got into it willingly. He did not struggle, because he knew that doing so would make the situation all that much more painful for his wife, whom he loved more than himself.   

That evening, as the prisoners waited to find out whose name would be drawn from the hat, Adam’s anxiety provoked tingling sensations in his scalp. Then he thought about how the tingling was a vestigial instinct from the time in which his very, very long-ago predator-facing ancestors became bigger in appearance if they happened to have fur that stood on end during perilous times. Then he thought 

“Why the hell am I thinking about this, when I’m about to die, and I could be thinking about my wife--the one woman in this goddamn, blighted world who loves me?”

Then Harold, our beloved prison administrator, drew a piece of paper from the hat, and read out the name "Adam." 

Adam replayed the sounds in his mind in order to be certain. (Incidentally, he was the only person in this entire world who had a name that sounded anything like “Adam,” so he didn't have to worry about similar-sounding-names confusion.) 

As soon as he possibly could, Adam called his wife to tell her the news, knowing that it would give her great joy. Then they wept, appearing much like the previous time they had wept, except that this time their emotions were at the other end of the spectrum. Then they praised gods that neither of them believed in, and then they wept more.    

Yet the positions of Adam and his wife in the relative spacetime of their universe continued to change, and eventually they found themselves squarely in the morning of the next day. Then evening arrived, and Adam knew that it would finally and actually be over for him. And then, just like the evening before, Adam's scalp wouldn’t stop tingling, and this reminded him once again of his primitive ancestors. But then, astonishingly, Adam heard his name again. He thought to himself “there’s no fucking way,” but then he thought, “well I guess there’s one way in 10,000.” 

Then he remembered the other ways, and he knew these other ways were far likelier to have occurred. His wife, invigorated by the joy of the previous evening, had probably woken up in the morning and said to herself “I will not let my husband die.”

And then she had selected one of the ways, other than random chance, to make sure that Adam would live.  

She was a clever woman, and so perhaps she had sent a topless photo of herself to Harold, along with the note “More to come if Adam’s name is drawn tonight.” Or perhaps she had slept with him, along with a similar promise of more to come. Or maybe she had just done it the easy way with money. There were all kinds of possibilities.  

When he called her to tell her the "news," she said 

“Well whaddayaknow?” 

Yes, I’m sorry to say that Adam’s wife, although clever, did not have a poker face or a poker voice or a poker personality. That was just the way she was, and nothing could be done about it.  

But well whaddayaknow indeed, because Adam’s name was drawn from the hat all the remaining 998 evenings. And on each of those 998 evenings his scalp tingled, and he thought the same thoughts about primitive ancestors. Yes, I'm serious. It happened each and every horrific and paralyzing time.

When Adam finally returned home, he told his wife that the one thing he hadn’t fucked up in his life was when he had asked her to marry him. Then she told him that accepting his proposal was the one thing she hadn’t fucked up in her life as well. Yet Adam knew that there were many things she hadn’t fucked up, and he could tell that she was realizing this was the case even as she was saying otherwise. (Again, this poor woman had nothing poker-like in her at all.)

By the following weekend, Adam was back to playing actual games of poker with his buddies. He explained that his wife had obviously done something after the first evening. He didn't even need to point out that his chances of survival would otherwise have been one in 99,900. 

But then Adam’s friend, Bob, said

“Actually, Adam, you’re not counting your bad luck in getting into that first group of one hundred, out of our whole entire society. And as far as what happened in prison, there are probably infinite other universes out there in which similar games are played. But in those other universes, the equivalent Adams were not so fortunate, and those Adams aren’t around anymore to tell this type of story. So in actuality, there was nothing going on behind the scenes. I mean you’ve got a great wife and all, but your assumption of intelligence behind what happened is faulty.”

Adam momentarily wondered if Bob was serious. But then he knew that Bob was, in truth, serious--because, just like Adam’s wife, Bob had one of the worst poker faces ever.

***

Dear readers, I must now ask you the following question: 

Do you think it is more likely that there is or is not an intelligence “below/above” our universe?

And, OK, simulation hypothesis folks, I’m with you. That is, I literally count myself among our number. We say 

“Of course there’s an intelligence 'below/above' our universe. It’s a programmer, possibly organic like ourselves or an artificial superintelligence or a merged organic-ASI mind. Perhaps the intelligence, if it’s an ASI or merged being is running the simulation out of itself just to experience a universe. This is beautiful, and it is the idea I happen to put my money on. 

But you do realize what we’ve done, right? We have dodged the fundamental question, albeit somewhat cleverly.  Yet now we have get back to the question, worded slightly differently this time:

Do you think it is more likely that there is or is not an intelligence “below/above” the base universe(s)? 

Many people adamantly refuse to discuss this question. They say such discussions are "pointless" on account of dealing with a topic that is "uncomfortable," and/or "unknowable," and/or "imaginary." 

Yet keep in mind that people also dismissed the concept of imaginary numbers for millennia. They said 

"It is pointless to discuss, let alone think about, something imaginary because of its imaginary nature. Besides, such discussions make me feel uncomfortable, and they cannot lead back to anything that is knowable anyway." 

But when, finally, they "played with" imaginary numbers, these numbers often cancelled each other out in a new world of mathematical proofs. And then what happened? These mathematical proofs led to frontier and fundamental new truths about the nature of existence. 

So perhaps it’s worth at least thinking about, and even discussing, that most fundamental of fundamental questions. I don't know the answer to the question, but maybe that is the point.