I've always loved The Thirteenth Floor a bit more than The Matrix, too. The story is tighter and more constrained, and Vincent D'Onofrio and Gretchen Mol are simply so outstanding. I didn't realize the outside, ie, "real" world was in 2024!

As far as simulations go, my suspicion is that that interest really goes back to what, I suspect, may be the evolutionary distinction between us and our earlier ancestors, the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, Homo erectus, et al.

When did language develop? The Neanderthals must have had it, as their Mousterian tool technology seems to require conceptual training. Also, the Neanderthal hyoid bone, which gives the tongue exquisite control to make complex sounds, is indistinguishable from our own.

But (perhaps) we may have developed an important ability, language-wise, which they did not have. I call it the metaphor hypothesis, ie, we have the ability to, in our brains and in our speech, to say A=B. A ballerina is a butterfly. We understand what that means so naturally that we never even stop to think that perhaps the wiring in our brains that makes really a rather remarkable thing possible was not shared by our earlier cousins.

And once you have that ability, codified in language, everything opens up: Stories around the campfire, Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, Beowulf, every mythology and supernatural deity. A=B. Homo sapiens humans love to invent stories. Does OUR world = another?

And, of course, elephants all the way down.