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Are we living in a computer simulation? |
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Are we living in a computer simulation? It may not be a question you ask yourself too often unless you read a lot of science fiction, but one researcher has spent several years asking himself that question, and has decided that the answer is...a definite maybe.
The idea comes from Nick Bostrum, a philosopher at Oxford University. He says that just a few basic assumptions make it almost likely that our entire reality is actually just someone else's hobby -- that we're living inside some amazing supercomputer built by a civilization eons more advanced than ourselves. As John Tierney reports in the New York Times,
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.
What do you think? Is this possible? Does it keep you awake at night thinking? Check out the New York Times' take on this (Registration required) to learn more, and then record your comments below.
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