What If Reality Isn’t Real?
The rise of the simulation theory tells us a lot about how we live now
Maybe it’s best to start at the end.
“I’m sorry, I’m running a bit short of time,” I say casually on the phone to Robin Hanson before the last question of my last interviewee. “Is there anything we haven’t covered that you think is important to say about this?”
Hanson, who is, among other things, a professor of economics and a research associate at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, speaks extraordinarily fast. Throughout our interview, his answers have tumbled out before I’d even finished asking the questions. Transcribing our conversation, I had to drastically slow down the recording to keep up with him. But at this question, he took a long pause.
“Uhh,” he says, drawing the word out into almost a sigh. “This topic — this topic breaks people.”
Have you started to get the feeling lately that nothing is real? That the world seems to be testing your credulity or cracking around the edges? You’re not alone.
Recently I’ve had this weird feeling, kind of like I’m the eponymous character in The Truman Show, in the sense that I feel like I’m living in a world that seems real, but one that I can also sense cracking around the edges, failing to…
