Man Behind Simulation Hypothesis Warns That Extinction of Humanity Is a Risk We Have to Take
Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Even if you don’t know Nick Bostrom’s name, you’re almost certainly familiar with the idea he’s most famous for. Back in 2003, when he was at Oxford, Bostrom penned an influential philosophical paper with the incredible title of “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Loosely speaking, his argument was that sufficiently advanced civilizations will eventually build sophisticated simulations of their own ancestors — and that, given enough time in the simulation, those simulated beings will develop their own simulation inside the simulation, where a new set of simulated ancestors will do the same thing, ad infinitum. You probably get a sense where this is headed: with all these layers of simulated reality, Bostrom thinks that it’s very unlikely that us humans are actually living in the original “base” reality. Instead, we’re statistically probably in some tranche of an Escher-esque cosmic videogame. Needless to say, the whole thing sparked decades of debate. Big names including Elon Musk have …
