(2017-02-27) Did The Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living In A Simulation

Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation (Digital Philosophy)?

Last night’s Oscar bizarreness was not just bizarre but bizarre in a way that is typical of this entirely bizarre time... was weirdly like that of . . . Election Night (Donald Trump).

And so both of these bizarre events put one in mind of a simple but arresting thesis: that we are living in the Matrix, and something has gone wrong with the controllers. This idea was, I’m told, put forward first and most forcibly by the N.Y.U. philosopher David Chalmers: what is happening lately, he says, is proof that we are living in a computer simulation and that something has recently gone haywire within it. The people or machines or aliens who are supposed to be running our lives are having some kind of breakdown. There’s a glitch, and we are in it.

There may be not merely a glitch in the Matrix. There may be a Loki, a prankster, suddenly running it.

“You can’t do that to them,” the wiser, older Architect said. “Oh, c’mon,” the kid said. “It’ll be funny. Let’s see what they do!”

The implicit dread logic is plain. If we are among the simulated minds, then we exist in order to be stimulated minds: we exist in order for the controllers to run experiments.