Oh, What a Relief: None of this May Be REAL?
What if the real world isn\u2019t 'REAL' but just some kind of computer program? Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with @Rizstanford\xa0 As Virk () puts it, \u201cThe fundamental question raised by the is: Are we all actually characters living\xa0inside\xa0some kind of giant, massively multi-player online video game, a simulated reality that is so well rendered that we cannot distinguish it from \u2018physical reality\u2019?\u201d These ideas may well have first been most discussed because of the films, but many people have been fascinated with the potential for far longer than video games have been around. suggests a similar concept, as do the teachings of Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Carl Jung, \xa0Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was interested in the while \u2014who frequently imagined such situations in his fiction\u2014firmly believed that the world was a simulation. Virk says the Simulation Hypothesis is not as far-fetched as it may seem. He explains computer science, humanity\u2019s understanding of physics, and mystical traditions going back thousands of years all point to the idea that the world may not be as \u201creal\u201d as people think it is. \u201cThe goal of what we call science," he says, " is to understand the nature of reality. If we are in fact inside a video game, then science becomes a matter of \u2018discovering\u2019 the rules of this video game.\u201d Virk demonstrates that what we call 'reality' is a harder concept to engage with than people admit.