From Mises Blog 2006:
Don’t worry–you don’t exist: Or, why long-range planning is really impossible
November 6, 2006 by Stephan Kinsella
I previously blogged about one of the papers by attorney Peter Jenkins. Now, from the “uhhhhh…. HO-kay” files comes his latest, in the Journal of Futures Studies, Historical Simulations – Motivational, Ethical and Legal Issues. Abstract:
A future society will very likely have the technological ability and the motivation to create large numbers of completely realistic historical simulations and be able to overcome any ethical and legal obstacles to doing so. It is thus highly probable that we are a form of artificial intelligence inhabiting one of these simulations. To avoid stacking (i.e. simulations within simulations), the termination of these simulations is likely to be the point in history when the technology to create them first became widely available, (estimated to be 2050). Long range planning beyond this date would therefore be futile.
Shades of Douglas Adams! Forget “in the long run we are all dead”–we are just a simulation. So, no need to worry.
Update: The Universe as a Hologram: Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?
Update 2: Our world may be a giant hologram
Update 3: Our Universe May Be a Giant Hologram.
Updates:
- Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network
- Our Universe Is A Gigantic And Wonderfully Detailed Holographic Illussion
- More absurdity: Reality is a computer projection: physicists: What we call reality might actually be the output of a program running on a cosmos-sized quantum computer
- Are We Living Inside a Computer Simulation? Ray Villard, Discovery NewsDate: 17 December 2012 Time: 10:48 AM ET
- And: The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time.
- Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram.
- We All Might Be Living in an Infinite Hologram.
- There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram
- You are a Simulation & Physics Can Prove It: George Smoot at TEDxSalford
- Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It’s ‘Very Likely’ The Universe Is A Simulation
- Odds are we’re living in a simulation, says Elon Musk: But that’s better than being dead, By Rich McCormick,
- Philip K. Dick Theorizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Computer-Programmed Reality”
And the Internet is a series of tubes, don’t forget.
So, there IS a God, then?