No, We Don't Live in a F---ing Simulation!

An iconic image from The Matrix: everything is made out of code ZOMG!!!!

It's a fun thought experiment: what if the universe is a simulation, and nothing around us is real? But lately, some of the most powerful people in tech (and politics) have been saying they believe this is true. Why would they think that? To understand, we talk to Damien P. Williams at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Paris Marx, host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast. Spoiler alert: anyone who'd trap us in a simulation would have to be a total sociopath.

References, Links, & Etc.

Damien Patrick Williams is an assistant professor in Philosophy and Data Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Here’s Damien’s Bluesky profile.

Paris Marx is a tech critic, author, podcaster, and international speaker. He hosts tech won’t save us and system crash, writes disconnect, and is the author of road to nowhere.

Here’s Paris on Bluesky, Instagram and Mastodon.

Oxford’s Nick Bostrom (PDF) famously argued that it’s likely we live in a simulation.

Rizwan Virk says physics are weird (quantum, dark matter, etc.) and maybe this means it's a simluation?

Elon Musk says Pong proves this must be a simulation.

Paris Marx talked about the simulation hypothesis in episode four of Data Vampires

More discussions of this idea via Ars Technica, Quantum Zeitgeist, and Scott Aaronson

Will Smith recently posted something weird on his instagram about how he turned down the role of Neo in the first Matrix movie, and kind of left people thinking that he might be starring in the upcoming fifth Matrix film