When you say that virtual worlds are real and authentic, to what extent is that just a semantic argument? We look at the physical world like ets, made up of a bunch of atoms. There not particularly intrinsically meaningful in themselves, but they add up to very important things that we can interact with. Think everything that we do of the physical world, we can do in principle, with a digital world. Maybe the digital world is ultimately made of bits. But once these bits get arranged into the right kind of structures, we can likewise invest them with meaning and reality the same way we do with the physical world.
Philosopher David Chalmers reckons there’s a 25% chance that we are living in a simulation. And he’s OK with it.
David's new book is "Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy."
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