If you believe that the universe is mechanistic, it is effectively a giant computer. We could be living in a kind of much more local simulation than we thought where maybe the solar system is real, but the rest of it is not. I do think though that the notion that this might have been that our entire reality may have been a kind of whimsical execution makes us feel kind of trivial.
Last year, Rufus sat down with philosopher David Chalmers to talk about the allure of virtual reality, whether robots will ever achieve consciousness, and the likelihood that we’re living in a simulation (David thinks it’s about 25 percent). It was a fascinating, freewheeling conversation, and we left large chunks of it on the cutting room floor. Now, though, with ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms taking the world by storm, those unaired sections, many of which were about the ethics of artificial intelligence, feel super relevant. So today, we’re sharing our complete interview with David. Buckle up. It’s a wild ride.