Reality Plus

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The main slogan in this book, Reality Plus, is virtual reality is genuine reality. I think by the time you get to, you know, community building in a virtual world, everything happening there is real. It's digital, but it's still real. And what's happening there can have really serious meaning for you. People have built deep and serious relationships in virtual world, virtual worlds. They've got projects. Ultimately, the virtual world could end up being continuous with the physical world in the kind of meaning it has to us.

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.