Simulation 2: Zoom’s face-smoothing, chatbot therapists, Trinitarianism, and evil as counterfeit

Hello, and welcome to Matters of Life and Death. Today we’re going back to our conversation about simulation for part two of this re-broadcast. Last week’s episode discussed the growth of deep fakes and other digital technologies which allow us to simulate human faces and speech with increasing accuracy. We thought about how these developments had been presaged for decades by sci fi, such as Philip K Dick’s iconic novels, but also by the influential yet eccentric French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard sketched out four phases of simulated reality, beginning with a first phase of accurate, faithful representation where an image acted as a sacrament. We’re going to pick up the discussion as John explains the next phase in Baudrillard’s analysis.

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com