LOGOS AND LOG-ON:

[W]hat if computers one day were to become so powerful, and these simulations so sophisticated, that each simulated "person" in the computer code were as complicated an individual as you or me, to such a degree that these people believed they were actually alive? And what if this has already happened?

In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization. He argued that if you believe that our civilization will one day run many sophisticated simulations concerning its ancestors, then you should believe that we're probably in an ancestor simulation right now. His reasoning? If people eventually develop simulation technology -- no matter how long that takes -- and if they're interested in creating simulations of their ancestors, then simulated people with experiences just like ours will vastly outnumber unsimulated people.

If most people are simulations, Professor Bostrom concluded, the odds are good that we ourselves are simulations.

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