technicat reviewed Reality+ by David J. Chalmers
if this is a simulation, god is a drunk programmer
4 stars
This book is in the tradition of hefty philosophy tomes so it took me over a year (maybe two) to finish, and now I forgot most of what I read (so I'm probably going to do at least a cursory second pass as a refresher), but at least I finished it before A. C. Grayling's The History of Philosphy (I'm in the home stretch of that one, meaning somewhere in the last five hundred pages). It does have the advantage of applying philosophy to VR and questions like are we in a simulation (you may have heard Elon Musk bring up this topic but don't listen to him anymore) and if we are, so what. And there are plenty of references to pop culture (and by pop culture, I mean nerd culture) such as The Matrix and science fiction works of the Snow Crash ilk going way back. While well-written, …
This book is in the tradition of hefty philosophy tomes so it took me over a year (maybe two) to finish, and now I forgot most of what I read (so I'm probably going to do at least a cursory second pass as a refresher), but at least I finished it before A. C. Grayling's The History of Philosphy (I'm in the home stretch of that one, meaning somewhere in the last five hundred pages). It does have the advantage of applying philosophy to VR and questions like are we in a simulation (you may have heard Elon Musk bring up this topic but don't listen to him anymore) and if we are, so what. And there are plenty of references to pop culture (and by pop culture, I mean nerd culture) such as The Matrix and science fiction works of the Snow Crash ilk going way back. While well-written, it's still a philosophy book and it provides a history of philosophy which is interesting except when it's not (philosophers seem to spend a lot of time debating whether something qualifies as something without defining what that something is, which just reminds me of drunk college), and if feels like every other page a new thought experiment is introduced - which I'm generally not a fan of. In my opinion, the last good thought experiment was by Einstein, but from philosophers they're not experiments, they're just thoughts, resembling bad sci-fi (so if you don't have the motivation to slog through this, then just read Snow Crash). I've worked a few video games and a Second Life-like virtual world, so during discussions of how simulations are constructed and often optimized (a typical game will use lower fidelity rendering and simulation for areas farther away from the player or not even simulate non-visible areas at all), I felt it was generally correct but lacked insight someone might have from being involved in one of those projects. Nevertheless, there are some pretty cool, or at least wacky concepts discussed, like Boltzmann brains, and this being a very modern philosophy book, the comprehensive bibliographic notes at the end have a bunch of web links, including to that time Musk was playing philosopher, before he started playing government advisor. Ah, those were the days. If it's any consolation, maybe this is all just a simulation.
