Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

The first hint of this came with the notion of an evil demon putting fantasies into our heads. How could we tell if these fantasies were real or not? It was updated to the ‘brains in vats’

scenario and from this we got the whole Matrix thing.

But it was when we started doing all this for real that our problems got so much worse. The intention, I suppose, was benign, although intensely stupid. Could we build a universe

better than God’s? No-one actually said it was about this, at least not out loud, but that’s what it boiled down to. Well, the ‘real’ universe, as we once knew it, was something of an enigma. It hinted towards perfection, but the perfection was always not quite achieved. Some even said that there had to be a bit of randomness and chaos in order to keep the whole show on the road – in fact, some even said the universe was BETTER for being slightly flawed. But then, one person’s ‘slightly flawed’ is another person’s nightmare of torture, rape, cruelty and terror. So yes, could we do better? Could we even have a universe each – to ourselves, alone – that was perfect for us? Tailor-made perfection?

And that’s when the simulations really began. And now, who knows, the universe – that is, the real one – may have just been a simulation all along. Maybe we could have coped with just one simulation, and maybe we could even have got to meet its makers one day. But now, who knows who is even a ‘real’ person, or a ‘real’ consciousness, or an artificial person in a real world or a false world inside a real person. And are we living someone’s dream now? Or an alien’s dream? Or a computer’s dream?

Someone’s ‘absolute contingency’ just pops into

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