As though we don’t have enough to think about in 2022. A growing number of ridiculously smart people think that every human being on Earth — including you, including me — is likely living in a computer simulation. But like Neo in The Matrix, we just don’t know it.

When Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born professor at the University of Oxford, published a paper in 2003 that set forth this hypothesis, he sent shock waves through the academic world. Since that time, the idea has become a staple of popular culture. Many now think it’s more than possible that we and our reality are the results of a computer simulation created by an advanced civilization. Among them are business magnate Elon Musk who has acknowledged his personal fascination with the idea. Musk has stated publicly his conviction that the possibility that we are living in base reality, i.e., one that is not simulated, is one in billions.

In the singularly uncatchily titled Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? Elon Musk & Nick Bostrom Think It’s Likely, author Stephen Hawley Martin [Life After Death, Powerful Evidence You Will Never Die] writes that Bostrom’s theory would be sound, and we would have to accept his logic as well as his conclusion that we are likely living in a computer simulation if it were based on a valid premise. But Martin maintains that it is not. Martin does believe, however, that the reality we share is similar in many ways to the one Bostrom postulates, and that it very likely differs greatly from your world view and that of most people alive today.

Martin cites research from highly-credible institutions, including the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Duke University, and the University of California at Berkeley to argue that Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom’s theory that we may be living in a computer simulation is based on an erroneous premise.

“It’s easy to see how Bostrom came to the conclusion that we are probably living in a simulation,” writes Martin. “Our reality does appear to have been created digitally. The DNA in every cell of our bodies, for example, contains a strand of what appears to be digital code that stretched out would be more than six feet long. But the research I cite clearly indicates conscious beings cannot be created by a computer.”

Martin went on to say, “The problem Bostrom and other scientists suffer from today is that traditional science is based on a premise that has them in a box they do not seem to be able to break out of. Until they do, they will never be able to develop a clear understanding of physical reality.” ◊

You can buy the book here.