NEW YORK—If you, me and every person and thing in the cosmos were actually characters in some giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it. The idea that the universe is a simulation sounds ...

Last week, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and other cutting-edge companies, took a surprising question at the Code Conference, a technology event in California. What, a ...

What if your thoughts and everything you perceive are nothing but bits in a computer simulation designed to satisfy the curiosity of scientists with capabilities far beyond anything known to human ...

Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at CNET. She covered climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Despite how it may feel some days, we probably aren’t stuck in a ...

The notion that we live as characters in someone else’s video game is irresistible to many, even outside of science fiction bookshelves. Googling the term “simulation hypothesis” returns numerous ...

A new essay explores which conditions must be met for consciousness to exist. At least one of them can't be found in a computer. Would it be desirable for artificial intelligence to develop ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Melvin M. Vopson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Experimental findings will be either boring or extremely dangerous. By Preston Greene Dr. Greene is a philosophy professor. Since the 1990s, researchers in the social and natural sciences have used ...

Elon Musk and others find it plausible that our experiences result from events in a computer simulation, just like the characters in the Matrix movies. An alternative view, supported by both common ...

Mark Robert Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations ...