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« "Wesley does not look at the screen, where the president looks up at the sky and continues: —The important thing is this: a hypertechnical civilization can simulate a thousand times more "false civilizations" than there are "real ones". Which means that if you take a random "thinking brain," mine, yours, it has a 999 out of 1,000 chance of being a virtual brain and one in 1,000 of being a real brain. In other words, the "I think so I am" of the Descartes Method Speech is obsolete. It's more like, "I think, so I'm almost certainly a program." Descartes 2.0, to use a formula from a topologist of the group. Are you following me, president? The president doesn't answer anything. Wesley observes him, who keeps his air sleathy and furious, and concludes, "You see, Mr. Chairman, I knew this hypothesis and to this day I have estimated a one in ten chance that our existence is just a program on a hard drive. With this "anomaly," I'm pretty sure. This would also explain Fermi's paradox: if we have never encountered extraterrestrials, it is because in our simulation, their existence is not programmed. I even think we are facing some kind of test. To go further, it may be because we can now consider the idea of being programs that the simulation offers us this test. And we better do it, or at least make it interesting. "And why?" Silveria asks. "Because if we fail, those responsible for this simulation may well turn everything off." (The anomaly, page 169) »

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