Re: Simulation Argument

From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Sun May 21 2006 - 13:09:44 MDT


At 10:58 AM 5/21/2006 -0400, Keith Henson wrote:

>The modern concept of simulations goes back at least as far as
>_Simulacron-3_, 1964 by Daniel F. Galouye ...
>
>"Probably influenced directly by Philip K. Dick's Truman Show-esque
>novel Time out of Joint, Simulacron-3 can be rightly regarded as the
>first description of virtual reality, even if the topic was already
>treated more than two thousand years ago in Plato's allegory of the cave."
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3

No; oddly enough, TIME OUT OF JOINT is one of Phil's fictions where
the ontological discontinuity actually *isn't* the case; it is an
induced hallucination in the protagonist.

Before the Galouye (which is certainly a significant elaboration of
the simulation posit) was Fred Pohl's extremely pivotal story "The
Tunnel Under the World", GALAXY magazine, Jan 1955.

I've played with versions of the idea in two recent novels,
GODPLAYERS and K-MACHINES.

Damien Broderick



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