Like the Czechoslovak communists, the Silicon Valley libertarians first promised a brave new world, then told us that there were no alternatives, then invited us to live inside a screen. Like the communists, they passed from great certainty about utopia to total nihilism about everything, to a world in which “everything is shit.” And then they ask us if we are not, perhaps, living in a computer simulation ourselves—or, in an older language, inside Plato’s cave. Unfortunately, wealthy and important people who speak of simulations are searching for an excuse to be irresponsible. If we decide
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