[extropy-chat] god delusion and simulachron-3

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:54 AM 12/7/2006 -0800, spike wrote:

>Daniel Galouye
>in Counterfeit World, have even suggested (and I cannot think how to
>disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly
>superior civilization."  Also known as Simulachron-3, this book was
>published in 1964.  So was Galouye the first to suggest this?

No. Fred Pohl, "The Tunnel Under the World", Galaxy magazine, Jan 
1955 provided a homely version

http://www.625.org.uk/ootu/bbcents/bbces208.htm gives a precis

(which is closer to Galouye's than to Dawkins' misleadingly cosmic 
description thereof). See also, for a more mythic version, my "The 
Sea's Furthest End" (1964); or rather, for the love o' dog, don't 
see. I was 18 or 19 when I wrote it and it's awful. But also any 
number of earlier stories such as Heinlein's "Them" and "The 
Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag".

Damien Broderick