He did make a Matrix allusion here, however, he soon clarified that the image and the reality we live in must be different.
We see that we are nothing more than physical bodies stuck in liquid-filled tanks in the film, but according to Nick, we don’t even have a body in real life since we are nothing more than particles of our brain spread over the brain’s network of circuits. Rich Terrile agrees with this viewpoint, claiming that we are on the verge of being able to properly produce a digital simulation of that magnitude in the next ten years or so.
What’s so implausible about believing that this has already happened in a more sophisticated culture. If we’re already so close? Terrile himself refers to Moore’s Law, which claims that computers double their capacity every year. Based on this, we will be able to compute every live human life on Earth and replicate it at our leisure in around 80 years.
This is a bleak world we’re staring at, but as far as we can tell. It’s the awful reality we live in after all.
