This book is a serious exploration of the simulation hypothesis, an idea which is mostly treated as either an excuse for an edgy nihilism or dismissed out of hand as either irrelevant or absurd. Charmers, in the great philosophical tradition of taking strange ideas seriously, deeply explores the implications and plausibility of the simulation hypothesis and uses this to draw broader conclusions about core philosophical questions in ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. On it's own terms I think as AI becomes increasingly important it will become increasingly important to think well about virtual realities on their own terms, and this book is an excellent start for that, as a well as a acting as an extended thought experiment to shed like on philosophical questions more broadly.

I've tried and failed with philosophy before, and this book hasn't improved my outlook. It's a long read, and because the author expects at least some readers to dip in and out, a number of ideas are repeated in slightly different guises. For those of us who expect to read cover-to-cover, that becomes wearisome. And like a lot of philosophy, it often seems to be little more than clever wordplay that seems to revolve around a definition of something. It is an easy to read, well structured volume, so maybe some of the chapters will be useful to you: I found the discussion of ethics and the trolley problem idea-provoking.