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Why it matters that you realize you’re in a computer simulation

What if our universe is something like a computer simulation, or a virtual reality, or a video game? The proposition that the universe is actually a computer simulation was furthered in a big way during the 1970s, when John Conway famously proved that if you take a binary system, and subject that system to only a few rules (in the case of Conway’s experiment, four); then that system creates something rather peculiar.

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These Are the Droids We’re Looking For

Could the planet’s next catastrophe be averted by R2-D2? That’s the idea behind the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a robot Olympiad designed to create autonomous machines that can go where no man can or should go—nuclear disaster sites, minefields, Montauk over Labor Day weekend—and fix all the toxic messes we make. The stakes are $3.5 million. Oh, and possibly the future of mankind.

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