ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Imagine for a second—if everything you've ever known were to exist inside a computer simulation. If that were true, then something would be on the outside, looking in.
Part 1 of this series looks at the theories and the science of whether or not reality is really as it seems. Now, we're asking a far more dangerous question: if we are in a simulation, what's outside it?
Philosophers have wrestled with this idea for thousands of years. From Plato's shadows on a cave wall to Descartes questioning whether anything can be known at all. The suspicion has always been the same: That this world might not be the real one.
Today, the question isn't just philosophical, and one scientist has a theory: that what we call the "observable universe" might not just be a limit of perception. It might be the edge of the system itself. The end of the world, and time. The cosmic horizon we're not supposed to see beyond.
Why are scientists saying the chance we live inside a simulation is anything from 50-50 to almost certain? What can ancient theories tell us about the nature of our existence, and where we are in the universe? And if we are trapped inside something, what lies beyond the boundary? And is there a way out?
