Description:
One of the Washington Post's Best Nonfiction Books of 2022
A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it.
Brief description: David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. He wrote The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World, and lives in New York.
Review Quotes: In this accessible yet thought-provoking book, readers will encounter everything from Plato's allegory of the cave and John Wheeler's it-from-bit hypothesis to how mind and body might interact in virtual worlds, whether reality is a mathematical structure, and whether we might just be Boltzmann brains floating in a dream world. Chalmers also tackles techno-centric questions like whether smartphones extend our minds, whether the Internet is making us smart or stupid, the threat of deepfakes and alternative facts, and whether there can be an objective reality in a multiverse of virtual worlds.--Jennifer Ouellette "Ars Technica"