Does thinking we live in a simulation say bad things about us?

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Panel from "Are We Living in a Simulation?", featuring Elon Musk as Link. Art by Maki Naro, script by me.
Panel from “Are We Living in a Simulation?”, featuring Elon Musk as Link. Art by Maki Naro, script by me.

I’m obviously a science writer by profession. However, I’m also a lifelong comics fan, starting from reading Peanuts before I got the jokes, continuing through He-Man and the Masters of the Universe mini-comics that came with the action figures, up to today when I read a wide cross-section of comics titles, genres, and media. So, I’ve always wanted to create my own comics, but have been hampered by my lack of drawing ability. (I know, lack of drawing ability hasn’t stopped Scott Adams, but neither has being a misogynistic jerkmobile. But I digress.)

Panel from "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation". Art by Maki Naro, script by me.
Panel from “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation”. Art by Maki Naro, script by me.

The obvious answer is…find an artist to collaborate with. I’m thrilled and privileged to announce a comics collaboration with Maki Naro, one of the better science comics artists around. I wrote and Maki drew a comic for The Nib, about a recent provocative statement tech billionaire Elon Musk made. Musk said it’s most likely that we — and our entire reality — are actually part of a simulation run by a more advanced version of ourselves. Read the comic here, to see why I don’t think this is an optimistic scenario, and why Musk may not be the most objective person when he talks about it.

He recently contributed a regular comic series to Popular Science, along with The Nib and his own long-running science comic Sci-ence. He also writes the award-winning slice-of-life comic Sufficiently Remarkable. Please throw a little money his way.

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