How will the world end

[Blarg]

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I just read the NY times article, and I'm not quite sure I understand...I'm sure you know more, so let me know if any of this sounds right.

As humans with intelligence and technology, we anticipate that some day we'll have computers that have tremendous processing power. So tremendous that we'd be able to run simulations of humanity's entire existence. At that point we realize if we can do something that extraordinary, it's really not extraordinary at all and we may just be a simulation ourselves. Our ability to create this suggests that we may just be a part of the same thing in the first place.

Is that the idea?

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That sounds more like a matter of attitude than a realization. I still couldn't build an internal combustion engine from scratch and it's been around a century since the first one was made. They seem extraordinary to me. Every time a helicopter is in the sky it's hard not to look. The incredible precision of SLR cameras strikes me with awe. I'll put the miracles of science and technology up against the miracles of religion any day. The industrial revolution was very recent, historically speaking. We've only just begun. Who knows how many ages of miracles we'll go through?

Aside from which, so what if we were a simulation? Why would our reality cease to exist just because it was an artificial one? Why is the "off" switch suddenly flipped? It wouldn't; it would just have its nature changed. I guess that may be arguing semantics, but since a semantic definition is the one being offered in this scenario, it's a more than fair way to respond.

By comparison, if robots eventually become something like self-aware, does that mean that they will spontaneously die and their self-awareness will simultaneously cease instantly because they will realize their reality is akin to a hoax and they are not really alive at all? Who's to even define the reality of life, or be the arbiter to say what it is and isn't, at that point?