The last truly great essay I found online was years ago and it was “Why the future doesn’t need us” by Bill Joy, but several people have now mentioned this one, which I stumbled upon myself a while back. It’s by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford, and it’s called “Are you living in a computer simulation?” He argues, and I more or less quote, that at least one of the following thoughts are true.

1) The human species is likely to become extinct long before reaching a “post-human” stage. 2) Any post-human civilization is unlikely to run simulations of their evolutionary history. 3) We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. All very The Matrix.