Spoilers for “Futurama” season 11, episode 10 follow.When it comes to any sort of episodic or anthology-based science fiction series, there will almost always come a point where the characters start to wonder: Is their world even real? Although “The Matrix” is still probably the most famous story about a guy realizing he lives in a simulation, the concept had been driving philosophers crazy long before modern computers even existed.In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” written about 2400 years ago, the Greek philosopher described the life of a hypothetical group of people trapped inside a cave since birth, unaware that what they perceive as reality is just a series of elaborate shadows on the cave walls.
In 1641, René Descartes wrote about how his senses weren’t a reliable indicator that everything around him was truly real, that he couldn’t prove with certainty that his whole world was not just an illusion…
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