Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
Tapestry

Confronting the 'realness' of our reality

David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University. He argues that there’s nothing ‘virtual’ about virtual reality. Later we hear from the co-screenwriter of the hit video game movie Free Guy.
CBC Radio ·
Team Canada boxer Nickenson Denis tries out a Virtual Reality training device at the Montreal training facility in March 2020. (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press)
Tapestry53:52Confronting the ‘realness’ of our reality

David Chalmers argues that there's nothing 'virtual' about virtual reality. It's all real. Every conversation, every emotion and every conflict are just as valid online as off. 

Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University who is the author of the recent book, Reality+ which examines what is means to live life in multiple realities, how understanding of what's real might become broader and stranger than ever before. 

Later, Matt Lieberman, co-screenwriter of the movie Free Guy, talks to Tapestry about living life in the background.

The movie Free Guy follows a non-player character, a sort of mindless computer program, who unknowingly works at a bank in a video game. He spends most of his life oblivious that players are running around, wrecking his world, until one day, he comes to full sentience.

Lieberman wrote the movie reflecting on his own experience feeling like a non-player character, and why he tends to be much kinder to video game characters than he used to.