It's time to get weird.

American TV news magazine host Keith Olbermann opens his mind to the possibilities of our reality being little more than a virtual world, a computer simulation, something straight out of Philip K Dick's fiction, or The Matrix movies (via Philip K Dick's fiction).

This interview transcript from Olbermann is a great read for the imagination :

OLBERMANN: ....we‘ve got what might be bad news for you. There is a 20 percent chance we‘re living inside a computer simulation.

The theory by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University...that technological advances will some day produce for us a computer so powerful that it could simulate a complex world with billions of creatures of some sort in it.

Advanced civilizations of real people, the argument goes, would create these simulations to better understand their own evolution or just for S and giggles. Like a super advanced version of the SIMS.

Ultimately, says Bostrom, there would be far more virtual people in computer simulations than there are real people in a real world. Therefore, there is a decent chance that some entity somewhere has already invented those super computers, that they have already perfected one of those mammoth simulated world games and that we are in it.

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Professor Bostrom of Oxford puts the chances at about 20 percent. You could argue it is more like 50-50. After all, if such computer simulation could some day exist, it is equally possible that it already does exist and that we all are already in it. Which would at least explain that metallic taste you get sometimes in your mouth.

I am joined here by William Irwin, professor of philosophy at Kings College in Pennsylvania, editor of “More Matrix and Philosophy, Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded.” ... So we‘re part of a computer program? You would this would have gotten larger play on the news.

IRWIN: It‘s possible. The idea is that if you were in a really high-tech, sophisticated virtual reality program, you would not know it...

OLBERMANN: We have seen “Twilight Zones” like, this where you are in somebody else‘s dream. We are in a somebody else‘s little bead sweat near their brow. The entire universe is actually this big. All of these things. This is the first time that it really has matched up with technology that people at home can understand.

If there is a SIMs game, we could be in a super version of a SIMs game. That‘s what this is all about. Right?

IRWIN: It started with Pong. We moved 20 years later up to the SIMs. We‘re amazed with that. Imagine what 100 years of computer technology from now will produce. Probably virtual reality games with beings in it that have minds and consciousness just like ours and who think they are in the real world. They will vastly outnumber the number of people in the real world.

OLBERMANN: What happens if we are simulations... and we all figure it out and go, yes, this actually rings true to my experience. And everyone holds up a big sign that says "Hey pal, we figured out this is a computer simulation," what happens then?
IRWIN: I would caution against that. If we let the maker of this game know that we are on to him, the game might be over. I suggest we go along with things, even though there‘s a 50-50 chance that this is such a game. Let‘s play along.

OLBERMANN: What would you do if the SIMs that you were playing with suddenly all held up signs, you would run out of the room screaming.

Brain food.