What if the ‘Black Eyed Children’ aren't sinister demons, but computer malware? Philosopher Alexey Turchin's new paper suggests that not only do we live in a computer simulation but urban legends could be viruses loose in our Matrix, feeding on human fears to survive and replicate. Every time you share the story, you help it spread…

What if the greatest threat to humanity isn't AI, nuclear war or a killer virus... but someone in the next universe up hitting the power button?... Philosopher Bradford Saad of Utrecht University spent three years writing a report called 'Simulations and Catastrophic Risks' - and his conclusions are pretty terrifying... He argues that the shutdown of our simulated reality is a 'neglected catastrophic risk' - one that almost nobody is working on. If we live in a Matrix, our simulators could switch us off at any moment - and it's not obvious that there's anything we can do about it... But Saad also says triggering shutdown could also be an 'escape hatch', so if our simulated reality ever descends into an absolute nightmare, we could deliberately provoke our simulators to switch us off - which might be the least-worst option left. Although pulling that plug too soon would itself be a 'catastrophic moral error'... And his numbers should make you worry - he estimates a greater than 90% chance that thousands of large-scale social simulations will be run within the next century, and a 60% chance that simulations containing CONSCIOUS minds will become a real thing... So - if we are about to fill simulated worlds with conscious beings, hasn't someone in the universe above almost certainly already done that... to us? And the real question then becomes - how do we stay interesting enough to be kept running?....