The modern simulation hypothesis is generally traced to computer scientist—-entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram and his 2002 book, A New Kind of Science. Wolfram made the case that our world might literally be a digital simulation. He presented this idea as a testable hypothesis. It might be possible to look for evidence of “pixelization” in subatomic physics. But not a few reviewers of Wolfram’s book pegged him as a genius who had gone off the deep end.

William Poundstone, The doomsday calculation: How an equation that predicts the future is transforming everything we know about life and the universe, New York, 2019, p. 166