closestpresentworld

Closestpresentworld is a neologism used in philosophy and speculative discourse to denote the world that is most similar to the actual world at the present moment. It is not a standard term in any single discipline, but a useful reference point for thinking about counterfactuals, near-term outcomes, and hypothetical variants of our current reality.

In this usage, similarity is measured by how few facts, laws, or contingencies must be altered to obtain the alternative world. The relevant differences are typically constrained to the minimal set required to accommodate a given change, with less emphasis on distant or large-scale transformations. The notion is often applied to questions about what would happen if a fact were different right now, rather than what could occur in the distant future or past.

Closestpresentworld therefore functions as a practical tool for analysis in ethics, decision theory, and thought experiments, including discussions of simulation theory and multiverse models that allow near-identical copies of our world. It is distinct from the classical concept of the closest possible world in modal realism, which concerns the abstract space of all possible worlds rather than a focus on current-time similarity.

Critiques note that there is no universal, objective metric for equality of similarity, and that the criteria for what counts as 'present' facts or laws are inherently contested. The term can be ambiguous without a specified framework for measuring distance between worlds.

See also: closest possible world; modal realism; counterfactuals; simulation theory; time; ethics.