> Words and images, audio and video, even virtual worlds with soft-body physics, are just flat projected shadows of the complexity of the actual world.

While true, so too are our senses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics

Edit: and conversely, look how mediocre sensory AI is. A trillion miles of driving experience over the Tesla fleet and reviews treat it like a young adult who only recently passed their test, the Cybercab is heavily geofenced, plus there's recent reports about them not correctly identifying the speed limit.