Elon Musk shares ‘strongest argument’ that we’re living in a simulation

Elon Musk has shared the ‘strongest argument’ humans may be living in a simulation.

A resurfaced clip of the Tesla CEO has got people talking as he explains there is a probability we’re living in a ‘Matrix’ style of existence.

The boss was asked about the future by a member of the audience at a Code Conference in 2016, and he spoke about how we may already not be able to tell reality apart from a game.

When asked if we would be unable to distinguish between real life and simulation, he said: “The strongest argument for us being in a simulation is the following – that 40 years ago we had [early video game] Pong, like, two rectangles and a dot.

“That was what games were.

“Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year, and soon we will have virtual reality or augmented reality.

“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality.”

He went on to say even if technological advancement drops by a thousand from what it is currently or we travel thousands of years in the future, humans are creating simulation games and virtual reality.

He added: “So given that we are clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is one in billions.”

Mr Musk continued: “We should hope that that’s true because otherwise if civilisation stops advancing then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilisation.

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“Either we are going to create simulations that are indistinctual from reality or civilisation will cease to exist. Those are the two options.”

This concept has been debated heavily in recent years, with a previous paper from 2003, called ‘Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?’ by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who said future generations may have computers that can run simulations of their humans and the simulated beings have artificial consciousness.

He explained the majority of minds do not belong to the original race but to the ‘people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race’.

But Mr Bostrom warned: “It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.”