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Elon Musk: 'One In Billions' Chance We're Not Living In A Computer Simulation (vox.com)
An anonymous reader writes: At Recode's annual Code Conference, Elon Musk explained how we are almost certainly living in a more advanced civilization's video game. He said: "The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago we had 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. Soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let's imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale. So given that we're 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. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is there a flaw in that argument?" You can watch Elon Musk's full interview on YouTube.
The idea that we are living inside a simulation is far from original from Musk.
Perhaps the most prominent contemporary proponent of this idea is the philosopher Nick Bostrom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's also peripherally related to the idea of a Boltzmann brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Even if there are bugs, you can just stop the simulation, fix the bugs and start it over. Furthermore, even if there were bugs, that's for the creator of the simulation to notice and fix, not the simulated apes per-occupied with voting for Hillary or Trump.
> Even if there are bugs, you can just stop the simulation, fix the bugs and start it over.
As a developer and administrator for decades, dealing with increasingly complex systems, I must say "no". Many complex systems have bugs that are "emergent". They emerge from subtle interactions among smaller components, and can be devastatingly destructive to your existing system to repair. Examples include exceeding the size of expected storage through conditions that were never in the original specification, but which were assumed by other developers.
He offers no proof but at least acknowledges the possibility that he may be wrong. You on the other hand offer no proof but seem certain that you are right (that he is wrong).
Bruce didn't claim here to be certain that Elon is wrong. Bruce said that Elon's statement explains nothing. Similar to how "God created us" doesn't explain our existence.
Elon also doesn't acknowledge that he may be wrong (except by not forcing everyone to swear by it by all that is holy) - he estimates the chances of us (at least him and one other person) not living in a simulation. So he acknowledges that we may not be living in a simulation, but doesn't acknowledge that his estimate of the probability may be wrong - which is his actual statement.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.