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.

Comments

Senile?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or does it start to seem like ol' Elon is going senile?

Re:Senile?

[Teancum]

I fervently wish he'd leave off the Mars stuff until SpaceX was on a solid footing as a profitable launch company with rapid cadence.

How can you say that SpaceX is not profitable at the moment? They have not had an investment round for several years now, except for the Google investment that seems to be aimed at something other that building rockets. SpaceX is also going to have well over a dozen launches at the current launch rate unless there is a major glitch that appears which would ground the launch fleet.

This comment would have been appropriate in 2009 or earlier when SpaceX was still flying the Falcon 1 and still struggling to simply get into orbit with only announced plans for the Falcon 9 and some test hardware in the assembly line. That is no longer the case right now.

If Elon Musk succeeds at sending a probe to Mars in 2018 like he already announced, it isn't just talking about Mars but rather actually going there. He also committed to sending at least one payload to Mars on every Hohmann Transfer Orbit opportunity between the Earth and Mars for as long as the company exists in the future (and mentioned in the above video). The question isn't just pontificating about what the future could be like, but rather holding actual hardware that will be on the surface of Mars in a definite time table.

When companies talk about spaceflight, I always look at "bent metal" to see how serious they are about getting the job done. SpaceX certainly has plenty of bent metal to prove they are serious about going into space and a growing resume of completed missions in space.

Just Solipsism and Faith-Based Nonsense

[Bruce Perens]

This is just a fancy sort of solipsism.

You could also describe it as a modern form of faith-based explanation for existence couched in a scientific framework, but otherwise much as conventional religions attempted to explain existence before the scientific framework came about. It explains nothing, because if the world is a simulation, there is an outside to the simulation and one still has to explain how that world came about. Just as older explainers said the world was created by gods, leaving open the question of how the gods came about.

Re:If we're living in a computer simulation,

[roman_mir]

Really, those are the worst in your opinion? How about Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, FDR, Hoover, Quadaffi (or however you spell it), Putin? Genocides, wars, murders, kidnappings, rapes, robberies, death, destruction .... How about stupidity, collectivism of all forms, types and shapes, ignorance, idleness? Governments are the epithome of the worst collectivists systems, religions, and we are mentioning Kardashiand and Trump?

But seriously, the Matrix was a great movie but it makes a bad religion and a bad belief system. What Musk is saying is akin to any other religion out there and his 'proof' is as good as a 'burning bush' or a talking snake.

Re:If we had flying cars...

[gl4ss]

thats not the jetsons flying cars. the state of flying cars has been AT THE TOTAL SAME for about 70 years now straight.

70 years.

think about that, dolt.

also I think elon musk has not actually been playing any computer games or simulations for the past 20 years since as far as being convincing on reality aspect really nothing has been happening there.

the guy is an idiot for trying to use the pong argument when there has been no advancements in a long time now already... just slightly faster graphics cards and more memory.

Re:If we had flying cars...

[TsuruchiBrian]

Cars do fly. The first flying car was made 17 years after the first car. And the first space car was made 58 years after that. For whatever reason, the stewards of the English language decided to call these things aircraft and spacecraft rather than flying cars and space cars.

Re:Scientology not Science

[arth1]

These are all completely consistent with the physical laws of the universe we live in. The simulation must be simulating all the matter and fields we can observe and so bug would be an inconsistency in the laws of physics. For example gravity not working at a certain time or for a certain object etc.

This is incorrect. You only have to simulate one person[*].
And any inconsistency can be corrected, and the emulation replayed from the fix point. No one in the surviving time line would notice.

[*]: Me, obviously.