Tech billionaire and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX corporations, Elon Musk, believes that the human species is almost certainly trapped within a stunningly realistic simulation of the real world. “Why does he believe this,” one might ask? Video games. In an interview earlier this year, Musk responded to a question concerning his thoughts on the possibility of such a simulation existing with these words:
“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following,” he told the Code Conference. “40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot. That’s where we were…
Now 40 years later we have photo-realistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, we’ll have augmented reality…
If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable…
If we aren’t actually living through a simulation, then all human life is probably about to come to an end and so we should hope that we are living in one. Otherwise, if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilization.”
Other business magnates / corporations seem to agree. Bank of America reportedly believes the chances that we are living in a Matrix-esque simulation are somewhere between 20-50%.
BANK OF AMERICA: There’s a 20%-50% chance we’re inside the matrix and reality is just a simulation Myles Udland pic.twitter.com/TltpYbjPxI
— Sanguine (@laginchey) September 8, 2016
What do you think? Is it possible that we are all being simulated in some kind of super-advanced computer? Are we the abstract result of the thoughts of God — thoughts so powerful and so real that we believe we are more than we are? Are the two ideas that different? Watch the interview with Elon Musk and let us your thoughts on Facebook or in the comments below.
