Elon Musk Shares Strongest Argument We're Living In A Simulation

In a clip from Code Conference back in 2016, the billionaire tech owner explains how we may already not be able to tell reality apart from a game.

The Tesla boss was asked about the future by a member of the audience, and whether he thought we would be unable to distinguish between real life and a simulation.

Explaining his theory on the concept, Mr Musk 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 said he had discussed the concept so many times, that 'it's crazy'.

Mr Musk continued: "Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now... okay, well, let's imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing in the evolutionary scale.

"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."

He said: "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.

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

The concept is one that has been discussed heavily, particularly in recent years.

A 2003 paper titled 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom said that future generations may have computers that can run simulations of their forbears - aka us - in which the simulated beings have a kind of artificial consciousness.

He explained: "Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.

"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."