Elon Musk:"If we aren't living in a computer simulation, then we're all going to die"

[Drew224]

This is some goodness:

Elon Musk: The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is 'one in billions' | News | Lifestyle | The Independent

Elon Musk has said that there is only a “one in billions” chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation.

Our lives are almost certainly being conducted within an artificial world powered by AI and highly-powered computers, like in The Matrix, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested at a tech conference in California.

Mr Musk, who has donated huge amounts of money to research into the dangers of artificial intelligence, said that he hopes his prediction is true because otherwise it means the world will end.

“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 photorealistic, 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.”

He said that even if the speed of those advancements dropped by 1000, we would still be moving forward at an intense speed relative to the age of life.

Since that would lead to games that would be indistinguishable from reality that could be played anywhere, “it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in ‘base reality’ is one in billions”, Mr Musk said.

Asked whether he was saying that the answer to the question of whether we are in a simulated computer game was “yes”, he said the answer is “probably”.

He said that arguably we should hope that it’s true that we live in a simulation. “Otherwise, if civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilisation.”

He said that either we will make simulations that we can’t tell apart from the real world, “or civilisation will cease to exist”.

Mr Musk said that he has had “so many simulation discussions it’s crazy”, and that it got to the point where “every conversation [he had] was the AI/simulation conversation”.

The question of whether what we see is real or simulated has perplexed humans since at least the Ancient philosophers. But it has been given a new and different edge in recent years with the development of powerful computers and artificial intelligence, which some have argued shows how easily such a simulation could be created.

I don't know if your life makes any sense, but now it makes even less.

 

[sk8rat]

high quality video games = we are not actually living a reality... got it.

 

[winexprt]

Most likely the case:

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? - Scientific American

 

[pomaranc]

There is no way we could have made games that simulate the world so realistically, that means that the entire world is simulation somebody created. Makes sense...

 

[TheX]

I almost made a reference to the g word, and how people can be made to believe just about anything.

 

[rxbandit]

I almost made a reference to the g word, and how people can be made to believe just about anything.

"almost"

 

[Phil47uk]

Interesting subject.
Yes, in theory we could be in a simulation of an advanced AI intelligence, or even a future one of our own. The only problem is that who's simulation are they in and where does it all end?....

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

Can I cut him a little and see what he thinks of this simulation?

....c'mon,...just a little

 

[Rocco Crocco]

That theory has been floating around for a couple of years. It's just as plausible as what the religion I grew up with taught us

 

[Phil47uk]

Reality is only what we perceive it to be and that's not by reason but by our senses.

 

[KTM]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtYdZkPmFoU[/ame]

 

[Zungle]

Actually....... the definition of reality is the" control mechanism"l of the entire theory.

Defining reality has not been an easy nor factual task....without "reality" being clearly and universally defined, all A.I. conversation are meaningless....

 

[DADGAD]

So we live in the Matrix? Who is at the helm of this giant video game?

 

[Zungle]

The entire theory is a waste of limited time you'll never get back.....

We exist in a finite time line.....whether its real or not isnt even a question...

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

So we live in the Matrix? Who is at the helm of this giant video game?

I like to think of it as The Grand Architect.


but considering when I dream I think it's real, and I can touch, taste, smell, hear, read (though I'm told I'm not supposed to be able to read in a dream...but whatever,..I can and do)....but considering how easily my sense are fooled into thinking a dream is real...

who's to really say what's real?

I do know simulations don't make me bleed. Nor do dreams.

This walking around under the hot sun reality? I can bleed in this one,....so I tend to take it a bit more seriously than the others.

...I also have yet to find a RESET button,..despite looking.

 

[sonar1]

I just blew a universe out of my nose, and another out my...




...well, you know.


'Scuse me while I gas out the guy driving the Tesla behind me, with my '68 Bargemobile.


http://postimage.org/

http://postimage.org/


It's analog BTW, and about 12% thermally efficient (maybe) on a good day.



Yes. We are all going to die.


Digital "reality" can't change that.


But a digital exam may buy some time...

 

[Phil47uk]

For anyone interested in all this sort of stuff this is well worth a watch and at 37:25 they actually talk about virtual reality..

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyH2D4-tzfM&list=FLXbqvk0hw6UPhTmrYmAcz5w&index=15[/ame]

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

240p,...ouch.

"recorded with potato."

 

[dave b]

From this perspective, I find the idea a tad 'out of this world'.

Just another take on our 'existence/reality', updated for the times/technology we live in/with. A 1000 years ago, with no way to find out otherwise, the average person thought (knew) that the world was flat. All you had to do was keep walking in a straight line, and it was obvious. Funny how we're now living (?) in a computer simulation (according to E.M.), just as A.I. and virtual reality are coming of age. Call me old-fashioned, but....hogwash

 

[Roberteaux]

Heh. If the world is a computer simulation, we may not even be alive to begin with!

Of course, without regard to the business about the world being a computer simulation, the philosophical perspective known as "solipsism"... which is the idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist... has been kicked around in Western philosophy since the time of the pre-Socratic philosophical era in the Western tradition. This line of thought was also a subject of fascination for various philosophers, metaphysicians, and mystics in other places and times as well. My tendency is to speculate that humans have questioned the ultimate nature of reality since the time when somebody ate the wrong mushroom, cactus, or whatever, eons ago.

Back to solipsism: it was Rene Descartes who first nutshelled the idea in the 17th Century with his famous statement, Cogito ergo sum, or, "I think, therefore I am".

Later, in the early 18th Century, the Anglo-Irish philosopher, George Berkeley, expounded further, coming up with a philosophical basis for a line that has become known as "Immaterialism", which simply added to Descartian thought.

Later in the same century, an early American burgher named Samuel Johnston heard what Berkeley's philosophical leanings were and kicked a large, immovable rock while saying, "I refute it thus!"

Of course, supporters of Berkeley's thesis were quick to point out that Immaterialism was not to be proved or disproved by such a simplistic process. And considerable debate ensued and went on for quite a while...

This led to the emergence of Immanuel Kant, who is generally regarded as the most important or central figure in modern philosophy. Kant's ultimate teaching was that the world is essentially unknowable-- either empirically or by means of logic.

Which was good enough for me, anyway, and so I left the disputatious sophists who wanted to quibble about such matters to themselves, and went on to other, more practical musings... like how to score chicks and make money.

I may not know what's really going on-- but I do know what I like!

--R