Elon Musk: Chance we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions” (video, independent.co.uk).
“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. … ‘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.’”
That “philosophical concept” the questioner starts with actually being the now much derided since the culmination of the Enlightenment ontological doctrine of “Idealism” (Wikipedia), although historically usually involving more evil demon or brain in a jar ala Descartes and Bishop Berkeley than virtual reality simulation parodically (but erroneously) refuted by dictionary compiler Samuel Johnson’s kicking of a rock to “refute it thus” until, for many, the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix re-introduced the derided millennia old concept and question to a new generation and perhaps closer to the hypothesis being termed “simulated reality” (Wikipedia) which classes it as only different from the currently technologically achievable concept of virtual reality in that it“s easily distinguished from the experience of actuality”, which of course Mr Musk there is saying is either a gap that is closing fast or one that has been closed perhaps without our knowledge.
Note: This post has been moved to Blog due to length of extended updates.
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