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Odds are we're living in a simulation, says Elon Musk
- yoo1I 10y agoIt's like he's Justin Biber or something ...
- cmrx64 10y agoSays Elon Musk, repeating a well-known (in philosophy) argument that's over a decade old. What lazy reporting.
- yincrash 10y agoThis happens a lot with Musk, through no fault of his own. For example, on The Late Show, he talks about terraforming Mars with nukes, which has certainly been on the Wikipedia page of the subject for a long time, but many articles reported on it like he came up with the idea himself, when he never claimed anything of the sort.
- thieving_magpie 10y ago"A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"" — Hawking, 1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down#Histo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_regress#Consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_regress#Consciousness edit: What if we talked about the idea rather than worried about who said it?
- Houshalter 10y agoI like that story, but it doesn't really apply to simulation hypothesis. Each simulated universe would necessarily have much less computing power than the level above it. We should expect there to be a limit on how powerful the computers we could build are, if we were in a simulation. Perhaps if we tried to build a simulated universe, things would start breaking, or events would happen to prevent it, or our simulation would just be shut down or reset.
- kbenson 10y agoYou are assuming that all simulations run at the same speed. A simple way to look at it is if you have half as much computing power to apply towards the simulation, run it at half speed. This is undetectable from within the simulation.
- Houshalter 10y agoStill, the universe only contains so much energy. There is a limit to the number of computations that can be done, and only a tiny percent of those can be allocated to our simulation.
- kbenson 10y agoWhat makes you assume that a simulated universe has to match the base universe in every respect? It's entirely possible that the simulations, including us if we're in one, are running an extremely constrained version of the real universe, however many levels removed it is.
- Houshalter 10y agoWell then that's not "turtles all the way down", it's just turtles 2 levels down. Second, the simulation argument is about our own universe someday making simulated realities. Assuming we are being simulated by a radically different universe is entirely different.
- imjustsaying 10y agoThe question I've recently been pondering is, how do I transfer my consciousness out of the simulation?
- hashkb 10y agoYou'll have to talk to the/a Simulator. Hopefully they've simulated a nice afterlife for us.
- imjustsaying 10y agoI forgot to specify - How do I transfer my consciousness out of the simulation, without dying?
- ndarilek 10y agohttp://escapepod.org/2010/07/29/ep251-unexpected-outcomes/ http://escapepod.org/2010/07/29/ep251-unexpected-outcomes/ might have some ideas on that.
- protomyth 10y agoLook for the paradox at the shadow of an edge case of physics. Programmers don't really do formal proofing or enough unit testing after all.
- vbo 10y agoThis brings about an interesting ethical problem. Should we get to the point where we can simulate life and consciousness to a level that is indistinguishable from the original thing (as perceived by the simulator), do our standards with regard to, say, human rights apply within, or does the ability to reboot or restore the simulation from a backup make is exempt from any ethical issues? Either way, I reckon this will one day be used to generate an infinite amount of behaviourally customized cat videos for our simulators' facebook feeds.
- weld 10y ago
- ck2 10y agoWhile I have great respect for Musk and know he is very smart, he is not a cosmologist, astrophysicist or theoretical physicist. So I'm going to disregard him on this one. If this is a purposeful simulation done by an advanced intelligence, then it is a sick puppy. If he means this is an accidental simulation, ie. a projection of 4D from a 3D plane, or a 4D shadow from a 5D plane, then maybe, just maybe.
- merpnderp 10y agoHe makes it clear he's speaking of an advanced intelligence as he explains how soon (relatively speaking) we'll be creating such simulations.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoHe didn't come up with the idea. Philosophers came up with the idea, and Musk read about it. The media doesn't report much on relatively obscure philosophical discussions, but they do report on what celebrities talk about.
- biot 10y agoVery clever, young man; it's simulations all the way down.
- AimHere 10y agoSo why is Musk better qualified to talk about this than every stoner high school kid who read the first few pages of Descartes, saw the Matrix or simply used their imagination when playing a SimCity style video game?
- forthefuture 10y agoIdeas don't need qualification. Think about it. What he said was that there is a one in a billion chance that our reality is base reality. If you agree with Occam's Razor, there's no reason to believe we aren't in base reality and just the result of incredible luck (the same incredible luck that leaves us the only known life in the universe). Understanding the probability of something is not the same as claiming the majority result of that probability.
- arcanus 10y ago> Understanding the probability of something is not the same as claiming the majority result of that probability. I see no evidence (empirical or otherwise) that this probability is accurate.
- forthefuture 10y agoThat's why you're supposed to think about it. Technology advances -> Simulations exist -> We're either the first civilization in infinity or we're a simulation. It's possible we're the first civilization in infinity, and it's the simplest explanation given no additional information. However, just because something is true doesn't mean the probability of it being true is very low and just happened to end up that way. You can believe in both probability and reality.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Technology advances -> Simulations exist -> We're either the first civilization in infinity or we're a simulation. Doesn't follow; there could be lots of civilizations in the same reality, so we could not be the first civilization, and still not be in a simulation. If simulations of the detail level of our universe are possible given the laws of nature governing the reality underlying everything, then either we are in the base reality or a subordinate reality (if such simualtions are not possible, we are definitively in the base reality.) The information we have provides very little basis for computing probabilities here: any estimate is just a projection of the biases of the person providing it. > However, just because something is true doesn't mean the probability of it being true is very low and just happened to end up that way. If something is true, it's probability is 1, by definition. (Something may have low probability based only on particular prior information, but that's a different story.)
- okket 10y agoThe "Simulation Argument" by Nick Bostrom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs Even if it is true, it changes nothing. Since this is the world we have to deal with and there is no indication we can influence the (supposed) simulation. If our world/universe is a simulation, it is simply too good. I also recommend to read "The Big Picture" by Sean Carrol, chapter 11 "Is It Okay to Doubt Everything?" deals with these kinds of thought experiments (including Bostrom). The 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate was about "Is the Universe a Simulation?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgSZA3NPpBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgSZA3NPpBs
- V-2 10y agoIt's essentially the question of God, only in disguise. It's absolutely untestable (just like the existence of God), so it's a matter of faith and nothing else. If God - as understood by major human religions - does exist, then the world IS a simulation. I mean, all atoms and particles are "real", but ultimately they form a simulation device, one that invokes the sense of existence in sentient beings.
- okket 10y agoI'd say God is a different question: Even if this entity can't help you while you live, you still can gain points for the supposed afterlife (I guess that is the mayor selling point of religions these days?). There is no such concept in the Simulation Argument.
- Houshalter 10y agoThe difference between God and simulation, is there is no particular reason to believe in God. Religions have traditionally argued that the universe needs a creator, therefore there must be a God. But then who created God? There is a reason to believe in the simulation hypothesis. We already have a massive industry devoted to making world simulations, video games. We know our computing technology advances steadily every year. So it's not unreasonable to suppose it's likely we will someday create such simulations. The second belief is also untestable, it's a prediction about the future. But a prediction about the future seems much more grounded than religion. It's taking into account our observations of the world, and what future outcomes seem probable. Not just making stuff up.
- x2398dh1 10y agoWhat he's really saying is, "I'm taking an extreme materialist view of the mind in order to grab headlines in a time when AI is becoming hot, which will further my access to human resources." Elon Musk does not really think that we are in a simulation. He's not saving the world. He's not trying to help humanity escape earth and colonize Mars. I think we've had enough of this. He's playing a massive chess game against other billionaires, and he's playing it extremely well, having amassed millions of intelligent, talented tech followers in the process who are willing to work for him in exchange for prestige and a lower salary, thereby helping him reach his goal of beating Bill Gates / Warren Buffet / etc.
- artursapek 10y agoYou really think he's motivated by greed?
- kelukelugames 10y agoNot greed for money, but ego. One of my coworkers used to report to Musk and says Musk is competitive.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- knieveltech 10y agoYou really think there's a rich man in this world who isn't?
- artursapek 10y agoLook at Bill Gates and tell me the man is greedy.
- knieveltech 10y agoOk, done. Now what?
- 10y ago
- V-2 10y ago"Is there a flaw in the argument?" - I don't see a flaw because I can't see any argument in the first place. How is the (let's say, quite likely) hypothesis that eventually we're going to create VR that's ingistinguishable from actual reality supposed to logically lead to the notion that there's a billion to one chance we're living in VR right now? It feels like something along the lines of the "???? PROFIT!!!!" meme (originated from a South Park episode). Clearly a crucial step is missing
- GrantS 10y agoHe's using the quickness with which we've progressed to VR as an existence proof that creating universes is not as hard as once expected, such that "universes" might actually be numerous and commonplace. From there, it's a statistical argument -- if "existence" contains one billion "universes" and only one of them is the base level of reality in which all the other simulations are nested, then if we assume a uniform distribution over universes, we have a one in a billion chance of being in the base level of reality. That's a very simple version of the argument with obvious flaws, but that's what he meant. Nick Bostrom has made a much more elaborate version of the argument.
- gybi 10y agoComputing technology is developing rapidly, which he cites as the reason it is likely we are simulated. However, if we are in a simulation, the laws of physics are likely different from those in "base reality." Moore's law in the sim would have no basis in underlying reality. The sim creator may have tuned the laws of physics to make it easy to develop microprocessors, when in base reality it is difficult. So I don't think his argument is valid at all.
- rainy-day 10y agoHow is this theory different from solipsism?
- jere 10y ago>If you assume any rate of improvement at all then games will become indistinguishable from reality," Musk said. "Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now, let's just imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale." Uh... following this precisely 10,000 years from now would at 1/1000 of our current advancement rate would look like 2026 (assuming our current rate doesn't slow down). We don't really have photorealistic graphics now and I'm not convinced that we'll have them in 10 years. Even if it is photorealistic, it'll just barely look that way on the macroscopic scale. Now simulate all the particles in the universe. >Musk said, the odds that we are living our lives in base reality — that is, "real" reality — is one in billions. Musk just presents an interesting argument and asks "can you find the flaw." Sure. The flaw is that there's absolutely no reason to think that: ...computers are going to speed up by 40 orders of magnitude, ever ...and there will be planet sized computers ...and civilizations will be motivated to spent their planet sized computing resources on simulations The whole thing is absurd.
- StavrosK 10y ago> Uh... following this precisely" 10,000 years from now would at 1/1000 of our current advancement rate would look like 2026 Only if advancement is linear.
- csours 10y agoI agree with your first two points, but as to the 3rd point, what else would you do with a planet sized computer? There just isn't that much interesting stuff to do with that much computing power besides simulation.
- jere 10y agoScience of course! Maybe you simulating the entire universe for science is a thing you want to do, but there's no reason to think you'd want to (or even be able to without simulating the earlier bits) t=4.5 billion years rather than t=0. And the numbers I gave only allow you to simulate roughly in realtime, so... your civilization has to stick around for another 4.5 billion years to get to us.
- reacweb 10y agoThe movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor gives IMHO an interesting insight on the subject.
- goodgoblin 10y agoIt doesn't seem like he was saying that we _are_ living in a simulation, but that at some point in the future we will be living in a simulation since virtual reality technology will be so good.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> It doesn't seem like he was saying that we _are_ living in a simulation, but that at some point in the future we will be living in a simulation since virtual reality technology will be so good. No, he's saying that his speculation about the future quality of our VR is proof that simulations of the quality of our universe are possible, and that if those simulations are possible then, our universe probably is such a simulation, because obviously anything that can be done has been done by someone else first.
- molsongolden 10y agoHere's the semi-classic "simulations all the way down" short story that pops up here every few months: https://qntm.org/responsibility https://qntm.org/responsibility
- jemfinch 10y agoThe simulation argument by Nick Bostrom neglects an important (probable) reality. While the number of simulated universes may vastly the exceed the size of the real universe, the size of these universes may diminish faster than the increased number can make up for. Bostrom's argument is that we're likely in an ancestor simulation, but if the size of the simulated universes decreases faster than the number of simulations increase, it could easily be the case that the the probability that we're a simulated person is lower than the probability that we're a real person: real people may vastly exceed the number of simulated people.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoInteresting argument! It makes sense - without some unexpected breakthrough in computer science, it takes a proportionate amount of energy and materials to run a simulation. Even if computing power, speed, and storage improve in the next million years to densities approaching the Planck length, power requirements approaching Landauer's limit [1], and cycle rates approaching the Planck time[2], the requirement that it can't be bigger on the inside still holds (at least in our universe, under our physics). Thinking about it for a few minutes, we would have to do at least one thing to make it work: 1. Make it more granular, so our sub-subatomic storage could record the states of atoms without being as large or larger than the stored data. 2. Make it slower, so our faster-than-light computer could have time to simulate all interactions. 3. Make it simpler, so our complicated computer mechanism operating on some exotic principle wouldn't have to simulate the same principle. 4. Make it smaller than our computer. It's easy even now to simulate a few atoms with a computer consisting of several kilos of matter, but I can hardly imagine any universe devoting a significant fraction of its mass to ancestor simulations. These restrictions would eventually limit the ability of child universes to simulate grandchildren, but I am not convinced that it significantly reduces the number of sentient beings (simulated and non-simulated) which is the key to our estimate of whether or not we are in a simulation. If in the parent simulation, room-temperature superconductors are common, cold fusion is easy, there is no speed of light in the parent universe, Landauer's Limit does not hold, and computers are built on a scale far below quantum mechanics, our (apparently) large universe could easily be one of trillions of ancestor simulations. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
- julienmarie 10y agoHasn't this been already solved by Descartes and his Cogito? ( that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought. )
- tpeo 10y agoNo. Descartes' apprehension of his own existence as a "thinking substance" doesn't say anything about the nature of the external world. The simulation argument is connected with Cartesian philosophy though. It is one of the possible forms of the "Cartesian demon" argument [0]. Descartes tried prove the truthfulness of experience through a twofold proof: a proof of God's existence; and a proof of His unwillingness to deceive. He does all this in Meditation III [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy#Meditation_III:_Concerning_God.2C_That_He_Exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosoph...
- eludwig 10y agoWouldn't it follow that the "simulators" are also simulated, ad infinitum? (see: "turtles all the way down" comment) Certainly, no matter how far you go back, the simulations are "real" in the sense that they exist. Why is this simulated reality considered less "real?" Would we (or whatever we really are) be able to experience "base reality" as he puts it? Can you see your own eyeball directly?
- jfoster 10y agoThe longer the string of simulations, assuming they have the concept of time, the more likely one in the chain will end and the entire rest of the chain cease to exist.
- jfoster 10y agoThe longer the string of simulations, assuming they have the concept of time, the more likely one in the chain will end and the entire rest of the chain cease to exist.
- JohnLeTigre 10y agoA complete simulation would require infinite means to process, memorize and exhibit. It is safe to assume that these infinite means could not exist. So, just like a physic's simulation that uses limited means, say like floating points, exception cases need to be taken care of (like detecting resting-cases in physics and then clamping floats to a small epsilon in order to avoid weird reactions). The treatment of these exception cases would add discontinuities in the physical behaviours we observe. For example, in a simulation, a force like gravity would be explained as: F = G (m1m2/r2), unless r is very close to 0 in which case F=0. In our reality, the "unless" part does not exist, in fact, if you have this exception, it is actually a symptom that your formula or approach might not be the perfect one. In our reality there are no glitches nor can we detect means by which glitches where avoided, in fact it is quite the opposite, metaphysics seem to exhibit an undeniable amount of coherency and consistency. I'm not convinced by the simulation argument at all.
- benjohnson 10y ago>>A complete simulation would require infinite means to process, memorize and exhibit. True - but a perhaps a clever simulation could concentrate it's computing near the observers and approximate distant or non-observed events.
- JohnLeTigre 10y agoThat would be clever, but you would probably still notice discontinuities between the distant and close objects. But more importantly, the laws of physics would be observably non consistent.
- benjohnson 10y agoIndeed! But ff you did notice discontinuities, the simulation could reverse and readjust the simulation until you don't notice.
- JohnLeTigre 10y ago
- nicolashahn 10y agoOur Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark is an extremely relevant book. I'm only about half way through it but it's been very engrossing. It's so far been a pretty concise overview of our current understanding of physics and supposedly ends up claiming that the ultimate level of reality is made up purely of mathematics.
- homakov 10y agoApplying the term "simulation" from subsystem (our attempts at VR) to the system (our world) are meaningless. The system above is nothing "like" what we have in the system over here.
- stillsut 10y agoThe Simulation Argument is just taking a more general intuition that is also behind the Fermi paradox to its full limit. This intuition that Mankind is a grain of sand in much greater goings on, is one of the key dogmas is modern scientism; probably best personified by patron saint Sagan. We laugh now at the 19th century man unable to accept that "man evolved from a monkey", but his case more charitably stated is the reluctance to give up the dignity of being made in his creator's image. Likewise, I think people who build the 21st century secular myths are setting themselves up to be "disappointed" by the actual data when comes in barren in the next two centuries - telescopes that can measure exo-planet atmospheres basically confirm or deny. I'm not taking either side, but if the "fact" turns out to be that we are alone, not anybody's simulation, not part of multi-verse, etc, this seems to be reality that modern scientism would have the most problem accepting.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vorotato 10y agoIt's all fun to think about but we should be mindful of how falsifiable things are. We should ideally be careful to not give too much credence to non-falsifiable propositions, even if they might be true. This violates most people's intuition, but it prevents us from being bogged down wasting time on problems which we cannot gain ground on. If we are in a simulation, and it is falsifiable, rest assured some physicist will figure it out. Until then I doubt rumination on the subject will get us much closer because unless something is falsifiable you can't actually KNOW.
- transpy 10y agoSimulation of ancestors. 1) This idea makes me think that the simulation hypothesis is wrong. If some advanced civilization has the power to create simulations, why would they create us, specifically? Why would they bother recreating a primitive world of the past? Wouldn't it be way more interesting to create cooler, crazier worlds? Do you really believe a post-human ultra-intelligent civilization would create something as present-day ISIS? Is someone having fun watching how we experience this world's horrors and pains? 2) Then I think the following: yes, the above scenario is possible, given that organized intelligence is able to realize more possibilities of the universal computational space. With enough computing power, organized intelligence would be able to spawn near-infinite world simulations, and ours is just one of those.
- mootothemax 10y agoWhat would the world look like if the Nazis had won World War II? Or if Russia had nuked the world in the 1980s? Or Henry VIII had had a surviving male heir early in his reign? Or if Yeltsin hadn't have been an easily manipulated alcoholic? I could go on - at length. And this only scratches the surface of alternative world history, which is just one of a crazy number of reasons to simulate something that involves a previous history's peoples. Hah, I wonder what geologists would get up to?
- miguelrochefort 10y agoI find the dichotomy between simulation and reality a bit absurd. A simulation is just as real as the reality that hosts it, and it only differs in it's fidelity to the inspiration. The same can be said about fractals. Let's assume we do live in a computer simulation. Then what? The fact that this knowledge doesn't change a single thing about the way we should do things means that it's not particularly interesting or useful. The same is true regarding the debate of free-will.
- Petedoes 10y agoHow can anyone argue with his rationale?