
Odds are we're living in a simulation, says Elon Musk - jwblackwell
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11837874/elon-musk-says-odds-living-in-simulation
======
thieving_magpie
"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#Histo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down#History)

[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
I 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
You 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
Still, 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
What 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
Well 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.

------
AimHere
So 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
Ideas 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
> 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
That'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
> 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
The "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
It'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.

~~~
Houshalter
The 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.

~~~
tpeo
There were reasons to believe in a God some two thousand years ago. Those
might have been wrong reasons, but still the belief in gods reflected people's
understanding of the world at the time (i.e. pretty much none at all).

I personally don't see much difference in the two. Before modern astronomy,
people looked at the frequency of the revolution of visible planets and
thought their ratios resembled musical ratios, and that this _had_ to be the
work of someone (such was the belief of Pythagoreans, Stoics and
Neoplatonists). Nowadays people look at some other physical quantity and think
that _this_ has to be the work of someone. In this sense, they're pretty
similar. And if the error of those ancient philosophers lies in that
supposition, I don't see how the degree of reality of our idea of who's doing
it (e.g. aliens vs. a hazy concept of a "Demiurge") makes it any better.

~~~
Houshalter
Well people believed in wrong things a thousand years ago. I'm not sure what
your point is. Are you saying we probably shouldn't have any beliefs at all,
because they might be wrong a thousand years from now? That's just silly.

Clearly we know a lot more than the ancients do. E.g. the concept of a
"simulation". And so we can make more accurate predictions than they would
have been able to.

~~~
tpeo
I wasn't really pushing a point. I was trying to add some perspective on the
issue. But if I were to push one, I'd say that the question of whether or not
our experience is "real" should really be considered a pseudo-problem, because
it's a question that can't be really answered.

I don't see an issue with believing things that might be considered incorrect
in the future, but I do see an issue with asking the wrong questions over and
over again.

I see no particular reason why _someone_ ought to be responsible for the
patterns of experience. Thinking it so is the crucial mistake here.

------
jemfinch
The 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
Interesting 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)

------
x2398dh1
What 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
You really think he's motivated by greed?

~~~
knieveltech
You really think there's a rich man in this world who isn't?

~~~
artursapek
Look at Bill Gates and tell me the man is greedy.

~~~
knieveltech
Ok, done. Now what?

------
cmrx64
Says Elon Musk, repeating a well-known (in philosophy) argument that's over a
decade old. What lazy reporting.

~~~
yincrash
This 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.

------
ck2
While 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.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
He 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.

------
transpy
_Simulation 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
What 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?

------
V-2
"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
He'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
Computing 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.

------
JohnLeTigre
A 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.

~~~
lucozade
By a small epsilon do you mean something like there being a lower limit to how
much we could measure, say, position and momentum concurrently?

Would you expect the glitches to appear as random events if you look too
closely?

'Cos until you wrote this I didn't think it was likely that we were in a sim.
Now you've made me question that...

~~~
JohnLeTigre
for example, floating point numbers can only hold a specific amount of decimal
points, so very small numbers would end up becomming zero, leading to tons of
divisions by zero or NAN's ect.

In order to avoid these glitches we need to clamp these numbers to values that
are very close to zero and basically stop simulating the objects concerned
until we detect that these objects move again.

Although this is an example, an imperfect process would have an upper and
lower limit of numerical representation, requiring patches to limit glitches.

patches would be detectable in a simulation.

~~~
lucozade
> patches would be detectable in a simulation

As limits. We have those, or at least our accepted view of physics has both
lower and upper bounds on what we can know. How are they that different from
what you're suggesting?

~~~
JohnLeTigre
It's not so much about limits or bounds, they do exist.

It's about limits or bounds that are incongruent with how physics normaly
works in reality (patches would always do that), for lack of a better
expression, I call these metaphysical inconsistencies.

------
stillsut
The 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.

------
vorotato
It'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.

------
reacweb
The 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.

------
molsongolden
Here'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)

------
miguelrochefort
I 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.

------
biot
Very clever, young man; it's simulations all the way down.

------
eludwig
Wouldn'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
The 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.

------
nicolashahn
Our 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.

------
jere
>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.

~~~
csours
I 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
Science 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.

------
imjustsaying
The question I've recently been pondering is, how do I transfer my
consciousness out of the simulation?

~~~
wlesieutre
Sacrifice a goat to appease the simulators. When you die, they'll transfer
your consciousness to a robot outside the simulation.

Serious question: any practiced religions that are built around that sort of
idea?

~~~
ccozan
Well, the whole Hell / Heaven idea and the life after death of the
christianity ? Which might be heavily influenced by older religions, like
buddhism ?

------
julienmarie
Hasn'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
No. 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_Philosoph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy#Meditation_III:_Concerning_God.2C_That_He_Exists)

------
homakov
Applying 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.

------
goodgoblin
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

------
Petedoes
How can anyone argue with his rationale?

------
rainy-day
How is this theory different from solipsism?

------
yoo1I
It's like he's Justin Biber or something ...

