
Elon Musk: Chance we are not living in a computer simulation 'one in billions' - bonefishgrill
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-ai-artificial-intelligence-computer-simulation-gaming-virtual-reality-a7060941.html
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sixQuarks
I get that the rate of improvement in game simulation will eventually lead to
experiences that are indistinguishable from reality, however, how did he
calculate the one in a billion chance that we're not in a simulation? That
just seems like a wild guess to me.

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d4nt
Think of it this way, how many times has our civilisation run the Grand Theft
Auto simulation? What about all the future GTA session that we haven't run
yet. It's got to be many many millions.

Now GTA isn't a very sophisticated simulation, and the characters don't have
much AI, but either no civilisation ever develops the tech to make a
"realistic GTA", or no civilisation ever wants to run a realistic simulation,
or there are many millions of realistic simulations in existence.

And if there are many millions of realistic simulations, and only one real
universe, it's literally a one in a billion chance that were in the real
universe.

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jfoster
In this context, why do we think there would be many other civilisations? In
the context of the Fermi paradox we think there would be because the universe
is so huge and we can calculate that there would be lots of planets capable of
supporting life. That said, the structure of our universe is irrelevant if
we're considering whether it is a simulation. The "billions" number that
applies in the case of the Fermi paradox doesn't apply to this conversation.
I'm also wondering where it comes from.

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jconn
YouTube link: [https://youtu.be/2KK_kzrJPS8?list=PLKof9YSAshgyPqlK-
UUYrHfIQ...](https://youtu.be/2KK_kzrJPS8?list=PLKof9YSAshgyPqlK-
UUYrHfIQaOzFPSL4)

