Reality and Simulation
I read a few weeks ago that Elon Musk, and apparently a lot of other people, think we are very likely living in a simulation . His argument goes like this: The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation, I think, is the following: Forty years ago we had Pong--two rectangles and a dot. That is what games 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. Although this seems to be a popular view among the technological elite in San Francisco, there are people who disagree. Some people think it is more likely that humanity will destroy itself before we get to the level of simulations required. Another line of argument is that the technology is harder than Musk is giving it credit ...