What if you, your family, the people you know and this entire universe were all generated by some sort of super-computer made by incredibly intelligent beings? What if the physics rules that make up our universe were all just math operations in the code we were written in? Sounds frightening so let’s dig deeper.

Basic Idea

As soon as computer power got strong enough to handle simulations in the 1990s, and technological progress kept getting quicker and quicker, people started wondering if in the future we would’ve been able to simulate our universe. As soon as that hypothesis came into mind, people also started wondering if we were the ones being simulated. When movies like “The Matrix” came out, people became more and more obsessed with this “simulation idea” and what was behind it.

Supporters

Tech Billionaires such as Elon Musk have openly stated their support for this theory and have popularized it. Even world famous Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks it is very likely that some advanced future civilization developed advanced computer simulations.

Many people in the Silicon Valley have actually become quite obsessed with the simulation hypothesis. Two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of it. Of course, that may not make a huge ton of sense as breaking us out of it would cause a “termination of the program” which would end up destroying us all. 

Elon Musk actually thinks being in a simulation is something we should hope for. If this were a simulation, we could save ourselves from the end of civilization by creating another indistinguishable from reality simulation.

Our creators

If we actually were in a simulation and we got to know the creators of it, they would surely be some incredibly intelligent beings, possibly not too different from us. If you think about it, mammals have a very similar DNA to our own, however, we are able to understand concepts they will never even get close to understanding. If this were the case for our creators, we would look like dogs compared to them.

Conclusion

We are probably living in a simulation. If in 10 years we were able to upgrade basic calculation devices to computers able to handle AI we think that in 14 or more billion years or more these “creators” were well able to simulate us.

 

 

 

 

Sources: www.nytimes.com, scientificamerican.com, snopes.com, seeker.com