Some of the world’s richest and most powerful people are convinced that we are living in a computer simulation. And now they’re trying to do something about it.

At least two of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires are pouring money into efforts to break humans out of the simulation that they believe that it is living in, according to a new report.

Philosophers have long been concerned about how we can know that our world isn’t just a very believable simulation of a real one. But concern about that has become ever more active in recent years, as computers and artificial intelligence have advanced.

Elon Musk - The chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is 'one in billions'

That has led some tech billionaires to speculate that the chances we are not living in such a simulation is “billions to one”. Even Bank of America analysts wrote last month that the chances we are living in a Matrix-style fictional world is as high as 50 per cent.

READ MORE

We are living in a computer simulation, Elon Musk says

And now at least two billionaires are funding scientists in an effort to try and break us out of that simulation. It isn’t clear what form that work is taking.

“Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer,” writes The New Yorker’s Tad Friend. “Two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.”

The detail came from a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman, who runs Y Combinator which helps develop tech companies.

Mr Friend didn’t indicate whether Mr Altman was one of those two, or who those people might be. A number of prominent tech billionaires have discussed the idea of the simulation – including Elon Musk, who has used his fortune to fund potentially odd efforts in the past.

Mr Musk spoke earlier this year about the fact that he believes that the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions”. He said that he had come to that conclusion after a chat in a hot tub, where it was pointed out that computing technology has advanced so quickly that at some point in the future it will become indistinguishable from real life – and, if it does, there’s no reason to think that it hasn’t done already and that that’s what we are currently living through.

If we aren’t actually living through a simulation, Mr Musk said, then all human life is probably about to come to an end and so we should hope that we are living in one. “Otherwise, if civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilisation,” he said at the Recode conference.

Mr Altman seemed to echo that fear and told the New Yorker that he was concerned about the way that the devices that surround us might lead to the extinction of all consciousness in the universe. He spoke about how the best scenario for dealing with that is a “merge” – when our brains and computers become one, perhaps by having our brains uploaded into the cloud.

“These phones already control us,” he said. “The merge has begun – and a merge is our best scenario. Any version without a merge will have conflict: we enslave the A.I. or it enslaves us.

“The full-on-crazy version of the merge is we get our brains uploaded into the cloud. I’d love that. We need to level up humans, because our descendants will either conquer the galaxy or extinguish consciousness in the universe forever. What a time to be alive!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31575477)

We didn't commit fraud. This money is all make believe.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31575498)

I am climbing out of my head with this right now!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31576186)

These 2/3 could encompass kingdom of heaven end of world.

Why catholcism? Why Not deep buddhism?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31577040)

The debunking of the "its a simulation" BS is very easy.

1. A perfect simulation of any universe from within that universe is impossible due to what we know about accessible information in quantum systems. Holevo's theory basically says there aren't enough subatomic particles in all of creation to model the universe perfectly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holevo%27s_theorem

You end up needing 2 to the n power - 1 subatomic particles for your simulation and all you have is n particles.

2. If its an imperfect simulation and the universe really is expanding to infinity then the simulation is a running buffer overflow and will result in a null result. ARE creator is a bad programmer and will be supper pissed when the simulation crashes -- literally blue screen of death. God is a fucktard. Since we have yet to observe any other obvious programming bugs it aint very likely that we are living in a buffer overflow since that's the kind of bug a super being would not introduce.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31575594)

Why catholicism, why not any other faith with the same cerebration?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31577009)

As for atheism often including a lot of intellectual free riders such as liberalism, feminism, gay rights etc.

I suppose that it comes from the thinking that if there is no God-ordered set of morality, then we have to forge our own from certain principals, such as an appreciation and valorization of the idea of allowing people to flourish individually, to be their best, to grow unfettered, etc. (wanting the fairest society assuming we don't know whether we'll be on top or bottom in this society) and the current thinking is that "hands off" on another's private thoughts and public expression is the best way to get there. (True or not, I don't know--monarchists might say otherwise!) But aristocratic societies tend to wipe out over violence in a way that democracy thus far has not, so, that's the paradigm we've got. An interesting line of inquiry, right?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31578414)

"you can also just set a stop time to the simulation so it doesn't ever wind up with buffer allocation errors due to lack of memory, and if your computer is big enough you can simulate for a long, long time"

Or you could just not have an expanding universe introducing a buffering error. The nature of the universe is the problem. The modelers built in a buffer overflow. They are shit programmers or this isnt a simulation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31576711)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31576841)

"Yeah Jimmy?"

"Look at this, H-437 is +71 years from first use of atomic weapons and still no nuclear war."

"Wow that's wild! Activate the demagogue billionaire scenario and see how many more years it runs."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31577454)

Besides, our current knowledge of quantum systems is that amplitudes can be arbitrary complex numbers, which theoretically have infinite information capacity (although it is impossible to extract or even use more than a finite amount). Any digital representation would be limited in precision and we've come nowhere close to detecting a resolution limit.

What we don't know is why wavefunctions collapse. There is an appearance that "something" happens that causes an exponentially complex (in the number of components) system to collapse into a simpler system that behaves classically. "Simulation" (i.e. nature's enclosing computer throws information away) is one explanation but far from mainstream. I don't know of any mainstream scientist who takes it seriously.

Putting probabilities on "We live in a simulation" is ridiculous. It's like putting probabilities on God. Furthermore, it's unclear what "a simulation" is or how we would break out of it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31577043)

but i don't really get why you can say there is any logical or mathematical argument available in our own universe that has any bearing on whatever universe the simulation is being run. It seems you are focusing on a scenario where the simulation is being run in a similar universe to our's with the same kinds of particles and basic truths (and math and logic). Instead it could be Plato's Caves of an order of magnitude beyond anything we could possibly imagine.

In fact, the basic idea of existence is a nutso inquiry because whatever is outside of the universe (or however you want to describe the context of it existing vs. not existing) is a very strange place I'm sure.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3375937&forum_id=2),#31584064)