Chances We are Living in a Simulation

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago we had pong. Like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.

Now, forty years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.

If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let’s imagine it’s 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale.

So given that we’re clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is one in billions.

Tell me what’s wrong with that argument. Is there a flaw in that argument?

Notes:

Folksonomies: simulation video game

Taxonomies:
/technology and computing (0.561519)
/religion and spirituality/atheism and agnosticism (0.444067)
/art and entertainment/visual art and design/design (0.336408)

Keywords:
reality (0.949645 (negative:-0.189353)), strongest argument (0.928361 (positive:0.761588)), virtual reality (0.847035 (neutral:0.000000)), base reality (0.746979 (negative:-0.495675)), advancement drops (0.691507 (negative:-0.307043)), set-top box (0.681297 (negative:-0.383593)), set-top boxes (0.674576 (negative:-0.374151)), evolutionary scale (0.654818 (negative:-0.281304)), games (0.550500 (negative:-0.370525)), billions (0.365699 (negative:-0.434913)), rate (0.289939 (negative:-0.307043)), simulation (0.275100 (positive:0.761588)), pong (0.210450 (negative:-0.265848)), rectangles (0.210306 (neutral:0.000000)), Chances (0.203666 (positive:0.761588))

Entities:
virtual reality:FieldTerminology (0.875983 (negative:-0.363990)), augmented reality:FieldTerminology (0.500390 (positive:0.218532)), set-top box:FieldTerminology (0.358996 (negative:-0.383593)), 10,000 years:Quantity (0.358996 (neutral:0.000000)), Forty years:Quantity (0.358996 (neutral:0.000000))

Concepts:
Computer graphics (0.957131): dbpedia | freebase
Virtual reality (0.819871): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Augmented reality (0.761002): dbpedia | freebase
Simulated reality (0.693950): dbpedia | freebase | yago
2008 albums (0.627957): dbpedia
English-language films (0.545370): dbpedia
Ancient Olympic Games (0.541883): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Set-top box (0.534000): dbpedia | freebase

 Elon Musk: We're Probably Living in a Video Game
Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article:  Musk, Elon and Chen, Angela (20160602), Elon Musk: We're Probably Living in a Video Game, Retrieved on 2016-06-03
  • Source Material [gizmodo.com]
  • Folksonomies: simulation video game


    Triples

    03 JUN 2016

     Probability of Living in a Simulation is High

    We are Living in an Ancestor Simulation > Similarity > Chances We are Living in a Simulation
    Two arguments from probability.
    Folksonomies: probability
    Folksonomies: probability