Over the decade that followed, the idea has been promoted by Elon Musk (who has said the odds are ‘one in billions’ that our world is real) and Neil DeGrasse Tyson (who reduces the odds to a still-troubling 50:50). If that is the case, the likelihood of us being in one of the billions of historical simulations seems almost certain – or else post-human societies have no reason to simulate histories, or never reach the technological capability. He argued that future civilisations could have access to vast amounts of computing power, which could run a near-infinite number of simulations.
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom made the possibility seem inevitable. “If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain”, Morpheus infamously tells Neo, before revealing the horrifying truth. The idea, and fear, that reality is not as it seems can be traced back thousands of years, through the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s ‘butterfly dream’ to films such as, most famously, The Matrix. Is it possible, maybe even likely, that the chaos of the world around us is the result of an advanced computer simulation? That we are simply characters in someone else’s game? What if the world around us was not real? Could it be that the screen you’re looking at, the air you’re breathing, the ground beneath your feet and even the smallest particles that make up your body do not really exist?
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