Are You Living Within "The Matrix"

The theory that we are all living within a computer simulation was made popular in 1999 due to the release of The Matrix, and since than has become a serious topic of debate among scientists, with leading figures such as Elon Musk claiming that the idea that we are all computer generated is not only possible, but is in fact very probable. His reasoning is as follows.

Imagine that in the future, someone where to recreate 2017 as a very elaborate video game, so elaborate, that it simulated the emotions and thoughts of all the people on the planet, and was indiscernible from "the real world" in every way. Then in theory every time this game was run, it would "create" a new version of every person alive in 2017, including you. Now if just one copy of a program was created, the odds of you being a computer simulation would be one in two. If the program was then recreated and sold as a product and one hundred people bought this video game, there would be a 99% chance that you were a computer simulation, but the percentage continues to increase.  If a sequel of the game were to be released, say a game about 2018, and was also sold a hundred times, you would then have 0.5% chance of living in the real world. Now do the math for if the games were sold a more realistic number of times, say one million each, and you have a one in two million chance of being a real person, and these numbers assume that only two simulations that include you were ever created in all of time.

Now things get complicated.

Say a simulation of the year 3000 was created in the year 3001. By 3000, the technology for creating hyper-realistic simulations would already exist. This would then mean that within that simulation, other simulations would would be created, and within those even more simulations would exist. Think of the movie Inception. This in theory means there are an infinite number of simulations stemming from one simulation being created, thus making the likely hood of you being real one in infinity. Then multiply that likely hood of one in infinity by the total number of simulations that were created in the "real world." Needless to say the chance that you are an original copy of yourself is unimaginably small, if you go off of this theory.

So can all this math nerd stuff be true? And if it is, does it make life any less meaningful? The answer is up to you to decide. There is no way to feasibly determine if what we see hear and smell is real or just a computer running a code for what it thinks would have happened in the real world.

Sources Cited:

Are We Living in a Simulation? – 8-Bit Philosophy. Dir. Allec Opperman. Perf. Nathan Lowe. Youtube. Wisecrack, n.d. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB3v3bDba5g>

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION? - Nick Bostrom, Oxford University - 2001