Elon Musk suggests humanity could be inside a "simulation," cites advancements in video games

Elon Musk has long remained a believer in simulation theory. The billionaire once again stated that humanity might be a part of a simulated reality. Musk recently appeared on Indian investor and entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath's podcast. In the interview, aired on November 30, the two discussed The Matrix.

While discussing the classic sci-fi, the host inquired whether Elon Musk actually believed in a Matrix. SpaceX's founder said that there is a probability that "we're in a simulation."

"I think you have to just think of these things as probabilities, not certainties. There's some probability that we're in a simulation," Musk said.

When the podcaster asked him what percentage of chance he would attribute to the possibility, Musk responded, "Pretty high." The xAI founder backed his opinion by citing the advancements in video games over the years. He stated that in the last 50 years, video games went from Pong to photorealistic games.

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BREAKING: Elon Musk says there is a high probability that we are living in a simulation. "There's some probability that we're in a simulation. Probably pretty high probability. One way to think of this is to say, if you look at the advancement of video games in our lifetime,

Elon Musk added that if the trend continues, there will eventually be intelligent non-player characters capable of doing "more sophisticated" conversations. Based on this, he inferred that humans might also be a part of any game-like simulation.

"So, the future, if civilization continues, will be millions, maybe billions, of...photorealistic, like, indistinguishable-from-reality video games with characters in those video games that are...in this level of the simulation, if you could call it. So, then, what are the odds that we're in base reality and that this has not happened before?" Musk said.

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Elon Musk adds to his simulation theory

Later in the conversation, Elon Musk also theorized that "outside the simulation" would be "less interesting" than "in the simulation." He added that humans' reality might be the "distillation" of interesting things. The Tesla CEO also gave his theory about the outcomes of the simulation.

"I do also have a theory, which is, like, the most interesting outcome is the most likely outcome as seen by a third party... the gods or god of the simulation. Because when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we stop those simulations that are not interesting," Musk said.

The billionaire drew this hypothesis from his own businesses. He said that people working in his SpaceX and Tesla draw lessons from the most interesting simulations and discard the "boring ones." Extrapolating Darwin’s principle to simulation theory, Elon Musk said that only the "most interesting simulations" would most likely survive.

"So, I think that, from a Darwinian's perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are gonna be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which, therefore, means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely," he stated.

The podcaster further asked if multiple layers of simulations could exist, to which Musk replied, "Yes." In simpler terms, Kamath asked whether imaginary entities that theoretically control humans could also be in a simulation controlled by others.

This was not the first time that Elon Musk expressed his views on the aforementioned theory. Weeks before, he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he discussed similar points.

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In the podcast, Elon Musk discussed several topics with the Indian investor. In their conversation, Musk also expressed his concern about the "population decline" and called it a "big, big problem."