Here’s Why We Might Actually Be Living In The Matrix - But We Don’t Realise It

Earlier this year, technology visionary Elon Musk claimed that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation like the Matrix.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder says there’s only a ‘one in billions’ chance that our reality is actually real - claiming that the rapid evolution of videogames means that, at some point in the future, there will be billions of simulations of our planet running, all the time.

But could we ever know? That’s the big problem, says Laura D’Olimpio of the University of Notre Dame Australia, in an essay for The Conversation.

http://www.sciencealert.com/why-it-s-hard-to-know-if-we-re-living-in-a-computer-simulation-or-not

D’Olimpio says that the concept is based on the work of Descartes - and his conclusion is that we can’t ever trust our senses. If we are in The Matrix, odds are we will never know.

D’Olimpio writes, ‘While watching The Matrix, we identify with the protagonist, Neo (Keanu Reeves), who discovers the “ordinary” world is a computer-simulated reality and his atrophied body is actually suspended in a vat of life-sustaining liquid.

‘Even if we cannot be absolutely certain that the external world is how it appears to our senses, Descartes commences his second meditation with a small glimmer of hope.

‘At least we can be sure that we ourselves exist, because every time we doubt that, there must exist an “I” that is doing the doubting. This consolation results in the famous expression cogito ergo sum or “I think therefore I am”.

‘So, yes, you may well be a brain in a vat and your experience of the world may be a computer simulation programmed by an evil genius. But, rest assured, at least you’re thinking!