Elon Musk suggests we are likely in a simulation; 1 in 1 billion odds that we are not in one

Because of the nature of technology to compound so rapidly, it leads Elon Musk to believe that we are headed towards that, indistinguishable from reality.

He postulates that if that were the case, we are likely already in a simulation and there is a 1 in 1 billion chance we are in real life.

It begs the question "what is real?"

If his predictions are correct, and they may not be, we are likely involved in an advanced simulation already.  There is a chance that we are the first iteration of builders towards an embedable simulation, though highly unlikely, he says.  It is more realistic that we have already built a simulation and are using it.

“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following,” he told the Code Conference. “40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot. That’s where we were.

“Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, we’ll have augmented reality.

“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.”

The head of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has sunk a large piece of his finance into AI research to circumvent danger.  He seems to believe that the alternative to ever advancing technology is the end of the universe, though he could have just been riffing.  He and his brother have forbid each other from talking about this in the hot-tub.

I've got my own ideas on the odds, but not sure where he came up with 1 billion