No Elon! We are NOT in a Simulation! If We Were, Here's How We'd know...

The simulation hypothesis suggests that everything we experience, our whole universe and everyone in it, could actually be an advanced digital simulation created by a higher order, technologically advanced civilization.

Think of it as an incredibly complex version of the video games and VR simulations we have today, but so advanced that it is indistinguishable from reality.

Supporters of this idea frequently mention progress in technology and virtual worlds to imply that cultures much more advanced than ours might generate simulations so detailed that even the complexity of a character's simulated brain would be enough to make it sentient.

But these characters would be oblivious to their existence in the digital world.

And if this is possible, then how would we know whether our world is not such a simulation? How realistic is such a notion? We can get an idea by estimating the amount of computing power that such a complex simulation would require.

Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University, an expert in robotics and AI, has made a rough estimate of the amount of computing power needed to simulate a human mind.

He calculates that this would require about 10 to the 14 operations per second.

This is based on computer modeling of individual nervous tissue.

Other experts calculate this number to be even larger, up to 10 to the 21 operations per second.

This level of computing power could make the simulated beings conscious because they would essentially have exactly the same brain capability of any real humans.

Do we have the capability to perform these kinds of computations? No, not currently.

But many people, including Ray Kurzweil, director at Google, have argued that such technology is less than 20 years away.

K. Eric Drexler, a PhD engineer from MIT, outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube that could perform 10 to the 21 operations per second.

And Robert Bradbury has conceptualized a hypothetical computing megastructure called a Matryoshka brain based on a planet-sized Dyson sphere that would have computing power on the order of 10 to the 42 operations per second.

Based on the highest number needed to simulate the brain, 10 to the 21, a total computing power of 10 to the 31 would be all that's needed to simulate the brains of every single person on Earth.

But to make a universe simulation, not only would the brain need to be simulated, but also our environment and the passage of time.

How much computing power would this require? Well, simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level would require a computer theoretically bigger than the size of the universe.

So that's not possible.