{"id":22043,"date":"2016-10-14T02:05:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T20:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org?p=22040&preview_id=22040"},"modified":"2016-10-14T02:05:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T20:35:03","slug":"tech-billionaires-convinced-we-live-in-the-matrix-are-secretly-funding-scientists-to-help-break-us-out-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=22043","title":{"rendered":"Tech billionaires convinced we live in the Matrix are secretly funding scientists to help break us out of it | The Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some of the world\u2019s richest and most powerful people are convinced that we are living in a computer simulation<\/a>. And now they\u2019re trying to do something about it.<\/p>\n

At least two of Silicon Valley\u2019s tech billionaires are pouring money into efforts to break humans out of the simulation that they believe that it is living in, according to a new report.<\/p>\n

Philosophers have long been concerned about how we can know that our world isn\u2019t just a very believable simulation of a real one. But concern about that has become ever more active in recent years, as computers and artificial intelligence have advanced.<\/p>\n

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Elon Musk – The chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is ‘one in billions’<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That has led some tech billionaires to speculate that the chances we are not living in such a simulation is \u201cbillions to one\u201d<\/a>. Even Bank of America analysts wrote last month that the chances we are living in a Matrix-style fictional world is as high as 50 per cent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And now at least two billionaires are funding scientists in an effort to try and break us out of that simulation. It isn\u2019t clear what form that work is taking.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer,\u201d writes The New Yorker\u2019s Tad Friend<\/a>. \u201cTwo tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The detail came from a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman, who runs Y Combinator which helps develop tech companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Friend didn\u2019t indicate whether Mr Altman was one of those two, or who those people might be. A number of prominent tech billionaires have discussed the idea of the simulation \u2013 including Elon Musk, who has used his fortune to fund potentially odd efforts in the past.<\/p>\n

Mr Musk spoke earlier this year<\/a> about the fact that he believes that the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is \u201cone in billions\u201d. He said that he had come to that conclusion after a chat in a hot tub, where it was pointed out that computing technology has advanced so quickly that at some point in the future it will become indistinguishable from real life \u2013 and, if it does, there\u2019s no reason to think that it hasn\u2019t done already and that that\u2019s what we are currently living through.<\/p>\n

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Gadgets and tech news in pictures<\/h2>\n

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If we aren\u2019t actually living through a simulation, Mr Musk said, then all human life is probably about to come to an end and so we should hope that we are living in one. \u201cOtherwise, if civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilisation,\u201d he said at the Recode conference.<\/p>\n

Mr Altman seemed to echo that fear and told the New Yorker that he was concerned about the way that the devices that surround us might lead to the extinction of all consciousness in the universe. He spoke about how the best scenario for dealing with that is a \u201cmerge\u201d \u2013 when our brains and computers become one, perhaps by having our brains uploaded into the cloud.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese phones already control us,\u201d he said. \u201cThe merge has begun \u2013\u00a0and a merge is our best scenario. Any version without a merge will have conflict: we enslave the A.I. or it enslaves us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe full-on-crazy version of the merge is we get our brains uploaded into the cloud. I\u2019d love that. We need to level up humans, because our descendants will either conquer the galaxy or extinguish consciousness in the universe forever. What a time to be alive!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the world\u2019s richest and most powerful people are convinced that we are living in a computer simulation. And now they\u2019re trying to do something about it. At least two of Silicon Valley\u2019s tech billionaires are pouring money into efforts to break humans out of the simulation that they believe that it is living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}