Original video in Chinese.
Key Takeaway
- Ultimate simulation hypothesis: In 40 years, games went from Pong to photo-realistic realism; civilization will eventually be able to create simulations that are impossible to distinguish from reality. There will be far more simulated universes than base reality, so we are almost certainly living in a simulation.
- Speculation about the purpose of the simulation: Musk believes the simulation is probably aimed at “drama/extreme testing,” pursuing maximum information, complexity, and unpredictability; a dull life would be deleted.
- Five action guidelines: ① pursue maximum possibility and keep crossing boundaries to create new combinations; ② become the system’s biggest variable and stay unpredictable; ③ create more and consume less, because data you give back has greater retention value; ④ be more humorous and embrace absurdity; ⑤ whether the hypothesis is true or false, living this way is the most exciting.
Have you ever thought that this world might be fake?
Musk has been thinking about this. He has an “ultimate simulation hypothesis.” Recently, on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he gave a very in-depth explanation of this hypothesis. He was not just repeating his past views; he also combined them with SpaceX’s engineering experience and put forward a concrete line of reasoning.
Musk believes that the world we live in is very likely virtual, a simulation. Why?
If you’re an old-school gamer, you know that 40 years ago, we only had very rudimentary games like Pong—the ping-pong game with just two blocks and a dot. And today, we already have photo-realistic single-player games and online games with a million people playing at the same time.
Look at that: in just 40 years, it has developed to the point of being almost indistinguishable from reality. What if we give it more time?
Even if the pace of technological progress slows by 1,000 times, on the scale of the universe’s billions of years, that’s still just a blink of an eye.
So humanity, or any civilization, will eventually be able to create a simulated world that cannot be distinguished from reality. This is entirely feasible.
Once that ability is achieved, there will be billions of “simulated universes,” and only one “base reality.” Therefore, the probability that we are in that one and only “real world” is one in several billion.
Let’s follow the logic further. Since this is possible, what basic rules would such a simulated world follow?
Musk believes it is very likely to be a simulation aimed at “drama” or “extreme testing.”
He uses SpaceX as an analogy.
At SpaceX, they run thousands upon thousands of rocket launch simulations on computers. So for those simulated launches, the engineers are the creators.
If a simulation runs perfectly, with no accidents and no malfunctions, engineers will usually just delete it or terminate it early. Because that simulation provides no new data and no learning value.
By contrast, only simulations that malfunction, or that due to some strange reason trigger a chain reaction and eventually explode, will be allowed to run all the way through to the end. Because that is the data they want. Or rather, that is the “interesting” part.
By the same logic, let’s look at the world today.
I believe a lot of people have this feeling: this world is getting crazier and crazier. For example, geopolitical conflicts and all kinds of extreme social events.
It feels as if the world, like software, is constantly throwing errors.
In other words, if our world really is just a simulation, and if there is a creator behind this simulation, then it is very likely that his goal, like the engineers at SpaceX, is to see situations with enough interesting, sufficiently faulty data.
If human society entered a perfect utopia, with nothing happening and no challenges or conflicts at all, we might have already been “formatted.”
To sum it up, Musk believes the world is fake. And only a civilization that is interesting enough, complex enough, and even full of problems qualifies to be preserved in the memory of a supercomputer.
Our current chaotic world is precisely proof that we are still in the simulation.
Musk is reasoning from the perspective of civilization. Following his assumption, I continue thinking from the individual level:
If the world really is fake, a simulation, then what should we as individuals do?
To put it in one sentence:
Under this framework, the goal of life should not be to “minimize pain” or “maximize safety”—like our parents taught us, that we must live steadily and not do anything reckless—but rather to achieve “maximized narrative value.”
Based on this bigger goal, I have laid out these five action guidelines.
First, we should refuse to be NPCs.
Because in game design, NPC behavior is scripted, predictable, and low in computational cost. If you also live like an NPC, following the same old routine, then you become “dispensable.”
So even a small act of rebellion has meaning, such as suddenly learning a completely unrelated skill. Because this is proving to the system:
I am an independent variable capable of generating new data, not a dead piece of code.
Second, we can reconstruct the hardships we encounter as “plot conflict.”
Look at suffering from a different angle. That is to say, suffering is not there to punish you, but to test the boundaries of your system and see whether you can evolve amid chaos.
So when you face a huge setback in life, never fall into a victim mentality. Instead, we should think: the simulator thinks the plot is too bland right now, so it’s turning up the difficulty for me.
Third, we should pursue a “high-variance life.”
If only simulations that involve accidents, explosions, and chain reactions are preserved, then in life we should pursue maximum possibility. We should try cross-disciplinary combinations and create things that did not exist before.
Look, isn’t Musk exactly like that? He builds rockets, digs tunnels, works on brain-computer interfaces, and bought Twitter. He keeps messing around, maintaining high complexity and unpredictability, so he becomes the biggest variable in the simulation, and he becomes very important.
Fourth, we must create more and consume less.
A person who scrolls short videos all day is consuming computing power to process data generated by others. A person who makes videos, writes books, starts businesses, or invents things is feeding data back to the system.
From the creator’s perspective, it’s obvious that creators are more valuable to keep around than consumers, isn’t it?
Fifth, we should have a bit more humor.
If the world is just a shoddy operation, just a huge joke, then cynicism is pointless. Instead, we should be someone who gets the joke, someone who knows how to appreciate this absurdity. When we find things becoming ridiculous, go with that absurdity, and even make use of it.
Musk often says: “The most ironic outcome is often the most likely outcome.” This sentence is actually a guiding principle.
If you look back at these five action guidelines of mine, you’ll realize that if Musk’s “ultimate simulation hypothesis” is correct, then although it’s frustrating, following these guidelines at least lets our “simulated life” continue; if Musk’s hypothesis is wrong, then doing this can also make our “real life” exciting enough.
OK, that’s it for this episode. See you next time!