Are we living in a simulation? Elon Musk, Nick Bostrom and the ancient idea of maya

The short answer: In 2016 Elon Musk argued in public that the odds we live in "base reality" are one in billions, because video games are improving so fast that one day simulations will be indistinguishable from life. His reasoning closely follows a 2003 paper by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. Indian philosophy has its own very old word for the gap between how the world appears and what it really is: maya. But maya and the simulation hypothesis are not the same idea, and the differences are where things get interesting.

What Musk actually said

At Recode's Code Conference on 1 June 2016, Musk was asked whether we might be living in a simulation. His answer, as reported by Vox and The Verge the next day, went like this:

"Forty years ago we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year."

He went on: "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality." Given billions of computers and devices that could run such games, he concluded, "it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions."

He then added a twist. We should arguably hope this is true, he said, because the alternative is that civilisation stops advancing, perhaps because of some calamity. In his framing, either we will create simulations indistinguishable from reality or civilisation will cease to exist.

That is the full argument. It is an extrapolation from technology, plus a counting step: if simulated worlds vastly outnumber the original one, any given observer is probably in a simulated one.

Where the argument comes from

The counting step is Nick Bostrom's. In "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?", published in Philosophical Quarterly in 2003, Bostrom argued that at least one of three things must be true:

1. Almost all civilisations like ours die out before they become technologically mature.
2. Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running detailed simulations of their ancestors.
3. We are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Bostrom is careful. He does not claim the third option is true; he claims that you cannot reject all three at once. Musk's version is bolder: he treats the third option as close to certain and treats the first as the frightening alternative. It is worth keeping the two apart. One is a careful philosophical trilemma; the other is a confident bet made on stage.

What maya actually means

Now step back about two and a half thousand years.

The word maya appears in the Rig Veda in the sense of a god's wondrous or magical power to take forms. As a philosophical term for the world, though, its key early text is the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 4.10:

"Know that prakriti (nature) is maya, and that the Great Lord is the maker of maya. This whole world is pervaded by beings that are parts of Him."

Read slowly, this is not quite "the world is fake". It says that nature, the whole changing material world, is a power or display, and that there is a Lord who wields it. The emphasis is on source and dependence: the world is real as an appearance, but it is not self-standing.

It is worth being honest here. The great older Upanishads, such as the Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka, rarely use the word maya in this sense. What they do have is the underlying intuition. The Chandogya (6.1.4) gives the famous image of clay: once you know one lump of clay, you know everything made of clay, because the pots and bowls are "a name, a modification arising from speech", and the clay alone is real. Later (6.2.1) it says that in the beginning there was only Being, one without a second.

What Shankara adds

The idea of maya as a full theory of appearance comes into sharp focus with Adi Shankara, the eighth-century teacher of Advaita Vedanta, mainly through his commentaries.

In the introduction to his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, Shankara describes adhyasa, superimposition: the mind laying one thing on top of another. His everyday examples are mother-of-pearl appearing as silver and a single moon appearing as two. We do this, he says, with the self and the body, treating what we are and what we are not as if they were one. In his commentary on Brahma Sutra 2.1.14 he returns to the Chandogya's clay to argue that the world of many names and forms depends entirely on Brahman, the one reality, and has no independent existence of its own.

Shankara's position is subtle. The world is not a hallucination you can wish away: you still have to pay your rent and keep your promises. But it is not ultimately real in the way Brahman is real. Later Advaita would call this status mithya, a word we will give a whole episode to.

Where the two ideas meet, and where they part

On the surface the two ideas rhyme. Both say that the world you see may not be the bottom layer. Both say that appearances can be fully convincing from the inside. A character in a perfect simulation and a person caught in maya would both feel that their world is solid.

But look at the differences.

What is behind the curtain. For Bostrom and Musk, behind our world is another physical world: a civilisation with computers, running code. That world could itself be simulated, and so on. For Vedanta, what lies behind appearance is not another machine but Brahman, pure being and awareness, which is not a thing in any world at all.

Who you are. In the simulation hypothesis you are probably a program: the simulation is real, and you are the illusion. In Advaita the reverse is closer to the truth. The witnessing self, Atman, is the most real thing there is, and it is the world of objects that is dependent.

What to do about it. The simulation argument is mainly a probability claim; it does not tell you how to live. The Upanishads and Shankara are interested in maya because seeing through it is meant to free you. The question is not only "is this real?" but "who is asking?"

Why this matters for an ordinary week

You do not need to settle whether we are code to take something useful from this. Shankara's silver-in-the-shell is a good description of ordinary stress: the email that looks like a disaster and turns out to be a misread, the colleague you were sure was hostile who was simply tired. Much of our suffering comes from superimposing a story on what is actually there. Checking the shell before you panic about the silver is practical philosophy.

Next in the series

In Episode 2 we turn to the Mandukya Upanishad, the shortest of the major Upanishads, only twelve verses long. It asks a question a simulation theorist would enjoy: in waking, in dreaming and in deep sleep, which one of you is real, and what is watching all three?

Frequently asked questions

Did Elon Musk say we are living in a simulation?
At the Code Conference on 1 June 2016 he said the odds that we are in base reality are "one in billions", because games will become indistinguishable from reality.

Who came up with the simulation argument?
The Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, in "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" (Philosophical Quarterly, 2003). He argued that at least one of three possibilities must be true, not that we are certainly simulated.

Is maya the same as the simulation hypothesis?
No. Both say appearances can be fully convincing from the inside, but for Vedanta what lies behind appearance is Brahman, not another machine, and the self is the most real thing there is rather than a program.

Where does the word maya come from?
It appears in the Rig Veda as a god's power to take forms. As a term for the world, its key early text is the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 4.10.

If you are curious what your own way of seeing the world says about your strengths, you can take the free DharmaCode quiz.

Sources

• Vox, "Elon Musk believes we are probably characters in some advanced civilization's video game", 2 June 2016: vox.com
• The Verge, "Odds are we're living in a simulation, says Elon Musk", 2 June 2016: theverge.com
• Recode / Code Conference 2016 video: YouTube
• Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?", Philosophical Quarterly 53, no. 211 (2003): 243 to 255. simulation-argument.com
• Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.10: hinduwebsite.com
• Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.4 and 6.2.1.
• Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhashya, introduction (adhyasa) and commentary on 2.1.14 (trans. George Thibaut, Sacred Books of the East vols 34 and 38).