[Music] what is reality this question has been pondered by philosophers physicists theorists
and universal law enthusiasts for quite some time there are a lot of mysteries regarding
reality that we simply don't have the answers to and it's likely that our minds only access
a small fraction of what physical existence actually is one of the theories surrounding
reality is known as simulation theory this is a modern system of ideas with ancient roots this
theory famously detailed in the 1999 film the matrix states that were actually living in an
advanced digital construct such as a computer simulation that's overseen by a higher form of
intelligence human curiosity alone tells us that if we were advanced enough at this stage of our
evolution to create a simulation to observe there are many people who would find this
type of observation interesting on a multitude of levels from a logical standpoint reality is
anything we can perceive using one or more of our five senses however as Rizwan Virk a tech
entrepreneur MIT scientists and author of the simulation hypothesis states simply because we
perceive the world is real and material doesn't mean that it is so in fact the findings of quantum
physics may shed some doubt on the fact that the material universe is real the more that scientists
look for the material in the material world the more they find that it doesn't exist here are a
couple of examples of this in the well-known double slit experiment electrons are fired at
a photosensitive screen through slits in a copper plate this will generally produce an interference
pattern that indicates wave-like behavior but when the same experiment is conducted under
observation electrons behave like particles instead of waves and there's no interference
pattern as far as simulation theory goes some have taken this to mean that if we are in fact in
a simulation this happens because that simulation is conserving its resources and rendering certain
things only when it knows we're looking at them here's another example that's worth pondering in
2017 a group of researchers from the University of Washington proved that they could embed malicious
computer code into physical strands of DNA their goal with this experiment was to show
that computers working in gene sequencing were vulnerable to attack however they may have also
inadvertently revealed that what we perceived to be biological reality has in fact been computer
code all along in a paper written in 2003 by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom entitled are
you living in a computer simulation he states that at least one of three possibilities is
true number one all human like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop
the technology capable of creating simulated realities number two if any civilizations do
reach this phase of technological maturity none of them will bother to run simulations
of their evolutionary history or number three advanced civilizations would have the ability
to create simulations if just one civilization were to reach the simulation point probability
says we are likely simulated beings and we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation
Elon Musk also argued for our probability of being in a simulation in 2016 when he stated
40 years ago we had pong two rectangles and a dot that's what games were now forty 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 augmented reality
if you assume any rate of improvement at all the games will become indistinguishable from reality
he brought attention to the simulation hypothesis when he claimed that the chances of living in base
reality were one in billions and Burk believes it to be somewhere between 50 and 100 percent that
the simulation hypothesis is accurate stating I think it's more likely that we're in a simulation
than not the logic behind this hypothesis is that we're already really good at making simulations
and we're getting better at it all the time in fact in 2014 the harvard-smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics connected 8,000 computers in order to create a 350 million light years simulation
of our universe that they digitally aged over thirteen billion years we also currently use
computer simulations to predict things such as hurricane paths earthquakes the interactions of
planets and to aid scientific studies because these simulations have some inherent value we
have more incentive to create them so what would this mean regarding our ability to create our
reality intentionally and have control over our destiny what we perceive as reality is already
partly a simulation created by our brains we use our past experiences to process the data we
receive theoretical physicists David Bohm states it like this reality is what we take to be true
what we take to be true is what we believe what we believe is based upon our perceptions what we
perceive depends on what we look for what we look for depends on what we think what we think depends
on what we perceive what we perceive determines what we believe what we believe determines what
we take to be true what we take to be true is our reality and from a law of atraction
standpoint we already know that what we believe is our truth is what we experience as reality
this is how the brain filters information to fit within the parameters of what it has stored away
and given meaning to when we consciously work with our own minds using affirmations or other
subconscious altering modalities could it be that we are actually altering our own program and if
we were in fact in a simulation wouldn't it be useful to know what the rules of the game are so
we could use them to our advantage to create the life we choose burke stated in an interview with
Digital Trends it's very possible that whoever created our simulation would like to see given
random choices where we as a civilization would end up what we destroy ourselves what we end up
creating nuclear weapons would we end up creating our own simulation he goes on to say we would want
to know what the goals of the game are and what our individual quests might be we all want to
know what our individual quests are and what our achievements are we might have certain goals or
experiences that we're here to try to fulfill is it possible that we're just dreaming or that we're
in a simulation or that reality isn't reality at all at this stage we have no way of knowing what
the true reality of existence really is simulation theory may sound like a far-fetched idea but this
hypothesis is often discussed in academia by theoretical physicists technology entrepreneurs
philosophers astrophysicists and other scientists even Harvard University physicist Lisa Randall who
doubts this theory allows for the possibility that nothing is what it seems including the cognitive
process of observation and how we experience so is it better to free your mind or better to live
in blissful ignorance whether you choose the red pill a metaphor representing a prefabricated world
and the knowledge of what the truth really is or the blue pill which represents moving through life
as you were without having concerned with that one thing is certain we all have a very real conscious
experience of our individual and collective lives reality may not always seem simple but we have
been given free will to make choices that impact our experience and very real ways in the movie The
Matrix knowledge means power and ignorance means slavery but it might not be that black and white
just because we are awake to one thing and gain power over our lives in that area doesn't mean
we don't need to continue to search for the truth in other areas of our lives so we learn to master
the totality of our existence it is a constant evolutionary process and we can still hack our
reality at many different levels as Nick Bostrom States if we are living in a simulation then the
cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence while the
world we see is in some sense real it is not located at the fundamental level of reality
you