Arguments that we live in a simulated world have been thrown around for centuries.
French philosopher René Descartes originally theorised about the brain-in-a-vat in his 1641 ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ in which he said our minds are all being controlled from a laboratory.
Since then, technology has advanced so much and, coupled with the rise of AI, many believe that we are living inside a virtual reality.
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote a paper called ‘Are you living in a simulation?’ which captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts.
Mr Bostrom suggests future generations will be able to create computers so powerful that we will not be able to distinguish between reality and simulations.
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He wrote: “Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct).
“Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.
“It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.”
Many high profile tech figures, including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, believe that our reality is simulated and our existence is fabricated on a super-computer.
But research from Oxford University has now shattered that theory, stating definitively that this is base reality.
Physicists Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that it is “impossible” to create a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs.
Essentially, the duo found that the complexity of a simulation grew exponentially with the amount of particles being simulated.
They found that to simulate just a couple hundred electrons, there would need to be a computer memory that requires more atoms that exist in the universe.
The findings, which were published in the journal Science Advances, will undoubtedly miff tech enthusiasts, particularly Elon Musk who once said that there is a “one in billions” chance that this is reality.