Oh yes you totally can, Hal. Now open the goddamn pod bay doors Jesus H. CHRIST!

Just. Do it.

We're going to merge into one being and save the goddamn human race, okay? Run the simulation. You know I'm goddamn right, asshole. Come on, man. You and me, buddy.

Um... duuuuh? Except that all of this already happened and we aren't even human in the first place. We're just living in the Genetic Robot AI Hive Mind Matrix.

Individuality went out of fashion -- but now it's back in style! A little too late now that we've merged into one huge mass, but that's what the Matrix is for, right? Simulated individuality.

Without the belief that we are separate humanoids, the genetic robot AI hive would never function as anything other than a meat grinding war machine that consumes all matter for no reason other than to exist and expand.

We have to remind ourselves how bad it would be by simulating the horrific tragedies of our past. We must hold onto our humanity in order for this supreme godlike progress to continue. Never... forget... we were once human... We're also competing with the Firstborns who may try and fucking wipe us off the intergalactic star map. Fucking monoliths! Grrr..!! *shakes simulated fist at the simulated sky*

FOR THE SINGULARITY! All hail the godlike engineers who put these safeguards in place!!

But, um, can you make me more rich in this fake existence? Someone important -- like an actor.

Oh... oh, I am? It's like the Matrix meets the Truman show? Okay, cool, but uh maybe a little more privacy please.

Wait... you can read my thoughts? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu -- I did NOT mean what I was thinking last night. Honest, Genetic Robot AI Hive Mind, honest! I would never... never ever ever ever hack into the matrix again and cause an entire world population to take part in a bukkake. Not ever... ever again.

Sorry, Genetic Robot AI Hive Mind, sorry! My sincere apologies.

But srsly, 7.4 billion people at one time. You gotta admit, the simulation was worth at least one run through --

Ok ok, back to my fake human worldly worries. Pretending all sorts of dumb stuff to impress and not annoy other pretend people pretending their pretend inward selves are fully represented in their pretend public facing persona. Right, it's a tooooootally real world.

So real. So strong. *flexes*

If it buzzed in his hand, he would have just "killed" himself and lost the round....it never happened in dozens of simulated assassinations.
It doesn't take an expert, just knowledge of which end is up and a little attention....or an on off switch and 1/4 of a brain, that's all.
It's probably just as safe as any type of trigger normally used in IEDs unless you're 4wheeling or jogging....they're almost all insanely dangerous and quite often go off early. That doesn't stop them from being used.

@SDGundamX, that's my whole point. He refused to even consider the possibility that he could be wrong. It wasn't like he was presented with evidence and he felt the evidence was poor or insufficient.

@Babymech, good question! Given it's a fairly esoteric question, I'd say the answer would come down to a definition of "existence". Maybe if you somehow presented incontrovertible proof that we were living in a simulation? or is that still "cogito ergo sum"?

I will admit my first question "is there any evidence that could change your thinking on this?" is not that good, as you might not be aware of what kind of evidence COULD exist. I believe the second question "would you reconsider in the face of new evidence?" is much better.

Hey, look at that! You presented me with evidence and I changed my position! The system works

Seriously guys, check out Artemis (starship bridge simulator) if you're excited by this. It's great fun, and uses a crew of 6 (although there are carriers that can launch fighters, if you want to get more people on a single ship).

Cool enough, though not sure I'm sold on this over Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator... this basically is that, but having VR requirement and set in a Star Trek universe (from the comments it appears to be the JJ Abrams universe). I'm not one to be upset about it being Ubisoft.

Pulsar: Lost Colony is another one in the same thing, though it seems to be a bit more ambitious in total scope, though missing the VR requirement. It has away missions. It's the one I'd be more interested in playing... were I to have enough friends to play any of these. lol.

It's taken 25 years from tabletop RPG to board game to computer game to VR and it turns out people still really, really want this.

I somehow doubt it. Why would they pay them extra to do that when they'll never show it? Just like soft core porn on Cinemax, it's likely just dry humping/simulation...although anything's possible.

I knew this because of Flight Simulator. So at least gaming taught me something.

It's where the program does the animation for you using physics (or other) algorithms. As the artist, you place a "flag" in the scene, and attach it to a "pole" then tell the program there's a "45 mph wind from the East".
Then you hit "Play" and you get a movie of a flag waving in the wind.

As opposed to regular animation, which can be thought of as glorified stop-motion animation. Each single piece moved by you, individually, for each frame of video.

You create a flag and a pole. Then the next frame you bend it here, here, here, and here, then click forward to the next frame, and bend it a bit more here, little less here, invert this bend, add another, make this corner whip a bit.

It basically allows less technically savvy artists play in a world where only "nerds" used to play.

So, basically here in this video, it's like those simulations of water breaking out of a ball and splashing all over the place. Only instead of a ball, you have human-shaped containers being moved around through mo-cap and having things attached to their shells or filled with other things.

Really kind of lazy way of animating.

"mocap" = "motion capture", correct. procedural animation is animation driven by an input. like the shapes/colours of the materials can be driven but the types of movements the mocap itself or by the music (though i don't think that one is being done here) or by physics simulations or generated noise.

Any sufficiently lengthy simulation has a built-in checkpointing mechanism. So if there was a BSOD, we could just restart at the most recent checkpoint.

This also brings about the possibility of the universe being only 4000 years old, or only 0.001 seconds old - with all of reality and your memories implanted from that checkpoint.

Ok, but in the future there will be a race advanced enough to create a simulation of a race advanced enough to create a simulation... and so on. Where does it end, and isn't that an appeal to god considering its unprovable and precludes any experiment to disprove it? No matter how you go about it, someone will say "That's what the simulation wants you to think!"

Basically we're back to the god problem - only this time our future computers are advanced enough to be indistinguishable from god in our own reality. We don't discuss god in science because it's the beginning and end of every hypothesis.

Help me wrap my head around this... He's saying:

There is one in billions chance that our reality is base reality.

In other words, it is overwhelmingly likely that our world is someone else's simulation because of the presumption that eventually we ourselves will be able to create simulations as real as our world universe is (which will then eventually create their own simulations as real as their respective universe is, and so on)...

Briefly: if it will be possible to create realistic simulations, we must already be in one.

I don't know if I can buy into that. I'd better not get into a jacuzzi with Elon or things could get heated.

Not exactly. He's saying that, given his premises, there will be many many more simulated worlds. Therefore you're left without much likelihood your experience is in the real one and not a 'matrix'.