Are we living in the Matrix?

With the release of the fourth Matrix film this Christmas, the idea behind the original movie is once again being talked about. The notion that the ‘real world’ is a computer-generated simulation was considered pure science fiction when the original film was released in 1999, but philosophers have long argued that there are good arguments to suggest we could very well be.

The argument is known as ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’, and — as crazy and counterintuitive as it sounds — it’s discussed quite seriously by academics, physicists and philosophers. Elon Musk, for one, made headlines a few years ago when he said that the chances that we are in ‘base reality’ (i.e. that we are not in a simulation) is one in billions.

The Simulation Hypothesis is in some ways the modern incarnation of an idea that has been around for thousands of years: that the physical world is not the ‘real’ world.