Are We Living in a Simulation?

Nobody knows, and that is the honest answer. The most serious argument for simulation theory, philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2003 trilemma, does not actually claim we are simulated. It argues that at least one of three things must be true, and living inside a simulation is only one option. The idea is provocative, unproven, and largely unfalsifiable.

By the Conspiracy Podcast team | Last updated: August 2026

The idea sounds like dorm room talk, but it has real philosophical roots, plus a growing list of scientists who take it seriously. The Conspiracy Podcast spent a full episode on it, from ancient philosophy to modern physics to Elon Musk’s math. Here is what holds up.

Are we living in a simulation?

There is no evidence that settles this either way. The strongest formal argument, from philosopher Nick Bostrom, does not claim we are simulated. It claims that at least one of three statements must be true, and being in a simulation is only one of them. Most working scientists treat the whole question as open and largely untestable.

Around 380 BCE, Plato described prisoners chained in a cave, mistaking shadows on a wall for the whole of reality. In 1641, Descartes asked what would happen if an evil demon fed a mind false sensations, and concluded that the act of doubting itself was proof of existence. Both are philosophical ancestors of simulation theory, not evidence for it. The hosts walk through that full lineage, plus the objections each philosopher raised, in the Living in a Simulation episode.

Modern computing gave the old question a vivid new picture. Alan Turing’s 1936 idea of a universal computing machine laid early groundwork, life simulation games like The Sims let people build entire worlds on a screen, and The Matrix arrived in 1999 and pushed the concept into mainstream culture. The episode traces that build up in order, philosophy first, then computing theory, then pop culture, arriving at Bostrom’s formal argument only after all three threads meet. It started as a much older question about perception, wearing new technology.

What is Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument?

Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper does not claim we are living in a simulation. It argues that at least one of three propositions must be true: almost all civilizations go extinct before they can build simulations, almost none that survive bother running them, or we are almost certainly inside one right now.

Bostrom published the argument in a 2003 paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” in the journal Philosophical Quarterly. The three propositions are meant to be exhaustive: civilizations almost always go extinct before reaching simulation technology, or civilizations that reach it almost never choose to use it, or we are almost certainly living in one. Bostrom’s actual point was narrower than the headline it usually gets. He argued that logic forces you to accept at least one of the three, not that the third one is true, and ruling out the first two leaves the third as the default.

This is the most misreported detail in coverage of simulation theory, and it matters. Headlines routinely compress the trilemma into a philosopher says we are probably in a simulation, which erases the two escape hatches Bostrom built into his own argument. The episode gets this right: the hosts walk through all three legs before weighing in, and frame the third option as a surmise, not a proof. Choosing it requires believing advanced civilizations both survive and choose, at scale, to run ancestor simulations, an assumption the other two legs exist to challenge.

What evidence do people give for simulation theory?

Believers point to three things: physics, math, and anomalies. Some physicists note that space and light seem to have limits, like a rendering budget. Reality runs on mathematics with unusual precision. And people report glitchy moments, deja vu, and odd videos. None of this is proof. All of it is suggestive at best.

The physics argument leans on limits that look like a rendering budget. Nothing in the universe appears to move faster than light, and space and time may not be infinitely divisible below the Planck length, roughly 1.6 times ten to the negative 35 meters. In 2012, physicist Silas Beane proposed that a simulated universe built on a numerical grid might leave a detectable signature in cosmic ray data, the digital equivalent of a video game’s draw distance. Theorists also point to how precisely the universe runs on mathematics, arguing a coded reality would look exactly this clean.

The more viral evidence is anecdotal, and it should be labeled that way. Glitch in the Matrix videos showing a bird frozen mid flight or a plane hanging in the sky circulate constantly, along with personal deja vu stories. None of this holds up as data. Frozen looking footage is easy to explain through camera artifacts or distance, and deja vu is a documented, ordinary neurological event, not a recorded system error. The hosts treat these clips as fun, not proof, and the same appetite for pattern spotting drives their separate episode on the Mandela Effect.

Simulation theory is really old ideas wearing a tech forward coat, which is part of why it refuses to go away. For more patterns like it, see the site’s roundup of famous conspiracy theories.

You think that you’re in complete absolute control, but all the data and everything that’s being curated and fed to you is being controlled.

the guys, on the record

Can simulation theory ever be proven or disproven?

Probably not, and that is the central weakness of the theory. If a simulation were sophisticated enough to produce our reality, it could also be sophisticated enough to hide every trace of itself, including from any test we could design. That makes simulation theory largely unfalsifiable, which in science is a serious objection, not a minor technicality.

Falsifiability is the standard philosophers of science use to separate a testable theory from an untestable one, and simulation theory struggles against it directly. Even the strongest proposed test, physicist Silas Beane’s idea that a simulated universe might leave a signature in cosmic ray data, only works if the simulators chose not to hide it. Bostrom himself never claimed his trilemma proves anything, he framed it as a probability argument, not a testable hypothesis. Any surprising result can simply be folded into the theory after the fact, which is exactly the pattern an unfalsifiable idea produces.

The episode does not pretend otherwise. Sean lands on a data control version of the idea, where free will is real but the information reaching people is curated by outside forces, not a full computer simulation claim. Eric rejects the video game framing entirely, arguing that whatever a person experiences is their reality by definition, while still believing there is something beyond ordinary explanation. Neither position resolves the trilemma. That restraint is worth noting, and it is exactly the kind of nuance our full episode on simulation theory spends nearly ninety minutes unpacking.

What did Elon Musk say about simulation theory?

Musk has said publicly that the odds we are living in base, unsimulated reality are about one in billions. His reasoning: if video games keep improving toward photorealism, an advanced civilization could eventually run countless realistic simulations, and simulated realities would then vastly outnumber the one original reality.

Musk made the claim at the 2016 Code Conference, walking the audience through the logic on stage. He pointed to how far games had come in a few decades, from simple graphics to photorealistic 3D worlds, and argued that if the trend continues, games indistinguishable from reality become inevitable and could run on ordinary consumer hardware. A civilization would not stop at building one such simulation. It would build many, and anyone living inside any of them would have no way to tell which copy they were in.

The hosts do not fully agree on Musk either. One pushes back on him specifically as a messenger, saying they respect his success but doubt he personally has the technical depth to pull off something like a simulation, while still finding the underlying math compelling. That objection is really about Musk’s public image, not the argument itself. Stripped of his name, the reasoning is just Bostrom’s trilemma again, restated as a personal estimate: if advanced simulations are possible at all, simple math says there would eventually be far more simulated worlds than real ones.