{To Be} Elon Musk: A Man Up His Own Ass

“To be or not to be” is a B+ opening to a much greater soliloquy in which Hamlet questions why we put up with the world’s bullshit. Bullshit such as our dad’s ghost demanding that we kill our uncle to maintain the strength of the kingdom^[1]. In much more florid iambic pentameter, Hamlet asks aloud, Is this all there is? Does nothing lie beyond our existence, or is there something better or more horrifying than we can imagine?

Hamlet muses that the uncertainty of what lies beyond death’s door paralyzes us from shuffling off this mortal coil. And many have pondered on what it might be waiting for us. Christians believe you mill arounds some clouds while catching up with friends and family. Muslims believe there might be an orgy waiting for you. Dante wrote three books on what the afterlife looks like. Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins suggest that there is pure nothingness.

All of these sound interesting, but what if it were a really kickass operating system?

That’s what business magnate who denies his true calling as a cologne mogul, Elon Musk believes. Musk posits that we are living in a computer simulation. Or a simulation of a simulation. He stated, “There is a one in a billion chance that we are living in base reality.” Jesse Stone, my esteemed colleague and awesome name-haver, laid out what that means in a previous Prompt piece.

I don’t know where I first heard Musk’s theory, probably on a podcast making fun of rich weirdos. Right away it sounded like the ravings of a man who hasn’t had to do his own grocery shopping in several years and uses the extra time to think of ways to shift the paradigm. As soon as I heard Elon Musk’s assertion that we are living inside of a computer simulation designed by hyper-intelligent beings, I knew I had to find a way to call him a dumbass on the internet.

My first issue with “We are living in a computer simulation” is that it’s the Silicon Valley version of the “reality is an illusion” line that philosophy majors say while failing to pass the joint. My response to each is the same: Cool, are you still going to pay your rent? Whether or not reality is a subjective illusion or a computer simulation, it’s still where we are, and we’re all just trying to have a good time.

Maybe you’re right, Elon. So fucking what?

The second issue is that Elon’s assertion that we are living in GTA XXII New Beijing is the assumption that he could conceive of the method that a more powerful being used to generate our universe. Allow me to paint you a scenario…

You are somehow able to travel back in time (which, if we are living in a computer simulation, should be possible) to the early days of the United States to meet George Washington. Instead of using your knowledge of what is now “the future” to stop one of the multiple genocides about to be carried out, you decide to blow old Georgie’s mind by telling him that he is living in a computer simulation. Do you know what comes next? You explaining to George what the hell a computer is and then explaining what a simulation is. Oh, and what electricity is. Because the universe is run by a machine that he can’t fathom, using processes of which he has no concept. What a time to be alive! Or simulated. Or whatever.

Where does Elon get off assuming that our über-brained overlords created our universe with equipment that we only recently invented? Isn’t it more likely that, if our lives exist inside of Deep Blue, then we all—Elon included—are clueless George, riding horses in the dark to catch pneumonia after getting some strange^[2]. The thing that is running our universe is technology beyond our wildest imaginations. What George knew about computers is what Elon knows about whatever is running the simulation he thinks we’re in living in. Which is to say that he’s so ignorant of it that he would think it’s magic. And I don’t buy into his atheist-tech-woke schtick.

However, the biggest problem with the computer simulation theory of existence is that it’s the plot to the classic Saturday morning cartoon Reboot. I loved that show, too, Elon. I just didn’t make it my worldview.

^[1] Spoiler: We put up with it because we’re too chickenshit to commit suicide with a bare bodkin.

^[2] Probably historically inaccurate.