Are We Just NPCs? Why Billionaires and Physicists Think Reality Is a Video Game

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there, almost as if your action queue was cancelled by a server admin? Or maybe you’ve experienced a sense of déjà vu so strong it felt like a corrupted save file reloading?

For years, I brushed these moments off as brain fog. But lately, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of Simulation Theory—the hypothesis that our entire universe, from the atoms in my coffee cup to the stars overhead, is nothing more than a sophisticated computer simulation running on a post-human supercomputer. And the scary part? It’s not just stoned college students talking about this. It’s Elon Musk, Oxford philosophers, and theoretical physicists.

Here is what I found when I took the Red Pill.

The Tech Bro Prophet: Elon Musk

If there’s a high priest of the simulation hypothesis, it’s Elon Musk. I remember watching him at the Code Conference back in 2016 when he famously said there is a “one in billions” chance that we are living in “base reality” (the real, physical world).¹

His logic is terrifyingly simple. Think about the trajectory of video games. Forty years ago, we had Pong—two rectangles and a dot. Today, we have photorealistic, 3D open worlds played by millions of people simultaneously. Musk argues that even if technology improves by a tiny fraction every year, we will eventually create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality. Since there would be billions of these simulated worlds and only one “base” reality, the odds statistically dictate that we are living in one of the games.²

In 2024, Musk updated this view, pointing to the rise of AI. He suggests that we are approaching a time when “Non-Player Characters” (NPCs) in games will be powered by advanced AI, making them indistinguishable from humans. The unsettling implication? If we can create conscious NPCs, we are likely NPCs ourselves.[³]

The Philosopher’s Trap: The Trilemma

While Musk provides the soundbites, the intellectual heavy lifting comes from philosopher Nick Bostrom. In 2003, he published a paper that trapped me in a logical corner I still can’t escape. He proposed a “trilemma,” stating that one of three things must be true:

The Extinction Scenario: Civilizations go extinct before they have the tech to run realistic simulations. (Depressing.)
The Apathy Scenario: Advanced civilizations can run these simulations, but they choose not to—maybe because it’s unethical to simulate suffering, or they just get bored.
The Simulation Scenario: Civilizations run many simulations. If this is true, there are billions of simulated minds for every one biological mind.

Bostrom argues that unless we assume we are about to die out (Option 1) or that we will fundamentally change our nature (Option 2), we are almost certainly in Option 3.⁴

The Glitches: Spaghetti-Os and Vanishing Cars

The theory isn’t just abstract math; for many, it’s visceral. I stumbled upon communities where people share “glitches in the matrix”—anecdotes that supposedly reveal the seams of the code.

One story that stuck with me involved a person who tipped over a bowl of Spaghetti-Os. Instead of a mess on the floor, they found a single “O” stuck to the ceiling, nine feet above—a physics engine error if I’ve ever heard one.⁵ Another common report is the “vanishing car,” where drivers see a vehicle approach on a flat, empty road, look away for a split second, and look back to find the road empty. Believers call this “culling”—the simulation deleting assets to save memory when they are no longer needed for the plot.⁵

The Physics: Finding the Code

This is where it gets truly weird. Some physicists claim they are finding actual computer code in the laws of nature.

S. James Gates Jr., a theoretical physicist, discovered something baffling in string theory equations: error-correcting codes. specifically, he found structures identical to the “Hamming codes” used in browsers and data transmission to fix corrupted bits. Gates noted that finding this in the fundamental math of the universe was “eerie,” suggesting our reality has built-in mechanisms to prevent it from crashing.⁶

Then there’s the “rendering” argument. Physicist Tom Campbell argues that the famous “Observer Effect” in quantum mechanics (where particles behave differently when watched) is a resource optimization technique. Just like a video game only renders the room you are standing in, Campbell suggests the universe only renders physical reality when a conscious player observes it.⁸

The Skeptic’s Reality Check

Before you unplug your router to escape the Matrix, I should mention the counter-arguments. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is the buzzkill we probably need here. She argues that the “simulation hypothesis” is pseudoscience because it’s largely unfalsifiable—you can always claim the “programmer” fixed the glitch before we noticed it.¹⁰

More damning is her point about relativity. Our universe appears to be continuous, but computers are discrete (made of grids and pixels). Hossenfelder points out that if we were on a grid, we would see violations of Special Relativity (like preferred directions in space) which we simply don’t see. To simulate our universe perfectly would require a computer larger than the universe itself.¹¹

My Conclusion

So, am I a blogger, or just a complex language model running in a teenage alien’s science fair project? I don’t know. But the next time I lose my keys or feel a sense of déjà vu, I won’t just blame my brain. I’ll look for the save icon in the corner of my vision, just in case.

Works Cited

Based on the research used to generate the blog post, here are the primary sources for each key argument and figure mentioned:

1. Elon Musk and the “Video Game” Argument

2016 Code Conference: The quote regarding the “one in billions” chance of living in base reality and the “Pong to photorealism” trajectory comes from Musk’s interview at the 2016 Code Conference.¹
2024/2025 Updates: Musk’s updated comments regarding AI, NPCs, and his interview with Nikhil Kamath were sourced from recent reports on his evolving views.⁴

2. Nick Bostrom’s Trilemma

The Original Argument: The “Trilemma” framework (Extinction, Apathy, or Simulation) is derived from Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” published in Philosophical Quarterly.⁵

3. “Glitches in the Matrix” Anecdotes

Specific Stories: The accounts of the “Spaghetti-Os on the ceiling” and the “vanishing car” (often interpreted by believers as “culling” or rendering errors) were sourced from compiled reports of viral “glitch” stories.⁸

4. Physics and “The Code”

S. James Gates Jr.: The section on error-correcting codes (specifically block linear self-dual error-correcting codes) found in string theory equations is based on the work of theoretical physicist S. James Gates Jr..⁹
Tom Campbell: The interpretation of the “Observer Effect” as a mechanism for computational efficiency (rendering only what is observed) comes from the work of physicist Tom Campbell and his “My Big TOE” (Theory of Everything) framework [¹⁶],, [¹⁷], [¹⁸].

5. Skeptical Counter-Arguments

Sabine Hossenfelder: The critique regarding the computational impossibility of simulating the standard model and the conflict with Special Relativity (the discretization problem) is based on the arguments of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder.¹³