[Music] it was the rock band Queen who famously opened probably their most iconic record with is this the real life is this just fantasy music fans have debated the meaning behind those words for decades and actually they could well have nothing to do with the universal nature of reality but in conceiving them the singer and songwriter Freddy Mercury was at least tapping into a universal truth channeling a philosophical conundrum that is flittered through the minds of humankind since we first became self-aware enough to consider it this is unveil and today we're answering the extraordinary question
is anything really real do you need the big questions answered are you constantly curious then why not subscribe to unveiled for more Clips like this one and ring the bell for more thought-provoking content on the timeline of humanity the question of reality has always been all around us that's kind of the point it's the fundamental question of our existence are we living in a tangible objective world or is our experience a complex illusion can we trust our senses or are they hardwired to deceive in ancient times we looked mostly to God or to Gods multiple
to try to explain what we couldn't understand we developed stories and traditions Legend and myth all in some way seeking to get a grip on our lives in ancient Greece and Rome especially records show that many of the most influential philosophers such as Socrates and Plato were also endlessly interested in truly understanding what life was what's the point of living and how is reality intrinsically formed by the time of the Renaissance and the enlightenment there were multiple theories erupting all over the world map human beings have always been naturally inquisitive but in just the last
few hundred years we've really outdone ourselves all leading up to now a moment in time when almost everyone alive has likely at one stage asked themselves questions like why am I here and how do I know that what's happening really is what's happening in the modern era the pursuit of science has added New Dimensions to this age-old debate and today we can explore it via things like simulation Theory and through other Matrix likee scenarios we can also consider the implications of a Multiverse the potential influence of artificial intelligence and even the possible existence of an
extraterrestrial Edge all have a role to play as we continually try to prove what's real so let's get into it first up simulation Theory which proposes that reality is in fact a computer-generated Sim it's an intriguing concept that actually has roots in ancient ideas but it gained prominence in modern times largely through the work of the Swedish philosopher and Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom bostrom's senal 2003 paper are you living in a computer simulation suggests that if a technologically advanced civilization can create realistic Sims of their ancestors a prediction that many models do make then the
odds of us existing in a base reality are extremely slim instead we're much more likely to to be populating one such ancestor Sim no matter how intelligent and capable of Free Will We Believe ourselves to be all of that would in fact be false or an illusion Elon Musk is a vocal advocate of simulation theory he argues for instance that given the exponential growth of video game technology it's now certainly plausible that advanced enough civilizations would create simmed worlds indistinguishable from reality the renowned astrophysicist Neil degrass Tyson has also gone on record emphas izing the
potential for all of this to be a simulated construct the chances for which Tyson has before claimed could be as much as 50/50 50% likely we're living authentic lives 50% likely that everything we've ever known is artificially dreamt up and rendered by some higher power so if our reality were a Sim then what would that mean for us it's the first chance of many that we have to properly question the true nature of what we know on the one hand would it matter if we were simulated some argue not not really but on the other
could Our Lives ever hold the same significance if we knew that we were mere lines of code importantly Sim theory is a speculative hypothesis lacking concrete evidence it isn't a proven fact but it sure does make you think in a broader sense The Matrix has come to be something of a catch-all term for any proposed social structure that takes us out of this Dimension and into another of course the idea is most closely associated with the 1999 cyberpunk sci-fi classic The Matrix which depicts a once unsuspecting Neo as he has the veil of reality removed
to learn the truth across all manner of blockbusting scenes and bullet dodging special effects Neo goes from being essentially an extra in what he used to think was real life to very much the main character in a higher Dimension but could Neo's story ever actually happen recent advancements in artificial intelligence certainly have fueled speculation about the potential emergence of a matrix-like reality as AI becomes more sophisticated the prospect of an intricate all-encompassing digital realm somehow managed by intelligent machines seemingly becomes less and less like science fiction and perhaps it wouldn't need to be a straightup
ancestor Sim either with growing talk around digital immortality could it actually be that we're all actually housed just on a server somewhere in this version of reality it's like we've already died it's just that we don't know it but before our deaths we all lived in a civilization Advanced enough to know how to convert our Essence into something that could be digitally saved and if that were the case then it would of course make sense to remove the parts of our former selves that knew about digital immortality because that knowledge could easily trigger Madness in
the here and now again it's not something that's commonly said to be true there is no proof of the Matrix but versions of it do form the basis for a growing number of hypothetical ideas and occasionally Notions of a higher version of ourselves have bled into testimonies given by those who suffer a near death or outof body experience in general The Matrix is a concept that explores the boundaries between human and machine Consciousness blurring the lines of what we perceive as real and it could be becoming more and more relevant with every passing year and
AI Tech Innovation but finally and as with many an ALT model for How the Universe Works some believe that we have to consider the potential for alien intelligence guiding the way it adds another layer to the mystery but could also solve many of the seeming problems the zoo hypothesis famously suggests that life on Earth is constantly watched by an unknown alien group pitching us like caged animals on show at the zoo the lab hypothesis Builds on that by suggesting that those aliens are also actively experimenting on us turning the zoo into something more like a
planet-sized petri dish crucially though both would serve to solve some of the Mysteries of the universe with the fine tuning problem it's now the case that reality works so well for us because it's custom built by a higher hand with the fmy Paradox we now know why we haven't discovered any aliens yet because our extraterrestrial overseers would never enter our enclosure for fear of scuppering the experiment or just because it would be dangerous for them even the apparent unknowables of the ort Cloud could even make some sense if it were actually placed there by a
superior Force to double up as something like the viewing windows in a reptile house clearly all of the above and especially the alien option are highly speculative simulation Theory The Matrix AI potential and ET possibilities none are supported by empirical evidence however all do form the basis for contemporary answers to the question of what's real on top of that all could in some way be grouped together under the broader concept of the Multiverse if ancestor Sims exist on a massive server somewhere then all of those individual programs essentially form a Multiverse if digital mortality is
viable then the universe has far more layers than we typically give it credit for if there's alien life that's sophisticated enough to create an entire star system for us then is it so difficult to Imagine The Wider bubble universes that are key to the inflationary Multiverse model for now the scene is set for us to at least reconsider everything we know and the search is on to find the proof that would turn these hypothetical ideas into genuinely valid scientific breakthroughs what do you think is there anything we missed let us know in the comments check
out these other clips from unveiled and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content