What if you didn’t need to do any of your daily life. What if you could just stay at home and “shut down?”

The simulation theory proposes that all of reality, including the Earth and the universe, is actually an artificial simulation. CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk very strongly believes in this theory. Jason Koebler a writer for The Motherboard, “Musk said he thinks there’s a ‘one in a billion’ chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation right now, meaning Musk is a firm believer in the hypothesis that a super intelligent artificial intelligence created the universe as we know it.”

With Musk being one of the most prominent supporters of the theory, many people believe the 2017 Oscars has proven that we are living in a simulation. Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker said,  “In the same way, while there have been Oscar controversies before–tie votes and rejected trophies–never before has there been an occasion when the entirely wrong movie was given the award, the speeches delivered, and then another movie put in its place. That doesn’t happen. Ever.” Both La La Land and Moonlight were nominees for best picture. The winner was supposed to be Moonlight but somehow La La Land was named. That could have easily been a reading error.

At Wheat Ridge High School, senior Jaime Bangert has said “It’s definitely possible because our minds simply take in information and process it through our neuro pathways… I do think it is a definite possibility.”  With this said, there is a possibility that Bangert is right. What we see is all based on our brain processing information but how do we know it is real?

On the contrary, many people believe the opposite. Sophomore Tori Dyl and other groups of people have said “I find the theory intriguing and fascinating, but there’s nothing that could prove the theory to be a fact.” Of course, many people think the theory is fascinating but question the evidence of the theory. Believers of this theory say they’ve seen the sky glitching or a bird disappearing into thin air. Shane Dawson, a well known Youtuber and conspiracist, said, “We’ve talked about supernatural things: ghosts, psychics, astral projection, dejavu… what if all of those things were all glitches?”

Ron Livingston, physics teacher at Wheat Ridge High school. “If you’re aware of your cognition then you must exist, there’s no way we can simulate that… if it’s possible to hack the human brain then we don’t necessarily have the evidence that what we perceive is real.” With that said, Livingston believes that the simulation theory cannot be real because we’re in control of what we do.

Is the world real? From Universe Today, “‘who discovered the Earth’, I thought it was ridiculous. If you use your eyes and look down beneath your feet, you’d be able to discover the Earth.”  In the 16th century, a Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus presented the model of the solar system. It took a few years for the ideas to catch on and for scientists to say that yes, in fact, the Earth is another planet orbiting the Sun.

The world in its totality is complex, confusing, and complicated. Although, there’s no way to determine if the world is real or not, people will still believe in what they desire to believe in. There’s no evidence to prove that the theory is not real. Therefore, the majority of people will believe the world is real.

What if this life you live, wasn’t something required to do. It could all be shut down.