Elon Musk and Joe Rogan Argue for Simulated Realities

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stopped by the Joe Rogan Experience to share what our digital future might look like.

On one of the numerous Elon Musk Joe Rogan Experience episodes, the tech billionaire and controversial podcaster discuss the negative impacts of social media. Despite Musk’s rocky ownership of Twitter over the past few months, he agrees with Rogan that you feel better without those platforms on your phone.

Elon Musk Flames the Fake World of Competitor Instagram

Elon Musks slams competitor Instagram, and the two controversial figures open up about how the platform is a deceptive highlight reel. They talk about how even if photos are not edited using apps like Facetune, they’re at least staged and picked from a selection.

Joe Rogan repeats the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote, “comparison is the thief of joy”, after Musk points out that the major problem with social media is how it adjusts our comparison to other people with impossible competition.

Joe Rogan sees the public’s use of the platform as acting like their own PR manager. People use this power to make themselves appear more glamorous.

Elon Musk and Joe Rogan Anticipate Fully Augmented Reality

Rogan fears what the future of social media looks like. He sees it as taking cues from virtual reality—a path that another Meta owned icon, Facebook, is already trying to make.

When Joe Rogan watches his daughters play with their virtual reality headset, he wonders whether that is the direction social media is headed. It’s a question perfect for the tech entrepreneur, and he’s ripe with opinions on the matter.

Elon Musk believes that one day our online spaces will be indistinguishable from reality. Joe Rogan suggests that one day virtual simulation will look the same as real life, and we are very possibly on that path already.

Rogan views people’s interest in natural textures, e.g. suede and wood, in design as a bid to cling to what we may lose in the future.

Musk finishes off the dark possibilities by sharing his desire to be hopeful and “enjoy the future”. He’d rather be “optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right.”

Elon Musk and Joe Rogan Question if We’re Already in a Simulation

After some back and forth about the world being destined to end regardless of its future, Joe Rogan asks Elon Musk on his views about the multiverse theory. It’s a theory that’s as the name describes and a current mainstay in popular culture: there’s millions of alternate universes to the one we’re living in.

Musk sees these alternate realities as simulations that someone has created and are living on the “substrate”. This substrate is an underlying layer Musk anticipates as being boring.

He relays the base layer as being similar to a movie being filmed. An action movie takes a year to produce, and the filming is worlds less interesting than the end product, which is months of work condensed into a two hour film.

Musk sees the base reality as the boring production, and the simulation we may be living in as the final, more interesting work.

Their theorising grows more abstract, with Musk pointing out that Rogan only thinks he’s in his LA studio, and he could be in a computer as they speak.

The podcast host jokes about needing a joint at the idea, something the two controversially got into later on this unforgettable episode. Joe Rogan agrees that Musk’s theory is not only feasible, but likely.

Elon Musk Hopes to Do Good for the Future

The clip concludes with Musk’s belief that we need to do the “set of actions most likely to make the future better”, something he admits must be continually re-evaluated.

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