#FF00AA

‘The absence of any noticeable life [in the universe] may be an argument in favour of us being in a simulation,’ he told me. […] Musk flipped through a few more possibilities, each packing a deeper existential chill than the last, until finally he came around to the import of it all. ‘If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way,’ he said. ‘And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.’

Judging from other recent quotes from Musk, he must be thinking that an easy explanation for the disappearance of all those other civilizations is that they invented artificial intelligence and it wiped them out. But then you still have to find a reason why those AIs wouldn’t be visible in the sky (and why they haven’t wiped us out yet). What if, instead, what happens to all intelligent civilizations is that they invent virtual reality, and become shut-ins just as they were about to start colonizing space?