“Elon Musk thinks it’s almost certain that we’re living in some version of The Matrix.”
Silliness. That’s like Einstein thinking space has curves in it.
Sometimes really smart guys have some exceedingly stupid ideas.
Explain human consciousness and tell us how it arises.
And most times they are wrong. Read Kuhns book, The structure of Scientific Revolution. Very enlightening to read about all the explanations of natural phenomena by smart guys that turned out to be inadequate.