Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Are we Living in a Simulation?

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

How can we tell if what we see is real or simulated? Does it matter? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

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Have you ever woken up from a dream, walked around, and then realized you're still dreaming? Yes, and it's made me wonder, like, is reality actually part of a dream, like an Inception or The Matrix? How do we know if we are living in a dream, or even in someone else's dream? Or like a low-resolution 8-bit video game. Hi, I'm Daniel. Jorge. And this is Daniel and Jorge. Explain the universe. The whole entire universe. All of it. Now you might be wondering, who are these guys who are going to explain the universe to you? Yeah, who are we, Daniel?

Who are we? Anyway, that's a deep question. Well, I'm a particle physicist. I do my research at the large Hadron Collider in Geneva, where we smash particles together and trying to figure out what is the universe made out of and how does this all work and mostly enjoy getting to play with enormous. 10 billion dollar taxpayer-funded toys. Nice. And I'm a former robotics researcher, and now I'm a cartoonist. And where do you do most of your work, Jorge? Is it a fancy government lab? Yes, I do most of my work in my pajamas, in my garage, usually starting late in the morning. And how does a roboticist end up becoming a cartoonist? That is a really great question. And I have to tell you that, My parents are also very worried about that whole career trajectory.

But no, yeah. They worried about their investment in your education there? I think they're just concerned about my financial well-being. But no, I used to be a, I have a PhD in robotics. I used to do research on legged robots and robots that could run and like jump around. But then at some point I started drawing comics, and I really liked that. and it kind of became more popular than my research. And so I draw something called Ph.D. Comics.

Which is how we met, because I used to be a huge fan of Ph.D. Comics. Yeah. And I used to be a big fan of, like, the universe. And so... Until you met me, now you're kind of over. Almost all of the universe now. But the universe is sort of where we overlap, right? I do research about the universe, and you try to explain the universe

in your science communication and all that stuff. And so I feel like we have a significant. overlap there. Yeah, I just really like talking to people who know a lot of stuff about something and just kind of learning new things. I always get my mind blow when I talk to someone who's a researcher on something because it's just kind of amazing like how much we don't know about stuff. You know, you sort of walk around feeling like, hey, we got everything figured out. But I always love finding out what people are still like wondering about. And I love pretending to know stuff about stuff and blowing people's minds. So it's a perfect setup, right? Awesome. No, I think that some of these questions are really interesting and they're really accessible. And my hope is that people out there will be listening to this stuff and think, oh, man, I wish I could have done physics in high school or some kid who's listening to it out there.

It gets inspired and thinks about potentially going into physics because there's a huge number of really deep, fascinating questions that we still have to answer, like the topic of today's podcast. Yeah, today on the program. Is the universe a simulation? The whole universe. I love the size of these questions we're asking. Is the whole universe a simulation?

Awesome. Yeah, so that's a crazy question. It's basically the question, like, are we living in the Matrix? Well, first of all, the Matrix is ridiculous because at its basic premise, it didn't work at all. You know, like humans as batteries, what? I mean, come on. Humans consume energy. They don't produce energy.

So the whole fundamental underlying assumption of the matrix, boom, toss it out the window. But the core idea there that we could be immersed in a deeply realistic virtual reality that we're not aware of, right, that we think reality that what we're experiencing is reality when actually it's something simulated. That's the fascinating question. Like what we see and what we hear and what we touch is not like actually real. is just like a computer feeding us these sensations to us. Yeah, and only I think recently has this possibility even arisen because we do now have virtual reality, right? You can have fairly immersive experiences,

and people extrapolate from that. It's getting more real and real, the things we can simulate. Absolutely. I had a virtual reality experience a couple weeks ago. I went to a go-kart place with my son, and I went into a virtual reality go-kart racing thing where you sit in a chair and the chair shakes

when your car bumps into stuff and it's totally immersive. And every time I was about to crash into the wall, which was a lot of times, I found myself like throwing my arms up to protect myself and ducking and stuff like that because it really felt... It felt realistic.

It definitely triggered all of my instincts. And absolutely, I mean, I would have wet myself if I hadn't peed just beforehand. Well, I had a very intense virtual reality experience too recently. I read the news And you think I hope the universe is a simulation

because this is crazy But yeah So that's the idea That's the question Is the universe a simulation Like is what we see around Is real or is it Are we like sitting in a vat

Of liquids floating somewhere In some alien beings Factory Being being fed all of these sensations and sights and sounds just to kind of keep us happy for some reason. You make it sound so sinister. Why can't it be like a cozy, warm, cuddly environment where we're like nestled in a sunny garden somewhere and being fed this beautiful, wonderful universe of simulations, right? Why does it have to be like we're experiments in some, you know, we're subjects

in some sinister experiment somewhere? Well, why else would somebody do that? So let's take a step back. So this question has been kind of very recently come out. I mean, it's always sort of been around in science fiction, but it's sort of become seriously lately, right? Like Elon Musk is wondering about it. Right. And so we went out in the street. We asked people if they thought that they were living in a simulation.

So think for a moment yourself, listener. Do you think the universe could be a simulation? Here's what people on the street had to say. Well, like a Matrix or something like that? Could be, but I doubt it. I doubt it. No. It's just because I don't want to tell myself that everything I do is a simulation.

Our universe seems so realistic and normal. It doesn't seem like that could be possible. So most people thought maybe it was a possibility, but nobody really firmly believed it. Nobody thought, absolutely, I'm convinced. Yeah, most people seem very skeptical. But a lot of them allowed the possibility, right? Well, you never know, but maybe sort of a thing. Yeah, and I have to, I mean, I fall into that camp.

I'm pretty skeptical about this idea. And I like one of the answers that they said, which is like, I don't know if that's possible. Everything seems really realistic. Yeah, that's a nice argument. And it's just because the universe around you feels so detailed. I mean, you look at the tiniest little water droplets and the light sparking off of it. It seems like an impossible problem to write a simulation that is this realistic. It seems impossible, right?

Yeah. But I don't know if that that's a really very persuasive argument because, computers are getting faster and faster and if you just extrapolate from what we can do now to what we can do in 20 years. I mean, look at how video games have improved from like Super Mario to super realistic racing games

now. It's incredible how much more realistic they are. From like Pong to like, yeah, like World of Warcraft. They're so realistic now. Absolutely. So I don't really think the it's impossible argument is very strong. Also because you have to imagine if somebody is running

our universe as a simulation, who knows what kind of computational powers they have, right? And if they are, their universe, the one that our universe is running as a simulation inside of, doesn't have to follow the same laws as our universe, right? If we're in a video game inside somebody else's universe, our video game can have rules that don't exist outside the video game, right? So they, like F equals MA or general relativity, that could have been something they just made up because they thought it would be fun or interesting.

You know, like we create video games with crazy physical rules. You know, Mario can jump half of the screen. He can jump 20 feet up in the air. So maybe that's what our physical laws are. They're just kind of like, hey, let's make this fun universe where F equals M. Is that kind of the idea? That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And I think that's partially the origin of this idea. You know, what is physics doing? Ask yourself that. Physics is trying to figure out what are the rules of this universe. Right? What are the underlying code that runs this universe? And so now that we actually have pretty powerful computer programs, people wonder, well, if you were in a computer program and you were trying to figure out what the rules of that simulated universe were, you'd essentially be trying to understand what was the physics coded into that universe. You would be a physicist. And so in some sense,

yeah, you'd be a physicist. Exactly. Physicists are trying to reverse engineer the source code of the universe, regardless of whether you believe the universe is real or a simulation, it does seem to follow some rules, right? So it's like when you first play... It's amazing that we can even discover those. So it's kind of like when you first play Super Mario or something and you're just jumping around and moving around trying to figure out how Mario moves,

you're essentially like being a physicist in that world, right? That's exactly right. Everybody who plays a video game for the first time is being a physicist. That's exactly right. Let's give a PhD to everybody who plays video games. that's right that you just gave a whole generation of listeners a reason to stop doing their physics homework and turn on their video games thank you for the PhDs the PhD is only valid inside the video game that's right but you know I think that there's a natural curiosity there right the reason video games are fun is because you get to explore a new world and figure out its rules and learn to master it also the best science fiction is the same way the best science fiction you're thrown into a fictional universe and the rules could be different Usually they are, and you have to figure them out.

You know, bad science fiction, they tell you in boring narration overtones exactly how things work. But in good science fiction, you have to puzzle it out for yourself. You have to deduce what the history is and what the rules are and how things work in this fictional universe. You have to be like an explorer, like an explorer. Yeah. I love how we're describing physicists as these like avant-godd explores. As couch potatoes who play video games, that's basically what you guys. Not that different from reality.

Spelt couch potatoes. Well, you know, I find it really interesting that you, so you're a serious physicist. I mean, like, you know, you're like a professor and you don't sort of scoff at this idea immediately. You know, like I feel like it's a crazy idea, but it's like something physicists actually sort of say or forced to say, yeah, it's possible. Right. Well, I think part of the job of being a physicist, and I would take exception to being called too serious seriously. Part of the job of being a physicist is being prepared for making mind-blowing discoveries. You know, the best kind of physics discoveries are the ones that completely change your view of the universe.

You know, where you discover the universe works really differently from the way you thought it did. And so you have to be open to crazy new ideas if you even have a chance to make a crazy discovery. I guess by serious physicists, I mean an employed physicist. That's right. I still have a job. That makes me a physicist. On that note, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in

plain sight that's harder to predict and even harder to stop listen to the new season of law and order criminal justice system on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts my boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now i'm seriously suspicious oh wait a minute sam maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit well dakota it's back to school week on the okay story time podcast so we'll find out soon this person writes my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet.

So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor? or not. To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA.

Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolved. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I like what you said earlier, which is that, you know, our universe right now, the one we're in, even if it was not a simulation, it's sort of like a simulation in that that's kind of what a simulation is. it's like there's laws and then you figure out what's going to happen in the next time instant based on those laws. That's, I mean, that's basically what a simulation is, right? Right. But is the universe like a simulation or is a simulation like the universe? I mean, we invented simulations. I know.

Or as Keanu Reese says, whoa. I mean, we invented simulations in order to model example universes, right? We said, what would happen if the. universe was like this. Well, let's see. And then we build a little simulation and we test it out. So simulations are built to mirror the universe on purpose. And we code in the rules of the universe in that simulation because we think there are rules of the universe. And we could have a whole other conversation about like, why does the universe have rules? Why do those rules seem to be fairly constant? And why can we discover them and express them in terms of mathematics? Like enormous

philosophy questions we haven't even scratched the surface of. And I really like thinking about like what is the computer of the universe, except for a moment the universe follows some laws, real or simulation. Right. They're like imprinted in the way things are.

Yeah, they're set somewhere, right? They're fixed somehow. How are those laws enacted? Like when a particle bounces off of another particle, how is that calculation done? What determines what is going to happen there? It takes no time, right? It's instantaneous.

There's no lag or delay in our universe that says, oh, there's no spinning ball of death when something complicated happens, right? No matter how complicated it is, the calculation is done instantly. Like, how does that little particle know to follow the rules?

That's right. That's right. It's just done. Yeah, and like what is there to enforce those rules, right? If a particle was like, yeah, I'm not going to follow the rules. I like how you try to give attitude to everything. particles have personalities. Yeah.

Maybe that's why I got fired for my robotics job. Yeah, but like what enforces the loss of physics in our universe, right? Like that's a... Right. Well, if you like the simulation model, right, then remember that inside the simulation, the rules are followed, but the calculations are done outside the simulation. If we build a simulated universe, right, you and me sit down and decide one day to build a little mini universe in which

cartoonists and roboticists are kings or something, and we can set the rules of that universe, but the calculations for that universe are not done inside that universe. They're done in our universe, right? And our computers. Like in a simulation or a video game, you would say, all right, here's

a mass of Mario, and this is the force that's being applied to Mario. Therefore, he should be accelerating. You crunched the numbers, and you say he should be accelerating this much, right? And then you apply that to the video game. Say we're in universe zero, right? And we're simulating universe one. Then as you said, things that happen in universe one are calculated in universe zero, right, outside of our universe. That's the thing I find

compelling about this is the universe a simulation question because it touches on that question, where are the calculations done for our universe, universe zero? Is there a universe minus one with some giant computer that's doing these calculations blindingly fast? Or is it just magically done? So, like, if we're in a simulation and everyone listening to this is in a simulation, what is computing the calculations in the upper universe, in the outside universe? That's right. What is that computer like? It doesn't have to follow the same rules as our universe, and how is it possibly doing all these calculations to describe our universe? And this is a question that's fair to ask, even if the universe is real, even if it's not a simulation, you have to

wonder, how is this done? How is this, how's this universe run? I think that's a really fun question. It doesn't go away. That's the interesting thing. It's like, even if we are a simulation, then you still have to answer the question about the aliens' universe, you know? Like, what, how does it work for that? Yeah, that's right. It's an endlessly recursive question. And you can always ask, are we in a simulation or not? And, you know, basic things that we assume, like the universe has rules, those rules don't change with time, that could be different in other simulations or in the universe that's running our simulation. That could be different. It could be that in their universe, the laws of physics change with time. Speed of light is variable with time, all sorts

of other stuff. So they were like, hey, let's have some fun. Let's create a video game where the rules don't change. Yeah, for example. I mean, that's just one hypothetical. Not one that I believe, but just it's a possibility. And that touches on other really fascinating stuff like say you have some calculation you want to do and it's really complicated. It would take one of our computers a billion years, right? If you can arrange our universe in such a way

so that it does that calculation for you, well, our universe appears to be able to do these calculations instantly, right? So you might be thinking, well, that's absurd. Well, let me give you a concrete example. say you have a ball that has like 10 to the 10 atoms in it and you want to understand how it drops, right? How it falls. Well, you could either do that calculation,

which would take you a billion years, or you could actually just drop a ball, right? So in that sense, we can use our universe as a computer. If what you wanted to know was something that was going to happen naturally in our universe. Exactly. And that is what experimental physics is, is arranging physical systems to do instantaneous calculations

of things we otherwise couldn't figure out, right? For example. Oh, my, I kind of said it in a derisive way. I kind of said it as like, that's a silly idea. But you're saying it's the basis of your entire research field. That's right. That's why experimental physics, that's why we do experimental physics because the universe is faster at calculating this stuff than we are.

Sometimes in particle physics, we don't know how to do a calculation. We're like, well, what happens when this, and this hits that? Well, we can't calculate it. Well, let's just go measure it. Oh, I see. Because the universe can do the calculation without us. If you had access to a miraculous computer, you wouldn't need to do experiments because you would just simulate every possibility in this magical computer, and you would know the answer.

That's right. And the universe is that computer. Oh, that's wild. Yeah. But, you know, it's not infinitely configurable. Like on your simulation that you write on your laptop, you can control a. everything, you can do everything you want. In the case of the universe, we can't necessarily do any arbitrary calculation because you can't arrange the universe to do it for you.

Like if you want to just know, what's going to weather going to be like tomorrow in Australia? That's a really hard calculation. How would we set that up? Well, we'd have an earth, right? And we'd run it forward for a day. But you wouldn't have the answer in advance, right? You'd have the answer tomorrow when it's tomorrow in Australia. So I'm not saying that the universe is a perfect infinite computer that we can use to answer any question. I'm saying that's kind of the model, yeah. Yeah, exactly. On that note, let's take a quick break.

December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m. Everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a new. a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.

Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate.

Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend? really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in the backlog will be identified. in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,

the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I find it really fascinating that physicists have come up with ways to maybe check to see if we are in a simulated universe, right? Like there's actual, there might be experiments we can do to test whether we are neo-indigenous. the matrix or not. Exactly. And that's step two, right? Step one is have crazy idea. Step two is, how could we test this idea? Step two, get money for the crazy idea. Apply for grant funding for crazy idea. It's pretty hard because you have to make some assumptions about how that

simulation is done, right? And those assumptions are just guesses, really. But that's fine. Like a lot of times in science, we don't know how to approach a problem. So we just make a bunch guesses so that we can at least try to answer the question. And then maybe later we reevaluate those guesses and try to widen their scope or whatever, but just so we can get somewhere. Right. Well, what are some of these ways that physicists think that maybe we could figure out if we're in a simulation? Well, one way is to look for things that move super duper fast. And the reason is that if we were to simulate a universe, the way we would do it is to slice space up into huge cubes and simulate each cube. Because you can't simulate the whole universe.

at once. You'd want like a bank of computers. You would only simulate the parts that are sort of relevant to the video game players. That's right. And also you would want to have a bunch of computers working in parallel. You wouldn't want a single computer operating on the whole universe. You'd want to slice it up and say,

this light year cube of space is handled by this computer and this light year cube handled by that computer. And when things cross the boundaries, they have to talk to each other. But that's the way we simulate, for example, you know, an ice cube forming. You have a bunch of calculations of these water molecules,

but you do them in little cubes and then you interface them. And so people think, what happens when something is going super fast through the universe, it could cross a bunch of these cubes really quickly, and that would be difficult for this simulation to do correctly.

And so we'd have to look for little glitches like that. You would have to look for cases that are really kind of pushing the limits of the computer that's simulating us, potentially, to see if there are any, like, Like if the simulation breaks somehow. Exactly.

And that's, you put it exactly right, but we have to assume we know something about what's hard for those kind of universe simulators, right? Which is like so presumptuous to even know. But if what's hard for the universe simulators is the same thing as what's hard for us when we simulate little mini universes, then one thing that's hard is things that go really fast. And so there are things out there in space that zoom around super quickly and that can potentially give us clues.

So we have to assume that A, it's hard to simulate the entire universe at the same time, so we have to break it up. And B, we have to assume that things going really, really, really fast across these different chunks of the universe. That's a hard problem. That's right. And so one thing we look at are super fast cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are just particles in space zooming around. And it's a whole other interesting mystery about why those particles are there and why they're going so fast. but they're going incredibly fast, like ridiculously fast, much faster than particles we make here on Earth,

even at our fancy $10 billion accelerators. And those are going so fast that they might reveal these glitches. So if we look to see if those particles are coming at the same rate in every direction and this kind of stuff, we might be able to get hints that there might be little glitches in the simulation. Cool. So are there any other ideas for testing this? I don't think there are any ideas that have much widespread support. I mean, we're already talking about crazy theories here. But, I mean, an idea I have is communicate with the simulators, right?

Like, let's send them a message, you know, like, write a note on the beach. Like, I know what's going on. We figured it out, right? Like, say you are running a simulation of a universe, right? And you don't tell the beings inside that universe that it's a simulation because that would spoil your experiment somehow, right? Right. Well, if they discover it, then you kind of want to know. And maybe you'd be interested in talking to them, right?

So I think let's try to send a message. Let's write something. It's the equivalent of writing SOS on the beach or something. But they would know everything we know because they're overseeing our universe. They would know that we're actually bluffing. We say, ha, ha, we found out. And they'd be like, no, you didn't. They haven't talked to us so far.

Why would they start now when we started bluffing? That's a good point. But you're assuming we are bluffing, right? What if we sincerely honestly believe that universe is a simulation? you're right we don't have any evidence for it so we can't so we can't scientifically sincerely believe that well i think the biggest sign that we're in a simulation is the fact that kenner reeves hasn't aged today surely that's pushing that is a glitch in the matrix right there that's the glitch in the matrix yeah well um what would it be like to be in a simulation

like what implications would that happen it might be just like this. It might not be any different. Yeah. I mean, if we are in a simulation, then we already know the answer. What's it like to be in a simulation? But you probably meant something else. You probably meant like if you simulated a mind.

Oh, I see. Like, are we simulated minds? Like, maybe we're not humans in a vat, in a warehouse, in an alien warehouse. Maybe we're, like, actually, like, pieces of coding. We're like artificial intelligences. Exactly. Maybe you are Mario. Oh, my God.

So, like, maybe we're like the fodder in a video game. We're like the mushrooms in Super Mario. You know, we're just here that are programmed. Right. Right. It's sort of two levels there, right? Like, one level is you are a brain, and your brain exists in the real universe, but you're being fed information about a fake universe, right?

But your brain exists in the real universe. That's sort of level one. Level two is you don't exist in the real universe at all except in that simulation. Oh, my God. piece of code that describes a virtual person, right? You could just exist in that simulation. And so the question is, like, are we

real? Are we conscious? Are we actually something? Or are we, like, completely fake? Right, which is right now an open question in philosophy. Like, say, for example, I could perfectly simulate Jorge's brain and Jorge's body, right? And I had that inside a computer and it was

a completely faithful reproduction, right? And just like you, it spent most of its day in pajamas and taking naps in the afternoon. right totally accurate the question is would that Jorge feel anything would it be aware would it be self-conscious right because really we're sort of computers ourselves right like if we are real we're just a bunch of like neurons which are really just like little computers we're just a massive computers in our brain so maybe maybe there's no difference maybe there's no difference right exactly maybe the thing that makes us us is just the arrangement of these bits right

just the information stored in the physical computer that is me or the physical computer that is you. That's a little hard to grasp. It's a little hard to feel comfortable with thinking I am just this representation, right? Because that means that you could translate me into a totally different representation, right? Bits inside a computer, which are also a physical system, right? A computer is a physical system with switches and bits and stuff. And that could be somehow equivalent to me. The problem is, I don't think we could ever know. And what I mean by that is, say I have a computer simulation, which is a perfect reproduction of Jorge, right?

I mean, not that I'm not perfect already, but... I'm not saying I wouldn't make a few tweaks, right? You wouldn't make a few tweaks? But say we had the simulated version of Jorge, and we asked it, are you real? Well, if I asked you if you're real, you'll say yes. So if the simulation is a perfect reproduction of you, it will also say it's real.

How do we distinguish between something that says it's real, seems real, but isn't actually aware. Wow. We can't. It's a topic known as a philosophical zombie in philosophy circles. Well, the whole reason we're talking about this is basically, is that the computers are getting so advanced now that it's actually kind of a possibility, A, and B, physicists can't categorically say, no, that's impossible.

And so that's why we're talking about it. That's right. And there are even some people that make the. argument that it's likely. Okay, likely. Some people even say that it's not just like a crazy idea that's not impossible. It's like there's strong evidence for it. Not strong evidence, but here's the argument. You can judge for yourself how strong it is. The idea goes like this. Say this one real universe and inside that real universe, somebody invents a simulated universe. Inside that simulated universe, somebody invents a simulated universe. So now imagine a whole set of nested universes,

right, each of which is very realistic and high fidelity and his beings in it to feel alive and love and hate and all this kind of stuff, then if there are this whole nested set of universes and only one is real, then what is the probability that ours is that real one? So they argue that therefore the probability that our universe is real is small, right? It turns the question on its head. Is the universe a simulation to is the universe real? And it suggests that that's unlikely. Oh, meaning that it is possible to simulate a universe, therefore in the infinity of time and space, what's the likelihood that we are real, not a simulation? It's like non-zero. Yeah, exactly. It's like if you're in an infinite crowd and only one person is real and everybody else is fake, what are the chances that you're the real one? Pretty small. I think that's not very strong. argument because it makes a lot of assumptions, you know, it assumes that universes will

always simulate another universe, and those universes would be high fidelity and that all them would be like ours, that kind of stuff. But, you know, it does have that cosmic context. I like the fact that it reminds us that we don't really know where we are and what the context is, and that as important as we think we are sometimes, it could just be that we are Super Mario Brothers bouncing around inside a video game. That's, I think, a useful reminder. I've always identified more with Luigi, to be honest. Because he's the taller one. I think he's just kind of the cooler brother.

He doesn't care about getting all the spotlight, right? He's over that. He's above it. Well, whether we are in a simulation or not, it's really fun to kind of question the nature of the universe, right? Absolutely. And it's only in asking these crazy questions that we're going to make crazy discoveries. Right.

The universe might not be a simulation, but in thinking about ways to test it, we might discover other weird stuff that gives us another crazy idea. And that one might actually be true. So we're all physicists in the sense that we'd like to all think about big questions about the universe. It's like in trying to break the video game, that's when you discover the hitting Easter eggs. That's right, the Easter eggs of the universe. That's where we're all hoping for. Cool.

Well, I hope you guys are keeping it real out there and enjoyed this discussion. I hope you're keep it assimilated and have a great day. Yep. Until next time. December 29, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new. kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota,

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