Imaginary Worlds - Living in a Simulation

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Is it possible that we are living in an imaginary world? That is the premise of many science fiction stories, but some scientists have begun to wonder whether it’s not a fantasy. Perhaps what we think of as reality is a computer simulation and we’re basically just advanced versions of The Sims and don’t know it. I talk with video games entrepreneur Rizwan Virk about what advanced civilization might be lurking outside our reality, and how he draws upon real physics, The Matrix and Philip K. Dick to prove The Simulation Hypothesis in his book. And we’ll hear one of my favorite stories from the podcast Snap Judgment, where the journalist Stephanie Foo creates a version of herself in The Sims and discovers eerie parallels to her own life. “Sim Stephanie” was originally produced for Snap Judgment in 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Eric Malinsky. I start out every episode by saying that, but I'm always assuming that we're taking a step back from these virtual worlds and examining our relationship to them. But what if the real world is an imaginary world? What if we're not real people, but virtual people in a computer simulation? That is the premise of a gazillion science fiction stories and many episodes of Black Mirror. But some scientists are beginning to wonder if it's not science fiction. In 2003, the first person to make this point and get a lot of people's attention was Nick Bostrom, who was a philosophy professor at Oxford. But scientists have chimed in, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has said that he thinks the chances that we're living in a computer simulation are 50-50.

But this idea really went viral when Elon Musk endorsed it in 2016. when Elon Musk endorsed it in 2016. I've been following this debate for a while, and I've noticed that scientists tend to avoid the sci-fi connection because they wanna be taken seriously, and science fiction writers who embrace these ideas usually don't wanna be tied down to real science. Then I came across Rizwan Virk, or Riz for short.

Riz is the first person I've seen make science fiction and video games a big part of his argument as to why we're living in a computer simulation. Riz is a video game designer and a Silicon Valley investor who supported game companies like Telltale and apps like Discord, which began as a gaming app. He also wrote a book called The Simulation Hypothesis. Well, it's a topic that I've thought about for a long time. You know, even when I was a kid,

I used to play the video games on the Atari console like a long time ago, and there would be this racing game. And I remember thinking as we went around the racetrack, what about those people in the bleachers? Are they really real? Are they there after I play the game or not? You know, the idea has been percolating for quite some time, but it was really a few years ago. I had sold my last game company and I was visiting a startup that was making a virtual reality ping pong game. And so I started to play the game and I was in the room with the headset on. You know, at the end of the game, it felt so realistic, the responses for when I hit the ball, the fact that there was this virtual table. So the physics engine was so good that it felt so realistic that at the end of the game, I forgot that I was in virtual reality. And I tried to put the controller down on the table, the paddle down

on the table, I thought, and I tried to lean against the table. And of course, I almost fell over and the controller fell to the ground. And that's when I realized, oh, you know, someday our virtual reality is going to get so good that we will be unable to distinguish between what's really happening and what's happening in the virtual world. When you're playing the type of video games where you're exploring a virtual world, the computer only renders what your character can see. The rest of that world is just information ready to be activated what your character can see. The rest of that world is just information, ready to be activated when your character shows up. The same thing with my avatar and your avatar if we're in the same room.

Mine is only rendering what I can see, and yours is rendering only what you can see, which is a much smaller subset of the actual virtual world, which all exists as information. Computer programmers do that to save up on energy and hard drive space. And one of the things that I think is so original in Riz's argument that we're living in a computer simulation is that he draws the line between how computers render virtual worlds and how quantum physics works. Now, science was never a strong subject for me in school, but I've always been fascinated by quantum physics

because when you zoom into that teeny tiny world that's smaller than a single atom, those microscopic particles behave in ways that feel more like science fiction. For instance, scientists can tell that when they're not observing these subatomic particles, the particles are doing crazy things, like being in five different places at once

or disappearing and reappearing. But when scientists focus their microscopes on the particles, the particles suddenly fall in line, like misbehaving students who realize the teacher's watching. I definitely cannot explain how scientists know what's happening with particles when they're not observing them. But I do know that the math checks out, and that the big mystery is not whether it's happening, but why.

Riz has a theory. He thinks these particles are behaving like pixels in a video game, rendering into existence only what we need to see. Maybe that's not a coincidence. Maybe it's because we are in a virtual world. Some scientists have argued there is no way a computer could be big enough to render a simulation of our entire planet, let alone the universe. But Riz says anyone who believes that is lacking in imagination. Yeah, I think it's a lack of imagination. And, you know, it gets back to the arguments that, you know, back in, I just saw a

headline in the, you know, in the New York Times that said, from like 1901, I think it was, which wasn't that long ago, when you think about it, that said, you know, man will never build a flying machine, it would take us a million years to get there, right? And within four years or whatever it was, somebody had built a flying machine because they discovered an optimization technique. What happens in the history of computer science and engineering is that you discover tricks, you discover shortcuts, you discover new ways of optimization. In fact, a quantum computer, we estimate, should be able to break cryptography that's, say, 256 bits long or 512 bits long. And it turns out that that is more than the number of particles in the universe. So you could say, well, we could never break that

cryptography using a computer because we don't even have that many atoms in the universe. Turns out a quantum computer should be able to do it within a decade or so. And so I just think it's a lack of imagination. So who is simulating us? Well, that's an interesting question, right? And it's one of those big $64,000 or $64 million questions. There are two major theories. First, aliens. Maybe the human race went extinct. And this is how aliens are keeping us alive for academic reasons or maybe entertainment. And Riz says if we go with that theory, these aliens could be on a planet that's very different from ours. Some people assume, just like in your statement about, well, a computer couldn't be big enough, that that physical world is just like our world.

Well, we have different physics engines we use inside our games. Like in the ping pong game, it was a very realistic physics engine. But if you go inside something like Second Life, there's two ways to get to different places within the game. You can fly and you can teleport yourself. Well, you can't really do either of those things yet in the physical world. And you can teleport yourself. Well, you can't really do either of those things yet in the physical world. Maybe these aliens are blobs that are floating around and they want to experience what it's like to walk on two legs with gravity.

But I really can't imagine that an advanced alien civilization would really care that much about us to simulate us. That's why the other major theory makes sense to me, that future humans are simulating us. And if you go outside of our simulation, it's actually the year 2659 or something like that. The first person to propose that was Nick Bostrom, the philosopher at Oxford. His point was either civilization will not get to the point where they can create realistic simulations, what I call the simulation point. He said, or they will get there and they will make no simulations at all. Or the third option is true. And the third option would seem that they get there and they make lots and lots

of simulations. Therefore, there are many more simulated realities than there are physical realities. Therefore, if you exist in a reality, simple statistics says you are more likely in a simulated reality than base reality, just because there are way more of these than these. And so that was sort of more of a philosophical argument that said, basically, if any civilization ever in the universe, whatever the universe is, reaches the simulation point, then you are most likely living in a simulation. So it would be like us simulating like the Roman Empire, for example. That is already happening with the video game series Assassin's Creed. The premise of each game is that somebody in the future is sent back in time

to live in the body of one of their ancestors so they can fight bad guys. This might look familiar to you. We're back in medieval Paris, late 14th century. You're outside the city walls now. I suggest you find your way back. But the games are best known for their hyper-realistic, historically accurate depictions of medieval France, the American Revolution, or ancient Egypt.

And in these games, the people in the background are called NPCs or non-playing characters. They have a certain amount of free will, but the pottery salesman in ancient Greece does not know he's a video game character. Look, I was a little late paying. Now Marco says I owe him double because of interest. I don't have it to spare.

And that is us. We are the NPCs of this simulation. So why would future humans do this? One theory is that they want to experience going back in time. And maybe some of them are out there embodying people around us. But Riz says what's more likely is that our descendants are running scenarios. run again, and we see how that would run, and that gives us a sense of where things might go. Will we have climate change? Will we blow ourselves up? Will we be able to leave the planet? How will the species evolve over a million simulated years, for example? You probably remember after the 2016 election, a lot of people were joking that they felt like they'd ended up on the wrong timeline. And maybe we are part of a simulation that combined three different variables, Trump,

COVID, and Brexit. Now, of course, these ideas have been explored in science fiction for a long time. This isn't real. What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, than real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. 1999 was the year of simulation movies. Oh, is it really? Besides The Matrix? Besides The Matrix, there were two other major motion pictures that were simulation related. One was Existence and one was The 13th Floor.

The most popular is The Matrix, but perhaps the most interesting was The 13th Floor. And so what happened in there was they had a simulated world, but also they had another simulation being built. Turns out they were in the 19, I forget what year it was now, 1940s perhaps, inside the world. How many simulated worlds like this are there? Thousands. But yours is the only one that ever created a simulation within the simulation. And this year, there are several movies coming out

about computer simulations, including Free Guy, where Ryan Reynolds realizes that he's an NPC in a video game. I know this world is just a game, but this place, these people, that's all I have. So this will actually be the new year of simulation-related movies. And then, of course, in December, there's the big one, which is the next Matrix movie. So the Matrix 4 will be coming out. But the science fiction creator that Riz likes to reference the most is Philip K. Dick.

Yeah, so he stands out for a couple of reasons. And while I was writing my book, Simulation Hypothesis, I interviewed his wife, Tessa. And, you know, she said that, yeah, you know, he very much believed this. And there was a famous quote from him at a sci-fi convention in Metz, France in 1977, where he said, We are living in a computer programmed reality. And the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs we would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present deja vu you know the creators of the matrix were inspired by him and i asked tessa well what what would uh you know phil think of the Matrix? And she goes, well, the first thing you'd think is he'd like it. She thinks he would have liked the movie a lot. The second thing you'd think is,

can I sue these guys for some of my ideas? What is it? Deja vu is usually a glitch in The Matrix. It happens when they change something. You know, the more I got into his belief system, the more intrigued I became because, you know, he believed not only that we were in a single simulation, but that somebody was changing these variables and would rerun the simulation. So he felt like he was living the same life again and again, but with slightly different variables changed, creating this funny sense of deja vu. And eventually he came to believe that some of his science fiction, such as The Man in the High Castle, was depicting a real timeline where the Japanese and the Germans won World War II, but that that timeline was rewound and then rerun. And so this timeline that we're on now, where the Allies won World War II, was actually not the original timeline. It was one of many timelines, and that they're on now where the allies won world war ii was actually not the original timeline

it was one of many timelines and that they're constantly doing this uh they're constantly you know fiddling with little things and in fact the movie the adjustment bureau which was based on his story the adjustment team came about because you know he went to the bathroom once and he he thought there was a light switch but there was a chain i forget which way it was or maybe there was a chain but he knew it was a light switch, but there was a chain. I forget which way it was, or maybe there was a chain, but he knew it was a light switch because I've been here hundreds of times before. And he felt like someone had been fiddling with these little parameters in reality, someone that's outside of the reality. And so that kind of defined his philosophy.

And actually, my next book, The Simulated Multiverse, really takes off this idea that if we can be inside one simulation, there's no reason. In fact, it makes no logical sense at all that they wouldn't run multiple versions of the simulation. All you have to do is change a few variables and rerun it again. In talking to Riz, I did begin to wonder whether he's been exposed to so much science fiction. He started to believe that these unlikely scenarios are possible. But he says most scientific developments started out as science fiction. Space travel was considered science fiction, right? And so, you know,

sometimes these ideas start off as ridiculous ideas and then they become more and more realistic. So we still don't have warp drive yet, but we do have interplanetary travel. And so, you know, give it another 100 years or 200 years, I think science fiction is a good harbinger of, you know, what's to come down the road. So, okay, so let's say

we're definitely living in a simulation. We figured it out. The closest sort of like primordial version to us, if we're talking about simulations within a simulation, would be The Sims or SimCity. If we were to look at The Sims or SimCity, assuming that that's really us and we don't know it, is there anything we could learn about ourselves

and learn about our reality by looking at games like that? Yeah, well, so now we get into philosophical areas, but I think these days in video games, we have quests that we set up for ourselves. And so these quests are achievements and there are difficulty levels to each of these quests. And so, you know, if we think of life as a video game like that, we can think of the difficulties that we face. And all of us face difficulties in our lives, whether they're medical problems or issues with families or financial issues. We can think of these as quests that are set up. And so, you know,

it gives you maybe a different way of thinking about some of the troubles of life. So that's, you know, one of the ways that I think you can kind of enhance your perspective on life just by looking at video games and how they work. You mean like in a philosophical way, instead of someone saying, you know, oh God, why me? Or something like that, saying like, oh, simulators, why have you done this? You must have had a reason. This must be part of my story arc kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. That there's a story arc that you may not be able to see the whole story of. You may only see the individual achievement, but these quests and achievements over time determine the overall story arc now if you

remember in the matrix like many people will say well if i were to make a simulation i would make myself you know a billionaire and i would have no problems and i would do whatever i want but they actually mentioned that the first version of the matrix was this kind of idyllic scenario where no one had any problems and the human mind didn't accept that. And so you had to have challenges and you had to have some prevails. But just think of it as a difficulty level. This is where we start to cross over into religion. In fact, I've heard some critics of the simulation theory argue that it's religion for atheists,

where future humans or aliens have taken the place of all-powerful beings that created us. Although, as I mentioned in my recent episode about Buddhism and science fiction, Eastern religions have explored the idea that the physical world as we know it is an illusion, hiding the true nature of existence. Personally, I don't really believe this.

I mean, to me, this is all a very fun thought experiment. And Riz says he started out feeling that way, but not anymore. I originally got on this track because I wanted to figure out what are the stages of technology to get us to the simulation point. And in the book, I have 10 stages, you know, ranging from virtual reality to photorealistic augmented reality to the simulation point. And in the book, I have 10 stages, you know, ranging from virtual reality to photorealistic augmented reality to brain computer interfaces, to false memories to downloadable consciousness. And once we get there, we'll pretty much be at the simulation point. So, so it really started as a thought experiment. But the more I began to think about it, and the more I began to delve into the physics of it, the more I realized, huh, there's really something to this. So now, you know, I'm looking at it from

four different perspectives, technology development, looking at it from philosophy, looking at it from the religious point of view, and then looking at it from the science and the physics point of view and realizing, okay, you you know there's actually a good chance that what we think of as the real world is just information and is not the real world which is what the mystics have been telling us all along that we live in some kind of an illusion or mind god i feel like it's like i don't smoke pot but i feel like i should be at this point like oh totally right some people think right this is one of those dorm room late night dorm discussion that's true these are the kind of speculations you would have you know i get emails from college

students all the time you know even from even from like college students in brazil saying hey do you have a portuguese version of your book i heard about it and i'm really we're talking about it at four in the morning over pizza. Exactly. I still can't help but wonder, what is it like to be one of the simulators? What did they get out of creating us and observing us? We might have an answer to that after the break. Introducing Tim's new Infuser Energy Beverages, made with natural caffeine. They come in two refreshing flavours, Blackberry Yuzu and Mango Starfruit.

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work on Snap Judgment, which is a public radio show and a podcast. And in 2014, Snap Judgment asked her to play The Sims again for the first time as an adult and report back on her experience. I'm thrilled that Stephanie and the producers of Snap Judgment have given me permission to play that story. I mean, first of all, it's actually one of my favorite pieces they've done. But also, there are so many interesting parallels between the experience Stephanie had playing the Sims and the conversation we just heard about creating a simulated world. So here's that story, which originally aired on Snap Judgment in 2014. My dad and I didn't have much in common when I was growing up, but we did share

one hobby, computer games. We'd play games together where we'd decapitate monsters with names like Putrid Defiler. So when I started playing The Sims, he didn't get it. The Sims, for those who don't know, is kind of like playing with a hyper-realistic dollhouse, with mini-people, or Sims, living their everyday lives. I already have to wash dishes and pay bills in real life, my dad would say. I don't need to do it on a computer game. And he'd go back to looting villages. But that's just why I liked it.

I liked controlling these little people, making them do grown-up things. Getting jobs, making money. Okay, let's be honest, I was 12. Mostly I just liked to make them woohoo. Which is what it's called when two sims have intimate relations. I also liked doing things like buying leopard print sofas and starving my children to death. Which sounds heartless, but I'm going to blame my behavior on the game. Sims were almost impossible to feel personal affection for. The Sims AI was pretty terrible back then,

and it was hard to actually like your Sims because they were so dumb. You just want them to cook breakfast, and they'd set themselves on fire. If you didn't tell them to go to the bathroom on time, they'd pee all over the living room. And so after I started to think the funnest part of The Sims was manipulating them to commit suicide, I threw The Sims away and didn't play the game again. And it wasn't long after that that I stopped playing computer games entirely. As I entered adulthood, I learned what actually being a grown-up was all about.

It was about making money and maximizing productivity. I work a lot. Sometimes, I don't have time to eat, let alone play video games. In fact, I probably would have never played the game again, unless work asked me to. Snap assigned me a story about The Sims for this episode. While I downloaded the newest iteration of the game, The Sims 3, I read the game's message boards. I was disappointed. A lot of the users were saying the Sims were still super dumb, but I did get a little rush when the game started and I heard the classic kitschy theme song. One of the first things I noticed with the new

Sims is I could make a Sim that looked like an Asian girl, and I could even give the classic kitschy theme song. One of the first things I noticed with the new Sims is I could make a Sim that looked like an Asian girl, and I could even give her an outfit with clothes really similar to ones I have in my own closet. So I decided to make a Sim me, a Sim Stephanie. When it came time to build her personality, my boyfriend helped me pick traits similar to my own. Sim Stephanie is ambitious, very excitable,

and, of course, a workaholic. One of her life goals is to be a journalist. And then I saw that the Sims had free will now. There was this slider where you could control the amount of free will they possessed so they could be more independent and do things like use the bathroom without you telling them to. I gave Sim Stephanie the maximum amount of free will. Then I made a Sim boyfriend for her, who resembled my own boyfriend.

The first thing I did was I suggested Sim Stephanie flirt with my boyfriend, Sim. And thankfully, they started getting really into each other. And then, right before they had their first kiss, my Sim excused herself, ran into the next room, clapped her hands, and did a happy dance. Before returning to make out. And this is super embarrassing, but the thing is, I actually did do that in real life. Before me and my boyfriend's actual first kiss.

And then Sim Stephanie continued to do happy dances about many things. Getting a phone call. Bedtime. Her waffles. I laughed, but a dark, shameful part of me recognized her behavior as familiar. I started to get self-conscious. Is this how people saw me? I look ridiculous.

I mean, God, waffles are super good, but I think maybe I need to calm down about them. Then, Sim Stephanie got her first journalism job. She wanted to be successful so badly that after she came home, she'd still write articles late into the night. But it got to the point where she'd be writing at midnight, and then she'd be miserable and exhausted all of the next day. She'd show up late for work. She'd take it out on her boyfriend. I tried to get her to stop working and go to sleep, but she wouldn't listen to me. So I'd start yelling at the screen, what is wrong with you? You are screwing yourself over. Until I realized, wait a second, I did this in real life yesterday. This was getting creepy, like some meta nightmare where I had to watch a bird's eye view of all of

my own flaws. In a manic moment of paranoia, I wondered if somehow a chain of meta meta juju existed, where perhaps there was an uber Stephanie, watching me, and facepalming herself over all the stupid stuff I do every day, yelling, No, no, don't eat those cheese fries, you will break out, no- Ugh. Eventually though, Sim Stephanie fell into a groove, balancing work and life. And her relationship with her boyfriend actually started to resemble my own, in this really comforting way. She'd work late, but since he was less work-obsessed, he'd play guitar into the night, serenading her and making her snacks.

I kind of felt like I appreciated my real boyfriend more watching it. But what was the deal here? Everyone on the message board said that the Sims 3 AI was terrible. So I went back and reread the comments from the disappointed users. None of the parents got a single promotion. My Sims will spend a lot of time woohooing, like three or four times a day. I discovered my Sims flirt with people who aren't their partner when I'm not controlling them, unhappy face. Sims have always had problems surviving or doing anything without help. The message from the developers is clear. Free will is a very, very bad thing. Control your

Sims at all times. And they did. Many of the players took away their Sims free will. Not really because the Sims 3 AI was bad. Because it was so good. They saw themselves in their Sims, and they didn't want themselves to fail. I thought there was something incredibly dark about that. I don't believe in fate myself. I like to believe that I control my own destiny, so I thought I was above that. I wouldn't take away Sim Stephanie's free will. Until one night. Sim Stephanie had been working really hard for several days and her happiness levels were low. She desperately wanted to have fun. She started playing computer games to relax for a couple hours. But I knew that if she completed this one task by tonight, she could get a promotion and a huge raise tomorrow.

I thought, we could really use the extra cash. I thought, I'd like her to be a little more productive. And that little slider was just begging to be slid. So, I turned off her free will, and I forced her to finish her work. and I forced her to finish her work. Sim Stephanie did what she was told, but her happiness plummeted. She sat there, resentful, exhausted, miserable.

And I knew exactly how she felt. I felt like I just punched myself in the gut. I had taken away Sim Stephanie's free will as punishment for playing computer games, and I was playing computer games right now. I was supposed to be so much smarter than Sim Stephanie. Sim Stephanie stayed up all night once because she couldn't find the bed. But even she knew that finding the next big story was not worth sabotaging her own happiness. Even Sim Stephanie knew that she didn't need any more fancy couches. Sim Stephanie knew how to be a human, knew how to be a happy grown-up better than I did. She, I, we know now that happiness, it comes first. And sometimes it's okay to just relax,

maybe even play a computer game. Since she produced that piece, Stephanie has gone on a long journey to create more of a work-life balance. And she told me that it's taken her years to learn how to treat herself better and how to stop being a workaholic. And if you're interested in learning more, she has a book coming out next year called What My Bones Know. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Rizwan Virk, Stephanie Fu, and the team at Snap Judgment. By the way, if you'd like to learn more about Philip K. Dick, I did a whole episode about him. And I did a different episode about Man in the High Castle. You can find both of those episodes

in the show archives. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted E. Malinsky and Imagine Worlds Pod. If you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover imaginary worlds. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free imaginary world stickers, a mug, a T-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has a full length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.