Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - PART TWO: How Quantum Physics, Religion, & NDEs are Linked By A Theory That’s Growing in Popularity. MIT Scientist Explains Simulation Theory.

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Could Simulation Theory be the key to uniting science and spirituality once and for all? Dr. Rizwan Virk (MIT professor, video game pioneer, and bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis) joins Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown to explore whether we’re living inside a computer simulation and why this idea may be the most important breakthrough of our time. From bridging ancient spiritual wisdom with modern quantum physics, to explaining life’s glitches, suffering, and precognitive dreams, Dr. Virk unpacks why simulation theory could radically change the way we see reality. In this mind-bending podcast episode, Mayim & Jonathan dive into: - Why Rizwan Virk believes simulation theory is more spiritual than you think - The surprising connections between quantum physics, religion, and near-death experiences - The Virtual Reality moment that convinced Virk the simulation might be real - “Glitches in the Matrix” and the Mandela Effect - Are precognitive dreams & near-death experiences proof of the simulation? - Could aliens or future humans be running the simulation? - What’s beyond the simulation? Are we about to be unplugged? Whether you're spiritual, scientific, religious, or just simulation-curious, this is the rabbit hole you've been waiting for. Get ready to question everything on this week's MBB! Latest edition of Dr. Rizwan Virk's book, THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game: ⁠https://www.zenentrepreneur.com/simulationhypothesis⁠ Dr. Rizwan Virk's Author Website (includes free downloads): www.zenentrepreneur.com Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm I am Biolic. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Riswan Verk, the author of Simulation Hypothesis. Dr. Verk got his degrees at MIT and Stanford University, recently got his Ph.D. He's a venture capitalist, successful entrepreneur and video game pioneer who's lived in the world of Silicon Valley, but also dips a deep toe into the worlds of mysticism, AI, and how all of this might fit into a gigantic simulation that we may be living in in part two of our conversation with him. We're going to talk about who might be behind a simulation. Is it God? Is it aliens? We're going to get to all of it. Would it ever be

possible that the creators of the simulation threaten to unplug us? We're going to talk about the evolution of human consciousness and the awakening that's happening. We're also going to talk about what do glitches in the simulation mean? I propose that they are clues to help guide us to the life that we are meant to live, and each one of us can get a better understanding of how to navigate the challenges that we face by becoming more aware of the clues that are presented. Myam also asks about love. Where does love fit in the simulation? We will find out in part two of our conversation with Dr. Rizwanberg.

Break it down. So is a near-death experience the reality that they see just another version of, of a simulation that's rendering, or is it outside of the simulation entirely? Well, that's a good question. And now you get into this idea of stacked simulations as well. People ask me what's outside the simulation. I don't take a strong position on it,

but I can go through the possibilities. Aliens. Aliens. It could be future humans. I mean, the term simulation hypothesis came from a guy named Nick Posterham, who's a philosopher at Oxford. And, you know, he called these ancestor simulations,

which would be like us simulating ancient Rome, or simulating Greece, right? So it would be future humans simulating. And that's kind of what the Matrix was. Remember when? Remember when there was water in the oceans? Let's go back and recreate that. Remember when teenagers wouldn't get off their phones?

Now the phone is their brain. Exactly. Or like in the Matrix, right? They're like 1999. They're simulated. There's actually another simulation film that came out in the same year as the Matrix called the 13th floor. I don't know if either of you've seen it.

I think I may have seen it a million years ago. It got kind of overshadow, The Matrix was the most talked about film up a year, and it came out like literally 60 days afterwards. Bummer. Yeah, bummer. But in that, they're in 1999, and they create an ancestor simulation of 1937, Los Angeles.

And they go in there, and they can experience and they come out, and I'll give away the plot because it's a 25-year-old movie. They find out at the end that they are within another simulation, from the year 2024, so from last year. And basically, you know, it's a stacked simulation. And they also say, well, we made thousands of simulations. You're the only one who's created a sub-simulation, but you're using too much power.

So we're going to unplug you, which is a possibility. But getting back to your question about near-death experiences and what's outside the simulation, I do think that there is another level, at least one other level. because people report things that are familiar to them. Like, for example, a nice garden that they were. You mean in NDE? In NDE, yeah.

Yeah. And they also report seeing more colors than they can see and more sounds. Coming at it from a computer science background, it reminds me of when we had eight-bit games, and you would hear about these games that had like 16 million colors or whatever. And you realize, oh, with more bits, you can get more colors, right? And people report it being more realistic than it is here. But at the same time, I think that what they see initially is something that makes them

comfortable for the most part. I mean, there are some uncomfortable NDEs, but for most... Yeah, we've had... Elizabeth Crone said that she believes that everyone's NDE would be tailored to them, meaning if you are a person, you know, just like when you have dreams or if you have a psychedelic experience, it's, in theory, sourced from your own data bank, right? Right. Right.

And in a way, like at the end of contact, for example, if you've seen that movie, she meets the aliens, but they... to appear to her as her dad. Why? Because that's a familiar figure for her. And then she realizes it's not really her dad, but that's how it appeared to her. So I do think, you know, that those tailorings happen. But when you talk to atheists, you know, those two, the tailings are different. But because for them, they didn't necessarily believe there was anything, but there is potentially something, something. So something that would be comforting to them, but yet maybe knock them off their arch. In that sense, and I think this is sort of a question I have for you,

what our atheist NDE, you know, people have reported, is love as the universal overarching language of whatever comes next or whatever this different consciousness state is that we can exist in, right, in these extraordinary situations. So that's sort of, I think, another reason why, you know, I've had resistance to talking about simulation. Yeah. Where does love fit in? Where does feeling, connection, you know, all the things that we know about the neurotransmitters that comprise the systems that our brain and nervous system have evolved to feel pleasure,

pain, you know, the complexity of an emotional experience, which, while we can leave it for a second when we're in, you know, a VR space, right? you know, for most of us, we're able to be able to say, that's not, I'm not feeling something. I'm experiencing a memory, but I'm not feeling it, right? Where do feelings fit in? Well, I think feelings fit in in the sense that our simulation is wired for feelings, right? We have emotions.

That's a key part of our character in this life. And it's possible that, like, why do we play video games? It's one of the questions I get asked a lot is, is, you know, why would we be in a simulation? And I say, well, there's two different questions I'll ask in return, because you can think of this at a civilizational level, or you can think of it at a personal level. And at a personal level, the question is, why do we play video games? And it's to have experiences that we can't have necessarily outside of that game for whatever reason. You can be whoever you want. You can be whoever you want.

You can fly around. You can also have, like, bad experiences. You could be a bad person. You could be a bad person, Grand Theft Auto, right? I mean, I knew people who also wanted to just have a virtual life. Like, I used to spend a lot of time in Second Life. I don't know if you guys remember. So Second Life is an example of what's called a Metaverse or a virtual world where it's not a traditional game.

Nope. In the sense. It's like people go in there and do whatever they want, really, but you create things. You have a job. You have a spouse. Yeah. So I know people who would, like, clock in for work. Yeah, literally after work, they would go home and then they would have a bartender job at a club.

second life. I think it paid peanuts. So they weren't taking it for the money. They would get played Lyndon dollars at the time. This is pre-Bitcoin. But they liked having that experience of the social experience of these avatars. People would be married in real life and then they would get married to somebody else.

Other people wanted to be really promiscuous in their virtual world. Then they got STDs. In virtual STDs. But the point is there are experiences that you may want to have that are challenging even but if outside of this world is basically love and compassion

and inside this world is a whole bunch of very negative things as well as love and compassion, I think the way to play the game is told by how you evaluate the game. And this is why I go right back to the Life Review as being such a critical, important point. The message you get by experiencing other people's pain is that how you treat them actually matters. And so I don't think this game is great.

on theft auto. Some people might, that you're out there to abuse as many people and steal as many things as you want. But in reality, in the end, what you're going to be evaluated on, if we buy this concept, when you replay the game, the scoring, if you will, the database of quests is how did you treat other people? And I think that's something we can learn from the NDE about the nature of the game. And it also ties back to scriptures, you know, it ties back to the golden rule, this idea that how you treat other people actually does matter, those relationships are actually more important than anything else. And if we're in a non-physical state outside of our avatars,

then we've come here to experience physicality and all that comes with it in a way that potentially outside of this simulation we are not able to experience. Right, just like I might go into a virtual reality simulation to try to fly around on a dragon. I think there was one, another VR simulation, that same year, where I was flying around on this dragon.

It's not something I could do outside. What did it feel like? It felt nauseous at first because the VR technology was not very good at that point. Don't you think you'd feel nauseous if you were actually flying on a dragon? Well, I mean, then I began to like it.

Once you get used to it, you begin to like it. So it depends on how smooth the dragon is, I guess. Let's stay here for a second, both on the purpose collectively and then individually. On an individual level, I don't think it's only about going on quests. I think it's also about understanding.

It's about avoiding your life and being in video game land. No, I don't think so at all. For some people it is. I'm talking back to a lot of the mystical traditions and the consciousness conversation, which often has this notion of remembering and trying to actually get over the forgetful part of consciousness. The fact that when we become embodied,

we have this level of forgetfulness, and often it's about remembering what we're capable of. It's about expanding our awareness and learning that there are mechanisms and capabilities that we all have that can supersede the limits that we were programmed with. So if we come in as these avatars and we only believe in materialism, for example, and we only believe that the world is, you know, only what has been rendered in front of us. And then we start to peek behind the curtain of what is it over here that hasn't been rendered yet. And can I access that through a dream, for example? I don't necessarily see it as a glitch in the matrix that showed you that dream. I kind of align with how Thomas Campbell explained it, which is that is an opportunity for you to realize that you are here and that the limit of the materialism is only a small faction of what's possible.

Yeah, and I agree with that, by the way. That was my interpretation of it afterwards. Because a glitch almost sounds like it's a mistake versus it's an, I like the cue opportunity where it's queuing. you to say, wait a second, let's broaden your perspective and then what else is possible if that perspective is going on here. So it's almost a way to encourage the awakening process, if you will. And so if the universe is constantly rendering and updating and each one of us is a part of that, then in our conversation recently we had with Dr. James Gladfelder, he's talking about how the universe is revealing itself. So if the simulation is processing constantly

and the data is processing, and we are learning more and more how to process that data, then it wants to reveal itself. And that's part of the experiment on a collective sense. I also think there's a collective need for the experiment to see if the world will survive or humanity will survive the world. I think that brings into question sort of who's behind the simulation, which I think is something, you know, you can have a God entity if you'd like one, right? You can have, you know,

aliens are one of my favorite things to talk about. Or non-human. You know, the alien, you know, we've spoken to Adam Frank and we've spoken to Robin Hanson, and most recently we spoke to Dr. Avi Loeb. And, you know, one of the things that I'm having to adjust to because they didn't teach this in graduate school at UCLA is that aliens, there is no reason to believe

that aliens do. not already exist. And that means, since they're not here now that we know of, they are likely very far ahead of us technologically. They are possibly some form of artificial intelligence already. We would then have this possibility that that is what is behind this kind of simulation. some sort of being that has an enormous head start, technologically speaking, and is either observing or, as Robin Hansen says, domesticating us, making sure we don't, I'm going to just say, like, making sure, okay, we don't go out of the universes and galaxies that we're allowed in,

or making sure that we don't figure, we can't be smarter than them. It's not like, I'm going to figure out the simulation, and I'm going to break through, and I'll show those aliens. they would have, if we are in a situation where we are being observed, controlled, or created in a simulation, don't think that you're going to figure it out and pull a neo. Well, you may pull a neo locally, but not intergalactically, meaning that what Robin Hanson says is that they're sitting on the edge of our solar system, making sure that we don't get too technologically advanced because if we exit the solar system, it could have a larger repercussion.

on the galaxy at large. We mess everything up and make it all dirty and polluted anyway. The zoo hypothesis. The zoo hypothesis. We're being, you know, kept to a certain point. Miami-Bialx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

Maybe they're like, you're fine. Drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan. This has happened to me many, many times, especially on the perimenopause journey. That's why we're fascinated by what Superpower is doing. They send a licensed professional to your home or you can visit a nearby lab. One simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers.

That's way more than you usually get. It unlocks a true understanding of your body. Their app has detailed information on heart, liver, thyroid hormones, metabolism, vitamin and mineral levels, even environmental toxins. From disease prevention to treating that annoying brain fog or simply optimizing your gym game, superpower is the most comprehensive and advanced system out there. I've been super tired of constantly guessing or just trying to read articles online about what to do for health. Superpower gives you an actionable health plan based on personal results. It's a real game changer.

Plus, they have an on-demand clinician team to answer questions. Supplement or prescription suggestions can be directly bought through superpower so you don't have to go anywhere else. They also have nutritional guidance, tips for lifestyle and behavioral adjustments. You even get your true biological age that you can track over time. Superpower used to cost $499. Right now, it's $199. for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower.

Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotics breakdown to help support the show. And I think that's certainly one possibility when it comes to alien, or even UFOs, but I think our understanding of that subject is also limited by our current view

of the world. So if you look at the UFO experience, and I spend a lot of time, like, you know, I spend time with Avi Loeb, I'm an advisor to the Galileo Project and Gary Nolan at Stanford, the Soul Foundation, and spend time talking to Jacques Vallet, who's been researching UFO since the 1960s. He was part of Project Blue Book. so probably longer than most researchers out there. And if you think about it, people who claim to have been contacted by these entities in the 50s, they said, where are they from?

They said we're from Venus. Now, we know that's probably unlikely, right? But did they just lie in order to have something that would fit their mental model because in the 50s, aliens were from Mars or Venus? Like that was something we could understand. Our science was good enough to understand it. We didn't know perhaps at that time there's no life, or maybe we didn't by the 50s, but in generally it wasn't well known that there's no life.

Well, those were the close planets. Like we all know the order. Right. But what I'm saying is now we know there are planets on other solar systems. And so we can interpret these phenomena as potentially being alien. But there are other interpretations of the phenomena that, as far, so the reason I brought up Jacques Valet's work was because he says, look, there have been stories. of connections, encounters with non-human beings

for thousands of years across different traditions. In the Celtic traditions, you have the Faye, who are like take people into the Faye world. There are some in France that are a different set. And then in the Middle East, particularly in the Islamic countries, the Arab countries, you have the Jin. Right.

And their stories. And I remember looking at some of the stories of these gin that have been recounted from medieval times and then looking at the stories that people tell in modern abduction. And I say, some of these, you know, are eerily similar. And so the question is, is it possible that they're seeing some entities

from outside the simulation that are projecting in, but they're being presented in a way, just like a couple thousand years ago, someone might have seen an angel with wings or interpreted that to be an angel. Or like the Fatima sightings in Portugal, they just saw a woman and they interpreted her as Mary. He never said she was married in that,

particular case. So is there an element of interpretation that our current science and our science fiction actually limits our ability to think about these things? I mean, look, I'm sure... But this is a long discussion. Well, no, and I'm sure you're, you know, you're, I'm sure you're familiar with the

very common, like, retort to that, which would be, you know, perhaps the human brain making it up again, right? Well, well, we'll generate similar concepts because we have not evolved that much over the last, you know, 10,000 years or so, right?

Right, right, right, right. Like, the brain that we have is the brain that existed in medieval times. It's the brain that existed in the time of Jesus and Muhammad and all these things. And so, you know, we're all, you know, tasked with this impossible notion of why am I here. What's it all for? Where did it come from? What are we doing here? And so there's, you know, there's not an infinite number of possibilities.

right, so that the human brain, no matter what time in history you find us, will conjure something that can help explain it, right? Right. Or it could be that we encounter a phenomenon we don't understand, and the human brain puts a mask on it, tries to interpret it. Right. Like, no one is like, I mean, except Terence McKenna when he smoked DMT, no one will say, like, mechanistic elves must be behind, you know, why I'm dreaming. Like, nobody says that. Right. But it's, I mean, and I say that slightly tongue-in-cheek, but the notion is for people who delve into the world of psychedelics. And even the world, you know, when we talk about yoga nidra and we talk about, you know, these kind of altered states that one can place themselves in, I think our strongest evidence does come from psilocybin, from LSD, from ketamine, like, from these kind of like, oh, my God, mushroom, like, what's happening? So, so, you know, to me, that's interesting because it's also people use it recreationally.

but some of these like psychotherapy-assisted journeys, right, that involve internal family systems work and that involve that kind of traveling to other states of consciousness where in many cases you're experiencing a sort of life review, right? Right. You're experiencing, yeah, or even in EMDR. I mean, we've had people say, I had one experience not through EMDR,

but in a sort of therapeutic trance kind of state, where it's not that I was looking at my childhood bedroom. I was in my childhood bedroom. The eyes that were looking around the room were as if I was in a body that was small and that was looking around the room, right? So being able to kind of move into different timelines, right, is something that we know we can do.

Is it an artifact or is it, you know, part of this training in a room? And I think it's, you know, an ongoing debate like, for example, like when the Native Americans saw like these big boats coming up, they just couldn't interpret it. They didn't know it was a boat. They just said they're like cities made of wood. Like at first they didn't even perceive them. When they perceived them, they weren't sure what they were looking at. That doesn't mean that there wasn't actually something in the ocean. It just means that their preconditions

were such that they only interpreted. And it's possible that a lot of our interpretations are in this way and that the UFO phenomenon and the alien phenomena is very complex. That said, in a multiplayer simulation, getting back to your earlier question about as a civilization, remember I said there, you could view this question

about the purpose of the simulation at a personal level, which is the video game, but at the bigger level, why do we run simulations? We run simulations, neurons, we run simulators of simulations of the virus spreading,

of, you know, the weather, of the stock market, of landing on a comment, all of these types of things. And why do we do that? We do that to see what will happen and to see what's the most likely outcome. But we never run just one simulation. We always go back and we modify the variables and we run multiple simulations. Why? Again, we want to see what's the

most likely outcome. And in some cases, we want to say what's the most favorable outcome. So how can we steer this? Which variables we have to change today? And favorable doesn't necessarily mean positive, happy and good. Not necessarily, whatever the purpose of the simulation. And that's why people who are, you know, of a religious ilk would say, only God knows, right? Only God knows what's intended for you. Right? True, yes. Unless you're able to go through an awakening experience and you remember, you know, you remember part of your, so we've talked about the life review. There's also this idea of a life preview where sometimes people either near-death experience, I think you had Jim Tucker on your show recently. Yeah, yeah. But there have been people who have remembered the time before they were born. Yeah. They remember hovering over their parents. Betty said, Betty, our favorite Betty, Buddha Betty, Betty, Betty said she saw her life laid out in milestones. She saw that her parents. would commit suicide. She saw that she would be a drug addict, a prostit.

She saw everything laid out. And I want you to touch on this. One of the most fascinating universal reports from NDE's is the choice to come back. Right. And when I read your book and you talk about it, it's that choice to pull that next quarter out of your pocket. That's what I thought of.

When you'd be playing a video game, I'd be in, who was it called? It was called like Mom's Cleaners on Melrose near Libreo. when I was a kid, and, you know, I'd be given a bunch of quarters, and I would watch it. It was counting down. If you want to play again, put then, it would be like, do what? Do what to? And just that one freak.

Mom, I need one more quarter. Talk a little bit about not just the sort of preview of life, but the sort of choice to live again. Yeah, and I think that's all related to each other. Because even in the preview, when you said she saw it all laid out, and I think I haven't listened to your podcast with her, but I think I've heard her on. Oh, yeah. Another podcast talking about her story. Ars is better. We'd like you to listen to ours.

Oh, absolutely. I'm sure it was, yeah. And it was more recent, too, so you always get the latest. But there was a guy named Michael Newton, Dr. Michael Newton, and he wrote a book called Journey of Souls back in the 90s. And he hypnotized patients and regressed them. And rather than going to a past life, they were regressed to that point in between lives where they remember dying the previous time. and they had a life preview which was very similar

to what you're describing here. But they described it. Now this is interesting to me. They described it in technological terms. They said it was like a big computer screen which had these lines and these lines have these milestone points, right? And you can go this way or you can go that way.

And so you have some choices. It's like a flow chart. It's like a flow chart. It's a dynamic. It's exactly. It's your life. It's exactly choose your own adventure, which I used to read as a kid.

Yeah, totally. But they're still a part of you. And this is what I was referring to earlier when I was talking about the writer's room that's sitting there and watching and saying, okay, let's throw something else at them because they didn't make the right choice or they went this way.

It's kind of like a care package in the Hunger Games or like they're sending something in to try to affect the outcome of the game. But I think when you come out and there are moments that we come out and it happens spontaneously to people. But I also think most of the mystical practices whether it's, you know, the yogic practices, the Sufi practices, probably in Kabbala as well,

they are meant to have you be able to come out. There was a famous yogi named Naramana Maharshi, and he basically, he didn't necessarily teach you any techniques. He just said, I can ask you a question. Who are you? Who is the you independent of what's happening to you? And the point of that was to keep questioning and to try to remember that there's a part of you, they called it the Atman in the Hindu traditions, or we might call it the soul. In the Sufi traditions, they talk about dying, meaning this awareness,

but remembering that there's a part of you that's outside of this. But then when you come out, it's like taking off the virtual reality headset. And then you have this choice, like in the Matrix with Cypher. Remember he was the guy who betrayed them and he had the, you know, he's like, oh, I want to go in and experience this meat, you know, eating this steak, this meat. But I know it's not real, but I don't want to remember nothing. That was his line. But I think in the near-death experiences, many of them are given this choice.

Some, they just send you back. They say, nope, it's not your time. This was a freak accident. This wasn't quite supposed to happen. Or this is meant to get you on a different path when you go back. But others have the choice. And so if we think of these lines, and then you could zoom into those lines and actually see what's going on, the choice, some of them say, well, I was shown what would happen

to my children if I don't go back, like who they would be raised. Yeah, we've heard that. So that's a kind of life preview. There was a woman named Natalie Sudman who was in Iraq and she was killed, not killed, but she had an NDE because of an IED. And she said, after her life review, she had this planning session. And this was, you know, really, it sounds a little grotesque in a sense. And she even laughs about it.

She goes, she was sitting there and trying out different possibilities, almost like they were simulations. It's like, what happens if my leg never heals? What happens if I'm blind? What happens if this? And she was seeing these previews of things that might happen. And it's almost like there's a part of us that's planning for potentialities ahead of us. And that, to me, reminds me of running simulations, running forward.

And so I think then the choice is, do you want to go back into the game and this might happen? Or do you want to stay out? And most people say they want to stay out because now they're experiencing love and compassion. and there's no suffering. But when they see what's going to happen to their loved ones, if they're not there, then they make the choice, particularly mothers, they make the choice to come back in

because they want to be there for their children. Elizabeth said she didn't want her husband raising their kids. Well, there you go. I mean, she said, if I could give my children the choice of not having a mother who died or them having their mother, I would rather they grow up with their mother. I just had the craziest thought experiment

during part of this conversation. So Robin Hansen talked about the fact that aliens are likely far more advanced civilizations. And because there would be alternatives in technology to replace biology, they are likely artificial already, right? Their bodies have broken down and they no longer have physical bodies. They're likely some sort of techno-hybrid or full technology consciousness, if you want to apply consciousness to that. So, and then if you take Avi Loeb's idea of the interstellar gardener, which is that creation of the earth is likely from an external source, which is how all religions talk about it, and the gardening is like, okay, I'm going to, you know, create this thing and see if life is habitable. It could be that the larger test of will humanity survive on earth could be. future aliens trying to regain access to the physical form which they lost during their

evolutionary process, which made them technical. Well, now we're getting into almost like a time travel type scenario, although not necessarily, but that's another one of the theories that's been put forward, is that aliens are actually time travelers from the future trying to, who have gone down the wrong path, meaning they are us from the future who are trying to make us make different choices in the past. And in a simulated universe, that would be possible. Or trying to jump from their timeline backwards. Like you said, a simulation was created of 1937 Los Angeles, right,

in order for them to go back and experience that. If I'm an AI non-humanoid, they want to come in. They want to recreate the best possible scenario to avoid the mistakes of the past. And in order to do that, I'm going to run as many simulations as possible to make sure that I don't go down the wrong path again. Now, here are some of the pitfalls, right? Because Greg Braden talks about the evolution of, and not only Greg, but Ray Kurzweil and others talk about us hitting that singularity point.

That could be the wrong point where everything goes awry, meaning we lose X elements of our humanity the more we merge with technology. Right. Well, and that's what I was going to ask about in terms of stages of technology. Where does this conversation lead us when we talk about, oh, we're here now, we're looking at AI, we're fighting at the dinner table over is AI better than humans? What happens next? But let me let us, let me walk just a touch closer to this, meaning we've already see, like I saw a video online recently that was a teacher just like at her wit's end saying like, you don't understand what's happening in the classroom, nor should you, because, you know, you're not in the, you're not in the, classroom. But it isn't that kids are distracted on their phones, it's that when you take their phones away, they are empty vessels inside because they cannot focus. They're just used to getting so much stimulation that I'm just looking at the eyes of these dead children in my classroom who look like drug addicts dealing with withdrawal at how slow the pace of the information is

as they're used to being flooded. So if you think about the trajectory, of how our brains are changing and then in very short period of time we will have the opportunity to merge more fully with machines, whether that be through neural implants or more adaptive technology,

we could continually be moving away from and giving up aspects of our humanity. So I just wanted to place that in terms of like where are we in the process? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of individual points there. I think

made. But in terms of our technology development, so as I said, the reason I went down this rabbit hole was because I played that virtual reality game and I started to think about how long would it take us to build something like the Matrix? And that's why I lay out the 10 stages to the simulation point in the book. And these include the ability to build virtual reality and augmented reality, but also AI characters that are indistinguishable from biological beings. So I define the simulation point as a point where we can build virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from physical worlds, but we also have AI characters within them that are indistinguishable from, like, characters controlled by humans or even from biological characters. And when we reach that point,

I call that also a kind of technological singularity. Because if you look at the term, as it's used now, with Kurzweil, for example, it's used for the merging of silicon and biology. And with Werner Vinji, the sci-fi writer who wrote the paper about the technological singularity, I think it was back in the early 90s. He actually laid out many different ways in which could reach the singularity, one of which is superintelligence, and that's another way we think of the singularity. But the term actually was borrowed from physics by von Neumann, who was a mathematician, but also kind of a computer scientist.

And he invented the von Neumann architecture, which is what we use for all of our computers right now. And he borrowed it and said, it's the point where Technology is growing exponentially, and then everything will be different for humanity. And it does feel like we're reaching that point. Yeah, mental health is in the garbage. Like, you know, body dysmorphia, suicide rates for teens are skyrocketing. Like, it feels like the world's on fire.

Also, like the president sounds like a comic book villain more and more every day. Like, I feel like I'm literally in a video game when I turn on the news. But this is sort of where my point was about the kids and our use of tech is that it's changing how we operate without it. So in some ways, the singularity has happened. not that our consciousness has merged or that we've become silica, but without my maps, like, I can only go very few places.

I can't remember anything. You're back in the scheddle. You just only have to go three months. I think we're the last generation that remembers what that was like. And the Thomas Guide. Like, I could you ran McAlde if I had to, right? Like, my son couldn't.

You used to be able to stop at a gas station and the guy who worked there knew the neighborhood. You and I would tell you, yeah, go this one. Take a left at the trees. I can't tell you the number of times I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions in the 80s. I remember driving across the country with my Rand McNally Atlas and then I'd get into the next state and then I'd need a map of a city. Yeah, a triptych from AAA, which you can still get. Oh.

So our basic cognitive functioning has drastically changed in a very short period of time, which is moving us towards some sort of merger or dependence on. And we talk about like all the things we're going to offload from a decision-making standpoint to our. artificial intelligence, which I think is getting us there. So I'm agreeing with you and also I feel like we're further into the curve than we may realize. Well, so there's an idea about technology and science called Collingridge's dilemma, which basically says that you don't know the side effects of a technology until after the technology has been rolled out. Like, for example, you know, who knew when Facebook was first created? They did.

Me. Me and Facebook. You and Facebook, right? But in general, when people adopted, started adapting it, right? They didn't realize it was going to lead to more polarization. Yeah, but like every hippie knew. That's what's interesting to me. Yes, yes.

The hippies knew. All the people who believe that they can access the Akashic records to decide if they should go to the supermarket were like, I see exactly what's going to happen. And when COVID happened, they were like, Uh-huh. See? 2020. What did they think it was going to happen? Like, I can't tell you how many, like, yoga instructors were like, it's all going to be okay.

Just breathe through your nose. Like, what? They knew. Right, right. So some people may have had indications of what's going to happen. The people that society calls crazy. Crazy. Yeah.

And says, you know, society. They're the non-materials. Correct. Yeah. Which used to be shamans. Yes. Right? Mystical leaders.

That's right. Prophets, people who, when they dreamt, decided that they could foresee the destruction of the temple, right? And everybody's like, that's a prophecy. Yeah, and that was a function within society. Correct. We've kind of gotten rid of that. No, we make them all live in Sedona. Yes.

And they do. Actually, many people move to Sedona during COVID. I know. They're just living their best life. I'm in Arizona now. It's an interesting place. But so what I was going to say about this dilemma was that sometimes you don't know the side effects until after it's been rolled out. So it's better to roll out technologies more slowly and more flexibly rather than simply just pushing them out to everybody.

Or saying let's give every six-year-old a tablet at dinner and let's give every two-year-old a phone. But you're a VC that doesn't work with the business model with the people putting money into these technologies and these platforms who want to see a return as quickly as possible. We've given them a pack of cigarettes and we're telling them to smoke it slowly. That's what, to me, that's what it is. Right, because from, like I said earlier, you know, part of my reason for pulling back Silicon Valley was because it's really about making money with technology. And how do you make money with technology through engagement, through users coming back again. Make it as sticky as possible. Make it as sticky as possible.

I mean, you see it with the social media algorithms. And that's the only criteria that gets used for success. Right. So it's not like, I mean, the only criteria. for a successful company in Silicon Valley and just broadly in our culture is did it make money or not? Did it go out of business or was it successful? Whereas products may have positive effects,

but if they didn't succeed financially. And so that I think is an issue with our general capitalist culture. And I say that as a capitalist and having been a VC in that environment. I mean, they're not necessarily thinking how do we ruin the world? What they are thinking is how do we build technology?

Slowly ruin the world. Slowly ruin the world, right? But they're also often looking at science fiction and viewing that in a very kind of what's techno-deterministic way. They're kind of looking at the optimism of technology and science. And they're trying to build. Like, for example, Facebook changed this name to meta. Why?

Because they wanted to build a metaverse, which the term was defined in Snowcrash, a novel by Neil Stevenson back in 1992. too. And so they were trying to build this virtual reality world where people would hang up. But if you read that novel, it's a pretty dystopian world outside of the virtual world. So we tend to ignore the dystopian aspects. And we tend to look at technology as the solution to everything. And to a certain extent, I blame science fiction for this as well. Because if you think of in Star Trek, you know, when the doctor creates some magical cure within 40, minutes, right, that you have to do with it.

There's never any side effects. I mean, no one ever has any side effects. Well, that's what the show Black Mirror is for. Yes. I mean, there's been so many amazing, some of our favorite episodes were the ones about simulation. Yeah, the episode, the San Juan of Hero is my favorite. And I use that in teaching about simulation theory.

There's an episode where you can literally choose different endings. Hmm, that's true. Have you not seen this one? I don't think I've seen this one. Yeah, so there's an episode of Black Mirror. I'd have to pull it up. It's one of the series that they did. about simulation. And if you watch it on an appropriate device, you can choose.

Oh, right. You're talking about like Band or Snatch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more like the game. Correct. Yeah, the game version of the episode. And I've tried many different, I've spent a lot of time with this episode.

You can try many different possibilities and I don't want to give it away. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's like choose your own adventure. Yeah, but like I'm... But with an actual... But also, my younger son and I, we were really enjoying a lot of the conversations

that came from talking about simulation and gaming and things like that. And what we said is we were like, they had to record every possibility. Right. So it makes you kind of start speaking this language, right? And he said, well, what if no one picks that? I said it was recorded anyway, right? You have to record all the possibilities so that it can be rendered,

depending on what the perspective is of who wants to choose it. So what's happened now is with the increase in AI effectiveness, you can have AI basically generate video that looks like actors speaking line. So there's something... He told me. I'm not necessary anymore. There was an episode with Black Mirror on that front as well. It was with...

Selma Hayek. So the episode is Joan is awful. Yes, that's the episode. Where this woman starts watching an equivalent of like a Netflix show. And it's everything that happens. to her that day except slightly glamorized and sensationalized.

And it turns out then that she, it keeps going deeper. It's a stacking doll where eventually Selma Hayek is hired to play her in her life. Anyway. Right, yep, that's the episode I was talking about. But now with AI, there's something called prompt theory. So this is a new flavor of simulation theory.

And basically, you can see videos that people have created. So this started a few months ago with Google V-O-3, which was basically one of the better video engines, but it would not just generate video. You can have the actor saying things. And so the prompts that were given to these characters has them talking about the fact that I am not a prompt. Look at how realistic this world is.

Never date a guy who talks about prompt theory because, you know, he's kind of lost it. And so you watch these videos. We're going to ban anyone from our school who teaches about prompt theory. You understand why this is scary. Yes, this is scary. Because this is scary. This is also how a lot of conspiracy theories are getting conflated, right? This is how a lot of hatred is being spread, truth is being twisted.

Like, it's scary. I mean, not just twisted, but it's the erosion of any sort of objective reality. If everyone's TV show ends differently. And now Amazon has created, I think they just created the technology or bought the technology for a whole series of animated videos that will be fully AI-gen and fully customized to the individual so you can create the stories and plot lines.

Right. We have no shared reality anymore. It was the company. They just bought them. Yeah. But I think primarily they were doing more cartoon type. It's all, yeah. Like South Park type cartoon.

Animations, cartoons. But more recently there has been this Google Jeannie was literally released like two weeks ago where, it can take a prompt or a description, or now with X and Grock, they're doing it too. It can actually make it a navigable virtual world. So we now have the ability to basically give prompt

and have it create not just an image or a static video, but to actually have you explore that virtual world. So we're getting to the point where AI can create a virtual world. Now, this actually does tie back to my investigation of religions, right? because normally, you know, in the scientific world, we would dismiss stories of God created the world in three days. Genesis must be bullshit, right? And of course, because there was never any mechanism for that,

that doesn't make any sense. But if you look at it, you say, okay, let's take it seriously, but not literally. What is the mechanism God uses to create the world? He speaks, he commands, and the world gets created by itself. And so that wasn't possible before. It was like the, but now it's like the holodeck.

in Star Trek the next generation where how do they program the holodeck? They simply speak. And the AI creates the characters and creates everything within it. And so we're getting to that point where we can probably create AI characters, not fully immersive worlds yet,

but pretty good so that in a few years we'll be able to. Now, I think where it gets scary, and this is why I try to draw the distinction between the NPC version and the RPG versions of simulation theory. I think people that are scared by simulation theory tend to focus on the NPC version,

which is that we're all just AI characters inside this game. What happens if the simulators shut us down? Right. And there have been, like there was a philosophy professor a few years back he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times where he said, we should not try to find out if we're in a simulation. Why?

Because if we do, the simulators, and the answer is yes, the simulators might decide to end the experiment and shut us down. Honestly, it seems better than what you're proposing. Like, this is a, it's a version of, modern version of Pascal's wager. Yeah. Pascal, he says, it's also the prisoner's dilemma. Yeah, similar to the prisoner's dilemma. But he said, let's not even try to find out.

But just like Pascal saying, look, you don't know, I don't know if there's a God or not. But if there is a God, then I can be punished for doing all these bad things. But if there isn't a God, it doesn't matter whether I did good things or bad things. But on average, I would be better off. Now, that assumes the NFC version. That assumes that we did not play a role in creating the simulation. we did not decide to come in and be characters within the simulation. And so, you know, a lot of academics who talk about simulation theory,

that's the version they focus on it. And I can see why that could be scary for people. But that also leaves open the possibility that if you were running that, you would run multiple timelines. You would run it again and again and again. You could end up with characters like Grandhog Day, for example, where they go again and again. You could try out every single possibility.

And so back to this civilizational question of running a simulation. It could be very much to see where it ends up. Does it end up destroying itself? Do humans get off the planet? Maybe there's another civilization of aliens. And the whole purpose of the simulation is to see when we meet, you know, how long does it take us to get to that point where we can meet, which is a whole interesting discussion in and of itself. So anyway, I think that there's a lot of interesting elements to this. But that's why, I mean, I write about both the NPC version and and the RPG version in the book. But I think you can look at it differently depending on your orientation. And it doesn't have to be, just like religion, mystical experiences don't have to be negative.

They can be a positive in your life. Simulation theory can be a negative or a positive in your life if you view it that way. I don't think they would unplug us because I think they want us to see and have the experience of knowing that we are part of something that is greater. I disagree.

I disagree. Well, in the movie The 13th Floor, so I bring up science fiction a lot just because it's easier to talk about these possibilities, just like with aliens. It's easier for people to imagine them. But it was actually based on a book, which came out all the way back in like 1964, I think, called Samilochron 3 by Daniel Gulli. And they modified it a bit in the film. But in the book, it was actually a simulation run by marketing ad executives. and when he figured out that he was in a simulation, that's when they wanted to shut the experiment down

because their experiment was, how will people react to marketing new products? It was a very 1950s madman type of world. But I don't actually think that's the reason for the simulation because people, there are people who, like Plato's philosopher, have peaked outside the simulation and realize it, and they haven't shut us down yet. And I mean, all our religious texts have been saying this for thousands of years.

So perhaps that, in my opinion, that's not the most likely scenario, but it could be if we were in an NPC simulation. That certainly could happen. Yeah, the only reason that I disagree is I think that if we're at the level of potentially contemplating that we're in a simulation that is governed by some sort of like any human attempt we have to understand what the purpose meaning or end game is is going to fall. so short of what actually is happening. Like, it's like saying I'm going to use tinker toys to build a jet. Well, I do agree with that to a certain extent because whatever computer systems would be running this simulation would have to be so advanced. Correct.

Like, well beyond even what we think of as quantum computers. No, we can't imagine it. Correct. We're not even there. We can't imagine it. But that's what I appreciate you. Don't think that they would unplug us. I don't think so.

I think that it's, I don't think these are glitches. I think they're actually clues. And I think that we're not. Which is a term I like, by the way. I like that term clues. There are clues that there's a larger expansion of consciousness that has been shared through all the mystic texts. Why are all these mystics having this awareness of non-physical reality and communicating it? It's so that there can be a larger understanding. Physics is now pulling us and trying to bring the materialist view forward to help merge these things. that doesn't seem like it's an unplugged situation. It's like, let's take this information,

build bridges across all these disciplines, build a larger understanding of why we're here, both collectively and individually. And I think better things will happen and potentially, well, I'll say the experiment may ultimately succeed in that we don't all destroy each other. Let's hope that's the case, right? Or if we do destroy each other, it's possible that you can rerun the simulation. Oh, for P-C. And there's a whole branch of physics that talks about multiple timelines into the future,

but also multiple possible pasts. That gets really strange. This is such a great conversation. I do really recommend the simulation hypothesis. Dr. Burke, thank you so much for being here and really a pleasure to get to talk to you. So great to be here. This has been a fun discussion.

Awesome. There's a lot about the simulation and the rendering that mimics the brain's creation of reality. Yes. So I cannot render what is happening at your house while we're at the podcast studio. You could just reach into the ether and ask what's happening. You could remote view my house.

Well, this is what I think is interesting is I could move my consciousness based on what we've learned about remote viewing to any location and render what is happening, get information. Now, it will be different than if I'm physically there and seeing it. But is it existing without it being observed? So, you know, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, right?

Does it still make a sound? No, it doesn't. Of course it does. Well, it does if you believe in the physical nature of reality, to some extent, just to a limited extent. The only way that you will know if it makes a sound is if you're observant. This is the observer problem, right? Correct.

But if I want to function in the world and not constantly feel caught in a loop of like, is this happening, is it not happening? Like, what do I do? Then I need to assume that when the tree falls, it makes exactly the sound that it does, and birds and squirrels will, you know, know that a tree has fallen. Maybe. And there are things that are happening that I am perceiving that may only be my perception of them.

I say that all the time. And that there is a larger view that can be created. Now, I want to take this to people's perceptions of their limits, people's perceptions of their difficulties. We get ingrained and say, this has happened to me. I can't get out of this situation. Now we have an answer. It's a simulation.

And aliens are simply trying. That's not what it is. It doesn't necessarily mean about. aliens or anything else. That's like the step beyond, which is let's hypothesize about the creation of the universe in general, which is similar to God created the universe or any other mythology. It's a myth that we can speculate to give us comfort and wrap our small perspective around some larger idea of why we're all here in the first place. But if you take the on the ground view, the fact that there can be clues, that there can be a large,

intelligence mapped on to our lives is similar to the fact that we could have guardian angels, the fact that there could be a divine intervention, the fact that our perspective on something could change in a way that would help us see it more clearly or have more opportunity and possibility. Like, let's go back to really base materialism where we think about, and you've explained and we've had other guests like Susan David explained that when we're in a state, our perception and our awareness is such that we can find solutions to problems that we otherwise would feel totally overwhelmed by? Excuse me?

You're welcome. That's the universe showing me a sign that it's working. I think what feels, you know, particularly sort of like comforting, not necessarily about, like, oh, yes, we're in a simulation or no, we're not in a simulation, but the notion of if you feel there's possibility, it actually might exist, right? Meaning that sense of stuckness that he talked about does not have to be your reality, right?

And I think if we were to say to him, like, what's the hope in the simulation? I think that's what the hope is, that if you feel like you're, you know, kind of going over the same things, like, yeah, there's a spiraling up that you're doing because of repeated experience and it doesn't mean that it's not going to be painful.

It doesn't mean that it's not going to be challenging, but the ability to say, and there's a lot of different ways to say, it's simulation hypothesis is one of them, but the ability to say, I'm not my thoughts. I'm not everything that I'm thinking. I'm not all of the pain that I'm experiencing. That's a part of me, or if you have trauma, right?

And, oh, I feel like I'm afraid of intimacy, and every time I'm in a relationship, I keep breaking up. It's like David Rico talks about this, right? With, like, what are we repeating in our relationship? in some sense, like that's what this can give us hope for to be able to say, even if you just say there's more than this, I'm more than this, I think it opens up a lot of possibilities.

Yes, you're more than this and there's a force that can guide you towards something else. Looking for the clues, expanding our awareness. When we talk about sci abilities, intuitive abilities, the fact that there's data in the field that the universe is made out of this data and that we can process it, and it is revealing itself. I love when he talked about how he got sick when he was off of the life plan that was shown to him and that he had an awareness of.

Yep, totally. What if every time we're in a very difficult situation, we ask ourselves one question from Betty, what now, not why me? And the second question is, am I aligned with my life path? Do I know what my life path is and have I veered away from it? Is this random chance or am I being shown a message? Yep.

Really enjoyable conversation. And I think I really, I appreciate just the integration that he's able to do with all of these different modalities. And also the notion that he's willing to say, I don't just need to look at it as if it's this small. Like, what if every mystical tradition, what if every historical event, right, was all seen through the framework that was appropriate for that culture? And just like everything we see, it's appropriate for where our situation is. But it's a much bigger picture than that. I really love that. If you want to get integrated, come check us out on Substack, where we release exclusive content, not released anywhere else.

Miami-B-Alex breakdown on Substack. Also, if this conversation was interesting to you, I do recommend that you read the book because he gets into the physics, he gets into the practicality, he gets into the mysticism, he really ties it all together. So I do really recommend this one. Yeah, from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.