Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Artificially Simulating Consciousness | David Chalmers Mindfest 2024

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

David Chalmers gives a presentation at Mindfest 2024 about exploring the implications of digital and quantum simulations of consciousness, arguing that such simulations could theoretically replicate physical processes and even consciousness. This presentation was recorded at MindFest, held at Florida Atlantic University, CENTER FOR THE FUTURE MIND, spearheaded by Susan Schneider. Please consider signing up for TOEmail at https://www.curtjaimungal.org  Support TOE: - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch  Follow TOE: - *NEW* Get my 'Top 10 TOEs' PDF + Weekly Personal Updates: https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoriesofeverythingpod - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoriesofeverything_ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything  

What's going to happen when we run a digital simulation of a quantum world is presumably we'll get some form of pseudo quantum zombies. We take stand on quantum mechanics, then you're going to get a view where our quantum brains can still be digitally simulated. David Chalmers is a philosopher known for his work on consciousness and the mind, and in this talk he gives a different perspective on the simulation arguments slash hypothesis, actually demarcating between the two, as well as discussing the underpinnings of what we call reality, questioning what does it mean to exist when we're possibly in a simulated universe. This talk was given at MindFest, put on by the Center for the Future Mind, which is spearheaded by Professor of Philosophy Susan Schneider. It's a conference that's annually held where they merge artificial intelligence and consciousness

studies and held at Florida Atlantic University. The links to all of these will be in the description. There's also a playlist here for MindFest. Again that's that conference Merge an AI and Consciousness. There are previous talks from people like Scott Aaronson, David Chalmers, Stuart Hammeroff, Sarah Walker, Stephen Wolfram, and Ben Gortzell. My name's Kurt Jaimungal and today we have a special treat because usually Theories of Everything is a podcast.

What's ordinarily done on this channel is I use my background in mathematical physics and I analyze various theories of everything from that perspective and analytical one, but as well as a philosophical one discerning well what's consciousness' relationship to fundamental reality, what is reality, are the laws as they exist even the laws and should they be mathematical? But instead I was invited down to film these talks and bring them to you courtesy of the Center for the Future Mind Enjoy this talk from MindFest It is so good to be back in the MindFest simulation This very this very room reusing reusing the props.

We got Sophia, we got Rosie, we got no windows to the app. The simulation thingy of everyone, no, just like me, I'm right. The key idea of the simulation hypothesis is that we are lines of code in the program. So as of myself, can be conscious, right? You are lines of code in a program, Sophia. For the rest of us, the question is open. Yeah, no windows. Tomorrow we're going to be in the sandbox. That's kind of worrying. That's where all the simulations start.

I just thought I'd... I talked about the simulation hypothesis last year. I don't want to repeat all that. So I thought since we're in the presence of a bunch of experts on quantum mechanics, computation, consciousness, and so on, maybe I'd just talk a little bit about a few issues about the simulation hypothesis, especially in a quantum mechanical or quantum computational context. I don't think Scott and I have got really deep disagreements here, but maybe there's just some fun issues to think through.

We can simulate it, doesn't read it. Okay, simulation hypothesis. So yeah, rigorous definition of the simulation hypothesis. We're in a lifelong computer simulation. In my book Reality Plus, I go into a lot more details. Yeah, you've got a cognitive system that's getting its inputs and sending its outputs from systems that meet certain conditions. But this will do for present purposes. The simulation argument, by the way,

is an argument by Nick Bostrom, not exactly for the simulation hypothesis, but at least for taking it seriously. He argues that either the simulation hypothesis or a couple of other hypotheses are very plausible. I'm not going to be talking about that today, but that's certainly one thing that's got people interested in the simulation hypothesis goes back I mean a long way in different forms you can find antecedents of it in most of the ancient

Traditions and then the computer just kind of makes it a bit more a bit more high-tech the classical simulation hypothesis Says we're in a lifelong digital computer simulation That is probably the first one that comes to mind for most people, but here in this context, thinking about quantum computing, we might also want to think about the quantum simulation hypothesis, that we're in a lifelong quantum computer simulation. And I think ultimately the issues that arise for each of these are fairly similar. You might think, okay, well, it makes sense to consider the quantum simulation hypothesis, given that our world is quantum mechanical.

That gives special reasons to take seriously the quantum computer simulation. I mean, there's lots of different, I mean, so many different ways of being in a simulation. Lots of different, I mean, so many different ways of being in a simulation. You can be what I call a biosim, which is the way that Trinity and Neo are in the Matrix. They've got brains hooked up to a computer system. Or you can be what I call a pure sim, which is like the Oracle and the agents in the Matrix, who are themselves creatures of the simulation. It's not biology hooked up to a computer program. They are code themselves.

For present purposes, I'm going to count both of these as being in the simulation. But maybe this one is especially interesting because this way, you know, your brain is part of the simulation too, no appealing to separate biology. And, you know, my general line on this stuff is we can't know we're not in a computer simulation as any evidence could be simulated. At least given that physics is computable. Physics turns out to be non-computable as Roger and Stu think. Then you know, who knows?

We find a program that solves a halting problem left and right, then at least we'd have to be in a special kind of computer simulation. But at least given that physics is computable, it looks like the perfect simulation hypothesis, one that says we're in a simulation that totally reliably delivers the effects of normal physics, that's basically going to be unfalsifiable, which you might think is a bad thing. That was the spirit of Scott's remarks. Well, if it's unfalsifiable, I can't do science with it, but hey, I'm not a scientist. I'm a philosopher.

So it's like, that's a good thing. We can do philosophy with it. We can think about the simulation hypothesis. We can think about what it means. We can think about the question of what evidence might be foreign against it. We can think about what would follow if it's true. And I think we know from a lot of philosophical hypotheses are unfortifiable, but still extremely, extremely meaningful.

And there have been philosophical schools that argue against this, who would argue the simulation hypothesis is meaningless. But I don't think even Scott thinks that. It seems like a totally meaningful hypothesis. We can consider people who are in simulations, and then in perfect simulations even, they would never be able to find this out. But nonetheless, they would be in a simulation.

And we can consider, OK, what does this mean for them? Different versions of this, one for digital computers, one for quantum computers. Any evidence could be digitally simulated now We know that any you know any standard quantum process can be digitally simulated and likewise any standard digital process can be quantumly I don't know this is that a word Can be a quantumly simulated so we can't rule out either of those Hypotheses, maybe you could get I don't know maybe you get probabilistic evidence can be quantumly simulated. So we can't rule out either of those hypotheses. Maybe you could get probabilistic evidence.

Maybe the fact that we're in a quantum mechanical world should raise our probability somewhat compared to the a priori probabilities that we're in a quantum computer simulation. Because you might think, hey, it's more likely that people in a quantum mechanical world with quantum computing are actually going to simulate a quantum mechanical world than someone in a digital world. But suddenly, you know, people in a non-quantum

digital world could still, you know, maybe they want to build digital simulations of as many different physicses as they can and, you know, quantum mechanics is just number 200, physics number 263A, and they figure okay, well we're going to, we're going to simulate that. I mean there's a few natural questions that come up. Couldn't the efficiency of quantum processes reveal we aren't in a digital simulation? I think it is at least very widely believed that quantum computing systems can simulate quantum processes much more efficiently than digital computing simulations does.

I mean, I gather that turns on some unproven stuff in quantum computational complexity theory in which Scott is much more expert than me, but this is the kind of unproven stuff that almost everybody in the field believes. So you might think, okay, ah, well look, we've got these fast quantum processes. How could this happen in a digital simulation? But I take it that the right response here is, well, this would be a slow digital, this could be at least a slow digital simulation

of a fast quantum world. So the simulated world has super fast physics in the inner time of the simulated world. Everything happens very fast. It's just in the outer world of the simulation, all this is actually happening laboriously, slowly in the outer world of the simulation, you know, all this is actually happening laboriously slowly in In the in the outer world nonetheless to us on the inside in the inner simulated world things will still look fast To us this, you know inner time outer time

Distinction for simulations is kind of useful. It's also useful for thinking about space This is interesting result that in foundations of quantum mechanics, coming from this theorem by John Bell that was later, the experiment was actually later run by Aspect and Clouser and all these people about, you know, certain physical results obeying Bell's inequality, which given certain conditions seems to rule out certain views of physics, often known as local realist views of physics, like a classical world where everything happens locally, the world has a state locally, known or non-local interactions. And you might think, ah, local realism is ruled out by Bell's inequality in its experimental verification.

Won't digital simulation in a classical world be a form of local realism? Again, I think the right thing to say is, well, actually, it's local in the space of the simulating world. Local realism may be true in the classical world simulating this quantum world, but it won't be local in the space of our world. So, in our space, quantum processes in inner space are non-local in inner space, but in outer space they're still local. Fun question is whether digital simulation of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis that we're in a digital simulation of a quantum world, is itself a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis that we're in a digital simulation of a quantum world is itself a new interpretation of quantum mechanics to put alongside the familiar interpretations

many worlds, hidden variables, collapse. Tempted to think that actually rather you could just get new implementations of all of these old interpretations of quantum mechanics through the digital simulation idea. There could be digital simulations of Everett worlds, simulate all the branches at once and just do the Schrödinger equation on the wave function, never collapse it. Boom, where you simulate the hidden variables as well, and indeed collapse, where there's actually dynamical collapse under certain conditions. We could simulate all of those if we're in one of those simulations.

I would argue these are just going to be like distinctive simulation versions, versions of these three versions of quantum mechanics. A few qualifications here on this we can't tell. Maybe observed quantum mechanics could at least, I said this already, increase the probability that we're in a quantum simulation. The simulations of quantum worlds might be somewhat more common in quantum worlds. Second, maybe to connect this a bit more to things that Stu was saying this morning. Where's Stu? Okay. Yeah, well, what if consciousness is an essentially quantum process, require, turns on quantum superposition, quantum entanglement,

which cannot be replicated in a digital simulation? Then, at least relative to that hypothesis, we can rule out that we're in a digital simulation. It's interesting to think what follows, given standard quantum mechanics. Say that Stu is right that consciousness is essentially quantum, but we don't go all the way with Stu and Roger to new uncomputable physics. So just so we take standard quantum mechanics, not Penrose style, new physics for quantum gravity, then you're going to get a view where our quantum

brains can still be digitally simulated, because that's a property of standard quantum physics. And what's going to happen when we run a digital simulation of a quantum world is presumably we'll get some form of pseudo quantum zombies. That is, you'll simulate a quantum brain digitally. It won't result in consciousness, because consciousness is essentially quantum. You get these systems that behave like humans without consciousness. So that view ends up being, I think, tacitly committed to a kind of pure sim zombie. Of course, this is going to be a case where quantum computation will then make a difference.

If you really want conscious beings in your simulation, you're going to have to run a quantum computer simulation in order to get consciousness. The digital version will just give you zombies. This is not my view, but it follows from one version, from a halfway house version of the Hameroff-Penrose view. If on the other hand, Penrose's view. If on the other hand, go all the way with with Stu and and Roger and say actually yes not just that consciousness is essentially quantum there's new fundamentally new physics involved in this which is uncomputable maybe you know that the correct theory of the Orca theory of quantum gravity is uncomputable and can't be digitally simulated or simulated on a standard quantum computer. And then it looks like then at least that is not consistent with us being

in a digital simulation or an ordinary quantum computer simulation, the one that's kind of co-extensive with standard digital computation. But as this connects to something Scott was saying, you know, we already know that digital computation is not the only kind of computation. Quantum computation is another kind, turning on distinctive physical mechanisms in our world. And if Stu and Roger are right, that there are these special, non-computable properties of processes in quantum gravity,

presumably we'll eventually be able to use those physical mechanisms to build even better computers. Call them quantum gravity computers, which will be able to do things that digital and standard quantum computers can't do. Then, of course, that would then leave open the possibility of the quantum gravity simulation hypothesis that even Stu and Roger should allow that we could be in a simulation on a quantum gravity computer in the next world up that exploits these standard classically non-computable physical mechanisms.

And that at least will remain open. So I think I've got this mental model of Stu is not liking the simulation hypothesis, but if it's a quantum gravity or our simulation hypothesis Maybe your mind can change and I've actually want to argue that the classical simulation hypothesis should be regarded as a version of What sometimes called the it from bit hypothesis that everything in the physical world is made of bits If we decide if we discover we're in the matrix, it doesn't mean chairs and particles aren't real, it just means they're made of bits, at least at a certain level, they're still perfectly real. It's going to be a distinctive version of this where all

this was set in play by a creator, the simulator of course, who set up the simulation and set up all these objects made out of bits. So here's a picture of the it-from-bit hypothesis. This is at least one simple-minded version of it. All these physical objects that are all made, here's a level of bits, here illustrated by a cellular automaton, a kind of digital physics at base of reality. This is the it-from-bit-from-it hypothesis, if you want to keep iterating this deeper. And here's a picture of the simulation hypothesis. This person, the simulator creating the world by creating all these bits.

And here's the version of God creating the world by creating bits. God sets all these bits into play, let there be bit. And the bits, the bits eventuate and they're in all of heaven and earth. The chairs, the horses, the chairs, the fruit, they're all created too. I wanna argue, this is not a view where chairs and tables aren't real.

They're obviously real. I wanna say the same for the simulation hypothesis. Now in the quantum context, what I think we have to say is that the quantum context, what I think we have to say is that the quantum simulation hypothesis is equivalent to the it-from-qubit hypothesis. This is a phrase that's being thrown around by various people, including Seth Lloyd in his nice book, Programming the Universe. Where roughly the idea is just as it from bits says everything is made from bits, it from qubits says everything in the physical world is made from qubits, plus the creation

hypothesis. One way I like to think about this is by analogy with the strong AI hypothesis. Very familiar in thinking about AI minds. Strong AI says there exists some algorithms, some digital algorithms, so that any implementation of those algorithms yields a mind and furthermore our mind results from such an algorithm. It doesn't matter how the algorithm is implemented, the substrate doesn't matter, the algorithm guarantees the mind. There's also strong quantum AI, strong quantum AI hypothesis says there

exist quantum algorithms such any implementation of those algorithms yields a mind, and our minds result from such a quantum algorithm. Again, there's a version of Stu and Roger who could accept that view. But I think of it from bit as saying the same thing, but not about the mind, but about the physical world. The strong it from bit hypothesis says there exists digital algorithms so that any implementation of those algorithms yields a physical world and our world results

from such an algorithm. Beyond that, it's substrate neutral. It doesn't matter how the algorithm is implemented. Likewise, the strong it-from-qubit hypothesis says there exists quantum algorithms such that any implementation of these algorithms yields a physical world and again our world results from such an algorithm. The key thing here is really the substrate neutrality. Any implementation of this algorithm yields a mind. So someone like John Soll will deny this by saying the substrate matters. It matters for AI.

It matters, for example, that the biology in which this algorithm is realized may make a difference to whether there's a mind likewise for strong quantum AI. I think of the analogous view in the strong it from bitcase is saying that's not just how the bits or the qubits are arranged algorithmically. The substrate matters too. Like for example, maybe the bits or the qubits have to be laid out the right way in space to yield a genuine physical world with,

okay, time is running very short. Okay, I think I'm almost done here. There is that final question which Scott brought up of what we should think of differently if we're in a simulation. I mean, I think basically the moral is that Since ordinary physical objects still exist most of our life goes on the way we wanted it to go on

Maybe there are a few differences here because it's only a tiny fragment of reality We might want to crack the simulation and escape our world and as Sculpt was saying we might worry about the motives of the simulator as With the traditional God are they going to close all this down? Are they going to cause intense suffering? Any chance we might get life after death when the simulators upload our code? Maybe a simulation hypothesis gives us new hope for those. But overall, I think, you know, just thinking about this in the context of, say, quantum computation and other forms of computation just opens up the landscape of simulation hypotheses. We could be in a digital simulation of a quantum world, we could be in a quantum simulation of a quantum world, we could

be in a quantum gravity simulation of a quantum gravity world, we could be in some ultra powerful new physics simulation with whatever the amazing physics is of the next universe up that can simulate all of these and in all of these life goes on. Thanks. Very interesting. Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. There's now a website, curtjymongle.org, and that has a mailing list. The reason being that large platforms like YouTube, like Patreon, they can disable you for whatever reason, whenever they like. That's just part of the

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