Kind: captions
Language: en
In 2022, three scientists won the Nobel
Prize for proving that the universe is
not locally real, meaning particles
don't exist in a fixed state until
they're observed. What does that mean in
simple terms? The universe only renders
when you look at it. This has been
proven scientifically, and it's made one
question above all the obvious one to
ask. Are we living in a simulation? And
if we are, if this universe is simply a
rendered environment, then there's no
reason to believe that death is the end.
Today's guest is MIT trained computer
scientist, author, and video game
entrepreneur Ryzswan Furk. He's got some
wild theories that tie together ancient
mysticism with modern quantum physics
and simulation theory. I'm not sure if
he's right, but I know he is
interesting. Buckle up because here's
RZswan Burke.
Starting at the foundation, what is the
simulation hypothesis and why do you
think that it's actually a valid way to
think of the universe? So, I started off
coming to this road through video games.
Uh and then as I started to research
quantum physics and looking at all the
weirdness in quantum mechanics, I came
to realize that a simulated universe
made much more sense than a physical
universe. Like if we lived in a static
physical universe, sort of a Newtonian
world, if you will, where everything
that's solid is solid and it always
exists. uh as opposed to in the quantum
world where everything gets rendered or
we say that there's a probability wave
that collapses to one specific
possibility. So that's called quantum
indeterminacy. And then the third part
was when I started looking at the
world's religions, I found that they
were saying something similar. They just
didn't have the terminology to talk
about it back then. So there's this
strange phenomenon called the observer
effect. And this is so crazy. Yeah. or
quantum indeterminacies would be the
more formal name for it. And most people
can probably think of it in terms of
Schroinger's cat. Most people have heard
of the cat. And so basically the idea is
that you have this box and inside the
box is a cat and some poison. And
without getting in details, there's a
50% chance that the poison gets released
and the cat is dead, which means there's
a 50% chance poison does not get
released and the cat is alive, let's say
after an hour. And so uh that is called
a state of superp position which means
the cat is actually in two positions.
Now normally we would say common sense
tells us the cat is either alive or it's
dead. Can't be both. It has to be one or
the other. We just don't know because we
haven't looked in the box. But the
weirdness of quantum mechanics tells us
that both of those are true. Meaning the
cat is both alive and dead until
somebody looks into the box. And then
what happens is that this state of
superposition or this probability wave
as it's defined gets collapsed down to
just one possibility and that's the
possibility that we see. So those are
the two most popular interpretations.
The big question is why would the
universe do that? And we can say well
why do we do that in computer games we
do it in order to optimize because we
have limited resources and you know
limited memory limited CPUs and all of
this stuff. So it's an optimization
technique that only renders that which
needs to be rendered. Now the objection
that some physicists have you know
between these two camps they like that
you know these guys don't like that
interpretation and these guys don't like
that interpretation. Why would the
multiverse make sense? So what I'm
saying is that the multiverse also makes
more sense if it's a simulated
multiverse. And I wrote a book called
the simulated multiverse that goes
through this idea. And so the objection
to this idea that the universe is
splitting off into multiple universes.
every time we make not just a you know
major life decision like am I going to
live in Los Angeles or New York but at
every single quantum decision event
which is happening like yeah infinite
yeah the numbers are incomprehensible
but one objection that people have to
that is well that is not a parsimmonious
yeah it sounds like a memory leak that
would like crash your computer exactly
because each of those like when they
split then within that there's
essentially infinite quantum moments
happening and so those are like
mushrooming like yeah I don't see how
yeah either my instinct is either we are
wrong it's not a simulation and so
quantum works in some other way that
doesn't require that kind of computation
or that one just rules itself out at the
level of computation not necessarily and
and this is why I I think it's
interesting to look at simulation theory
as a bridge between these two
interpretations and so the objection
comes If the universe is actually
spinning off lots and lots of physical
universes, basically you're saying that
there's an infinite amount of resources
and an infinite amount of um universes.
Now, physicists love infinity. Computer
scientists don't like infinity. We're
always looking at, you know, this
algorithm is on this order of resources
are required. And so, we're always
looking at ways to optimize. And nature
has shown that in general it finds the
most efficient way to do something. And
I think that's true across many of the
different sciences. Now in a simulated
multiverse, you've redefined what it
means to spin off a new universe. In
fact, it's very easy to take a universe
as it is now and then to create a copy
of the data or information of that
universe and spin off a new universe.
And so that universe is only alive while
the computation is running. So the idea
is that this these universes might only
exist while they're needed for the
computation. And so when we run
simulations, what do we do? We run with
a certain set of variables and then we
rewind and we run it again with another
set of variables. Right? So in essence
we try out the different possibilities
and we see which of those is likely to
lead us to let's say you know what is
the likely result what is the most
favorable outcome. So if those universes
aren't necessarily alive forever if
those universes are alive only as
they're needed in order to do whatever
computation the universe is doing. It
could be that the other uh the other
universe is paused. It could mean that
it's running again. So, you get into
this interesting notion of what does it
mean for these other universes
to be physical universes? If our
universe is not physical to begin with,
then that starts to make more sense. I
think when when you say then that starts
to make more sense, what's that? That
the universe must be simulated. Our
universe must be simulated. doesn't mean
there isn't a physical one outside of
the simulation. Otherwise, this weird
behavior that we get in quantum
mechanics, I mean, there's almost no
good explanation for for why that would
occur. So, let's go back to the the
Copenhagen interpretation. I said
there's a probability wave and then that
goes down to one collapses to one
probability. What does that mean
actually? And so there was a physicist
uh from Oregon I think University of
Oregon uh named Amit Gowami and he said
something once that that really struck
me and he said look it's not really a
probability wave because h how would you
know what the probability is of this
happening versus that happening unless
you had run something multiple times
like if you look at where probability
comes from the idea goes back to some
French mathematician
uh who was asked to help somebody who
was betting money on the roll of the
dice. And so he said, "Look, if you have
a dice, a dieice, a single dice,
you can roll it and there are six
possible futures in a standard dice."
And so the probability of each of those
futures would be one out of six in this
case. But how would you know that if you
haven't actually run it multiple times?
So probability by itself implies that
there is some amount of repetition going
on from which you can make the
conclusion that this is a probability
that begins to look like a simulated
multiverse. It ends up being a universe
that runs again and again. Uh and it
tries out each possibility. You know
let's take Schrodinger's cat. So for uh
people that know it, you're going to get
this there. There's a part of the story
where there's like a radioactive isotope
that has the a 50% chance of uh decaying
and as it decays then it triggers the
poison that kills the cat 50% chance of
not. Okay. If I'm programming that in a
video game I have to decide what the
odds are so that when the box is opened
a calculation happens that goes this
time alive or dead. Now as a game
developer the reason that you do that is
you want the game to feel dynamic. You
don't want it to be on rails. So when
you look at like procedural generation,
you realize I can make this game a lot
more interesting for the player if it's
a rules-based game. A lot of this mental
model began developing for me when I
played Minecraft. Minecraft is a
deceptively brilliant game because it's
just a set of rules. And so each biome
has a different set of rules which makes
the biome react differently which makes
different things happen different times
of day, different amounts of light. And
once you know those rules, then you can
predict everything that's going to
happen in the game. But if you make the
rules sufficiently uh simple but
complex, then what emerges is stable,
learnable, but very diverse and capable
of surprise. And so it's like, oh, as a
game developer, that's that's my goal.
Now, if I'm a from our perspective, a
godlike game developer, then I'm going
to be putting probabilities across
as many things as I can. And as a game
designer, you want a stable, predictable
game, but you want it to be based on
rules enough that take for instance, if
I wanted right now, I could go
absolutely crazy. I could smash my
computer. or I could break this table
and it has been programmed into the
matrix the way that pressure applied to
these specific materials will break and
shatter and move. And so the first thing
you learn when you're developing a game
is, oh my god, I have to tell every
pixel how to act. And so if you have
like as a filmmaker, nature takes care
of the physics engine. So clothes move
the way you expect, grass moves the way
you expect, wind happens the way you
expect, it's all there. In a game,
you've got to tell the fabric how to
move. You've got to tell wind what to
do. Hair how to react to wind. Hair how
to react to a hand. This is why you get
crazy things like clipping. And so if
I'm developing that game and my game is
dope in the way that real life is, it's
like everything has tailored
probabilities that you apply pressure in
this way and it's likely to break like
that. And I had a physicist once explain
to me, Tom, uh, I can explain quantum
physics to you in a single sentence. The
universe you see is simply the most
probable university universe. And I was
like, ah, it's actually a really
interesting way to see it. He said there
is if there are infinite universes,
there is a universe in which you go to
sit down in your chair and you just fall
right through it because all of your the
gaps in your space cuz when you zoom in
enough we're all basically just empty
space line up perfectly with the gaps in
the chair because it's also at a
microscopic level just empty space and
so you fall through it. He's like that's
just not very probable so it doesn't
happen. So, going back to game
development, you've got this setup where
um everything's just been pre-programmed
so that no matter what might happen,
it's already been accounted for. And so
now the game isn't forced to be on
rails. You get all of this surprise. And
but the rules ultimately are knowable.
And that feels like what physicists are
trying to do is I'm an NPC inside the
game and I'm trying to figure out how am
I and the the game that I'm inside of
how are they programmed? And once you
understand the rules, then you can do
things like nuclear energy because you
actually understand how this stuff is
programmed, structured, however you want
to think about it. But it the more that
you can go deeper into this probability
set, deeper into the rules of a given
biome,
uh all of a sudden you can do things. I
want to just follow up on what you said.
So if this universe has been fine-tuned,
yep, with a set of probabilities that
allow us to do certain things. So
there's something called the anthropic
principle. And what the enthropic
principle says is that the numbers in
this universe seem like they're
fine-tuned in such a way that we can
have planets, we can have galaxies like
the gravitational constant. And there's
a whole bunch there's a whole list if
you look up the anthropic principle
there's a list of constants that are
found in physics such that if they were
off by even like 1%
that the planets would fall apart. they
would fly apart, the galaxies wouldn't
hold, uh, and that the universe would
not be teamed for life. But yet, our
universe somehow seems like it's
fine-tuned. And so, there really isn't a
good explanation for that. And the the
only explanations that we can come up
with are one that it was intelligently
designed this way and there may be more
that we haven't discovered yet or that
there have been multiple universes and
those universes couldn't support life.
So perhaps there's no reason to have
those universes continue. And the one
that we're in out of this multiverse is
the one that has been fine-tuned for
these types of things. So in computer
science, you know what we'll do or just
think of like an old chess game, right?
And so when you're playing against the
computer, what does the computer do? It
would try to project forward each move
so many number of moves and then it
would say, okay, this is the best one to
take. But it's already tried out these
other moves and then what's your
possible response to that? So it's
possible that the simulation can run
multiple times until it finds uh a
universe or a set of constants that
actually would support this. So those
are the two possible explanations for
the anthropic principle. Is there a
physical world somewhere? So I I am
writing a story that our video game is
set inside of. So the game's called
Project Kaizen. Inside the game, there's
a character who basically goes crazy by
asking a question which is where is the
array? the array is our name for the
server basically that we have to be
running on. Okay, where is that server?
Because that means that there's a world
beyond the world that you're trapped
inside of, right? And so whenever I hear
people talk about this, you're always
just pushing the miracle essentially of
a first mover farther away. That's true.
Because then you're just going to ask,
well, how the hell does that universe
exist? But so let's just say that
instead of driving ourselves crazy with
where this is, do you believe that there
is a material world somewhere, I believe
there is an outside the simulation and I
think because of the way that the
physical world works. So getting back to
what we talked about a little while ago
where you said um you know this table is
all 99% empty space and if you were to
go down you would find that the the
molecules mostly empty space the atoms
you got the electrons but it's mostly
empty space and if you keep going down
you know John Wheeler the physicist I
mentioned at Princeton got down and said
well at the bottom level all that's
there is an answer to a series of yes no
questions and those are basically bits
right that's what a bit is it's a zero
or a one, a yes or a no. And so what he
said was he came up with this phrase it
from bit to suggest that anything that
looks physical to us is actually just
built of information. But somehow that
information has to get rendered in a way
that it looks physical to us and that it
feels physical to us. And so, you know,
my interpretation of that is that that
means that there is another layer to
reality uh where all of this information
exists, but while we're inside, that's
where the rendering occurs. And and it
turns out most physicists will not argue
with that first premise that the world
is built of information. So, I met a
Nobel Prize winning physicist at the
University of Cambridge last year and
he's like, "Okay, tell me about the
simulation hypothesis." And I said,
'Well, it starts with the idea that the
world is information. And he said,
'Okay, that's not controversial anymore
in physics. It used to be. I mean, go
back 50 years and tell them the world is
information. They'd say, "You're nuts.
The world is obviously physical. We know
it's physical because, you know, going
back to uh uh, you know, the Burke,
Bishop Berkeley was arguing with this
guy who was it Dr. Johnson, I think, and
Berkeley thought the whole universe
exists in his mind." And what Dr.
Johnson was kicked a rock and said there
I just proved you know that it's real by
kicking the rock. That said if you're in
a video game you kick a rock and if the
physics engine is well done then it you
know your foot won't go through the
rock. Uh so simply saying that there's
something physical there isn't enough to
say that it's not built on information
because that's the particular
arrangement of information. So this
second part of how does that information
get rendered to look like a physical
world and feel like a physical world is
where you know we don't have physics
doesn't have an answer for that. Uh
neuroscience thinks they might have an
answer for that but I think the
simulation hypothesis provides an
interesting answer for that which is
that it gets rendered as part of the
computation and we are able to see only
snippets of that information. They get
presented to us in certain ways. This is
where I think the conversation gets more
mystical at this point because we don't
have the answers necessarily. But you
can look at all the various religious
traditions and they always use the
metaphor of the dream that the world is
like a dream world and that you wake up
from this dream and you realize it
wasn't a real world but I thought that
it was real. And and so you get into
this this uh metaphysical type of
conversation in the Hindu traditions for
example they have that the whole world
is a dream of the god Vishnu and then
when he wakes up the whole world gets
destroyed and when he goes back to sleep
the whole world gets conceived again and
then you have this idea that the world
is maya or an illusion within the Hindu
scriptures and you find the same terms
being used within say the Islamic
scriptures where they say the world is
an enjoyable able delusion and they use
a very specific term for that which is
elguri matau in Arabic and what that
means is not just it's an illusion but
it's an enjoyable delusion that what
does that remind me of it reminds me of
a video game or a type of game uh and in
fact in the western religious traditions
you have this idea of the here and the
hereafter and we're told there are these
uh angels that are recording everything
we do and then we have to like review
all of that in the book of life For in
Islam, it's called the scroll of deed.
So you can go to pretty much any
mystical tradition and you'll find that
they're telling us that there's
something more that can be perceived.
And this is an ongoing debate in
physics. I mean you go back to Max Plank
who said consciousness is fundamental.
The material is derivative. Today's
material model is that the physical
world is real. Consciousness is derived
from the physical model. So the neurons
are there and the neurons result in
consciousness as an emerging property.
So, it's it's sort of an ongoing debate
and it we end up in metaphysical
territory, I guess, is what I'm saying
when we go down that debate. Is the
pursuit of answering this question
meaningful in any way? Well, I think it
is, but again, it gets back to this
issue of whether we're NPCs in a video
game or we're not. So, if you think back
to Pascal, one is meaningful, one is not
meaningful. One is more meaningful, I
guess I would say. What does Pascal tell
us? So what Pascal said was,
I can wager there is a god or there
isn't a god. Meaning basically in the
western traditions, if you're good, you
end up in going to heaven. If you're
bad, you end up going to hell. And he
said, if I act like there's there's a
god
and there is a god and I've acted well,
well then I'm golden because then I get
to go to heaven. He said, on the other
hand, if I act like there is a god but
there is no god, meaning there's no
afterlife, then it doesn't really
matter, right? Either way, whether at
that point it doesn't matter whether you
acted good or bad, but if you acted
good, then you know, insurance policy.
Let's say you're at zero. Yeah. It's
like an insurance policy. On the other
hand, if you act badly in the way that
you could end up in in hell if there is
a god, you think of it as minus one
million points. So, I drew this out like
a video game, right? If you go to
heaven, it's plus one million points. If
you go to hell, it's minus a million
points. uh and if you act badly and
there's no god then it doesn't m then it
doesn't matter but but it actually does
matter. So he says it's better to just
pretend like there is a god whether
there is or not as an insurance policy.
Uh and so this one philosopher used the
same argument to say well we should not
try to find out if we're in a simulation
and he said because if we do then the
simulators might shut us down right so
if we try to find out if we're in a
simulation and we are actually in a
simulation the simulators might shut us
down and if we try to find out we're in
simulation and we're not in a simulation
then it may not matter. Um, but on the
other hand, if we don't try to find out
if we're in a simulation and we're in a
sim, then the sim keeps running, uh,
because that may be part of the reason
for the simulation. Um, and then in the
other case, it doesn't matter. So, it's
the same kind of four quadrants that you
come up with, right? And and I don't
necessarily agree with that, but we
don't know what the purpose of the
simulation is. Perhaps the purpose of
the simulation is to see if we will get
off the planet, if we will destroy the
planet, uh, if we will build
intergalactic species. Perhaps there are
other people on other planets to see if
we are able to connect with each other.
Uh or but we might ruin the experiment
in that version if we happen to know
we're in a simulation or the purpose
might be to see you know how long does
it take us to finally figure it out and
how many times do they have to run this
simulation like what things need to
happen for them to get to that point.
And so now we get into this the
metaphysical version where if you look
at the religious traditions you have
this idea of a soul and then you have a
body and the soul goes into the body.
And in fact they end up using such
similar language or terminology or
metaphors for how that very mysterious
process works. They end up saying the
soul clothes itself in the body just
like your body puts on clothes. So
they're using a metaphor of putting on
clothes. So you can kind of understand
how that works. Now in the Eastern
traditions they say you go in, you put
on a certain character, you come out,
you go back in and you play a different
character along the way. In the Western
traditions or the Abrahamic religions,
right, you might say that we just uh put
do it once and and then we're in heaven
or hell afterwards. But but it's the
same idea. Either way, we're saying that
we have put ourselves into this game for
a reason, into this false delusionary
world uh that we are uh in. And how do
how do we determine, you know, what
happens in a video game? Usually, we
give the characters an outline um for
the game. So, you choose a character,
right? Like when I was young, we used to
have Dungeons and Dragons and we used to
have the character sheet, which almost
all modern role playing games are based
on that idea. and we would choose the
race, we would choose the background, we
would choose the likely profession or
the profession of that character. We
might roll some dice and we would get
different attributes. Uh so there's an
element of randomness in that. But then
you also have a story line that you're
trying to fulfill in say a campaign for
example. And then we have a bunch of
quests or achievements along the way in
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now let's get back to the show. Do you
leverage this? Like if you're going
through a rough patch and you just start
thinking to yourself, okay, hold on. The
right orienting mechanism here is to
assume that I'm playing an RPG. I have
chosen this character, so let me make
the most of my time. Exactly. I think
you're seeing exactly where I'm going
with this. Is that in that case, when
you have difficulties
in the game, I mean, in a video game,
you don't necessarily give up when you
have a difficulty, you go and you keep
trying to to work that specific
challenge again and again. And you might
have a a tree of quests or achievements
that you're trying to achieve. And some
of them may not be unlocked until after
you're able to, you know, achieve the
first few in the tree and then that
unlocks other parts of the tree. And
some of them you do in conjunction with
other people, right? You might say,
"This is a multiplayer quest." Uh, and
you might say, "Okay, we're going to
meet at such and such a time in front of
the castle and we're going to go on this
raid or, you know, whatever the case may
be." Um, and so you have this kind of
weird purposefulness to it. But the
grandfather of the video game industry,
we'll talk since we're talking about
video games a lot was uh Nolan Bushnell
who started Atari. Actually got to meet
him once. It was really interesting.
Really fun guy. Got to know his son
Brent Bushnell who runs a kind of a
amusement park type. Yeah. Randomly I've
met them both. Yeah. Yeah. Because
they're here in LA as well. Um, and so,
you know, there was a rule back at Atari
and they said, "Make the game easy to
play but difficult to master." Uh, and
so it's important that there be some
difficulty in the game to make it
interesting because otherwise what'll
happen, you'll stop playing the game and
you play it once, it's it's easy to
master and then you'll say, "Okay, I'm
done with that. I want to go on to the
next one." On the other hand, if it's
too difficult, you then you might
abandon the game prematurely. And so,
you need to make it difficult enough for
the player. So when we encounter
difficulties in our lives, we can think
of them as ramping up the difficulty
levels uh for a particular challenge or
a particular quest that we're on as part
of our storyline. And so again, now
we're now we're in metaphysical
territory. So what I'm hearing you say
is uh life is challenging, but there's
this really powerful metaphor that all
through history people use the modern
technology to explain the human
experience. I'm no different. That's
just how I look at this thing is through
that lens.
Um, yep. I come at it from a very
different angle, which is I've had the
very startling experience of thinking
that it was just a metaphor to then
building a video game and seeing all
these parallels to then the Nobel Prize
gets handed out for people who, and I'm
going to butcher this, but I really want
people to at least have the vague
understanding that I have of of the um
the quantum entanglement that you were
talking about that they won the Nobel
Prize for. Let me kind of explain that
part. If we have light that's coming
from say a quazar or some big object
that's really far away like a billion
lighty years away and then that is
coming to earth it's going to take how
long? billion years, right? It's billion
lighty years away. Uh the light is going
to take a billion years. And then
there's something in the middle between
the quazar and us. Let's say a black
hole or a galaxy or something that's a
gravitationally large object. Then the
light has to go to the left or to the
right of that object before it comes
here. And we can measure
uh the polarity of the light, let's say,
and and to figure out which way it went.
So this is kind of like the equivalent
of two slits. It just happens to be
going around an object and suppose that
object that black hole is a million
lighty years away from us. Okay. So when
would the decision of whether to go left
or right
happen? Now common sense in a material
universe where time you know is linear
that decision would have been made a
million years ago. So before humans were
really around on the planet and
certainly before we had any recorded
history. um maybe after the dinosaurs uh
but it was long enough ago that you know
it's it's in the distant past and so
that decision about which way the light
went is not made until the measurement
occurs of the light today on earth. So
if we have these two telescopes that
that can figure out which way it went
left or right it's when we do the
measurement that choice is made. That
means today we are somehow influencing
the past. Uh because that decision
should have been made a million years
ago. The past isn't real. This is
exactly. And so the past isn't real. And
so I'm not saying that it's only a
metaphor. Uh I'm saying that that shows
us that the past doesn't really exist in
a single format in the way we think it
does. Correct. Rather it gets filled in
like in a video game or like in a Philip
K. dick story where they have false
memories. So it gets the false memories
sub is where you and I are going to
start disagreeing. Yeah. So let's first
lay the track down because if we can
like people at home should be spitting
their coffee out being like what the how
is that possible? Uh the reason that the
more I develop video games, the more I
become absolutely convinced that we are
living in a simulation is because that
is exactly how you would have to develop
a video game. There is no such thing as
the past. What you say is there is a
roll of the dice, a calculation that you
were going to run at the time that you
have to render that thing and you're
going to say, "Oh, now that light is
going to hit here, but I need to
understand like reflections and all
that." So when the player looks at it,
I'm going to go, "Oh, what are the
probabilities that it's going to look
like this?" Okay, cool. It runs all
these calculations. I decided the
mathematics ahead of time, but I don't
run the calculation until I need to look
at it. So yes, theoretically, there is a
quazar way out there. And yes, because I
know that that quazar is programmed. I
know that there is a probability that
I'm going to see the light when I look
at this thing and it's going to be
reflecting in this way, all that. But
I'm not going to actually do the math
until I need to for the player. So sure,
by the programming it left a million
years ago, and I need to know that from
the perspective of how I run the
calculation, but I'm not actually gonna
run the calculation till I look at it.
What got me thinking about that? So, I'm
playing Minecraft in my 40s and I'm
like, "Oh my god, this game is
unbelievably brilliant." But the thing
that traumatizes me is that when I walk
away from the game, the game stops. Y
and I was like, but what if you could
take the server clock and have it keep
ticking even when you're not there?
Right. And I was like, what if I could
set up a set of rules that instead of
growing uh crops of wheat that my
civilization keeps advancing and that I
could walk away from the computer for a
year and I could come back and whatever
server tick I assign, let's say I assign
every server tick is 50 minutes in the
real world, but it accounts to a week or
a year or whatever inside the game. And
there's a certain set of rules, constant
dice being rolled. Now, I don't roll the
dice until the player comes back to the
game and says, "I want to go to that
place." And as you the way that I was
going to do it is as you get
successively closer, I start running
more and more of the mathematics. And so
then as you like get fully to the thing,
you realize, oh my god, there's like a
space station here. This is crazy. When
I left, there was just a bunch of
monkeys. But I've got the rule set. I've
got the mathematics. I've got the server
ticks. And so we're just clocking. It's
in a database. I say, "Last time you
were here was this. there are this many
server ticks between when you come back,
you're this many blocks from seeing that
so I know to start running certain
amounts of the math so that you don't
have like some drastic load time as you
get there. And I was like, this is the
actual universe. I was like, "Oh my god,
if you just set up all these rules,
you've got evolution, you've got time,
which none of it's real." Yep. In terms
of a material way. Yes. But because we
have all of us NPCs or whatever we are
constantly doing the measurements, we're
constantly forcing it to run the
mathematics, right? And so you have this
perception of a persistent world that
until you start pushing and pushing and
pushing and pushing in, it just seem
it's all solid. It all works and
everything. But the reason that I'm
obsessed with it is I realize is if you
become aware of how the simulation
works, you essentially become a
superhero. And that's why physicists
have given us our entire modern world
more than people even realize from GPS
to nuclear power is they understand, oh,
you can actually go and split the atom.
It's not easy, but you can do it because
I understand the fundamental rules of,
in my opinion, the simulation. And so
it's like yo there are real
consequences. There are real
consequences by understanding the forget
whether it's actually a simulation or
not. By understanding the rules of this
thing which happen to seem to point to
it's a simulation. Uh you can do things.
Yeah. Although often we understand the
rules only a little bit. I think for
sure we could be sometimes we don't take
into account, you know, what might
happen if we start manipulating, you
know, these rules without knowing all of
the rules of the simulation. And of
course, so you're worried that we'll go
off halfcocked because you said that
this could be the simulation to find out
if we destroy ourselves, right? Exactly.
that could be part of the simulation.
But I I think this this idea that the
past gets filled in as necessary
whenever there are players or whenever
there are NPCs, depending on how you
look at it, I is quite fascinating. And
I think the crops example is a good one,
right? Because you might say there's a
50% chance that you have a locust, a
storm, a swarm of locusts. Yes. Right.
But when it's not till you log in and
you run the game again that you find
out. So it literally hasn't happened. So
there are two possible pasts there.
There's the past where your crops just
continue to grow and now you know you're
and to your point there's so many things
that we'll we'll get an answer to when
we run the mathematics when you log back
into the system and you start moving
back towards that village or whatever
then it's going to be like okay well
there was this many years uh storms
happen at this rate. The likelihood of a
flood is this. The likelihood of raiders
coming by your village. the likelihood
that your th roof catches on fire like
you just have all like all this stuff
all these crazy things. Now it turns out
in quantum mechanics based upon what we
were talking about earlier the delayed
choice experiment that is true as well
that there are all these probabilities
of things that happened but it's not
until somebody observes them that all
this entire history including the
dinosaurs being here and they left us
fossils all of these types of things.
Now, at first I thought, okay, this
can't really be the case. I mean, is
that what really what quantum mechanics
is telling us? Most physicists would
tell you there's no such thing as
retrocausality,
meaning that we can't change the past.
But that there is an exception to that
and that is this delay choice
experiment. And so I started looking
around at some of the original quantum
mechanics pioneers and founders of the
field and Schroinger himself had a very
obscure quote all the way back in the
1940s. So even before the whole
multiverse idea, you know, they were
still struggling with this Copenhagen
interpretation. He said every time we
make a choice or we observe or we
collapse the probability wave, we are
choosing from one of multiple
simultaneous histories, right? That's a
very weird choice of words. Why
choosing? It's it's a very weird choice
because physicists would tell us we
can't change the past. And that's what
it seems like once we've chosen a past,
right? It's it's as if it's all been
fixed. So they'll say you're not
changing the past. Do you agree with the
use of the word shoes? I I do because
I'm of the opinion that the observer
effect requires an observer, right? That
it's not just the NPCs
now run the mathematics. It doesn't say
uh that okay, go left instead of right
around the galaxy or the black hole.
That seems like an odd way to think
through this problem. And this is going
to matter as you and I begin debating
whether there's life after death, right?
But the observer does determine say what
they do next right so if you think of it
as a series of choices over a long term
do you think we have free will I believe
we do but you can't account for it
inside the system in the same way how
could we have free will because you in
order to have true free will so
physicists define free will simply as
randomness quantum randomness so that's
not free will that's random right that
that's there that I'm saying from a
materialist point of view that's the
only approach where we could have free
will is if it's random but it's not it's
still not free will in my opinion right
and and I kind of agree with you there
uh but in order to have free will you
have to have a set of choices and then
you have to have someone outside the
system who's free to make those choices
to have free will you'd have to have
choices that I mean quite frankly uh you
couldn't be bound by physics because the
second you're bound by physics now I'm
like okay I have a bounded option set
and then it becomes well what is helping
me process whether I choose left or
right. And then all of a sudden you'll
get down to, oh yeah, I'm running a
program. My brain is made of certain
material. Even if it's made of certain
material inside the simulation, right?
It still runs and processes data in a
certain way. And if it processes data in
a certain way, I don't have free will,
right? But then the question becomes how
are those rules defined? And also like a
good example, I think it was David
Deutsch who uh or Seth Lloyd, these are
like two pioneers in quantum computing.
I'm forgetting which one had used this
example, but it was a good one. They
said that, you know, running physics
rules
can get you to know how materials
interact with each other and chemistry
can combine, etc. But it doesn't tell
you why there's a bunch of brass that's
a statue of, you know, Admiral Nelson in
the middle of London, right? So there's
some there's some ability because if
you're just running rules, why would you
end up with that unless there is some
set of goals or or some uh you know some
set of uh
people programs that are choosing that
specific goal in and of itself. So, so I
think you can set up a pretty simple set
of rules around
uh evolution is going to get you there
because nature is deceptively simple
from a survival standpoint that is just
motivating you to have kids to have kids
but then you're trying to get this one
animal has gone down a path of
cooperation. And so then you realize
there are going to be certain mechanisms
in the brain that you have to plan for
cooperation. We'll shorthand it to
religion. So you have to create a sense
of awe that there's something that
people kneel before. because they're
willing to kneel before it. They're
willing to gather in large groups
because we all kneel before the same
thing. And all of a sudden, you realize,
oh, this is literally nature going, I
only have two levers, pleasure and pain,
and I've got to find ways to get these
guys to have sex and protect. I mean,
it's one of the options. Th this is one
where um we probably have to be careful
to stay in base assumptions. My base
assumption is that we operate on a
finite set of rules. Y and those rules
run on a computational device of some
kind. The computational device has a
nature meaning that there are I'll say
circuits who knows what it actually
does. But like electricity can only
travel in so many paths on a circuit.
And to your point, if this is bits of
information, it's either on or off. So
like once you boil it down to its
simplest, we're a very complex automata.
But I don't see any way that we're not
automat right. But if you think of
automata and how they work, let's look
at AI today. Yeah. So for example, LLMs
are based on essentially a very simple
architecture at the at the bottom level.
Uh but they get incredibly complex when
you start talking about layers of neural
networks. But I mean even back when I
was studying computer science back in
the day, they you know we had this idea
of taking a neuron and a neural net type
approach. even back in the 90s where
they were using this approach where the
neuron fires or doesn't fire after a
certain period of time. But if you look
at AI, most of the AI in what I like to
call wave 1 AI was a rulesbased AI. So
it was more about expert systems and
defining rules and how to do things. And
then they realized, oh, we have to use a
bunch of different data. Uh, and so
today's AI is more based on machine
learning algorithms, deep learning, all
of this stuff. And it's based more on
neural networks. So it's more based on
You don't think neural networks operate
on rules? They do, but they operate on
on very small rules, very simple rules.
Yes. But it's not always predictable at
a high level. What even today we have
hallucinations, right? Because of those
rules. But it's is it the level of
complexity or the pre-programmed set of
probabilities?
Because to me and maybe where we're
disconnecting, I have the base
assumption that uh probability does not
equal free will. Randomness does not
equal free will. So then what does equal
free will? There is no free will. So
free will would be that you're not using
a processing device that has a nature.
And this is why to me, do you know
Phineas Gage? No, I don't. To me, this
story just literally shuts the argument
down. People always push back. I find it
crazy, but uh Phineas Gage, real person,
he was working on a railroad, hit a
tamping rod, and it misfired. It shot a
three foot metal rod that was about that
big around up through his cheek and out
the top of his head. He lost a tups
worth of brain matter. Never lost
consciousness, but was never the same
again. Now, the reason I would say it
was never the same again is that even if
we're in a simulation, the simulation
has a set of rules that go all the way
down to the cellular level. How cells
combine and we pull in mitochondria and
all that through a process of evolution.
It's like you just set those rules and
they go. So any you get to the point
where this NPC processes data through
again it's all it's all uh synthetic in
the sense that it's a simulation but
there cells are used in this incredibly
complicated MPC in his brain the brain
has physics so it respond to traumatic
force and all that has an inflammation
response and all that and so if in the
game you cause that trauma then it's
going to alter the way that that NPC
processes data And so I'm just saying
whether I'm an avatar somewhere else
like um matrix style logging into this
body, I'm still now processing data
through this body. I have lost sight
that there is anything else. My base
assumption is that there is nothing
else. Everything is a simulation on this
level. Yeah. And there's just a set of
rules and the set of rules gives birth
to what we call biology. And if you
disrupt that biology, there are
consequences.
Right. And so, so you know, you lean
towards the NPC version and that means
I'm locked inside my biology. That's my
punch line. And if I'm locked inside my
biology, I don't have free will. But if
you're in a video game, you know, I have
these rules of what will happen if I do
X, right? Because that the rules define
the game. But as the player of the game,
I still choose whether to do it's like
those old choose your own adventure
games or in in a game. I still choose
whether to take this quest or that
quest. Think about computer programming
for real. If you want something to
happen randomly, you have to assign a
random number generator and it literally
rolls the dice and says, "Okay, you do
option 32." It's not by my definition, I
would not consider that free will. Do
you consider that free will? I don't
consider it free will, but I consider it
uh free will. The only way to have true
free will is to step outside the system
and have somebody make the choice
whether to do that thing or not. outside
of any system that guides your behavior.
And I'm saying biology guides your
behavior. Not necessarily. I mean, that
hasn't been established yet. You know,
hasn't it? I don't think so. I just told
you the Phineas Gage story going. It's
still in No. And I'm not saying that,
but what I am saying is that there is
still debate about whether consciousness
survives, for example, death. Right now,
we're back at Yes. This is this is
exactly what I want to argue about. So,
first of all, I want to I want to I want
to say my fundamental belief in life is
nobody knows anything, least of all me.
So, while I'm going to myself, you seem
pretty sure 100%. And I think that's the
only wise I have strong convictions
loosely held. So, I know I'm wrong about
something. We may not even be in a
simulation. I could be wrong that
foundationally. I'm super open to that.
I love this stuff so much. Uh but I I I
can't follow anyone's train of logic
that is saying that we have free will.
We can talk pansychism where we're like
uh an ant a radio with an antenna that
receives consciousness. Like we can talk
about it however anybody wants and I
still don't see how we ever end up with
anything other than we're we're a
processing plant that follows a set of
rules and that to me isn't free will.
And I don't know that maybe the audience
doesn't a care and we don't bog down in
free will, but uh to plant a flag so I
can track your base assumptions. You
believe we have free will. Well, the
reason I wrote this book, interestingly
enough, is because
I think that the simulation hypothesis
provides a common language between those
who believe we have free will and those
who believe we don't have free free
will. because there is this spectrum,
right? In the NPC version, I agree, we
don't have free will because it's just a
set of rules. In the video game version,
the player has some amount of free will.
So, for example, I might choose as my
player, you know, to go on this
particular quest to uh, you know, go
fight the Goblin King. Now if I as a
player never decide to go down that path
then that specific set of circumstances
never happens. So you still have this
opportunity to choose. And that's where
I think in the religious side there's
this idea that consciousness exists
beyond the body. And in the materialist
world there's this idea that it is just
physical and that's all it's based off
of is just simple biology. Right? And so
what's interesting to me about the
simulation hypothesis is that it could
actually accommodate both of those. If
we're inside a simulation, you can have
all of the rules of the game uh that are
there. All of the quantum physics starts
to make at least more sense, right?
We're not 100% there. And you know, I've
talked, as you mentioned, about how we
tend to use the latest technological
metaphors. Uh, I believe we're in a
simulation, but I don't believe we're in
a simulation on a simple computer like
the computers we have or like my iPhone
computer, those processes, right? I
believe it tends to be more like a
quantum computer, which is a new type of
computer that can accommodate things
like superp position, etc. But I believe
that the video game metaphor is a way
for those who believe we have free will
to think about a physical world uh and
yet to try to ground that in some level
of of of a technoscientific basis if you
will. Do you believe that we have a
soul? I believe that our player is the
soul. Yeah. I mean I tend to believe
that more really fast and we'll come
back to the the simulation for a second.
Does the player outside the game have a
soul? Player outside the game may be the
soul. I don't take a strong position on
that. Or the player outside the game may
be just a soul. The player outside the
game may be an alien. They may be future
humans. So once we start to think about
what's beyond the simulation, now we're
really speculating, right? Because we're
barely figuring out what's inside the
simulation and we're still having a
debate on whether it's a simulation or
not. I mean, you and I aren't, but other
people are having that debate. Sounds
like you've come to a very similar
conclusion to me. Here's the thing. I
really don't know. So, I like to step
inside the frame of reference and go ham
to see what's there. I But the honest
answer is I don't know. But I'm going to
keep going as if I really am convinced.
It's more interesting for me to find the
edges uh of my belief. But I I really
the life after death thing is really
really interesting to me. So, I believe
simulation or not, that when the lights
go out for your character, that's it.
But I've heard you talk very eloquently,
that there might be a better way to see
that. I think some of the phenomena
of of quantum mechanics suggest that we
don't live in a physical world or a pure
materialist uh paradigm. And I think at
the same time there are other phenomena
in other areas of human experience that
also suggest something similar that
there is no physical world but that
there is possibly a consciousness that
survives past death. uh and I think uh
you know there are many researchers who
have been working on these uh areas
where there are just glitches I and pro
one of the areas that that I find most
intriguing is near-death experiences uh
and so these are situations where
someone has died someone has had no not
just their heart not function but has
had no brain activity for a period of
time who end up coming back to life uh
and they end up coming back and
reporting similar things many of them
not 100% but there's enough commonality
across what different people who have
died or have been in had NDEs as they're
referred to which is a term you know
that was coined by Raymond Moody all the
way back in in 1975 and one of them is
that they're kind of floating above
their body another is that they see a
tunnel or a light another is that they
encounter a light being uh and they're
very familiar with that being and then
uh the phenomenon that intrigues me the
most about NDEs is this idea of a life
review. So many of them report having
had a life review. And what a life
review is um is uh a replaying, right?
So it's of every single experience in
your life up to that point. Now I first
learned about this from a guy named
Daniel Brinkley. He was struck by
lightning again back in the 70s or so
and he had like a pretty full account of
an ND. Eventually he wrote a book called
Saved by the Light about it. But he
called it a holographic
panoramic life review. Uh, and what he
meant by that was he felt not just that
like he was watching his life flash
before his eyes. So that's the old
terminology for this thing, right? But
that he was embodied within that
experience
of replaying every single moment of his
life. But he had to experience it from
the other person's point of view. Uh and
so he got to see what it was like not
just to be himself but to be the other
person. Uh and he was a bit of a bully,
you know, when he was he was growing up.
This guy that was in Vietnam. Uh yeah,
this was the guy that was in Vietnam. He
used to beat up other kids. He was kind
of a big tough kid. And then he went to
Vietnam and he actually shot people uh
while he was there. Uh, and he said he
had to experience what it was like to
have that bullet come at him from, let's
say, that his character, but from the
point of view of the other person. He
also had to experience what it was like
to be shot. But more interesting than
that was
he often saw the ripple effects of that
uh across that person's extended family
or if that person had a wife and had
kids, what was the effect that that that
person being dead had on them? And you
know what people who've had a life
review report is that they come back
with a completely different sense of
purpose in their lives, but they also
report that where they were was so
familiar to them. It was more real than
this feels real. Like once they come
back, they say, "This doesn't feel that
real." And to me, that just reminds me
so much of like when you play, let's say
a professional football team plays a
game, what do they do afterwards? they
watch uh you know the replay and they
say oh you shouldn't have done that in
the quarterback you shouldn't have done
that and what he said was he realized
that his behavior was causing certain
things to happen bad things to other
people and he decided to change his
behavior uh and he's not the only one
who's had this experience but to me I
started to take it more seriously and in
fact this this whole idea of being in a
virtual reality or a simulation I
started taking it more seriously when VR
R started to become a thing and I put on
a virtual reality headset and I've told
this story many times online. Uh but for
those that haven't heard it, this was
back in like 2016. So, uh VR headsets
were big and bulky. We didn't even have
the uh the MetaQuest yet. It was still,
you know, wired headsets basically. And
so I was in this room maybe about the
size of this room. The wires were coming
down from the headset. I put it on and I
started to play this ping pong game. And
after a while, it started to fool my
body into thinking that this was a real
game of table tennis, right? So much so,
and it wasn't the graphics. I mean, if
you look at the graphics that were used
back then, they were terrible. So, but
it was clearly something about it. It
was the physics engine. Um, it was the
the responsiveness of the game to my
commands. So much so that I tried to put
the paddle down on the table and I tried
to lean against the table and of course
the VR controller fell to the floor. And
of course I I knew I wasn't, you know,
playing a real game of table tennis. How
could I not? We had what we called the
toaster on your face back then. And even
now, you know, whether it's the Apple
Vision Pro or it's, you know, the
medical, we're still dealing with big
form factors. Uh, but it was then that I
began to consider how long would it take
us to build something with rules that
are so realistic and that the world
looks so realistic that we wouldn't be
able to actually distinguish between a
physical universe and a material
universe. And then at the same time uh
there was a startup in Silicon Valley
that was able to take a gameplay session
of a game like I think we had World of
Warcraft World of Warcraft League of
Legends was another one a popular
esports game and
particularly Counterstrike Global
Offensive right so that's a first-person
shooter set in like a you know place
like Iraq or some place let's say and in
that you know you're shooting people but
we could go back and replay that entire
game from any XYZ coordinate. And so
literally, we could see what it was like
to be shot by our character if we wanted
to. But with a VR headset, it felt like
you were on the, you know, the actual
League of Legends playing field. You
look around, you're not looking down on
it like many games do. Uh you could have
that firsterson point of view. And that
started me thinking, you know, is that
what's really going on here? So, not
only would we be able to create a world
that's indistinguishable, could we also
step outside that world and replay
what's happened and then uh use that to
actually learn uh from our mistakes so
that we might actually change our
behavior. And that's when I started to
dig into the world's religious texts and
realize, oh, you know, they were all
saying something very similar, but they
were using different metaphors. I mean,
what's the essence of the golden rule in
Christianity? do unto others as you know
you'd like to have done unto you. Well,
how would you understand what it feels
like to be those others? If you're able
to replay those uh that gives you a
sense and in the Quran, which is, you
know, a little more recent than say the
Bible, the old or the New Testament,
they get very explicit by saying that
there are these angels that are writing
down everything that you do, all your
good deeds and your bad deeds. you
probably seen like, you know, the little
cartoons with the angel and the gin uh
or the demon that's sitting on your left
shoulder and your right shoulder. And
so, uh, they use a metaphor of a book
and they say, uh, that the scroll of
deeds contains all of your everything
that you've done, but also the impact of
your actions. So, it's not just what you
did, but what happened because of that.
And even though we simplify
the religious traditions to say, okay,
you know, you did a bunch of good
things, you did a bad things, you're
going to go to heaven or hell. Uh when
you really look at it, like even in the
Quran, which is, you know, very much in
that Abrahamic tradition, uh it says
your own book will be open to you on the
day of judgment, and you yourself are
sufficient to be the reckoner, meaning
you judge yourself. and and and that's
exactly what's reported by these
near-death experiencers that, you know,
they said, "Oh, I shouldn't have done
that." It wasn't like, "Okay, you're
going to hell. You're going to heaven
because of this." It was more, "Oh, I
see now the pain that I caused." And the
more people that I've met, like I
remember recently meeting somebody who
had a life review and they said they
said something to their mother. They
didn't think anything of it because or
their aunt they were supposed to meet
meet her but uh and she she had a garden
and somehow as a as a little girl she
just ran across the garden and then
ruined it or or I forget the exact story
but it was a case where she stepped into
being her mother or her aunt and then
she understood oh this is why I
shouldn't have done that. Um and and so
to me that's yet another indication that
what we're living is some kind of
non-physical reality, but one that can
be replayed and and how would that work
if we weren't in a simulation? It also
indicates to me there's a part of the
game when you step outside of the game
uh that that you can learn lessons from
it. And I believe that all the religious
texts of old use metaphors. They use
technical metaphors. I I mentioned
earlier that you know the soul coming in
the body no nobody knows how that works
if you try to try to dig down on it
right but uh we can think of it almost
as as a metaphor of putting on a virtual
reality headset and there's they all
agree that there's a level of
forgetfulness so while we're here we go
into NPC mode often we're not we forget
but when we die we remember oh yeah this
is what I was going to do I was going to
be an entrepreneur I was going to be a
writer and I I myself have had this
personal experience. You know, when I
had my health crisis, which was I I had
heart surgery. Now, you can come up with
the logical reasons why I had heart
surgery. You know, you could say, oh,
cholesterol, genetics, heart disease,
you know, my my father had heart
disease, my my mother was diabetic,
therefore I got a double dose, right? Uh
and of course, you know, what I ate, all
of these types of things. But what was
interesting to me was during that
experience, I had this strong sense
that I had already laid out my storyline
and that I wasn't getting to the second
part of the story line. Like I was
spending all my time on the first part
of the story line, which was being in
Silicon Valley because at that point I
was actually running. And this is Are
you sort of I know at one point you said
you'd sort of dip in and out of
consciousness. This wasn't a near-death
experience. It wasn't a near-death
experience in that technically I wasn't
dead and I don't remember what happened
during the operation itself. But so this
started to happen to me while I was
recovering. Uh in an awake state or half
awake, half asleep asleep. It's like
that hypnogogic state. Uh because I
would just, you know, be if you've ever
seen, you know, heart surgery, it's it's
about as much violence to the body, you
know, as you can do. Uh and may often
have unintended side effects. But as I
was recovering and you know it took a
long time to recover. Um and during that
time I would kind of go in and out of
consciousness. Uh I be falling asleep
really but it was in that in that middle
state that I remembered the most because
you don't always remember your dreams.
Uh but it was during that time that I
actually got a very concrete message uh
during those visions of these other
beings that were there to take care of
me and help me resuscitate me back to
health. Uh, and did you see them? I
could see I could see them in my mind's
eye. I mean, they weren't physical
because So, you had a sense of I know
they're not physically here with me in
the room, right? They're somewhere else,
right? Okay. I'm sort of dipping in and
out, right? So, imagine if you were in a
VR headset, you took the headset partly
off. You you could see what's going on
here and you could see what's going on
there. And then you can get fully
immersed here or you can be, you know,
fully out of the game. It was out of
curiosity as that is happening. Yeah.
Why does your hypothesis become
uh this is tied to sort of being half in
half out of the simulation
that there are beings that look over us
versus your mind making up a story
that's somewhat dreamlike. Uh it it
certainly could be that and and I think
that's the conventional explanation for
even near-death experiences, right? That
it has to do with chemicals and neurons
firing. except that what you get are
very coherent instances of people I mean
you can talk to nurses this is
interesting if you talk to doctors who
take a very materialist perspective
they'll say oh yeah you know there's no
such thing you know it's all material
but then you talk to nurses and they'll
tell you stories all the time and
they'll say yeah you know this person
while they were under surgery remembers
you know they describe a guy coming
somebody told me this last week you know
there was a guy who was only who only
came in for like a second to check some
uh measurement on some device and left,
you know, while they were completely
unconscious and yet they were able to
not just tell me about them, they were
able to describe the clothes they were
wearing. Uh in other cases, you have
people who are describing things that
were happening outside of the room with
their relatives uh or that so- and so,
you know, was on a plane. There are all
these coherent things that come out of
it that can't be explained in a purely
materialistic
world. And so that's where, you know,
since I didn't have a near-death
experience, I don't go that far, but I I
almost consider that I was having these
uh subjective little simulations or
dreams, if you will, in that sense that
the beings that I saw weren't
necessarily
physical beings, but they kind of were
guiding me and telling me, okay, do you
remember now? Do you remember this was
your storyline? These are the different
paths that you could take. almost like a
like a a chessboard was laid out and
they said here's different choices you
could have made in your life and this is
what you're doing now and you were
supposed to you said you were going to
do this kind of as if I had planned with
them uh to do this now this is a
subjective experience I'm the first
person to say that and that's my
interpretation of that experience but to
me it kind of indicated that there are
that there there are quests there are
challenges and sometimes we we signed up
for those uh and So, I've chosen to uh
give a a meaning to that that actually
aligns well with simulation theory. And
that's when I started to write this book
because I found that it was one way that
we could bring the materialist paradigm
and the non-materialist paradigm closer
together when I feel like, you know,
it's been kind of going further and
further apart. Assuming all of that is
accurate,
have you hypothesized as to why? Like if
we're in a simulation and there are
lessons that we're supposed to learn and
that at the end we go through a review,
presumably you teach somebody something
that they're about to use. Is it uh
reincarnation? Is it moving to another
simulation but with similar rule sets?
Like do you have a hypothesis about why
that would be true?
Yeah. I mean, my hypothesis is that we
there's not just a life review, there's
also a life preview when we're choosing
our characters and we're we're choosing
our particular challenges and difficulty
levels uh that we're going to achieve
and maybe some of the choices that we
might have to make. We're still free to
make those choices, but we choose that.
So, there's a life preview that's more
like a character selection and then a
life review. And I think the two are
kind of tied together, right? And we're
working on different aspects of
ourselves. So in a sense, I think of it
almost as a cosmic self-improvement
program in a sense that you you go into
a game and you try to learn the rules of
the game, but you're measured based
upon, you know, how you did after the
game. And so, you know, one way to
approach it is to say the game is
totally random. Everything is random.
Another way to approach it is to say
it's Grand Theft Auto or you know the
game is I'm going to get as much as I
can, right? But what people who have had
these experiences tell us and and the
mystics of old whether it's in the
Western religions or the Eastern
traditions, they tell us that the way
we're measured is very much about how we
treat other people. So, I know it sounds
really simple, but if that's the point
of the life review, that's the point of
the game at the end is, you know, one,
how did you treat others and how did you
affect them? And two, you were here to
work on your arrogance. You were here to
work on, you know, why do you think we
forget them? So, if we've got these big
lessons to learn, we do the review, all
of that. Why make me learn the lesson
and then wipe wipe my memory before I go
into the next round?
That's a good question. And I think
that's one that has uh you know many
many scholars and mystics have weighed
in on over the years. Uh and the
forgetfulness is something that's very
common in different traditions. So it's
not just in the religious traditions
even if you go back to the Greek and not
just in the modern religious but if you
go back to the Greeks they have this
river called leth and when you cross it
you know it's called the river of
forgetfulness and when you go back to
incarnate you go back almost to start
fresh to try to re relive that life or
to go in and and do an incarnate. So
it's almost if you knew everything that
you were going to do you didn't have to
choose. So I view it more like you know
the old saying tell me something and
I'll I'll forget. Show me something I
might remember but if I have to do it
myself then I really understand. So as a
teacher and an instructor uh you know I
know the value of making students
actually do things right. One of the
things that we that's talked about a lot
in academia today is you know should
students use chat GPT all the time? Uh
it was a big issue when it first came
out because a lot of universities were
like okay using chat GPT uh is not
really learning right you're just
getting it to do it. We're getting to
the point where now we have to adapt our
strategy so that is having chat GPT
review you know all the pros and cons of
an argument and then you perhaps using
that information to come up with a a
reasoning against those. the process of
doing that is the process of learning.
So I think we learn better um you know
when we've forgotten some of that stuff
especially if you play the game more
than once. Okay. So in a reincarnational
world now
if you're like stuck on all the bad
things that happened last time uh you're
not really kind of embracing the game
right so then it's not fully immersed.
So, it's a question of how immersive is
the game. Uh, and and if you you
remember that it's a game, then you're
not fully immersed. You're not enjoying
those quests in the same way that you
might want to. That said, there are
people who step outside the game and and
you know there are many who who believe
they remember whether it's past lives or
you know you've had documented instances
from say the University of Virginia in
their uh department of perceptual
studies where in India there was a woman
that died in one village and then
suddenly in another village uh a woman
who was about that same age but who was
married and had kids suddenly got all
the memory stories of the woman that had
died in the other village and now she
said she was this person or that person.
Uh and it was just a really weird
coincidence uh that that would happen
but she had all the memories of that
other person. the game allows for that
kind of transfer just not very often
like yeah I think just not very often
and it may be because it's kind of like
saying here take over my character you
know okay why don't you take over my
character and then you have the memories
of the other character uh that you may
have been playing from before so it's a
big mystery right do you think that the
memories that we have influence who we
are
I think the tend yeah the memory the
tendencies that we have tend to live
across gameplay sessions. Uh, and so,
for example,
in in this life, you know, I I, as I
said, I I knew I was going to be or at
least I I thought I was going to be a
software entrepreneur and then a writer.
There was another part of me that wanted
to be like a scholar or a teacher, but I
never really pursued it. And and again
that was something very unique to me
that wasn't there say with my siblings
who had very similar genetics and very
similar upbringing. And you think that
comes before the body before the
upbringing that's an innate thing from
the method by way I mean I assume you're
taking an RPG standpoint. So whatever
the soul is, the person outside that's
plugging into the body and wearing it
like clothes, you're saying those things
are inherent to that
person. Either they're inherent to that
person or they've been chosen by that
player as characteristics of the story
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And now, let's get back to the show. One
thing I want to try to map is, okay, so
we're both speculating like mad. Uh, for
sure, for sure. I don't know that the
things that I'm saying are true. I
assume you have a same sense of like,
well, I'm mapping it like this, but do
you have a what is the what is the thing
that you see that you're trying to
connect the dots of?
So, like by saying like have you seen in
your own life like I really feel like an
old soul. I feel like I had to have been
here before. I hear all these people
with near-death experiences and like
they're clearly referencing another
realm and I'm trying to bring all these
together in a modern technological
context and like here's what I've come
up with or is there something else that
you're mapping? I think yeah. So, what
I'm mapping is uh experiences that
people have had with near-death
experiences in the modern world and
other weird phenomenon like uh whether
it's reincarnation or it's transfer of
consciousness uh or memories of other
lives uh with uh also what the ancient
mystics have been telling us that that
this world is Maya or illusion. And so
again they had to come up with metaphors
uh for what does this mean and you there
was a a yogi from India named Swami
Yogananda who came over to the US back
in the 1920s and he became one of the
first Indian yogis to really spend time
here in the US. He wrote a book called
Autobiography of the Yogi which was like
Steve Jobs favorite book and you know he
gave it out at his funeral. Uh what was
his big insight? He was given a message
that the world is like a movie or a film
projector. And so he was reinterpreting
the ancient ideas of Maya and illusion.
And his insight was that the characters
are dying but the actors are still there
outside of the game and that the world
itself is made of light and shadow that
it's not substantial. And that sounds
very much like Plato's cave. It is very
much like Plato's cave. So if you think
of the different metaphors, whether it's
Plato's cave, whether it's the world is
a dream as in Buddhism, I mean literally
the word Buddha means to awaken, what is
it you're awakening from? The concept of
Maya or Leela in the Hindu traditions,
the concept of the illusion in say the
Islamic traditions or the here and the
hereafter uh within say the
Judeo-Christian traditions. Each of them
are using different metaphors, right?
and and Shakespeare used the metaphor of
all the world's a stage and the men and
women are merely players in it. That
idea of play is is one that has
persisted over time. And so Yogananda
used the latest technology which was the
film projector in the 1920s. That was
new, right? That was a new way to
understand. Now, he didn't literally
mean there's a big projector that's
projecting onto a screen, but he said
it's like that. And I think that's where
we are today. Uh when we say video game,
we're talking about what we know of as
video games. So we're using that as a
way to describe something uh that is
very complex and and it's it's difficult
for us to get our our our heads around
that idea. Uh and in the same way that
before there was a massively multiplayer
there were massively multiplayer online
role playing games, you know, we would
use other metaphors at the time. Uh, so
there may be new metaphors that come up
in the future, but this is where I'm
trying to tide the idea that the world
is made of information with this idea
that the world is some kind of a hoax or
illusion where players are kind of uh
choosing to get in uh and when they get
in then
uh they forget they experience it and
then they come out and then they review
the game. Um there there's an old story
uh in the Hindu traditions of Sushila
and Narada. I don't know if you ever
heard this story. And so let's say
Narada is this proud warrior and he goes
to the god Vishnu. Remember in that
tradition uh the world is the dream of
Vishnu. But he says to the god Vishnu, I
want to understand what illusion is,
what maya is. And he says, well I can't
tell you what it is, but I'll show you.
Sounds a lot like the Matrix, doesn't
it? Um, in fact, Morpheus is the Greek
god of dreams. And so, he says, "Here,
step into this pool of water." So, let's
say this proud warrior steps into the
pool of water. And suddenly, he's a
little baby girl named Sushila. And he
grows up as a princess in this kingdom
in ancient India. She grows up, you
know, she ends up marrying a prince from
a nearby kingdom. And then later, you
know, the two kingdoms go to war. uh her
husband goes to war with her father and
her brother's kingdoms. They all die and
now she's really sad. Obviously, her
whole family's been killed. Uh then she
goes outside the village and she sees a
blue water and she steps in it and then
suddenly she's back. She's no no longer
Sushila. She's the proud warrior Narata.
And then the god Vishnu says
that is Maya. Right? It was an element
of forgetting of immersing yourself in
this character and now you can step out.
Now that's just a metaphor. But I think
our metaphors today have the ability to
bridge this idea that information
science is eating all the other
sciences. And I think you and I would
probably agree on that in that the
physical sciences in the end they're
coming down to how is information being
processed with this idea that there may
be a consciousness or a part of
ourselves that exists outside the
physical world and we don't necessarily
agree on that part of it but that pro
that this idea of how does the
information get rendered into something
that appears real uh that provides us
with a a way a framework to think about
that I think you know is so if we're in
a simulation then I imagine there's a
server and the server processes data in
a certain way and the software has been
written in a certain way and so if I'm
an MPC I run AI logic that AI logic
follows a set of rules even if
probability is part of it. Yeah. Do you
want it to remain a mystery or do you
feel like this is a knowable thing? I
feel like there are elements of it that
are knowable and they're knowable
because of glitches that happen and
things that don't seem to be able to be
explained. uh you know in a purely
physical model of the universe even
little things like okay have you heard
the term synchronicity
uh which was coined by Carl Jung and he
called it an aausal connection between
you know an internal thought and
something that happens in the external
world and of course
in a modern technoscientific world we
would dismiss that there's any
connection between you thinking a thing
and something happening in the real
world uh but the other day uh I was just
explaining this idea of a technological
synchronicity. I was browsing the web
looking for a backpack and there was a
specific brand that somebody told me to
look at. So, I was looking at their
website and and then I I forgot that and
then later I was on my iPhone and
suppose I was in Facebook or I don't
know some social media and there's an ad
for that exact same backpack and I said,
"Oh, that's weird. I was thinking about
this backpack. I had an intent for this
backpack and now I'm seeing an ad for
that." Now, if you didn't know that
about how technology works, if you
didn't know there's a server that tracks
your intents, that there's something
called a cookie that whenever you have I
was so nervous you were going to be
like, "Oh my god, can you believe?" And
I was like, "Yes, very much so." As an
advertiser, I can believe. Absolutely.
And I was in the advertising business,
so I know all about this for a while
where we advertise mobile games. And so,
the closer you can register somebody's
intent, the more likely you are to make
the sale. That's why Google has done so
well as a company because you know
before that you were showed ads to
everybody and now if you know somebody's
searching for Axe you can show them an
ad for Axe. But if I didn't know that it
would look like it's just weird
mysterious and it would be dismissed as
that's just coincidence. There's no way.
But in a technological universe or or
rather an information-based universe,
suddenly things that seem disconnected
and are often attributed to pure chance
might actually have some explanation or
some intentionality behind it, you know,
which could be technological in nature.
Uh but if we don't acknowledge that the
world is technological in nature or that
that information is stored somewhere
somewhere outside of the physical world,
then they just become mysteries or they
just become dismissed. Why don't you
take psychedelics?
Well, so it's funny. I was on a panel uh
at a conference the other day. It was
from psychedelics
to synchronicity. And I said, why am I
on this panel? I you know, I've never
taken psychedelics. That said, I have
spent a lot of time with people that
have taken psychedelics. But why haven't
you? Well, I haven't just because one,
they put you in an altered state of
consciousness, which is okay. That part
I don't mind. Uh I've explored lots of
altered states of consciousness but
usually through yogic breathing you can
do it through drumming shamanic. So you
find the altered state useful you just
don't want to do it through drugs. Yeah.
Just because all drugs have side effects
and I think this is something in a
technologically deterministic world we
think all of our technology so so I
study science fiction uh academically.
So how does science fiction influence
the world? And I think it influences in
such a way that we're we're used to
thinking of medicine and pharmacological
approaches to everything as being
infallible. Right? So in Star Trek when
Dr. McCoy or if I don't know if you're a
Star Trek fan, not really, but I know in
the original Star Trek or Dr. Crusher
and the Next Generation, you know, when
they figure out how to how to how to
cure something, you know, nobody ever
has a side effect, right? That's not how
it works in if only. If only, right? But
it's a science fiction version of
medicine. And so there are bad trips.
There are side effects. Uh there are
also reasons why medicines interact with
each other in ways that we don't know
about. Right? Even now we're having to
use AI to try to figure out because
there's so many different
pharmarmacological substances that could
affect us. Um and you know psychedelics
wasn't really a big thing uh when I was
exploring these altered states of
consciousness. uh sort of in between
let's say the 60s and 70s and now where
psychedelics are becoming more u
respectable uh and and there are a
number of people like uh this gentleman
Danny Goler I don't know if you've heard
of him u so what what what he did was he
was taking DMT uh and you've taken it
before and he said he was shining a
laser on the wall like a laser like a
scanner from your uh grocery market and
he said he started to see what looked
like little numbers and figures and
scripts in fact he that it looked kind
of like katakana, right? Which is what
you have on your uh you know uh on your
t-shirt there. But but it wasn't
katakana because that's Japanese. But he
started to see like it was moving so
fast these little figures. Uh and it was
part of the structure of the physical
world. It was and then he ran a hundred
people through that always on DMT always
on specific versions of DMT. I'm not
familiar enough to know, you know, the
different versions of Do you think they
would have seen that in 1998
before The Matrix comes out? I don't
think they would have seen it exactly
that way, but they might have seen
something because I've had people tell
me uh on on DMT. In fact, first time
somebody told me this was after I had
originally written about the simulation
hypothesis. I was here in LA and I had
Sean Stone, who was the the the son of
Oliver Stone, um and he said, "Oh, yeah,
I know it's a simulation." And I said,
"Okay, well, how do you know it's
simulation?" Like he I've written a book
on I think it's likely we're in a
simulation, but I don't know 100%. And
he said, "Well, because when you take
DMT, you see the grid lines of the
simulation." Uh, and it just looks as if
you're kind of perceiving more. And I
thought that that was pretty interesting
as well. And so I started to take the
idea seriously that perhaps we can open
our perception and we can see more. That
said, you know, I for me it's more an
issue of pharmacological side effects,
unpredictability. You know, I've had
some health issues, so I've been on
various medicines. I don't want to take
any chances. Yeah. Okay. So, um I think
you and I have a different base
assumption about self-reporting. So, I
don't trust it in the least. I think
humans are so fallible, most
aggressively me. And so, I walk away
from that going, "Ah, there feels like
there's a pretty easy explanation from
just the aberrations of the human mind."
uh given the human mind is so similar
from person to person that of course
whenever a thing starts to go ary it's
going to have a similar reaction. It's
not like when one person has hypoxia uh
they're going to feel like they're being
shoved in a meat grinder and then
another person has hypoxia and they feel
like they're floating on a cloud. Like
the odds of it being that different seem
low. So of course you would get
patterns. At least that's my take. So
when you look at self-reporting what is
it that makes you go there's probably
something here? Well, for me, I think
it's the similarity
of the stories. You don't think that can
be explained by our common biology? Not
necessarily. Like, I'm not saying it
100% can't be, right? But I don't think
you necessarily would get, you know,
such similarities and and there are
times when, you know, people have
stories from near-death experiences that
go way back before there was a term
called near-death experience, right? and
then later it takes people to collect
those stories. And so I I think yes,
it's possible that it's just random
neurons firing that leads to random
weird things. But again, that's not a
really good explanation. That's still
relying on weird random things, right?
Uh or as you start to see these
patterns, I think they become
they become more interesting uh when
it's across different populations and
different cultures.
Uh so you know you can you can look at
near-death experiences in different
places around the world and you get
similar now you do get differences right
it's like with DMT you get enough
similarity but you also have differences
and which leads me to believe that
they're also interpreting it what
they're seeing which gets back to this
idea that there's still an element of
putting things together. It's just with
near-death experiences what is the the
interpretation when is it occurring?
It's occurring when they're dead
potentially. uh which leads me to
believe that there is a part of uh of
reality there there's a way to view
things outside. I mean you know there's
there's cases of remote viewing for
example which again make no sense in a
materialistic point of view. I've met
Hal Pudof who ran Stanford Research
Institute's remote viewing program back
in the 70s from the CIA. I mean, they
had many, many instances where a remote
viewer who knew nothing about what was
going on, including an instance where
there was a uh an airplane that had went
down somewhere in Africa and this guy uh
I think it was Pat Price, one of the
remote viewers who was really good at I
think there's a spectrum. He was able to
pinpoint within the continent of Africa.
Now, if you look at the size of Africa,
it's bigger than it is in a Mercer map,
right? we think, oh, it's as just as big
as, you know, this part of Europe or
whatever, but it's huge. He was able to
pinpoint, you know, exactly where it
was. And Jimmy Carter said that's, you
know, would admit later that's how they
found this crash plane out there. Uh,
now you could say, well, that's just
random coincidence. Well, yes, except
certain people tend to get random
coincidence more. Now, that can't be
explained in the materialist model. So,
I think you have to look at the
glitches, the outliers, the things that
don't work and say, "Well, what if
there's a better model, just like I was
saying with the the backpack example,
what if there is something that ties
this together? What would that look
like?" And then we can start to
speculate about what that might be.
Well, in games, we have a virtual
camera. And in remote viewing, they give
them coordinates, oftentimes, latitude,
longitude coordinates, and you can just
put the virtual camera anywhere. And if
you're in the right state, if you're not
locked in to your avatar, you know, you
can like pan around and see what's going
on in this other part of the world as
long as you have the coordinates. Um, so
I feel like we need to explore those and
figure out if there is a
technoscientific basis for it. But
because we say, well, you can't do it
100% of the time, therefore it's not
real. Uh, then that's I think the
materialistic paradigm that says, well,
we have no mechanism for that, therefore
it's not real. And we take it the other
way and say, well, you know, exceptions
are how science gets expanded. Uh, you
know, whether it's anomalies like
Mercury's orbit, nobody could explain it
until uh until they had to have a
different model. Einstein's theory of
general relativity was able to explain
it. Or these crazy people would report
rocks falling from the sky. And as
scientists, we know that's ridiculous
because there are no rocks in the sky.
Turns out science is incomplete. And
guess what? Science is still pretty
incomplete today.
But when they looked at it with a
different kind of lens and they said
okay what if you know the earth is one
planet and what if there's like you know
these asteroids and meteorites and
things then now we have a mechanism for
how rocks could be falling from the sky
whereas before we dismissed it because
we didn't have the mechanism and I'm
saying we should look for the mechanism
and the simulation hypothesis is a good
way to frame how some of these things
might happen in my personal opinion. And
that's really why I wrote this book was
to try to bring some of these weird
things into all the findings and my the
fact that my background like like yours
now is in video games uh and in
information science. If this is a
simulation, do you think that it's just
meant to simulate Earth or do you think
that there are other planets with life?
What do you think about the great big
universe? I think it would make sense
that there are other planets with life
as well. That said, you know, there's a
game called No Man's Sky. It's a great
game. Yeah. Some people like it, some
people say it's when it came out, people
slashed it for pretty just reasons, but
over the whatever five or six years that
it's been out, it's pretty impressive.
They've done a nice job of like
continuing to push and develop and all
of that, but it's whatever two to the 64
power number of planets or I mean, some
just ungodly number. Was it 18
quintilion worlds? Rightassive. Now, if
you didn't know, you know, two 2 to the
64 is 18 quintilian, that number
wouldn't necessarily make any sense. But
they they obviously didn't design all
those worlds, right? They fill them in
as needed, right? Rules based rules
based procedural generation while while
you're there, but when those worlds are
needed,
they get rendered and then the player
can go to those worlds. So at that
point, you know, they're doing exactly
what we talked about in the but in that
example, the player is the only
observer. Do you think that there are
other planets with observers on it or
would we? It certainly could be. There's
no reason why they shouldn't be uh more.
Is it possible that we are being
observed and that's the only reason that
we're running? That's very possible.
Like if we're in an NPC universe, are we
the ant colony that the aliens are
happen to be coming by to check out
right now? And so we're we've got the
processing power. There are people that
believe. How crazy would that be? Have
you read the threebody problem? Yes, I
have read the three. Oh man, such an
interesting concept that you could have
these like really tiny particles that
we'd never see that could fly through
our bodies because they're so small. Uh
but that can actually watch and record
and listen. Yeah. What was it? What was
the term? What was the term they used? I
forget starts with a P that the particle
I could look it up. A single particle.
Yeah, if you have your laptop there,
there's a single particle. Now, you know
that that's an interesting novel in many
ways because it it gets us into this
question of alien life, also
technological progress, right? The
aliens wanted to stop our physics from
developing so they could come and
invade. Spoiler alert. Yeah, spoiler
alert. If you're going to watch the
Netflix series, that's what it was. Not
P starts with an S. Sons uh was the
single particle in another dimension
that they're able to to send out. Uh
they also have the dark forest theory.
Yeah. In the second novel. Yeah. Yeah.
Don't make a peep. Yes. Exactly. Because
if somebody knows you're there, they're
going to shoot. Now, now you're into
interstellar game theory, which is a fun
area uh to think about. But do you think
aliens are a thing or
I don't see why they wouldn't be? Right.
And I've talked no evidence. Well, I've
talked to enough people in the
government and I don't know if we want
to go down this rabbit hole. Whatever
you've got, let's hear it. I mean, we're
so deep and we live inside a video game
that uh I think we can handle aliens
because now I'm in academia and in
academia, you know, people are looking
at me and, you know, I'm getting my PhD
at a later age, so I care a little less
about, you know, the the stigma
associated with topics. They're like,
you might not want to talk about UFOs
and aliens so much. And I said, I just
wrote a book that says the world isn't
real. Yeah. Hey, and do they know what
era we're in? Like, yeah. Plus, I mean,
aliens is not even it's not even out of
our current scientific understanding
that we know there are planets. Like, if
you go back, uh, all the aliens were
from Mars or Venus, right? If you go
back to the 50s and 40s because that was
the general knowledge of the population.
They didn't know anything beyond that.
Now, we happen to know there are other
solar systems and now we know for sure
there are other planets. Uh so there's
no reason why there wouldn't be aliens
in different parts of the galaxy. Uh and
in fact if you were designing a
massively multiplayer game you know you
might have you know like different
servers and then you would see you know
how these uh different empires might
evolve over time and how they might
interact with each other. That said,
there is a phenomenon, the UFO
phenomenon, that's been around since the
1930s and 40s, and you have reliable
witnesses saying they saw metallic craft
engaging in uh or performing with
performance characteristics
in ways that we can't understand and
that we can't duplicate. Um, now I think
that's almost a given if you investigate
this. I I know for the general public
that's not a given, but actually for the
general public it probably is, but
within say the technoscientific
community it's not a given. I think in
the general public people will generally
admit that they've all seen weird
things. I had a professor at a major
university tell me he talked about this
subject. Nobody, you know, no, nobody
said anything personal and then
afterwards people would come up to him,
other professors and say, "Oh, you know,
I saw this weird metallic object moving
silently across the screen." Or not the
screen. Now we're back in the
simulation, right? across the screen.
And so, you know, I've talked to people
who've been in these government programs
and they're telling us our pilots are
seeing things that we can't explain and
they're not China and they're not
Russia. And you could say, well, is it a
Lockheed Martin skunk works, you know,
secret thing? And then you talk to
people who worked in these aerospace
companies and say they'll tell you that
they had samples of stuff that came from
somewhere else and they didn't know
where and they're trying to reproduce
it. And so it's very possible we could
reproduce some of this behavior today.
Uh there's a guy named Lou Alzando who
used to be in charge of the Pentagon's
uh UFO program that Harry Reid, Senator
Harry Reid actually got $22 million for
back in the day. And they came up with
what they call the five observables.
It's like uh let's see if I can get this
right. Instantaneous acceleration,
hypersonic velocity,
uh no visible means of propulsion,
trans media, right? all these
characteristics that we don't know how
to do with our aerospace technology. So,
somebody whether it's, you know, a
secret government lab, it's maybe a
breakaway human civilization, it's maybe
ai civilization that's been on Earth
that is hidden. There's something called
the Curian hypothesis. Have you ever
heard of that word? So, science fiction
fans might know that term. It comes from
Doctor Who. And in in Doctor Who,
there's this reptilian race that's been
like underground for millions of years,
for example. Uh so the bottom line is
there's a phenomenon and we don't know
what it is. Now, this gets back to how
science fiction influences how we think
about things. Uh when you say UFOs,
people conflate that with aliens.
Could be aliens, could be something
else. I was going to say, what do you
mean? What else could it be? Could be
time travelers. Right. There's there's a
guy. Let's go. So now we're into time
travel. So So you think time travel's
possible or it's just skipping around
the simulation essentially? Well, I
think in the simulation you can make it
possible if you were inside a
simulation. I think in a physical
material universe where time goes one
way it's impossible, right? But I I
think I mean there are closed timelike
curves and that that are allowed uh
within uh Einsteinian physics that might
allow you to be able to repeat certain
things. There's obviously time dilation.
I never thought about time travel in the
simulation. In the simulation, time
travel would be a sense of going back
and being able to rerun a portion, but
to inject other avatars or NPCs into
that that part. I mean, you can you can
stop a simulation, you can save it, you
can run it forward. Uh, so now we're
totally in in in science fiction
territory at this point. Uh, one of the
first guys to talk about this idea that
we're in a simulation in modern times, I
mean, obviously the idea has been around
in various forms forever was Philip K.
Dick, you know, who wrote the the books
behind Bladeunner, Minority Report, you
know, Man in the High Castle. He said
all the way back in 1977 in a speech at
a science fiction convention uh in maths
France, we are living in a computer
programmed reality and the only clue we
have to it is when some variable is
changed, some alteration occurs in our
reality.
And so, you know, he he kind of believed
that you could go back and change things
and rerun parts of the simulation, which
in an NPC simulation, you could do that,
right? I mean when you run a simulation
you never run it once just once. You
always run it more than once. Why?
Because you want to see what would
happen. And so this gets back to this
broader idea uh that perhaps we are on a
branch of a simulation that's running to
see where we will end up. does not only
apply like when you talk about an RPG
one I think immediately I'm at like a
theme park or the void or whatever and
this is a game and I'm logging in to do
the thing and in that case it's not
experimental so I'm not looking for a
given outcome I've just set up a game
and this we're like the Sims if it's an
NPC universe then I get that you could
just be running it to see what happens
like you said before is this the world
where they blow themselves up or the
world where they reach interstellar
travel. Can't wait to find out. Um,
but yeah, it seems like that the
rerunning assumes that we're in an MPC
version. I think that, yeah, the
rerunning tends to lean towards this
idea. But now if you combine this with
this idea in quantum physics that we
talked about earlier that was just so
weird the delayed choice experiment and
Schroinger saying there is one of
multiple simultaneous histories perhaps
while we're playing we're able to
perceive you know a particular history
but that doesn't mean there wasn't
another history that might have been run
in another run of that simulation and so
it may be that we play the game multiple
times. It may be that we can choose
different paths to bring it in. So,
there is an area where it overlaps, but
yes, I agree with you in that that tends
to lean more towards an NPTC type of
simulation and the video game a single
video game at a time, but you can save
the state, you can change the variables,
and you can rerun the state. And that
could be the past. Getting back to the
crops example, right? Both of these
things could have happened and maybe it
actually explored what would have
happened if this happens and it might
have explored what would have happened
if that happened. You know, just like in
the chess board if if I make a move, I
can explore,
you know, I can I can simulate what
might happen, but then I come back to
the present and I play the game forward.
Maybe I can do the same thing with the
past.
Are you working on a new book? Uh well,
so uh you know, the simulation
hypothesis is coming out the new the
second version, right? Yeah. entirely
the new version because we didn't have a
lot of AI. It was mostly speculation
about AI when I wrote it originally. Uh
and so you know in July uh of this year
2025 the simulation hypothesis v2 being
a software guy think of it that way um
comes out with a lot more about virtual
reality developments uh about Boston
simulation hypothesis which you know we
haven't talked that much about his
argument uh but but it's out there and
then I'm also looking at perhaps doing
another book in the future which will
combine a little more of the religious
and mystical element
with the simulation hypothesis. And what
what do you think is going on there? Is
it religions are people grappling with
the simulation and they just don't have
the metaphorical language or are they
actually in touch with whatever is
creating the simulation? How do you see
that?
I think that whether it's religious
mystics and so religions get formed in
couple of ways primarily I have a friend
who who calls it uh you know uh
observation or insight uh and there's
something called a theophony and a
theophony is when something intervenes
in the physical world and somebody sees
God grabs you God grabs you or in the
case of Islam the angel Gabriel grabbed
you know the prophet Muhammad when he
was asleep in the cave and said listen
to this or something happens right uh
the other way is you have mystics and
yogis who are out trying to find
insights whether it's the Buddha you
know meditating under the bodhic tree or
you've got Millera Tibet's most famous
yogi you know they're going through and
trying to perceive what's what's out
there and if there's a part of them that
maybe is outside the physical world. In
either case, somehow there's an
awareness that something from outside
the physical world that we can't
normally see or perceive is able to be
acknowledged or understood. And now they
have to explain that to people. So this
Plato's cave again. So if you if you
read the full allegory of the cave, not
only does the guy break his chains, he
leaves the cave, everybody else is still
in the cave looking at the shadows on
the wall. What's the first thing that
happens to him? He's blinded by light
because there's there's the sun out
there. So, the first thing that happens
is he can't really figure out what's
going on. Second thing is he eventually,
you know, gets used to the light,
explores the world outside, and comes
back in and tries to tell people, "Hey,
there's a whole world out there." And
you know what they do? The people in the
cave, they say, "No, that's ridiculous."
You know, there's no world out there.
That is for sure what would happen.
Exactly. And that is pretty much what
happens often at the beginning of most
religions, right? whatever religious
paradigm came before is the orthodoxy
that you know tends to prevail for a
while while the new one catches on. But
so they use technological metaphors you
know the Buddha's wheel which is the
wheel of samsara or wandering where you
go through multiple lives. Now they
couldn't say back then oh it's like a
video game and you're playing a
character and then that character's life
ends and then you choose another
character but you're at a higher skill
level or a higher difficulty level. they
didn't have that terminology. Um or they
couldn't talk about quantum mechanics.
So they, you know, they say things like
uh all that we are, we create with our
thoughts.
I mean that's a description, but it's
not a real description. I think today as
science and technology advances, we can
come up with better descriptions that
might describe what's actually going on
there. Or they couldn't say it's a, you
know, it's a quantum computer in superp
position. and they can just say all
possible paths have been explored. And
so they use metaphors. And so my goal is
can we take the metaphors of old and
using simulation theory? Some people say
simulation theory is a religion for
atheists, right?
Because it provides them an out to say
okay this world isn't isn't the whole
thing that there's something else beyond
this world. Which is the basic principle
of most religions. It's interesting. So,
I I don't believe in God, but I never
refer to myself as an atheist. Um, and
in no way does thinking of the
simulation give me a religious
experience that's interesting. It just
feels like you move the miracle
somewhere else, right? Um,
my relationship to that is there's
clearly something that I don't
understand. There is clearly
whatever a first mover would be whatever
forever is like I can't conceive of
there was nothing and then instantly
there is something so I mean I am at a
loss when I try to like terminate at
what what created this why does anything
exist you can go to oh bro it's just a
simulation but then you're like yeah but
where's the array where where is the
server sitting is it in a rack somewhere
it's in the cloud we like to
So if it's in the cloud, if it's on a
rack somewhere, like then what's that
world? So you're always going to find
yourself left with and what's the thing?
Yeah. So I don't know. I stand in awe
before the natural world or the
simulation, however you want to think
about it, and that sort of provides the
reverence, I guess. But um yeah, I
wouldn't say that it it does a standin.
The simulation doesn't do a standin for
religion for me. the unknown, the sense
of awe of, wow, there's a thing I can't
comprehend. Um, but it doesn't have
doctrine, it doesn't have ritual. And so
those things can be very, very helpful.
But honestly, I think because I grew up
in a Judeo-Christian
ethic, like I feel like, okay, I have
grounded morals, um, I can articulate
them. I just can't say that I believe
them because God told me to. Right. And
and that that makes sense. I I think
there's different ways to look at it.
And again, it gets back to the NPC
versus RPG versions. This is why I think
I'm one of the few people that really
try to delve into what it would mean if
it was this kind of a simulation. What
would it mean if it was that kind of a
simulation? And you know, religion.
Which do you hope it is? I I hope that
it's more of the RPG version. So you
want to have a soul or a body or
something that exists in the other plane
just because it's more interesting or
what does that give you?
You know, I'd say it gives me a sense of
meaning and purpose like we all want a
sense of meaning and purpose and that is
also the point of because you want to do
the hard things here, learn and then
take it back out, right? And also do the
things that I felt I was meant to do.
And what does that mean? That's
interesting. That's a strong one for
you. Yeah. Because I feel that I was
meant to do certain things while I was
here. uh now that meant to do why meant
because it's difficult to explain
because it's more that I feel that there
was a reason why I stumbled into say
simulation theory which was part of my
plan which was how do you bridge the gap
between
people that are in a totally materialist
point of view and people that are in you
know a religious point of view and I've
spent time with people that are in all
kinds of into all kinds of weird things
and and I realize at the beginning there
it's a it's a common metaphor that we
can use to try to describe reality but
it also has you know this ability to
delve down into the rules and really get
into the scientific side of things if
you will but why do I feel that I was
meant to I mean I think that's just a
intuition I mean I'm a big believer in
intuition and I feel like different
people in the same circumstances are we
born with intuition
I think intuition
could be thought of
as
another interpretation of quantum
mechanics. So there are there are
interpretations as in we're picking up
on what the rules are. No, but there are
interpretations of quantum mechanics
that say that um uh there are multiple
possible futures and they're sending us
back information
about what would happen if we did this,
what would happen if we and the way that
that calculation comes back is as bodily
intuition. Bodily intuition, hunches,
uh sense of certainty or sometimes it's
just a visualization. Uh pre-cognitive
dreams. Okay, here's an area that that
science says that's just random
right? So, this actually happened to me
as an entrepreneur. So, one day, uh, I'm
working on my software startup and one
one morning I have this weird dream
about this competitor of ours that I
hadn't thought about in a long time and
he used to compete with our product.
This is way back. Uh, and I was like,
that's odd. I mean, I've never had a
dream with this guy in there. It's not
like, you know, one a member of my
family or somebody I'm in a relationship
with. It was just it's been over a year
since I've even heard anything about
this guy. And I've had zero dreams where
this guy has appeared. I walk into the
office
and I get a call from IBM, which was our
business partner at the time. Just like
today, if you, you know, had an app in
the app store, you would have to be
partnering with Apple or with Google or
with Epic to be in their their their app
stores. And he says, 'Oh, we're making a
competitive product to your product. I
just wanted to let you know because
we're a partner of yours before it
happens. And I said, 'Well, IBM's a huge
company. How come I've never heard of
this product before? And he goes, "Oh,
do you remember that guy that used to be
your competitor in the past? Uh, we
bought his company about a year ago, and
we're just going to announce the product
they've been working on today." And I'm
like, wait, I had the dream before I had
the call, not after. So, it wasn't a
regurgitation of something that happened
that day. Now, most dreams are not
precognitive. Most streams are not in
any way that meaningful depending on who
you talk to. But the fact that this
happened before shows me there's
something weird going on with time here.
Uh that I got the message about this guy
before I got the call. And again,
getting back to the backpack example, if
you didn't know there was something else
going on, you would just assume that's
weird. It's magic. But if you know that
there is some information somewhere that
you can access, uh then that wouldn't be
such a weird thing to believe at that
point. But also in what they call the
transactional interpretation of quantum
mechanics, the future is sending us
information and and we're like by
observing we're choosing not just the
present, but we're also somehow pulling
these in. And I believe this is, you
know, people talk about manifestation,
visualizing yourself successful, doing
all these things. I believe the basis of
that is visualizing these different
futures. And maybe there are certain
futures that are easier for us to
visualize because we were, you know, we
were meant to learn lesson X or learn to
have lesson Y. But it may just be that
we run the simulation forward and that
that's just us remembering that we ran
the simulation forward in the in the
present moment. So it's like a
previsisualization, if you will. You
might visualize something just to see
what might happen and then you actually
go and you live it. So the simulation
feels very purposeful to you. It's not
like rules got set and then hey, let's
just see what happens in the simulation.
There's more of a there's meaning behind
it. It's um I mean if I were to sort of
visualize what I imagine you're
imagining, there's a soul that needs
lessons. Could be more like a person or
could be a true soul. Uh they log in to
this experience, inhabit a body. There
are things that they're meant to learn
and discover and explore and it's on a
quantum computer of some kind. So, we
can
run forward. You talked about time
travel. So, maybe we can run them back.
I'm not sure what advantage there would
be to that, but um
that there's such a profound lesson to
be learned and there's such a meaningful
point to being in the simulation that
we're able to do what most people who
are not awake would assume to be magic.
Yeah, I think you know I have a strong
preference for that version of
simulation theory personally. Uh, at the
same time, I acknowledge there could be
an NPC version of the simulation
running, but I don't view the two
necessarily as mutually exclusive. Uh,
and in fact, I think we all play roles
in each other's stories. And so we may
be running, we basically enter sort of
NPC mode because we've sort of forgotten
the specifics, but we remember kind of
basic highlights of things and these
weird experiences happen along the way
that are common human experiences. We
just don't have a mechanism for them, so
we dismiss them. And I believe that the
simulation provides us with these things
as clues to what the game might be like,
you know, and that's what the glitches
can often be. They can often get us to
go in a certain direction or or uh to
try to achieve a certain thing or or or
to try to not go a certain path because
maybe we ran that path forward and said,
"What would happen if I did X? What
would happen if I did Y?" Uh and and
they're very different, you know,
different sort of outcomes but of the
game. Kind of like in the choose your
own adventure books from long ago,
right? Where, you know, it says turn to
page 58 if you do this. Turn to page 172
if you do that. There's still lines, you
know, kind of like I know behind you and
behind me there's this uh sort of
geometrical shapes. If you think of each
of those as
a particular point of the universe in
time and all the matter in the universe
is arranged a certain way and then each
of the times uh you know the lines go
like this. It's like two branches and
you can explore the branches a little
bit and then as you play the game you're
actually defining your real path through
the simulation.
Which religion
is most in tune with
making the lessons of running the
simulation accessible? Well, I I this is
sort of why I like to look at the
religious side of this as well is I I
don't believe that any one religion by
itself has
the entire truth. It's like the old
story of the you know the blind man and
the elephant, right? Each of them are
touching different parts of the
elephant. One of says it's like a snake,
you know, they're touching the trunk.
One says it's like a house, they're
touching the body. One says it's like,
you know, a slender thing like the tail.
One says it's like a tree, they're
touching the legs. And I feel like each
of the mystical doctrines that are
behind the religions, right? Because the
religions are formalization
for that culture in that point of time.
And so they're going to speak not just
in the language but also in the culture
of the time. And of course each religion
wants to say okay that you know we have
to freeze it at this point in time and
that's it. Nobody can have those
insights today. I mean today people are
taking DMT. They're coming up with their
own insights. They're doing the same
kinds of things that people did back
then. Uh so I don't think anyone
religion has has a monopoly on it. But I
believe that if you look at the
commonalities behind religions, that's
where simulation theory I think is
effective. It becomes a connective
thread for some of the principles behind
each of these religions. So if you think
of the principle of the here and the
hereafter, okay, that that is the basis
of most religious thought, which is the
physical world is not all there is. Then
there's the ethical side, you know,
whether it's the ten commandments,
whether it's the golden rule, you know,
whether it's karma in the eastern
traditions or whether it's u the scroll
of deeds, which you have to look at your
deeds in judgment day within the Islamic
world or going to heaven or hell within
the Christian traditions. Uh all of
those, you know, maybe are talking about
some aspect of being inside a game and
there being something outside of the
game. But I don't believe any of them
gets it right because they have to put
it in language and terminology for the
people of the time.
You don't think though like something
like yogic breathing which you were
talking about before which can create
like very altered states of
consciousness
um meditative practices in general
whether yogic or not you don't think
that that does anything extra to make
this stuff accessible whether it's the
intuition you were talking about or well
I wouldn't say that it doesn't do
anything I think that that does make it
more accessible
if your goal is to try to understand the
nature of reality, right? Most of
religion, most people who follow
religion are just trying to go through
their daily lives and so you know there
the religion might find some guidelines
for how to live those lives. So you have
the physical rules of the simulation.
There might be there might be you know
behavior rules which are not physical
like I said Grand Theft Auto and how you
treat or or the movie Free Guy if you've
ever seen that movie. Yes. with Ryan
Reynolds where, you know, they were
going running around uh the the city and
they were just abusing the NPCs. And
then some of the NPCs realized, you
know, by putting on the glasses, they
could see the heads up display. They
could see the additional information
that the people who have players could
see that they can't see. Um so yeah, I
believe those things help. I mean there
are shamanic traditions that do that as
well that are not yogic per se whether
they do it through drugs,
pharmacological substances or through
drumming. Um there are Sufi mystics who
do dancing
uh rituals to get into an altered state.
There's the whirling dervishes for
example. So I think you have the
mystical tradition in across different
religions tends to try to understand
more than just how to behave. They try
to understand what's really going on
behind the scenes. But I think most
people are just playing the game the way
they were meant to enjoying and I put
that in quotes because you know clearly
the world has a lot of suffering in it
and there's a lot of challenging parts
to the game otherwise the game would not
be any fun.
All right. So, if religions are like the
ultimate self-help book and this is
potentially a video game, uh, be
prescriptive for a second. What does
playing the game well look like?
Let's assume for a second that the life
review is real. Okay. So, if you know
that you're going to have to live what
it's like to be the person that you are,
you know, interacting with,
are you going to do something bad to
that person? You might like steal their
stuff, right? Or uh, you know,
shoot them, whatever the case may be, or
cheat them in a business deal. Let's
use, you know, more modern example,
right? Let's say you cheat somebody out
of stock in a company. They had the idea
with you. you were going to do it
together. You decided to do it yourself.
You don't give them any stock. Okay.
Now, if you knew you would have to
experience what it was like to be the
person that was cheated, would you cheat
them as much? I mean, this is very
common in the entertainment industry.
This is why you have so many lawsuits
against each other, right? Back and
forth. I I think there's a on the one
hand, it would change your behavior. on
the the the second point I think is when
bad things happen rather than you know
there's a old
character from the 70s named Carlos
Castana who supposedly went to Mexico
and learned a lot about peyote and a lot
of drugs and he wrote all these books
that were was called the godfather of
the new age movement back in the 70s and
whether he was just on a lot of drugs or
he really did that we don't know most
people think he didn't but there was a
character in the book who says the
ordinary person views everything as a
blessing or a curse,
you can view it as a challenge instead.
And I think that that that is the way to
think about it. When you have some
difficulty, view that as a challenge.
And perhaps your difficulty level has
been raised and it's trying to set you
on a on a different path. And then
three, think about the things that have
always attracted you like like why do
you want to be a game game developer? I
mean, is anybody else in your family
building games or doing a podcast? No.
What is it that makes you you? Think of
that as part of your storyline. And I
think when you think of it that way, uh
it you live a more meaningful and
purposeful life rather than just a bunch
of random interactions, you know, and
then you feel that you can influence
things as well. We can argue whether you
can or you can't, but at least you feel
that way. Rose, this has been amazing. I
find this topic so fascinating. Where
can people follow along with you? So
they can go to my website which is
zenontrepreneur.com which was the title
of my very first book uh called
Zenontrepreneurship. Uh they can follow
me on Twitter at rizstanford or x I
should say uh like the university or on
Instagram at riz cambridge like the city
where where I was living when I set up
the account. Uh and they can get the
books pretty much anywhere but I I would
suggest people go to their local
bookstores to to get the books. Let's go
support the locals. Absolutely. I love
it. Well, thank you man for coming on. I
really appreciate it. All right,
everybody. If you haven't already, be
sure to subscribe. And until next time,
my friends, be legendary. Take care.
Peace. If you like this conversation,
check out this episode to learn more.
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