From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't.
Want you to know.
This evening, we're asking a big, big question, one that we have surprisingly not tackled before. Guys, what exactly is this thing that we're all in?
What is life? Well?
I mean I'm a normal guy. Yeah, I wake up every sunset at the at the crack of evening and put on my skin one leg at a time like anyone else. But like, what is reality?
Bro? I think we're just spiritual beings having a physical experience, right, So I think and I made that up.
Yeah, Yeah, we're just animated carbon shambling through the filth.
Bro.
Yeah, we're just if you think about it, you know, the closest analog to the consciousness is kind of a song, right, It's a pattern. So we're sort of the stories and the songs we sing to ourselves. If you think about it, your brain is kind of like a little figure in a big meat mech and it's controlling all sorts of weird stuff.
Yeah, meat mech and.
I you know it's it's weird because people have been arguing about the nature of reality or phenomenology for since time immemorial. And there's this question. Is the set of hardwired, constant, unchanging physical laws. Is it more subjective? Is it just this sort of narrative that thinking minds agree upon. Is is it all just a bunch of you know, kind of shadows on a cave wall, like Plato said? Or is it some sort of computer program? And if so, can this program be hacked? We promise you we are
not high. Here are the facts.
You said that a lot in the last episode too.
I feel like when we talk about these things, we have to establish that baseline.
Hey, to each their own. I am a little high. I'm gonna perfect facts here.
We have explored the nature of reality because you know what, guys, it's fun. It's like one of the things, like metacognition is one of the things that makes us human. So thinking about thinking, thinking about what this all of this is, what we're being presented with it, if it as meaning? If not, like all of the things that you said. So, this is something that's definitely come up in a lot of strange news and Listener Male episodes in the past,
this idea of some sort of simulation here. But like consciousness, until relatively recently, reality has always kind of been presented as some sort of dilemma that needs to be reckoned with, right, like the nature of reality, like what is this? Is this a shared experience? Is there a god? Whatever?
Well, it's because all of us can deuce take certain actions to affirm for ourselves that this is in fact reality, and the things that we are experiencing are very similar, if not the same, to things that some other seemingly
conscious being is experiencing. Right, And as humans, as we've continued to evolve, we've gotten better at, you know, measuring things and writing down the things that we find as we get deeper and deeper into you know, the sub atomic and go bigger and bigger out into the cosmos. But there's a problem, right.
Oh, yes, there are quite a few problems humans experience reality all the time. There's not really a pause from it. But despite thousands and thousands and thousands of years of contemplating this, humans still struggle to define reality, let alone understand it. And there was this great this great article
for new scientists. I think it came out in twenty twenty one or so with these three authors, Jason Arun, Mrogessu, Joshua al Guego, and Gilead Ahmet, and they put it this way, they said, reality seems so solid, and yet when we examine it closely, it melts away like a mirage. We don't know when it began, how big it is, where it came from, and where it is going, and we certainly have no clue why it exists.
For another perspective, you could check out the seminal nineteen ninety four grunge film Reality Bites, directed by Ben Stiller.
That's another way of looking at reality.
But ninety eight percent of bends are just so dope, dude.
Ben ben Stiller's a good He's one of the good bends. I like where his career has taken him. I think he's a talent both in front of and behind the camera. That was that one he did he directed. I think every episode severance also about the nature of reality, very mind bend kind of show, if you're to that kind of stuff. But you know, to your point, it is an interesting thing, because what is reality if not like some sort of shared understanding of the truth, you know.
But then it can also become more of a question about presentational qualities of what we are seeing and experiencing. So reality, it's got a lot of layers to it just as a concept.
Right, sure, Yeah, the new scientist quotation continues here. They say, nonetheless, the desire to understand reality seems part of our nature, and we have come a long way. They're talking as humans about humans. They say, what was once explained in terms of divine creation is now in the purview of science. Over the past two hundred years or so, we have peeled back the layers of reality, even if we are
still not entirely sure what we have revealed. I mean, okay, look, obviously this they can run the risk of becoming a somewhat sophomoric conversation where people just sort of bandy platitudes about but that's not what we're doing this evening, fellow conspiracy realist people have made progress on navigating the Gordian nod of existence. Even now you can find no shortage of people claiming to have capital F figured it all out. Some of the answers spirituality philosophy. You can't argue with
spirituality that is every person's individual choice. I love when Descartes said, you know, man, I'm thinking about it, so I guess I'm real because something is thinking.
I was tight.
Yeah, no, that was good, But I mean, I also think it's interesting to think about the idea of like eyewitness accounts and the way people perceive things, and this idea of what.
Is the truth?
You know, like that to me is as one of the layers I think those researchers were referring to. You know, there there are many layers to the idea of reality, not just about what we see, but about how people interpret things.
And there are a lot of gatekeepers for that idea. Because we're coming now, we're talking about consensual narrative, right, the idea that, like a lot of spiritual belief systems will argue that you, if you are cue, you exist on the precipice of some greater profound understanding, you know, some samsara right piece beyond words, and you can find this if you follow the right spiritual leaders, the right regiments, if you meditate, or in some cases cough cough, scientology,
if you donate money. Other attempts at answering the challenge of reality. They rely on the bleeding edge of modern science. And that's kind of what we're looking at this evening. I think we'll get into this in a second, but we've got to do a tease for our main guy, our protagonist of the show. We're going to go into this dude's reality pretty deep tonight. What's his name?
Who is he?
He's somebody you should know by this point. Twenty years ago he put out something that has really been foundational for a lot of the discussions that have been going on on YouTube and TikTok and all these other things. Right, mister Nick Bostrom, philosopher.
F I'm just amazed.
I'm just amazed because I didn't think about it, Matt, until you pointed it out. Two thousand and three was twenty years ago.
Yeah, yikes.
Yeah, this is what you will hear known as simulation theory or holographic universe theory. There's all kinds of names for it, most often simulation theory, and if.
I'm not mistaken, I believe Bostrom comes up or maybe is even interviewed a little bit in Josh Clark's The End of the World series, which is about existential threats.
Correct correct, yes, yeah, And Josh's show holds up.
Do check it out.
He is a dear old friend of ours. He also does a little show with his pal Chuck that you might know. It's called Stuff you should know, So check it out.
Support that's just going places now that we've given up the plug.
Yeah, I think this is going to be a big year for them.
Oh, hey, kids, their kids book just came out. I got a message from writer and his mom. They were in the bookstore there in Decatur, where I guess they.
Have a sign shop of stories.
There are a bunch of science copies.
Former that is a former bank too. That is the coolest children's bookstore in the Atlanta metro area. Also shout out to our pals Annie and sam Annie recent Samantha McVeigh over at Stuff. Mom never told you they have a book on the way. Do check that out. We also have a book if.
We're on the book talk.
But yeah, Bostro, what's this what's this punchy character up to. So his idea, and we're going to dig into this. His idea, I argues one basic groundbreaking premise, and it's it's really interesting.
It calls a lot back to earlier arguments of spirituality and philosophy, or it may remind some of us of the premises of gnosticism. He's saying, this whole thing, this whole reality, could be made up. If reality really is somehow a cartoonishly complex computer program, how would you know, folks, Well, starting basis, if it's a computer in any way remotely like the computer's Earth's favorite primates have been making for a while, then it relies on programming. It relies on code.
And if reality has a source code, can you find it? Perhaps more importantly, can you hack the simulation? This would usually be the moment where we pause for a word from our sponsors. However, we got a lot to get to tonight, folks. We're not going to stand on ceremony. Here's where it gets crazy. Could we hack the simulation? Is the universe as you know it a simulation?
Maybe?
Actually, yes, just maybe it might be.
What Yeah, And it goes back to the problem that we Once we get deep enough again into the micro, into the nano, into deeper than that, things get fuzzy and stuff doesn't seem to function the way our models of physics say they should function. Isn't that the crazy thing? Because that same problem exists on the macro scale, things don't function the way we understand they should function within physics.
If you go in either of those directions, which means that we have an understanding of what we can do and really truly interact with with our human meat bodies, you know, and to you know, there's a threshold above what we can actually touch, you know, when it comes to like temperate sure heat or lack of heat, when it comes over time. Hey, when it comes to time and all that stuff. We can go beyond. We can
push those bounds with our technology. But when we use that technology to look too hard at something, stuff just gets wonky.
Yeah, down to the femto scale up to the giga scale and beyond. It's weird because since no one knows what's happening, since humanity collectively for the entirety of existence up to August twenty first, twenty twenty three, as we record this, since no one knows what the is going on. We're in a pretty cool spot as a civilization. Even the strangest sounding ideas like simulation theory are worth investigating. We are currently in the brainstorming period of figuring out
reality as a collective thing. So Nick Bostrom has a few basic premises or axioms that we have to understand to really understand his argument about simulation theory, and they're pretty simple, except well, we'll give you three and then there's a big like Shyamalan plot twist.
At the end. Yeah, that's okay.
I mean, let's just lay it out before we try to dismantle it.
First.
He argues that humanity, you know, will inevitably reach a technological point, a high water mark where a simulated version of the universe could be something in the cards to be created. Maybybe it's even like a copy of the one that we're already inhabiting, whether this be virtual or whatever, like a like a miniature. I don't know, we've seen this, and this is a science fiction any type stuff for sure,
which you're definitely gonna get to. So this could be what we may be referred to as the singularity when humans and send humanism by you know, basically flexing all of these technological and scientific muscles you know that they've been honing for all these years. Bostrom says that if they humanity can create a universe simulation, they absolutely will.
Yeah.
Interesting, right, it is interesting, And I agree people.
I mean, you know, we know people do stuff. They often leap before they look. Uh so it's not like we have a great history of like thinking about things before.
Just let's just try it. Throw things at the wall, see what sticks. Of course they're gonna do the thing. Yeah.
The next question is why would they do that thing?
Right?
What would they use that thing for? Once let's say you've created well, because you can, but what do you use it for? What's the purpose of this other universe that you've created if you could create it?
Think about the virtuals, like the sims.
That's what That's exactly what I'm going to think about. So we're talking too than and three when Nick Bostrom is, you know, presenting all this stuff. A couple of years before that, nineteen ninety nine, a little movie called The Matrix came out. That was that captured the popular mind, right it did. It was a huge movie. A little thing that you just mentioned called the SIMS came out a virtual world a couple like literally a year after
you put out these thoughts. World of Warcraft was first unveiled. We were getting into virtual worlds as humanity, like real, tangible, feeling virtual worlds, not some of the older stuff that we think about when it comes back to video games.
Yeah, yeah, drug wars.
Even like the early MMOs like EverQuest or something you could put into here, or you know, second life things like that. We're we're just thinking about it a lot more, right, So, I.
Mean, I'm glad that you took it there right away.
The idea of the gamification, you know, the immediate thing that we would want to do with this is to make the world's most advanced mm RPG.
Or something like that. Right, That's one possibility, right, But the other possibility would be what maybe.
For study, some studying, yeap, just to see how things work, right, like to try things.
Let's see model catastrophic weather situations, model all kinds of scenarios to see how they might affect you know, the quote unquote real.
Universe or political systems that too.
Let us build a small a small scale, constrained instance of a world right and and you know it's no secret longtime listeners. Before doing this podcasting thing, I was tangentially involved in some in some of this stuff I learned at the feet of some people who really are doing that thing. There are, as we record now, it's open secret at least that there are very smart people who have constructed simulations with constraints of entire countries and
they are mapping out stuff. And when you have enough data and you have enough know how, then what your model can do becomes very close to what happens in the real world, which maybe for some people proves that the real world is another model, not the reality show. Clearly, that's an awesome model for human interaction. Thank YOUMTV. So, like that's the idea, the educational aspect. Why would you do this if you could, Well, you would want to
learn more about yourself. Humans are humans favorite thing, so you would also be able to use this as a diagnostic predictive tool. Scientists, if this were possible, would probably create as many simulations as they could as a way of learning more about their own universe. Like what what if the amino acids that make up DNA are just a little bit different. How does that change things? What if life is silicon based rather than carbon based?
You know what I mean?
These are very interesting questions. The third assumption the Bosstroum needs us to follow on with is he says, we must assume that the virtual inhabitants of any simulated universe possess characteristics similar to our own universe, including consciousness. Key thing being they're not aware they're in a simulation. So the quick recap humanity reaches a point where they would create a simulated universe, and they definitely would that's another assumption.
Then second, they would use this to learn more about themselves, and third, the that they created would not be aware that they were in a program. And this leads us all to the you know, the big plot twist. I don't know what's to do this one. I uh, it's a lot.
Oh well, yeah, no, we can talk about this. Basically, what Bostrom is stating is that if it is possible to create a universe like this within whatever universe that they live in that are creating this universe, let's say us far in the future, it's almost impossible that it hasn't already been done, and we currently aren't living in that universe, the simulated one. That that's where it gets a little, It gets kind of crazy because it sounds like a huge leap, right.
I mean, I guess it makes me think of the inevitable part of the science fiction movie where the cyborg realizes it's a cyborg, you know what I mean.
Like, what what does it mean to know this? And like we all exist.
In our heads, we know that we are aware, and we feel unique and the product of memories and things like that that make us individuals.
So like if we were faced with this, Nope, that's all not real.
That's all but been created by somebody else, and none of it is.
Unique to you.
That to me is that moment, you know, where like the robot who's been living under the assumption that it's.
A real human has its world rocked. You know, uh, you're the clone, damn it. That kind of stuff. But also also, okay, think about this, like it sounds at first blush. It sounds as though we're saying, Hey, the following ingredients for a case idea exist. We all know those exist.
Therefore, you are inevitably eating a case adea right now. Those two things are don't square, and it does feel like a leap to your point, Matt, because everything that perceives reality appears to tell any living creature. It appears to indicate that just because an event can occur does not necessarily mean it will, has, or does occur, unless, of course, we bring in multiversal theory, wherein everything is happening all at once, all possible events do occur. But
let's hold off on that one. Let's go back to bosterm He does not accept this idea. He does not accept this objection to the argument. He argues instead that we cannot assume some other version of intelligent beings human, posthuman, transhuman, or otherwise. We can't assume they haven't already hit that technological landmark and therefore created a simulation in which we're
now living. And then it gets even trickier, because if you're living in a simulation, everything that you can gather and observe and test and measure also exist within the bounds of that manufactured reality. So we'd have no real way to break the fourth wall, as it were, you know, anymore than like you guys know, we're gamers. We love,
we especially love deeply immersive RPGs. You know, anymore, it'd be like a non player character NPC in Skyrim or Fallout all of a sudden saying, holy smokes, I'm a caji, I'm a cat person. Or what's what's like an NPC from Fallout? What do they have?
A ghoule perhaps, okay, a junk trader or whatever.
Yeah, like right, well, I mean, I think another good piece of pop culture to refer to with this kind of thinking, as Westworld to the series, at least the first couple of seasons where they're really in the game.
I kind of lost track of it after that.
But like all of those characters that are NPCs or whatever, some of them have lower level programming, some of them are like they do one thing and that's all they do. Then they're the higher level ones that like can make
more complex decisions. And they refer to it in game theory and in game designing as a loop, and that's what they refer to it in the show, as all these characters, these storylines are on these loops and then they're reset, you know, And a loop could be any length, you know, if you think about it in the scale of the universe, or like a really long timeline our loop could be very very long. We just in lifetime isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, a human life?
So maybe that's loop, you know. I don't know.
I'm just a big bang to a great collapse. Yeah, and the of course the triumph of entropy.
Yeah. I'm sitting here staring at the playhead in audition, just thinking about time when it comes to this stuff, and I'm trying to put it into words. You know, I've failed a couple of times, We've beat it out.
But there's also time factors into here, right, like fourth dimensional state of time as something that can be accessed not in the way we experience time, Like the playhead in audition that's currently recording everything I'm saying, and I can only experience what has you know, hit that playhead, right,
what that playhead has experienced thus far. But if you pull out further than that, it's everything that could possibly be in front of that playhead or I don't know, God, I don't even know what I'm trying to say.
No, it makes sense, I hear you, Matt. Because the idea then is that there is a dimension a space right that we call time, and it for observable experience. It's accessed in one way, via one process. However, the argument would be that without those constraints, time could be accessed in a much less linear way. It could be
experienced the way that you experience other dimensions. Right, Like this is this is weird, and it gets weirder the concept that Okay, let's just say, for the sake of argument, for the sake of hanging out, let's say Bullstrom is right that they're this reality in which everyone's hearing this show tonight is part of a manufactured reality from some other space. Well why stop it to realities? Okay, right,
why not both? What about a Matroshka doll approach? What about the possibility that this universe could be a simulation within another simulation within another simulation, and that humans are thinking minds in this reality could in turn create their own simulations, which is already happening. Then it would just be ones and zeros. It's just code all the way down, all the way up. I think that's kind of cool. I think that's walking into a cathedral.
Yeah, it's very freaking morty.
Yeah, what's that.
There's the thing with the universes in the boxes, or we talked with with Hartman about that when we had them on or that episode anyway, Yeah, I mean, and you also there's a lot of people that that throw around the idea of let's let's think about like intelligent design, or like the idea of a prime mover or like a god like force or entity that has control or perhaps doesn't have control, just laid the pieces out just to see what they do.
There there is within that even a bit of.
This kind of simulation theory where it's like for someone else's benefit to see to test, to see what the things are gonna do, to see what how things are going to play out.
Mm hmm.
And on the first day God said, hold up, I'm trying to say something, so, uh, you know, we're gonna pause for a word from a responsor here at first, though, before we go, we need to make an important note between Bostrom's concept and between the ideas of gnosticism, the wonderful work of the Wachowski's and the Matrix films. In the Matrix, humans live in a simulated environment, but their conscious minds or a product of the outside or quote
unquote real reality. Bullstrom is arguing that you everything that makes you quote unquote you is in fact just another product of this simulated reality. He's calling you a bit of an MPC. Not really, but it's a fun tag. Before we go to an ad break, I got to ask it. You know, we've got just a few minutes before we come back, and maybe we can just figure this out and solve it off air, right.
To make it a short episode.
I have faith in us, and we have returned.
Did we figure it out now?
We actually just kind of made more questions. Hopefully we can get to a few of them.
In the episode with the time we writ I guess well, that's one of the first questions. If you're an observer here, the idea would be okay, this is really interesting stuff. Nick Bostrom is one of the sharpest minds out there and has made a really good, very well reasoned argument with the appropriate axioms and the appropriate caveats and assumptions. But can we prove it? Even Nick spoiler says that you can't really prove it, and three very smart physicists took that personally.
That's right.
For one, we have Silas r Bean, Zora Davoodie, and Martin Jay's Avage. No way, It is no way to not these names with a certain amount of gravitas, for they sound like superheroes. They sound like superheroes, and they are, for lack of a better way to describe them, scientific superheroes in their own right Martin Jay Savage. All of these individuals found the notion of the universe as a
computer simulation should be fascinating, as do we. We share that with them, we are the same, and they started to think of how it might be possible to figure out if our own universe is a numerical simulation. Back to your point about ones and zeros, Ben, we are
not scientific superheroes, nor are we physicists. So we're gonna, you know, depend on some pretty solid work by our buddy Jonathan Strickland that he has done on his podcast Tech Stuff to break down some of these concepts, these very complex concepts, into understandable form.
Yeah, we're gonna.
Okay, so these legend tier physicists what they're also names. These researchers decided to work with something called lattice gauge theory and something called quantum chromodynamics or QCD. These may be unfamiliar terms to a lot of us, listening along at home. They were certainly new to us when we first started diving into simulation theory many years ago. But here's the way we break it down and again shout out to Strick. All right, the universe in which you
exist in what you hear this podcast. He's got a lot of stuff going on, but it is, as far as humans understand, based on four fundamental forces. One is strong nuclear force, one is electromagnetism, one is weak nuclear force, and the fourth is vibes. No, I'm kidding, the fourth is gravity.
It is known vibes is in fact a force of nature. So about the movie itself, it is a force culture to be reckoned with.
I missed you guys too. Yeah.
So lattice gauge theory, which we'll get to, and this idea quantum chromo dynamics. What they do is they focus on one of those four fundamental forces, the strong nuclear force.
This is the.
Force that humans believe holds all the tiny things together. It's what keeps sub atomic particles from drifting away from one another. It is the strongest of the four fundamental forces. But also it has the shortest range, which already sounds like the kind of give and take that you would encounter in a well programmed game. All right, so that makes sense so far. The basic stuff. What is quantum
chromo dynamics. It is a theory that attempts to explain how this strong nuclear force works in space time in four dimensions. Right, so that's the three dimensions we know plus the dimension of time.
And this is crazy.
When scientists like our three legendary physicists are studying quantum chromo dynamics, they build their own universes to do so. They're just very very small universes.
Yeah, you may ask how small?
And this is a very appropriate question considering the topic they were trying to take on today, the idea of copying the universe, whether it be in virtual form or otherwise. What does that even look like down the line? Well, this is something that is possible, but again on a very very very tiny dining scale. Call you alluded to it earlier, Ben, I believe the fempto scale.
Which is what is this a universe for ants?
Exactly? I know.
It's a really funny moment in the film Zoolander. Callback once again to Ben Stiller. He contains multitudes a unit of measurement the femto scale smaller than the nanoscale, which I've always thought of as being as the teeniest of tinies. No, no, says Femto, I am am one smaller. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, but a Femto meter is one quadrillian. That is a figure or a ten. What is that ten to the negative fifteen? Is that what we're talking?
Yeah, a ten to the negative fifteenth boundin yep, remember those for maths, I sure do.
So.
They so this very very very very very small universe. That's an excellent X explanational It's so small I can't understand it. With all of this in consideration, this is where the lattice structure comes in. The researchers say, let's represent this universe as bounded by a thing like picture a ball around this tiny experience. This ball is not a continual shell. It is instead a lattice, and a lattice just means there's an overall bounding structure, but it
has holes in it. So like if you look through a window screen and you have the the tiny grid that keeps bugs and other big things out but still lets air pass through, that's a lattice. And their assumption then is that they can build a tiny universe bound by this non continual structure around it. And they said, look, if we go into this tiny, tiny universe with far fewer variables, it might be possible to observe that this universe is something we created by watching the interaction of
energy at the border. What happens when the air and the bugs meet that windows screen meet that lattice.
It's interesting, but it's weird because it's all through a computer simulation. Right, So they're simulating energy moving within their simulated computer generated universe.
Yes, that's a really solid rhyme scheme. You just dropped their mass.
So the concept is if if they can observe as the creators of this mini universe, if they can observe particles that they have created moving through that lattice and like see it move through the lattice, then if we could blow up that experience to our scale and find similar energetic readings, we would know we're in a simulation.
One hundred percent. That's the idea. Okay, that's the idea. Uh, Like, what if what if you could zoom back out, get away from the simulate a very small universe and go back to the world in which you became a physicist and in your ostensibly larger universe. What if you can find an energy that can prove the lattice? What if you can find the boundaries of the simulation. These researchers believe this energy could be cosmic rays, which we guarantee you is not something Stanley made up.
No, cosmic rays are very real. I just learned about this because personally, guys, I've been studying this thing called the ice Cube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica.
Yeah. Yeah, ice Cube was not only an excellent rapper and an actor, but also a physicist.
He contains multituders U s iced Tea. Sorry.
Also, ice Cube is apparently a bit problematic, he said, some not very nice things, but please different ice cube.
Yeah.
Well there. The detector is Oh gosh, I'm gonna get it all wrong now that I'm having to like say it out loud rather than just read it. It's it's a beautiful, amazing detector that can sense I don't know if it's cosmic rays, guys, but it's like neutrinos or something where it, yeah, detect it moving through the Earth, and I think it's connected in some or could be connected to this in some way.
Yeah, it's it's part of cern overall. And you nailed it, man. It's a it's meant to observe neutrinos. And the pain in the ass about that is it's actually, uh, it's not possible now for human technology to directly observe neutrinos. So what they did is they put a bunch of very powerful sensors around like a cubic kilometer in Antarctica, and they look at the ice. That's why it's called
the ice cube. They look at the ice, and when neutrinos interact with it si ice, they create these electrically charged secondary particles they're called Now this is deep water for me, I'm not because it's with ice.
It's optical detectors allegedly that are in there. So it literally sees these these thousands and thousands of optical detectors see the thing. What's just nuts to me.
And that's that's the kind of fabric you're looking for if you're trying to understand, you know, the clothing that the universe wears that we call reality. This is like feeling the lapels, you know, what I mean and getting
some sensory input. The researchers that we're talking about when they're when they're talking about cosmic rays, Silas and the gang are looking at this high energy radiation that comes from outside the Solar system, and their idea is if these cosmic behave as though they are interacting with some sort of lattice structure, it would suggest that we exist in a computer simulation that uses the same techniques as
this lattice gauge theory. So if reality as we know it is bound by a rough structure that is not totally continuous or contiguous, that you know, it has holes in it like a lattice, then maybe the argument is we can notice when some energy like cosmic rays appears to hit part of the boundary and then appears to shoot through the little holes.
But think about that in a computer simulated like virtual world that we've created a simulation, right, you can't shoot things through a boundary of World of Warcraft because it's all software.
Right, Well, you can get to areas of any kind of open world RPG wherein your path is blocked.
You get stuck in the environment. Sometimes you know whatever you know I mean, and to me, my mind with a lot of this stuff goes to the concepts of resolution. You know, if you think about like cameras and pixels, you know how large are. Over time, things have gotten more and more precise in terms of like how tiny the tiny as pixel is.
This is, I don't know.
This is just like sort of a more elaborate version of that in a weird way, but maybe not. And it also makes me think of the concept of a very early I believe it was Pythagoras who came up with the idea of monads, which was like a unit of representational stuff, you know. I think it's described as an elementary individual substance that reflects the order of the world and from which material properties are derived, which even
in and of itself, is sounds like a construct. It sounds like a simulation are derived, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, I love it because for the longest time humans have been asking themselves. Humans love what are they called superlatives, So humans have always been asking themselves what is the smallest thing? What is the biggest thing? We
have to give a couple of notes about this idea. First, for this to be real, humans would have had to would have to develop some very sophisticated technology, the kind of stuff that doesn't quite exist yet, something that could measure and detect cosmic rays and their behavior with a very high degree of accuracy and fidelity, right, because humans are still working in linear time. And then that requires
a few additional assumptions. First, whatever created this simulation would have had to follow a practice similar to what the researchers are doing in their own tiny universe without a common starting point, the whole concept, the whole argument, the whole thought experiment, it collapses, not a wave collapse, but hashtag no joke left behind. And then second, whatever creative generative force was there, it would have also had to
have made a finite universe in which humans exist. Remember, right, If there is no ending to this universe, then there is nothing for that lattice to exist around. There's nothing
for it to contain, so lattice theory doesn't matter. And then maybe the most important assumption, we would have to assume the designers of this universe are not actively preventing people from discovering that they are in fact part of a simulation I think, I mean, do we want to pause for a word from our response, whatsre we have to talk about the caveats, the implications.
What does this mean? You know?
Well, yeah, it just makes me think about UAP. If you wanted to come in and talk to the simulated.
You could come in as you know, a thing that looks like one of the simulated and speaks like one of the simulated and just interacts amongst them, or you could send in whatever you were, you know, like I'm trying to imagine, like, hello, fellow kids, I'm thinking back back in the day It's Ultimate Online, when a GM game manager would show up and just like pop in to where you are and be like, oh, hi, what
seems to be the problem. Oh, I understand, let's talk about it, and like tries to help you with a problem, and then just pops out of the universe, Like could that happen? Would it look like a UAP that's just sitting there floating as a cube inside a sphere?
This is like tech support?
What a.
Excuse me? You seem to be having some difficulties with simulation.
What can we do to make your simulation experience as as pleasant as possible?
I love that?
What if?
What if you in religions are real and you die and it's just like going to tech support instead of having yeah, and it's.
All done over a.
Really really quickly. Then you have to get in our group. Text Threat had mentioned the new balders Gate game, which apparently is great. People are screaming about the new balders Gate game. And it is a big like choose your an adventure type you know, RPG, but it sort of is more like a virtual D and D. So it's a little less where it's this accurate, super precise simulation and more like terms of a tabletop game that you might recognize, but with all the benefits of it being a virtual thing.
I just that hybrid approach is.
What my mind is starting to go to for like what this whole thing is all about?
And let's pause there in our since we are bound by linear time, we are going to make some time for goods and services from our sponsors and we will be right back. Or are we already here? Have we always been?
Sorry?
Let's go, We have returned.
So what does this mean?
You know, you're listening to this show now, You're in Brisbane, You're in Jakarta, you're in Kansas City, you're in New York. Or Atlanta, maybe even Russia. We've gotten some weird emails. What does this mean for you? If the universe as you understand is made up well, honestly, right now, it does not change much. Doesn't change the price of a case. Indea, it doesn't matter what your philosophical leanings or your ideology or beliefs are. All human minds understand basic truths about
the reality. If you're a human, you emerge into the world, experience stuff, your body decays over linear time, and at some point you disappear, and no dead person has ever come back in a provable way. If there is some greater meta reality, we might think about our experiences differently, But those experiences are not going to be different from your phenomenological perspective. Like, You're still going to experience stuff
the same way. You'll just have different thoughts about what's happening and why and knowing that you live in a simulation. Is it going to change those basic truths? Oh, except for the part that it means there would be a god. That's like the one thing. It means there would be a creator.
I'm on board with that.
I don't know, man, I think sure do seem for it to all be from entropy, for it to all be from chaos and un organized you know, madness.
Things sure did.
Find themselves into an orderly, relatively orderly way that allow us to live here on this planet. And it also reminds me of a thing that I think we've all talked about with our good buddy Frank friend of the show, who took a.
Class or audited a class or took.
A massive one of those massive online classes on complex systems and the idea of complex systems and like how they can be modeled and some of the features of complex systems, which can be anything from like the way the water table works and the water cycle to like you know, the connection between members of different animal species and all of that stuff and just you know, natural things where you have to look at the individual components
in order to fully understand the bigger picture. And there's tons of simulations that are done in the world of complex systems.
Absolutely, yeah, And before we go any further, because we are now we are addressing scientific implications that do go into the world of spirituality. So again, your spirituality is your own. When you hear Matt or Noel or yours truly talking about this kind of deep faith based stuff. Know that we're speaking for ourselves. We're not telling you what to believe. With that being said, I'd like to shout out Epicurus, who has one of my favorite quotes
about this kind of thing. Is God? If God is real? Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent? Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
I love that. I have never heard that. I agree with all of that.
I've always had an issue with the whole It's free will. Man, God's not gonna, you know, keep you from suffering. That's not his deal. I'm like, why not thought we were all children of God? Like, why doesn't he intervene? And if he's not, isn't it all just a game? Isn't it all just kind of again that thing that he's just observing to see how it'll play out, which seems a little nihilistic and not particularly charitable to his creations.
You know, well, have you ever been mean to your sims? You know, do you ever play civilization six and just think I'll nuke it.
Why not?
That's like the idea, right or for a human analog walking by an an hill and stepping on it for a momentary, little little little shot, see like you.
Grow out of that.
I feel like that's the kind of stuff that petulant children do. And I would really hope that, you know, someone with the power and.
Clout of a god would be above that. Maybe.
But this, okay, So all this means, if if one could prove a simulation exists, all this means is that there is some sort of again I hesitate to use the word God, some sort of generative force. But from the human perspective, it would be something like the divide. It would be a creator from wind Sprang all creation, and it might not have any remote resemblance to any human concepts of God. Like I think, I went back and looked to science fiction for one of my favorite
ways to understand this potential new state of reality. And I think we should shout out one of the absolute best examples of simulation theory from the world of fiction. It is a short story called The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clark, whom we quote often on this show and our boy Artie he wrote this absolute banger way back in nineteen fifty three.
Do you guys know this story? We've talked about this show before, but okay, I don't. I don't even want to. Man, It's like, okay, fine, well, okay.
The setup. The setup.
It's very short. It's also freely available online as an audio book and as text. You can listen to it now. It won't take up a lot of time. The setup is that there is a remote monastery in the Himalayas, and they have contracted these two computer engineers to build a very advanced computer for them. That's the That's all I can tell you. I think that's enough of a tease, right, No, you are gonna when when you read or hear this, man, I guarantee you're going to hit the group chat.
What the hell?
I also, you know you you gave a really good quote about the nature of God from an more uh classic kind of source. I would love to offer one from a more modern source. An amazing writer and musician named David Berman who sadly passed away.
A handful of years ago.
He has a song called Margerita is at the mall from this record he made called Purple Mountains, and I think the lyrics.
Are fabulous and really go along with kind of what you.
Said, Ben, It's how long can a world go on under such a subtle God? How long can a world go on with no new word from God? See the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God, trotting the sod.
Of the visible with no new word from God.
I'm sorry, the wordplay alone is worth the price of admission.
But I think it really I think it hits and then.
We're just shrinking. Margarita is at the mall. That's the next line. It's yeah, it hits, man, And especially when you know this is a very sad individual who struggled with this kind of stuff and these sort of questions and this sort of what does it all mean? And managed to write it in such a tongue in cheek,
a cerbic kind of way. And this this man took his own life very shortly after this album was released, And if you listen to it with that in mind, it really does read like the world's most hilarious tongue in cheek suicide note. So all that to say is These questions are not minor. These are like everything, you know what I mean, too many people and some people
can't go on because it's just too much. It's too much, you know, to think about all these possibilities and what does it all mean and the meaninglessness or meaningfulness of it all. I just think it's important to mention the mental health aspect of a lot of these types of things.
You know, sure, yes it's it's a it's a big, big thing to get your head around. And you know, science is very good at explaining how, and spirituality attempts to explain why. So this gets us into a troubling range ven diagram between those two pursuits, which I would
also argue are not mutually exclusive science and spirituality. We're out here on the bleeding edge of metacognitive experience, and we have to ask what would happen if we could not just prove the universe was a simulation, but what would happen if we could interact with whatever generative force created this simulation? Would they tell us that they were also part of a simulated reality? Would they want to hear from you? What would they say? What would their
priorities be? These are questions that haunt us. They echo from the ancient past, pre linguistic ancient past, to the modern day. And for fans of mathematics, the idea of the universe has nothing more than a sophisticated form of code. What's super intriguing. That's a umami right there. We can understand ones and zeros. You know, it's devilishly if you'd permit the pun.
Well, imagine you're playing SimCity. You create just just one city, right, a single city, but you created it. Imagine that each of those individual citizens of your city prayed to you as the god their creator. Each one individually does and says, you know, praise to you, tries to communicate with you
in some way. You are one person. How do you respond to and take care of each one of those you know, creature's demands, each one of those individuals demands or asks or wants or needs, like if we were if we're taking it to that level right now, Imagine instead of a city, it's a planet. And now imagine instead of a planet, it's a galaxy and a universe and a web of galaxies like I'm imagining just you know, asking these questions of like getting to communicate with a creator.
I don't know, man, I do controlled opposition. I would create a Promethean Luciferian character in the city and be like, tell me your grievances, let's team up. You know what I mean. That's just to keep things interesting.
I think this is a quote from Stanley Kubrick. I've seen it attributed to him a bunch and I couldn't find anything saying otherwise. I believe I've said this one before too, but it's so appropriate. He says, how would essentially an ant view the foot that crushes his aunt hill as the action of another being on a higher evolutionary scale than itself, or as the divinely terrible intercession of God?
Right?
Right, it's a good question, right, It's one that applies now. I mean, this planet civilization is one Gamma Ray burst away from just popping, right, and there's nothing you could do about it. Shout out again to Josh Clark at the End of the World with Josh Clark, great show. Check out the Gamma Ray episode. If here's that's another intriguing thing, another baffling thing. There are certain patterns of numbers that seem to spontaneously generate impredictable patterns throughout all
observable human experience. They're the same every time, They're very just so. The most famous, of course, would be Pie. Do check out that amazing film Pie, But then also check out the world record, which changes pretty often of individuals who are able to recite Pie from memory to the longest extent. No one knows when Pie ends. Yet, it's just a thing that exists. It's always the same in the entirety of the observable universe, and no one
knows why. Another thing would be the Fibonacci sequence. That's where the sum of each number is the sum of the two numbers. That can before it sounds really simple, gets really interesting. Like that's the thing that gets me. How is that stuff the same? How does that never change? That's the thing that science can't answer because that's a why question, that's not a how question.
And like things like the golden ratio that like appear you know, in nature so often.
Ah, yeah, I don't know, man.
I had a conversation with a dear friend the other day about sort of like the nature of reality and like sort of like a lot of these existential threats outside of the simulation thing but I do think that whatever the case, you know, we do know that I think this experience, whether it's simulation or not, is painfully short and pro probably best to do anything we can to not beat ourselves up psychically over these kinds of things, and just to kind of, at least at the very
least enjoy this ride to some degree.
And if it gives you.
Joy to think about these kinds of things and to analyze it, then I think it's something that you should do. But I just I think some people can go down really dangerous rabbit holes with these kinds of things, and it can lead to problematic lives, and I just don't want.
Everyone to have a good time, that's all. That's my whole thing.
Sure, And for those of us playing along at home, what you need to know is it's probably best for us to save the ideas of these what I would call this constant math for a future episode, a follow up episode. All we need to walk away with is this for now, there does appear to be some sort of again discernible, predictable pattern towards certain events and structures within this larger universe from the very very small to the very very large, until you get to the edges
of experience. It seems like there's a weird symmetry to stuff. There's a weird sort of call and response that reality is making toward you. It reminds me of all the you know, the old the old masters were right as above, so below. When Rumy says you know that which you seek is seeking you, it's okay. Well, now I sound like the photojournalist at the end of apocalypse now, but we'll keep moving on. People don't understand why these patterns exist.
They do.
The Fibonacci sequence is in everything from basic math to patterns of cicada lifestyle. It's very popular here in the US South. Scientists have learned to model and predict patterns and everything from fingerprints to cacti. And while the nature of this dilemma may not be readily apparent for everybody just hanging out as possible simulation, some of the world's smartest people are working around the clock to figure out whether or not there is an essential code, some sort
of fabric from which this universe's clothing is composed. Before we end, I guess we should add Bostroums totally legitimate. This is a very smart person working in good faith, and he says in his paper, which you can read for free online, he says, look, all the points I've made do not prove that we are definitely living in a computer simulation. Further, he says, it might be impossible for us to ever reach a point where we can
build our own universes at home. It might be because we can't get the technology, or because there's always a possibility. It might mean that humans go extinct before ever reaching that technological point. Here's the thing, it's kind of petering out, are you guys? There's just Jonathan pointed this out over on tech stuff as well, Jonathan Strickland, There's no real way to disprove simulation theory. It is not what we call a falsifiable claim. It's a thought experiment.
But like so that's one thing that I kind of held back. I guess Bostrom does he really believe this? Is he sort of being a clever, cheeky little devil or like you know, sort of like do like again, to your point about it being a thought experiment, He's basically saying, if then if this heck is possible or becomes possible, then it has happened. Before, but then that pause. It's a whole nother kind of timey, whimy doctor who kind of scenario that also isn't really provable.
I mean, like, what's his deal? Does he?
Do you really think he's he believes this? Or is he just being too clever for his own good?
I think it's it's an exploration, That's what it is. I don't think, I mean, clearly he's not. He and other people are not attempting to found religious movements based on this. They're not attempting God right, They're not attempting I was good. They're not attempting to bilk people, you know, And you can also the conversation continues. You can find plenty of work questioning this or attempting to disprove simulation as a concept. I think there were I can't remember
their names. There were some physicists who looked at the knowable balands of classic computers and said it was impossible, indeed to create a computer that could simulate a universe. It's it's ongoing, and it's quite a high stakes exploration. Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks about this, But I want to give space one thing. Matt you've been kind of quiet, as Nola and I are, as he said,
if then ing through this stuff. And I know there's a lot on your mind because you and I have talked about this for many years.
What do you think.
I just don't have anything to add. I looked at some of the latest attempts, like scientific attempts to work on this. It's not a problem to put more shed more light on these questions. Right, I'm not seeing anything that's blowing my mind. I always go back to the work of James Gates that I remember watching a video of him a long time ago talking about these things. He referred to them as error correcting codes, and they're associated with browsers that we use to hang out on
the Internet. And when he was studying, you know, stuff in the atomic level, quarks and those things, he at least in his talk back then, years and years and years ago, he was saying that he was finding error correcting codes very similar to the ones we use for web browsers inside like the code of the universe. Basically that was at the sub atomic level, and that always blew my mind. But I could never find any further
information on it. I don't know I'm just at a point right now where I haven't seen anything that is making me believe it harder.
What if this whole universe is a sponsored ad for some other universe, you know what I mean?
What if this whole universe is an everything bagel? M m, yeah.
What if there is source code for the universe and it turns out it's something like drink oval teine.
Remember that movie Source Code with Jake Gillenhall was directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones. It had some of these kind of themes, the idea of a simulation of like the ability to change the past, you know, time traveling stuff. But it was a little more on the simulation to But it's been a minute so I've seen.
It, but I remember it being good.
I don't know.
Well, but Matt, do you think Bostrom's being a cheeky little fella or do you think he, like.
Is really believes this.
That's always a big question for me, you know, And I guess with scientists it's different. With politicians usually you could go either way. But like with scientists, I'm like, is it even about belief or is he just conjecturing?
He's just saying this is a possibility.
It personally, it's very weird to me. I have been under the influence of substances in the past where I fully, truly thought I understood the fabric of the simulation, not of the universe, not of reality, but of the simulated, computer generated thing that I was living in. And I've had those real moments that I like, they stick with
me and I think about them. But for this specific topic, I don't dwell on those moments because I don't like what like thinking about that further and taking the thoughts to maybe their conclusions of if we are in fact in a simulation like.
That you're talking about monster energy drink, I assume, right.
Uh yeah, sure, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
It'll do it.
But what I mean is like that I'm sorry, just you know, That's why I've been kind of quiet, because I think about this stuff. But I'm like, I don't know, I don't even know if I I don't know if I personally want to explore it much further.
It's scary. And we talked a little.
I think we did a video recently where we all give some book recommendations, and I talked about one that I think we all appreciated called the spirit molecule about DMT, and so many DMT trip experiences have very similar results where people see these like creatures, you know, these like machine elves or whatever, and there's a lot of conjecture around that various communities that these might well be the creatures pulling the strings behind the simulation, right, I don't know, Ben,
I see you kind of just see the wheels turning. Is that something that you've heard in terms of like that's a way to see through the veil into the source code, and maybe there are things that are pulling the strings that are observing us that we are not aware of.
Yeah, said that we do function on a constraint of linear or time and have to wrap this up because that is a favorite hobby horse of mine.
I would.
I know, not everyone agrees with Graham Hancock, but the guy can spin a story for sure. It goes to the concept of discovery. It goes to the concept of information being conveyed via human DNA and being able to interact directly with some sort of sentient force within that DNA when under the influence of certain usually psychedelic or who loucinogenic substances. There is so much more to the story, and I'm so glad we finally got to this. I
think this is the first of a continuing series. We have much more to explore in the existence of numbers as source code for reality. But for now, you guys, Matt Noel, Mission Control, fellow conspiracy realist, We've got to call it an evening. I have become strange. I am doctificant. We have miles to go before we sleep. Shall we pass the torch to our fellow sims and see if they can solve the question of reality for us?
What does sims say on their little weird language?
I like that weird little things like that.
I can't simulish is a thing that it's called, and I used to remember it was like David the Gnome type language. But anyhow, please reach out to us. Let us know what your experiences of all of these things. You know, if you have any theories to add, let us know. You can find us on the internet on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, where we are conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
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