TechStuff Classic: Are we living in a computer simulation?

This is a philosophical question that has received a lot of attention and back in Lauren Voge Obama and I really thought it'd be a lot of fun to explore that whole concept. So enjoy this classic episode do we live in a computer simulation? And in fact, the reason why we're even talking about this is a few years ago a philosopher, and boy is that a surprise, no one. A philosopher by the name of Nick Bostrom who works at a little um yeah tiny, like in academic circles.

They have some swagger. It's the University of Oxford. Yeah, yeah, as far as the boffins go at Swagger City, right anyway, Yeah, he works at the University of Oxford and he's a philosopher employed there. Who so his job is to sit around and think about the nature of reality. And he presented an interesting thought experiment. He said, do we live

in a computer simulation? Is everything that we experience and everything that's around us actually just the product of some sort of computer program in a universe larger than our own? And we'll talk about you know. What led him into this kind of line of thinking and his arguments presenting the likelihood that we are actually in a computer simulation. But before we begin in that, I thought it'd be

interesting to look back quite a way. Is actually because this idea that reality as we understand it is not not exactly new at all. We've been pondering for basically as long as we could ponder things, whether or not our our experience of reality is reality. Yeah, and and part of that is understandable. I mean, we know for a fact that reality consists of stuff that is beyond

our perception, right, Oh, sure, absolutely. Like I don't know when the last time you looked into the infrared spectrum was, but the last time for me was never because it's outside my visual acuity. I can't see in the infrared spectrum, all right, And there's lots of lots of things above our scale of hearing, above and below our scale of hearing. Um, if you talk to sharks, they can they can hear different stuff, but my dogs totally different stuff that I

can hear. Yeah, and and even even before we had as much scientific data about that as we do now, you know, if we had done the research, we can tell you the exact spectrums that we can see within but outside of visual which is a pretty good word for it. But um, but but yeah, you know it's it's even long, long, long times before that people are

pondering these questions and all kinds of literature. Uh goes into literature and philosophy right right all the back in one one of the famous famous examples of this kind of philosophy was proposed by a fellow named Renee Descartes, about whom Monty Python had some rude things to sing. If you know that your philosopher's song. But Descartes, um, I think therefore I am uh fellow. He wrote something called the Meditations on First Philosophy, and he presented an

very similar thought exercise to the one that Nick Bostrom mentioned. Now, his was called the Evil Demon, or sometimes people refer to it as the evil genius problem. And he said, well, what if everything that I renee, I think therefore I am Decartes experience is actually just an illusion that's generated by an evil force. In his case, he was from an evil demon. So there's this malevolent creature that is

capable of creating everything that Decard is experiencing. So while he thinks he's walking around and being really smart and chatting with other smart people and having a croissant um, in reality, he's not. He's just he's just a consciousness that's being manipulated by this evil demon and everything that's happening to him is an illusion that's created by him. And this is unfalsifiable, right. It means that that means that there's no way that you can prove that it's wrong.

It's like if I say, there's a six ft invisible bunny walking around behind me all the time, makes no noise and has no scent, right, and you can't touch it. You cannot touch. Yeah, that well, that there's no way for me to prove that you're wrong. I will sit

here and I will think that you are crazy. Or Donnie Darko, but that uh, you know, or Deborah Donka don't darko, I don't know, I mean, or the character in in Harvey there you go, yes, but but you know, there's no way for me to prove that there's not a six ft invisible, untouchable, unsensible, unhearable bunny behind you. So that's that's called that. It's called unfalsifiable. That means it is not scientific. Scientific principles premises these sort of things.

They are falsifiable, meaning that there should be a set of criteria under which you would say this is not true right now. It does not mean that what you're saying isn't true. It just means it has to be possible, that has to be within the realm of possible. In order for something to be proved, it has to be able to be disproved exactly. And so if it's unfalsifiable, it's not scientific. Now I should also stress if it's unfalsifiable and unscientific, that also does not mean it's not true.

It could be true. It could absolutely be true. String is a great example of this. We call it a theory, but but some people argue it's a philosophy, Well, it's a it's yeah, it's not a mathematical theory, and I get into arguments sometimes of people on Facebook about this because the theory is the word that has many many meanings.

Mathematical meaning of it is is something that has been proven is true, whereas has been exercised the whole scientific theory versus I have a theory, which is really more like I have an idea of why this is the way it is. Scientific theory and that kind of theory are two different things, but anyway, uh yeah, string theory would say that the entire universe is made up of

these tiny, little vibrating strings. And we're talking like tiny, as in tinier than sub atomic particles, tiny small, and that the way they vibrate, that's what makes stuff what it is. Well, mathematically this makes sense, but there is no way we can uh we can observe this or test this, so therefore it's unfalsifiable and unscientific using that particular definition. Uh So, same sort of thing here with

Renee di Caart and his theory. And this is not again, not the first time this idea has popped up, but it's one of the really famous ones. And that's back in So if we look at the modern version, you've got Nick Bostrom talking about a computer simulation, and his whole argument hinges on this idea of transhumanism or the singularity.

So we kind of have to talk about what the singularity is so that we can finally get around to this whole computer simulation problem, right, and and and also talk about trans human because that that's basically a fancy term for stuffy. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a fancy term for saying what happens when we reach a point in in advances in science and medicine in biology where we can transform ourselves to a point where we

are no longer strictly speed being human. Right, Like, we have altered ourselves on some fundamental level, and we aren't we we wouldn't be human as we recognize it today, right, that our our technology has bonded to us in a way, or that our science has bonded to us a way. Right, we we've understood genetics enough so that we're all mutants like in the X Men, or we have all become cyborgs, or we have all transmitted our consciousness into computers and

there are no physical versions of us anymore. And these are all different ways that we could in theory become trans human. So it's a very generic term that spreads across multiple possibilities. Right, there's no one trans human because really, I mean, the thing is that we don't know because we're not there yet. It hasn't happened yet, as it turns out. I mean, there's a few of us who are a little wacky, but but it doesn't mean some

of us are clearly better than others. I mean, okay, I mean we're not we're not naming names, but we're pretty awesome. But no, that's the area of trans humanism. Singularity is sort of one of the pathways where we could reach this sort of trans human future. And the singularity is this idea that several futurists have proposed about the fact that technology advances are continuing at a faster

and faster pace each each year, really exponentially exponentially. You've got things like Moore's law, where, depending on how you're defining it, essentially the computer power is doubling every two years um, but other technological advances are are happening at an even faster rate that we will eventually come to a point where we are advancing continuously with no break between the generation, right right, if you think of like operating systems and how they come out, like you know

Windows seven and then Windows But then you think, all right, well, then down the road it might be the every six months, and then it might be every three months, and then it might just be that every single day there's something new that's being incorporated, or every second or every a second, right cetera. So at that point, things are changing so fast that you cannot even define the era you are

in because there's nothing like within within one moment. Uh you have changed so much that it's it's pointless to try and defind a series of moments. Right at this point in our future, we would hit what is called the singularity. And part of one of the defining features of the singularity is it's impossible for us to say what will happen once we hit that point, because by its very nature, it's going to evolve so fast that we cannot conceive of what I mean. It's it's kind

of pointless to talk about it too much. Doesn't stop me, but it's pointless. It doesn't stop philosophers. Either doesn't stop me, And there are many pointless discussions that you cannot stop me from having This is one of them anyway, So the singularity could happen in various ways. Again, biology, science, technology, These are all the different avenues that that could lead to the singularity or could be you know, yeah and uh.

And that forms the very crux of Bostrom's argument. Let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So Nick Bostrom's argument uh is worded this way here. Here's from a paper he wrote on the subject, a technologically mature post human civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the

following propositions is true. One, the fraction of human level civilizations that reach a post human stage is very close to zero. To the fraction of post human civilizations that are interested in running ancestor simulations is very close to zero or three. The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences they are living in a simulation is

very close to one. Now, what that essentially means is that if we are able to reach a post human phase, this trans human phase where we have at our fingertips practically limitless resources because of things are being so magical

and rainbows are popping out of everything. That uh that if that's the case, then we should be able to create a computer simulation of the universe that is within the realm of the simulation itself extremely realistic, and that we could also create within this, uh, this universal simulation stimulated intelligent beings, so that these these created beings would have sentience, they have consciousness, They would they might be

very much like modern humans. Yes, they be self aware, but they would exist within the context of this created universe, and so they would only be able to see the things that are within that universe. Anything outside of the universe they would be incapable of perceiving. So within that universe, it would seem like they were quote unquote the real people, right. They were. They were the people who were there because of whatever forces caused the universe to create be created

in the first place. Um, And that for these people within the simulated universe, it might be completely impossible for them to detect anyone outside of it, anyone being us

that we were the ones creating it. So his argument is that if we in fact reached the stage, and if we would use our technology to create simulations so that we could see how civilizations develop and that we would see how we do that interesting bits of the universe work, because we're intrinsically curious, right, So his argument is, if it's possible, we would do it, yes, And if it's possible and we would do it, that means we, the current people living in this universe, almost surely a

computer simulation. So if it can happen, and if we are interested in ourselves, and we obviously are, then it's

almost a guarantee that we're in a computer simulation. And the reason for that argument is that in order for us to not be a computer simulation, we would have to be the first ones, right, we would have to be heading towards that timeline and just haven't gotten there yet, Mr. Fusion, whereas in every other case, some other post human civilization has already gotten there and made at least one level of simulated universe, which means that one out of infinity

means we're the first, and then every other example is we're number two or lower. So yeah, that's that's that's kind of the crux of his argument, and it's really again a philosophical argument it's not meant to say, right, we're we're in a we're in a computer game, because because somebody that it's set up. Yeah that you know, if if you're saying that that ad infinitum percent of

the time, we're probably a computer simulation. That it's you're you're placing the burden of proof on that point nine, etceterascent of the population who might think you're wrong and that. So, but it's really fair, it's an interesting it's an interesting question. It's it's again unfalsifiable at right now. But but here's the funny thing. Boston makes this the statement, but it's purely from a philosophical point of view, right, It's not from a physics point of view, it's not from a

science point of view. It's philosophy. That has not stopped other people from looking at this from a scientific point of view. And that, to me is another interesting aspect of this argument is that usually you would look at an argument like this and say, okay, well that's an

interesting philosophical question. Ultimately, there's nothing I can do about that one way or the other, and then you go about your mary a little way, right, But a bunch of nice I'm I'm assuming um quantum scientists have gotten together. Are you assuming they're nice? Are you assuming their quantum signed assuming well, I'm assuming both. I'm going to go

ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt. There have been have been doing some research into quantum chromodynamics, which is which is a theory about one of the four fundamental forces in our universe. So the four fundamental forces are strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and gravity. And that is in fact, in the order of how powerful they are, right, gravity is the weakest, is the one that we're having the most trouble incorporating into our

model of the universe. Uh. Strong nuclear force deals with the force of you know, you know those nucleus is things as the nuclei the exists inside atoms. You know how they have like stuff that's stuck together, like protons and neutrons. And we're not sure why because because hypothetically

two protons should should push each other each other. If you've ever played with magnetics, we well, strong nuclear force is the force that that's the name for the reason why these things are stuck together so strong whether why they're able to stick together, clearly it has to be an incredibly strong force, an incredibly strong force that only kicks in in incredibly short distances. We're talking on the atomic scale. So the strong nuclear force is what quantum

chromo dynamics is all about studying. And one of the ways that quantum chromo dynamics or q c D should be way easier to say is to to look at this as a part of well, it looks at reality as four space time dimensions, so four dimensions. We mentioned string theory earlier, So versions of strength theory require that there are no fewer than eleven dimensions for strength theory to work, which is basically beyond my comprehension entirely. I I get X, y Z and time that I can

I can get a three dimensional object moving through time. Yeah, that's cool. Beyond that it gets a little wonky. Yeah, yeah, wibbly wobbly. I'm right there with you, and uh and yeah,

the same thing. And then again this this plays back to that discussion we have at the very beginning where we talked about, you know, we know the universe consists of stuff that's beyond our perception, but you know, we have to filter that through our brains and our brains are acting as a middleman between our consciousness and reality.

So the things that we experience may very well be in their fundamental nature extremely different from the way we think of them because it's being filtered through because we have to model them in a this this concept we shouldn't have done. This philosophy makes me sad. I just realized that my brain is what's making you sit there and you think, like, think about it. If you have

a bad day, you're thinking, wait a minute. Part of the reason I'm having a bad day is because my brain is filtering things in a it's my fault, and then I just it becomes this cirable loop of of everything is terrible because of my brain, which is making things terrible. A little glimpse into Jonathan Strickland, folks, that's how I get just before I have to go to c E S. I know this episode publishes after I come back, but trust me, it's it's a terrible life.

Having to fly around the country and look at really shiny technological objects. You're not helping this suspicious cycle going on. Getting back to qc D. So part of part of this is looking at reality as for spacetime dimensions. Uh, and it's using computers that are really really powerful to do this and creating something that's uh, well, it's it's it's it's called a lattice gauge. Uh. It's last gage

theory actually. Uh. ATM is sort of the framework within which q c D tries to explain the strong nuclear force. And uh, this part of this means that we try and simulate and then incredibly tiny simulated universe, right, right, And this is on the this is on actually the femto scale by saying that, right is correct, excellent, um, And and a femtometer is one quadrillionth of a meter nanometer for for references, one billionth of a meter. And

that's also very small. Yes, yeah, when you talk about nanotechnology and that super small technology that is enormous compared to the femto scale, we're talking really really really tiny. Well, they build this sort of lattice structure to contain the simulated universe, and within this simulated universe, they are examining the elements that make up the strong nuclear force so that we can understand what it is and how it works better. Right, that's the whole purpose. One of the

big driving forces of the universe. We want to understand it. But these these physicists said, hey, wait a minute. If this is how we are simulating and entirely fake universe, a very tiny universe, doesn't it stand to reason that some other like if we are and if we became hyper advanced, if if we went trans human, couldn't those trans humans in fact use the same technology to simulate an entire universe on a big scale, on a really large scale niver scale, right, or or at least for us.

I mean, you could also argue that just to populate a fimpto sized universe with with even smaller individual units within that fimpto sized universe, the idea being that, well you could you could create a stimulation that is a true universe with inhabitants and intelligent inhabitants, and that if in fact we are in a computer simulation, then perhaps there's some way that we could text if this lattice

structure is around our own universe. Um. Yeah, this is where it's getting to the point where it's hard for me to actually explain because it's stretching both of our grasps on quantum mechanics are are perhaps not as strong as they could be, and cosmology for the matter. For that matter, because we're talking about things like cosmic rays.

The physicists suggested that perhaps we could um observe cosmic rays and and really study them in depth and see how they behave within our universe and look for evidence of a lattice structure, which would indicate that some other larger universe had used the same techniques we used to create the fimto universes we're making to look at the strong nuclear force to make our own universe, and then we'd say, hey, look there's evidence we are in a

computer simulation crap. There are there are some issues with this. One is that, uh, it presumes that any post human civilization would use the exact so uh, there's another assumption that said post human society would allow us to be able to find our own right that you know, they wouldn't paint in a nice little backdrop that would prevent us from seeing the scenes, like to put in a patch or to reset us. Let's go back to bronze age, Pope,

folks control or delete um. There's also the argument that, well, what if our universe is so large that it is a bounded universe, because that's the other thing. A lattice structure would also indicate that our universe does have finite it's a finite universe. What if that finite universe is still too big for us to ever be able to see the edges, or what if the universe just is finite anyway. Yeah, it could be that the universe is finite anyway and has nothing to do with the lass structure.

And so there are a lot of a lot of objections that people have brought up. But mainly what this approach would allow us to do is if we saw the last structure, we could maybe draw some conclusions. But in any other case, like if we didn't see the last structure, it doesn't answer any questions. All right, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Yeah, it doesn't mean

that we're not in a computer simulation. So this so it's interesting, But again it's just sort of an extension of this thought experiment where, uh, you know, we're kind of getting round to the point that I'm most interested in in this whole discussion that all right, let's let's say that let's say that we are in a computer simulation, whether we know it or not. It doesn't it doesn't matter. We don't necessarily need to know that we are. But let's just let's just assume assuming that we are that

we are. Does that matter on a day to day scale? Would it matter if we were in a computer simulation in some ways? Now, if we don't know, it doesn't matter at all. I mean, you know, if we if yeah, you know, if if we had absolute proof of it, then that would be that would be huge, That would

be shattering. Yeah, that would that would probably cause wars. Yeah, for for all kinds of philosophies and religions and and just interpersonal I mean, I mean within my own head, I would probably need to spend a few days just just a drooling because talking about my normal weak this is what I do. Alright, Fine, Okay, so now I know something different between me and Lauren learn a new stuff?

Um No, I I agree that that. And if we don't know, there was no difference because the rules that we have created for ourselves, but based on our cultures and our society, those haven't changed. Like like if I found out somehow, like if if knowledge were given to me personally, everyone who's alive, that yes, in fact, you live in a computer simulation. After I had that moment where I I upped my drooling capacity for my daily allowance of drooling, I would sit there and think, well, ultimately,

this doesn't change anything. I mean, it's my life still has meaning within the context of the world I live in. We still need to go get lunch, we still we still get married, we still die, and I still I still laugh, I still cry. I still find that Mitchell and Web look to be absolutely hilarious, and I would really like it if Netflix streaming would bring it back for me. I mean, you know, all these sort of

things would still be true. So I don't think that ultimately it changes anything unless it were something where we could definitively prove it, and then that would change major things, like essentially a lot of people would have to answer some very tough questions in regards to philosophy and religion particularly, but other things as well. But those two insticularly some very nice philosophy departments would be more or less out of jobs. Yeah, well, you know, actually you'd step away

from being out of a job anyway. Come on, we're talking about philosophy here. Snap. This is coming from a literature major Okay, I did you see that. This is off topic, But there was a list I think of the most unemployable majors came out. Philosophy I think was in the top three. Yeah, literature was in the top ten. Was it was it? I was created writing? Do you have any creative writing? I think they didn't even put in there. It's like, are you Neil Gaiman? No? Um, hey,

I'm an editor. I'm working in my field, folks. That's true, that's true. I'm I don't know what my field would be. So I was a medieval literaguy. I guess I'd be teaching medieval literature if I were in my field. But it's funny that I went into technology podcasting instead. So anyway, ultimately, I don't think it would really matter. There's no way of knowing currently one way or the other. So from that perspective, thought exercise right. Yeah, hey there it's Job

of twenty nineteen again. Time to take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So, ultimately, uh, it may or may not matter if we're in a computer simulation. But the other question to ask is how feasible is it? How would it be possible to actually create a universe on this what would it take to create a universe on this scale? Right? And I mean because simulating something

is actually very much more complicated than just doing it. Um. For for example, UM, I was reading one article that that sided a number where if you were to take a hard drive and you wanted to create a simulation of that entire hard drive, you would have to simulate every single adom, minute, record, its position, it's it's time scale,

everything about it. That would be you know, and and and every single atomant and hard drive is maybe intend to the power of twenty four atoms a couple a bunch um and but in order to simulate it, you would have to about have about a hundred bits of

information at least on each of those atoms. Right. So, so when you think about that, if the world is or this universe is a computer simulation, and that means the simulation has to take into account every single object within that world, whether that object is part of something else or or an individual object, its position, it's uh, if it's moving, its relationship to every other object within that universe, how that objects behavior you know, however you

wanted to find that affects other objects. It's it's are you are you going down to the atomic scale? Are you going to the sub atomic scale? How how deep does the rabbit hole go? Right? Right? Because because the other problem here is that as we the human beings who live right here and now, whether it's a computer simulation or not, get more advanced, we get to learn more about our environment and we get to look even

deeper than we could before. So like, let's go back to the Stone Age, no microscopes, nothing like anything that was beyond our ability to actually see it did not exist in our minds. And then we got more and more advanced, and we were able to suddenly start seeing things that are tinier and tinier. And then we get to the point where we've got electron tunneling microscopes and we can move individual atoms into place and we can

see things that are really far away. That would mean that the simulation would have to take into account the ability for us to see well beyond what we first right, So that's kind of incredible to think about that way, Like how much power would you have to have to generate this? Is it something that would be added over time so that like you know, someone's someone's checking in every now and like, oh they can see atoms now, all right, well we got to build the next level down, guys,

or or like fire up that extra server. We're gonna need it toe exactly like you know, it's some place in this other larger universes North Carolina, there's another server farm being built. Yeah, I mean it's it's It blows the mind. It becomes one of these things where you, as you start to think about it, you're like, would

that even be possible? Now, from a futurists argument, they might say that in the future will be able to do things like harness the power of black holes to do computing, in which case the limitations of computing suddenly seem like a non problem. Sure, even with quantum computers, which they are already experimenting with, we've gotten up to a sixteen sixteen cubits was the last reliable one, but

we've had there been larger ones. The problem with, of course, quantum computers, is that as soon as you really observe the state therein it collapses, that decoheres, and you end up with a classical computer that is severely underpowered to any other normal classical computer. But there are people who

are working on that problem. So yeah, I mean that it may be that reaching such a level of computing power is not possible, And in fact, that was part of Bostrom's point was he was not necessarily saying we live in a computer simulation. He was saying, there's another way of looking at this. We can look at this is saying trans human or post human in the sense

that the futurists have defined. It is an impossibility that we will never get to a point where we have computing power so vast as to be able to simulate an entire universe down to the tiniest detail and have it populated with intelligent creatures, right or even beyond the feasibility of that, the idea that probably we're going to kill all of each other way way before that. Actually

that that was another point. One of his points is saying that it's way more likely than any any sort of civilization reaching post human or trans human uh status would end up wiping itself out in some sort of cataclysmic event, whether on purpose or by accident. So we could have, Hey, we have reached this level of superiority. Now we are going to force our ideological values upon everybody else. And everybody else says no, you're not, and then we all kill each other or we say, hey

was this button? Do zombie outbreak? Those are the only two possibilities. That's a lie, but no that Sposton's point is that that could also be a case. It's really a depressing case. But you could say humankind could hit extinction before we hit posting. More fun to think about that other thing. But overall, zombie I'll break. I agree, walking dead man right down the street from me, that's just to land on normal traffic. That's true. That's true.

It's it's pretty much it's the office before we get to the coffee machine. It is. It gets ugly folks at walkers, a lot of walkers. But yeah, that's I mean, that's a good point, is that it you know, we could we humankind could go extinct. That's one downside. We might not ever be able to reach that level of computational achievement in order to to ever simulate a universe. That's depending upon whom you ask, also a downside. Or we just might never know. So yeah, sometimes it leads

us to to explore the question further. Really, yeah, and we've we've seen that explored in multiple venues, not just philosophy, not just science, but entertainment all over the place. Yeah, I mean going back to a lot of Shakespeare stories we're talking about really, like, like, what's the difference between dreams and reality? Midsummer Night's Dream is kind of a big one. We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

Thank you, Jonathan. Oh, brave new world to have such people, and it tis new to the that's the tempest right there. That's that's our that's our literature major. Yeah here, Yeah, well, you know I used the degree once in a while, but more perhaps more modern things. A few a few of you have probably seen the Matrix. I know, kunk fo I keep quote it. Let's just keep going. I got it. I got this Vanilla sky. Oh no, I haven't seen that. Yeah, I can't do that. The documentary

or the Spanish version effort. Let's so host do you speak Spanish? There we go. That was my total recall. Inception. Um, that's that's that's every other short. Not not inception at all. The inception one would be that's inception love love. These movies, by the way, I'm making a lot of fun, but no, these are good points. I mean you do you do see this theme come up over and over again. Total recall what is real, what is being imagined? Is the

entire story actually only happening in quad? That was his name rights mine? Uh? Or inception? Are you still within a dream? Are you one level down in a dream? Are you two levels down? At the very end of the movie is the is the main character is dream right? Which? And of course that brings into questions something else. This this is a good argument that falls within the same sort of thing about being able to tell versus not

being able to tell. Uh. This is big spoilers for Inception here, obviously, but one of the one of the things they set up in an inception is that one way you can tell if you are in a dream is you have a totem that is specific to you and behaves a certain way in the real world, but in dream space it does not behave that way. Why who knows, But it's convenient physics. The main character has a top, so if he spins the top and the top stops spinning, he knows he's in the real world.

If he's a layer down into a dream world and he spins the top, it just keeps spinning, and that's how he can look at a moment and know if he's in a dream or if he's awake. Uh. There's a problem with this though. If the whole thing is within a dream, there's nothing to stop the dream world from saying at a certain level, this top behaves a

different way. So, in other words, even at the top topples over, which into the movie gives you this kind of idea, is it gonna sp But even at the top word to topple over, that would not answer the question of whether or not you're in a dream, because it only depends upon if that level is real or not. And if it's not real, if that's just another point of the dream, then all it means is that the behaviors of off in one level of the dream behaved

differently than the others. And and similarly, if if our if our future trans human selves decided to make it so that we cannot detect whether or not we are in a dream, then yeah, we're kind of stuck. Yeah, the same thing with the matrix. The whole idea of creating a universe that is not ideal, because if we created an ideal universe, humans would go, this can't be real. My life stinks. There's no way my life is this awesome. And uh, and then we have a universe filled with

Jonathan's Tripling's and nobody wants that. Nobody, nobody wants, not even Jonathan's. And look, I'm enough to deal with already. But yeah, I know there's there's tons of examples. There's there's a lot in science fiction, obviously, obviously especially since since William Gibson in the entire cyberpunk thing became a thing, you know, and that's that's sort of our our entrance into into how did I just make up a word in French? I don't think that that's an actual thing.

Um Ever, ever since cyberpunk happened, we've been we've been looking at technology in in this fearful way, which we always kind of do in horror films. I think that fiction is a really terrific way for us to work out our anxieties because we can go, like, well, in this scary world, all of this terrible things. I think all of these terrible things will happen. However, we're going to have some attractive people in pleather who are going

to take care of it. For us, and that's or die and die in numerous with Yeah, like you said, yeah, it's science fiction and horror, the two genres I think of the most when I think about this kind of mentality, because I also think of things like other movies. Here's another spoiler. Guys, if you're a Josh Ween fan, this is a spoiler, So spoiler for Jos Weeden fans you can skip ahead. But Cabin in the Woods another example

of like what is real and what is what is artifice? Yes, what has been simulated, So there you go, same sort of thing. Um. I don't think that's a huge spoiler

because that's revealed early in the movie. But still, um, at any rate, these are you know, we've explored this idea and multiple forms of media, whether it's entertainment or also a multiple uh disciplines entertainment, science, philosophy, and I don't think it's gonna go away anytime soon because obviously there's no way for us to answer this question, not not unless we detect that last structure. And even then

you're like, well, well then who created us? That could mean anything that could mean and also it could be like inception. We might be levels down from reality. It

could be that marble in the Men in Black. Yeah, yeah, then, yeah, exactly, yes, we could be we could be a moat of dust upon the nose of a dog in another universe, which in itself is a moat of dust upon the nose a another dog, and another universe, which in itself is a moat of dust upon Douglas Adams pencil as he giggles maniacally and writes another book, because in that universe he's stilled around. I like that verse. I do too. I want to, I want to I want to go

to their But yeah, it's a it's a really interesting question. So, um, and if you've heard about this whole thing, because it came up in conversations towards the end of two thousand twelve, which is kind of interesting because the first uh, the publication of Bostrom's work was in the early two think so. But in this case, it was because the physicists had said, hey, there might be a way for us to find out

maybe possibly probably not, but it could happen. U And even then, we're going to have to get to a level of technological uh, advancement that is beyond what we have now. Before we could even hope to detect these cosmic rays. And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you guys liked that one. If you have a suggestion for a future episode, send me an email.

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