Link to Question Submission Form
Contact us at yondercast@gmail.com
Episode Agenda with Time Stamps:
Credits:
Link to Question Submission Form
Contact us at yondercast@gmail.com
Episode Agenda with Time Stamps:
Credits:
Ep.5 - Yondercast: Do We Live in a Simulation?
Ian: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to Yondercast, a show where we do our best to answer your questions. My name is Ian Lake, and this week I'm joined by community icon, Patrick Leitch, as well as another dude named Josh. Guys, how are you doing?
Josh: [00:00:24] I'm doing really good or really well. Grammar. It was the 4th of July.
Ian: [00:00:29] Yeah, it was 4th of July yesterday a s we're recording this, this won't go on air for a little while, but how was your 4th of July?
Josh: [00:00:36] Oh, I feel like I shattered the illusion. It's it was, it was good. I went down to the beach so that I could do my homework and just hung out with family.
Ian: [00:00:44] very nice.
Patrick: [00:00:44] Yeah we got couple of people over and we had Avery watch some fireworks that crackled unexpectedly. . So he was not super thrilled with those. So he decided to get a little upset about that, but that's okay. And we barbecued and enjoyed some time outside for the first time in what seems like a long time and it was great.
Ian: [00:01:06] have to admit I'm a little concerned about the state of our nation at the moment because I went on Netflix the other day to watch something and the number one most popular show on Netflix right now is this show called the Floor is Lava.
Patrick: [00:01:25] Oh,
Josh: [00:01:26] Oh yeah.
Ian: [00:01:27] guys seen that?
Patrick: [00:01:28] I have
Josh: [00:01:28] I haven't watched
Patrick: [00:01:29] but I know what it is.
Ian: [00:01:31] and it's like, I don't know. I'm seeing it as this symptom of just a horrible thing happening in our country right now. it's a really terrible show. Although I did watch a few episodes and enjoyed them, I will be honest, but, man, people aren't bored right now.
Josh: [00:01:49] we're just inventing any kind of TV show at this point.
Ian: [00:01:52] Yeah.
Josh: [00:01:52] Speaking of Netflix, have you guys watched Eurovision?
Patrick: [00:01:57] No. I really want to though.
Josh: [00:02:00] That show is so my sense of humor, I was laughing through the whole thing and that probably says a lot about me that probably didn't need to be disclosed, but I loved that movie.
Ian: [00:02:11] I really enjoyed it. I went to Iceland a couple of years ago and we went to Husavik. We did like a little whale watching in Husavik. So it was just really fun to like see that as being the kind of home setting in that movie. And I wasn't expecting much because the reviews were pretty mixed on it, but I actually found it to be really good.
I thought the music was really well done. the music was funny and catchy and pretty tongue and cheek. I enjoyed it.
Josh: [00:02:38] I downloaded some new artists because of that movie, like the goblin scene, where the guy is like singing and then the girl comes out and they like duet. That was the greatest song in the whole movie. And it's only like a minute long.
Ian: [00:02:51] Also that, what was it like the millennial Viking? I can't remember what they called him. Right. He was this like Viking and a kilt, but he sounded a lot, he was singing a lot like Sam Smith, you know, is that kind of style is really funny.
Josh: [00:03:05] Oh, he had the voice of an angel
Or a Valkerie.
Patrick: [00:03:09] Yeah. That's that's on our watch list for sure. Now I just need to make it happen.
Ian: [00:03:13] It is pretty good.
Patrick: [00:03:15] Ah, maybe we actually form our band and go into the contest. Cause it's a real contest, right? It's not just for the movie. That's like a real actual music competition
Josh: [00:03:27] for Europeans
Ian: [00:03:28] we could found the American version Americ AmeriQuest no Amerivision.
Josh: [00:03:36] you want to include Canada and Mexico, so it should be called like Natorious.
Patrick: [00:03:40] I mean, I think it's a great idea.
Ian: [00:03:41] I also, I did something I haven't done in a little while, which is I threw my VR headset on.
Patrick: [00:03:46] Ooh.
Ian: [00:03:47] I have an Oculus quest and I haven't played it in a little while and I bought a new game. It's called. I Expect You to Die. And.
I know. Right. and I, I threw it on and just completely fell in love with VR again, VR is such a cool technology. I thought maybe like I'd gotten tired, of it for some reason by totally haven't. this particular game is like a, it's like a puzzle game. It's a 3d puzzle game. it's got kind of a 007 sort of British spy theme to it. And you're just like put in these little tiny rooms, and you just have to figure out how to escape.
Basically. It's like a little escape room and you've got to you know, interact with all the different elements in the environment and then things happen. And then you gotta change plans. It's just super fun.
Patrick: [00:04:37] I forget the name of the game, but right before Half Life Alyx came out, I got one that had like a little mouse that you play around with and it's like, you're solving puzzles and it's it's third person. So the mouse is running around, solving kind of like a puzzle. God I Really wish I could remember the name.
Ian: [00:04:55] I think it's called Moss
Patrick: [00:04:57] Moss?
Yeah. I think you had told me about it.
That one is really cool. it's like the cutest little mouse ever, and you run around solving puzzles and you can, move around and like go three 60 around an object and look at the whole map if you will. And in third person. So you can like look around the corner. You would never be able to see in two dimensions. So that aspect of the VR part of it was really cool. And it was really like a calming, soothing, fun game.
Ian: [00:05:24] That one is really cool. it's like playing a regular video game. You know, you can just sit there in a chair and move your character around and you don't have to like, do crazy stuff with your arms or anything like that. But if you want to, if you want to change your perspective, you can get up, like you said, and you know, like you can move your head and get really close to the character that you're moving around. Or you can like look under something or it's just, it's really cool.
Josh: [00:05:50] See, I like that better. Cause VR kind of freaks me out. I'm a giant and the thought of swinging my arms around while being unable to see reality kind of freaks me out. I'm scared I'm either going to hit someone or something or fall down or hurt myself.
Ian: [00:06:07] Yeah. Josh, are you six foot four?
six, seven? Yeah. They say you need like six feet of play space. You'd probably need like 10, something like that.
Josh: [00:06:21] Yeah. If you come in my 10 foot bubble, you're going to get hurt if I play VR.
Patrick: [00:06:25] That's funny.
Ian: [00:06:26] But actually, Patrick, I wanted to ask you how you enjoyed Half-Life Alyx. Cause I can't play it on, on my particular VR headset, which makes me really sad, but I heard incredible things about it. Did you finish it?
Patrick: [00:06:40] I, I did not finish it no. There's just a lot coming out and a lot to do as I gotten near, I feel like I'm maybe halfway if not near the end, but like, it was really fun. Like I really, really, really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, I would highly highly recommend it. Like the controls in it are really cool. The gameplay's really fun. The graphics are great. It's fully immersive as is almost all VR, but yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun.
Josh: [00:07:05] You know, I've never told you guys this, but I've never played a Half-Life game unless you count like the little advertisement that they sent out when I was in high school.
The advertisement was just walking up some stairs and then it just like cut to black. And everybody said that it was an incredible advertisement. I was like, we walked upstairs.
Ian: [00:07:23] I don't even, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Josh: [00:07:26] Some obscure half-life reference, but like I've never played.
Ian: [00:07:30] Oh, wow. They're good. I didn't play the originals, but I played Half-Life 2 and then the two sequels that came out, like episode one and two.
Patrick: [00:07:38] Yeah, it was a big, played a lot of Counter Strike in my younger days.
And like the very first Half Life is like a mod for that. And so it was like, it's been a big part of like, even what started my entire gaming experience.
Josh: [00:07:53] I learned most of my first curse words from playing Counter Strike
Ian: [00:07:56] makes sense.
Josh: [00:07:57] that community. Jeez.
Patrick: [00:08:00] That sounds about right. you'll hear some things you never want to hear in a Call of Duty multiplayer lobby.
Ian: [00:08:06] mute everyone. As soon as you can in that game,
Josh: [00:08:09] If I had a nickel for every time, a 12 year old said that I sucked at video games, I'd have like three nickels
Patrick: [00:08:15] three times also on Netflix, this is speaking of like, kind of like childhood stuff. Like there's a new magic school bus.
It's like the magic school bus rides again. It's really cool.
we've been kind of watching it a little bit with our little guy. cause he, we had to get him off, puppy, dog pals and paw patrol. You can only sing that song to yourself so many times before you got to find something new. But yeah, there was one on like the three States of matter that I thought was really interesting. A couple of episodes, it was really fun. I was like, Oh my gosh. It's like actually pretty informational and kind of fun and a throwback to, I mean, I remember the magic school bus being one of my favorite shows growing up.
So it was cool. And I think Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live is the new miss Frizzle. It's like her sister. She does a pretty good job you at first, you can't really tell my wife and I were like, who is this? we know this voice who is it? And then it was Kate McKinnon and she does pretty good with it.
So it's, it's fun. So if you're looking for a little bit of nostalgia, throw back a little bit of something new, can always check that out. I don't know if it's going to be super engaging for you.
Ian: [00:09:20] I think I'll stick with the Floor is Lava Patrick. That's really more my maturity level.
Patrick: [00:09:26] all that reminds me of, there was an old show called MXC Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. That kind of reminds me of that floor is lava.
Ian: [00:09:33] It's just like all those obstacle course shows that are destined for people to fail and fall. Well, Hey, since we're talking about virtual reality and video games and simulations, should we get to our big question for today?
So this is a question that came from our listener, Logan. He asked us, "Do we live in a simulation?" And Josh you've been pretty excited to talk about this one. So you're going to kind of lead our discussion. I'm going to hand it over to you.
Josh: [00:10:08] Yeah, I know Logan. He, he's going to be disappointed with how I answered this because it's not really a science answer. It's kind of more a philosophical answer. So Patrick is going to love this,
But yeah, no, this led to a rabbit hole that just left me incredibly confused with more questions than answered.
And I hope it does the same for all of you. when I was doing my research, I found out that this is more of a question about what is reality. I can already tell that Patrick is getting excited.
Patrick: [00:10:41] I know I'm, I'm like shaking in a good way.
Josh: [00:10:44] Oh, good. Good. So this question actually dates back to like 200, 400 BC, to some of the earliest philosophers in China. So I know, I know I can tell from your expressions, this is going to be good. So, there are these books and I apologize for the pronunciation because, I do not speak Mandarin, but I will do the best that I can.
they're called the Zhuangzi books. and they're just basically this collection of wisdom and poetry. And one of the books, actually contains this poem called the butterfly dream. So hopefully I do this justice once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting, and flittering about happy with himself and doing, as he pleased, he didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou.
Suddenly he woke up and there he was solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou, but he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt, he was a butterfly or a butterfly that he was Zhuang Zhou between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly. There must be some distinction. This is called the transformation of things. So that poem, it asks the question basically, like, how do we know when we're dreaming and when we're not dreaming and it brings up this whole idea of is reality what we think it is or is reality, something else? So we're going to go through a couple of weird brain things, because this ended up being a huge neuroscience conversation, and like a philosophy of the theory of the mind.
So I think that you guys would like it.
Patrick: [00:12:22] Oh, gosh. Yes.
Josh: [00:12:23] So, not only did Chinese philosophers come up with this idea of maybe reality is something that we're taking for granted. This also goes back to Greek philosophers, Indian philosophers, and I don't know very much about philosophers, so I'm gonna just totally ruin this guy's name.
Discart Wait is that it's Decart
Ian: [00:12:47] Descartes. I believe.
Josh: [00:12:49] okay. That guy, I don't even know his first name. He contributed to some of the concepts of what is reality by saying it is possible that I'm dreaming right now and all my perceptions are false. So it's kind of a question that gets thrown out a lot. Are we real? Is what we're seeing real is what we're thinking real.
and philosophers have always tried to answer this and it isn't until recently that we've kind of started viewing things through a different lens because now technology's at our disposal. the crazy thing about reality is that. It's actually more of a cerebral hallucination.
Patrick: [00:13:27] Oh boy.
Josh: [00:13:28] I know, I know you could see where we're going with this. so your brain has a hundred billion neurons that are just constantly firing messages about random stimuli in the form of ones and zeros, essentially. either the neuron reaches its action potential sends out a signal saying yes, we're coming into contact with something or it doesn't. And that's really oversimplifying the brain, but it is essentially just some ones and zeros and it all has to do with what's being filtered through our physical bodies.
We have our photoreceptors in the form of eyes. We have, nasal, nerves that, pick up any smells that we have and can actually tell us, Oh, This nerve just came into contact with this molecule, which it sends a signal and says you're smelling spaghetti. but basically everything is a hallucination.
What you think is reality, your brain has put a nice little comfy pillow around you telling you this is reality. When in actuality it's not, it's your interpretation of reality. Someone is listening to this right now, going. No, this is stupid. Shut up. there's actually a really cool guy on Ted talk. his name is Anil Seth, and he talks about how the brain essentially creates hallucinations in order to make us, better understand what's going on in our environment. But what's really cool is he actually puts a spin on it in terms of medications and, diseases of perceptions.
So individuals with schizophrenia, oftentimes they'll see faces and objects where there shouldn't be faces. They'll hear sounds that aren't there. They'll see blinking lights. All that boils down to just whether or not the brain is producing signals that it's not actually receiving. So its output is larger than its input kind of crazy.
Right. But that is like an entirely different conversation, but the guy makes some great points about how reality is just a hallucination.
Ian: [00:15:38] yeah. Reality is fake news.
Josh: [00:15:40] Exactly. I'm glad that you're picking up what I'm throwing down.
Ian: [00:15:44] it's a reality is, well, I don't want to say it's a hoax, but reality is ... Technically reality can exist, but we can't ever be certain that what we're perceiving is reality.
Josh: [00:15:58] So we have like our own little universe where reality exists for us, but it's not the same reality that someone else is perceiving. So like, when I look in the mirror, I see a six foot seven ruggedly handsome guy with beautiful blue eyes, muscles everywhere, beautiful hair. I could go on for hours talking about how gorgeous I am, but when you see me, you might see the same thing, but it's slightly different.
Ian: [00:16:25] Sounds sounds right to me.
Patrick: [00:16:27] Yeah, I was going to say pretty spot on.
Josh: [00:16:29] what's really crazy about this conversation is that everybody assumes that it's a computer science question or a physics question, and a lot of physicists have gotten in on this conversation, but it really boils down to a philosophical debate because all of the evidence that we have that life is a simulation is more circumstantial evidence. And it isn't like a direct" haha see, we have proof" cause we're just not there yet. But a lot of the philosophical evidence that we've been gathering along with technology and physics is starting to point towards life is just a simulation. So there's this guy I know, right. Take a moment and just like reflect on what I've told you so far. Cause it's about to get more trippy.
Patrick: [00:17:15] How's I say, so if, if it's a simulation, that means someone has to be in control of it, right.
Ian: [00:17:20] So where my mind is kind of right now, my mind is thinking that you're saying We do live in a simulation, but not in the way that I think the question was asked, which is like, do we live in a computer simulation? We, each of us lives in our own simulation, which is our brain and our perception of the world.
Josh: [00:17:48] But this is just the first part where I'm trying to tear down everything that you think is reality. Then we're going to build it up into a computer simulation. wait,
you just wait. this is, this is like setting up a nice little warmup so that your minds don't crumble over the existential crisis that I'm about to create for you.
Patrick: [00:18:10] I feel like you're like the Oracle, right? You're the creator because you're the one that's controlling our simulations right now.
Josh: [00:18:16] Yeah. Jokes on you. Josh Baltzell doesn't actually exist. I am the game master, right?
Patrick: [00:18:22] Oh boy.
Josh: [00:18:23] You're all just a bunch of 12 year old aliens playing D&D.
Ian: [00:18:28] all right. I'm all limbered up, Josh. So tear my life apart.
Patrick: [00:18:33] I got my mental sweat going.
Josh: [00:18:35] So there was this theoretical physicist and his name was David Bohm. I'm probably pronouncing his name wrong too. I apologize if I am, but he had this quote when he was asked about what reality is and if life is a simulation and here's how he responded. Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe, what we believe is based on our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for? Depends on what we think, what we think depends on what we perceive, what we perceive, determines what we believe, what we believe, determines what we take to be true. And what we take to be true is our reality. Notice what he did there?
Ian: [00:19:19] Oh yeah, it's a circle,
Josh: [00:19:22] but it's a nice logical progression.
Ian: [00:19:24] it makes sense.
Patrick: [00:19:26] huh?
Ian: [00:19:26] I mean, he's right onto something. Right. Cause like, in so many ways people see what they're looking for. like, I've heard people express that, you know, when they start to think about like starting a family or having a baby that suddenly it feels like there's babies everywhere. is it just a weird coincidence that suddenly everyone in the world has a baby or is it that these babies were always here and I just never really perceived them cause I wasn't looking for them.
Josh: [00:19:59] Those are paid actors by Amazon. It's their new marketing campaign. It used to be, if you talk in front of the echo, then all of a sudden you're like, wow, I was talking about buying a new slip n' slide. Now they're slip n' slide everywhere, but now it's like, they pay people to wheel babies in front of you.
Patrick: [00:20:14] So I think the same thing happens with like cars and words too. Right? So like we got a Subaru Ascent, which is like a brand new three row SUV from Subaru. I had never seen one before and literally the very next day after we had one, because we knew it existed. We see them everywhere and the same thing with like a word like, Oh, I've never heard of that word before. Then all of a sudden everyone uses it or a phrase
like my wife has a saying "six one way, half a dozen another." And I'd like, that's funny. I've never heard that saying. And then like the next day I literally heard like seven people say it I'm like, was it that big? You're actually saying it. And it just got brought to my attention. And now my brain is perceiving it and understanding it in a different way. Or was it actually just because like, it was just pure coincidence it's happened.
Josh: [00:21:08] Careful not to think too hard about that though. Cause you can drive yourself insane.
Patrick: [00:21:12] I'm pretty much there.
Ian: [00:21:14] I thought that was your goal, Josh.
Josh: [00:21:15] It kind of is because I went crazy. And so now I'm bringing you all with me. Like I said, Logan is probably listening to this and thinking, when are you going to answer the question? spoiler alert. I don't.
Ian: [00:21:27] I think he'll be fine with it.
Josh: [00:21:28] I think he will. So I'd be hard pressed if I didn't bring this guy into the conversation because the conversation really took off about whether or not life is a simulation when Elon Musk savior of the technophiles, decided to give his input. And he actually went on the record saying that the odds of us not being in a simulation is like one in a billion.
So he firmly believes that we do live in a simulation.
Ian: [00:21:59] what's he basing that on? Like, what's his logic there?
Josh: [00:22:02] It's Elon Musk. I don't think he bases it on a lot. I think that it's his perception. It's his truth. And he's putting it out there.
Ian: [00:22:10] I have some thoughts on that. because there's a short story that I actually read to my chemistry classes it's right when we're kind of talking about electrons and particles and, it's basically about quantum computing and simulations.
I'm trying to find the author and I'm having a hard time finding the author.
Patrick: [00:22:33] Well, it's almost like that are while you're looking it up. The article about light not being light, it's actually absorbing dark.
Josh: [00:22:40] I hate that article.
Patrick: [00:22:42] dark is what fills the room and lights absorb that light.
Josh: [00:22:45] I get that it's supposed to be philosophical. Like let's look at things through a different lens. No, screw your lens. I don't like your lens.
Ian: [00:22:54] so the short story is called, "I Don't Know Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility" and it was written by Sam Hughes and it was published in 2007 or 2008. I'm going to try and summarize it as quickly as possible. Basically, these people build a quantum computer with near infinite processing power. And what that enables them to do is simulate the big bang. And so they simulate the big bang. And as they're watching the simulation unfold, the universe unfolds in front of them in exactly the same way that it unfolded in quote unquote reality. And they get to the point in time where they are basically watching themselves in the simulation. And from that, they conclude that they are actually in a simulation. It's a really fun story and they kind of play around with it and explore different aspects of what it would mean if that was the case. it's definitely worth taking, 10 to 20 minutes to read the short story. It's it's a good one.
but it sort of supports Elon Musk's ideas that essentially, if we're thinking about computers evolving and eventually computers evolving to the point where we have such incredible processing power, that we could simulate a universe, it seems like you could say that inevitably, at some point we will simulate the universe. And therefore the universe in all likelihood is a simulation because even if there is one real universe in that universe, a universe is simulated. And in that simulated universe, another universe is simulated on and on forever. And so there's basically a one in infinity chance that we live in the real universe and not in one of the simulated universes.
Patrick: [00:24:42] so you're saying there's a chance.
Ian: [00:24:45] I don't know if Elon Musk, if that's what he's thinking, but I thought I'd bring that up. Cause that's one of my favorite things
to read to students.
Josh: [00:24:54] Ah, see, I got the topic that gives me an existential crisis. I don't like it. So part of this rabbit hole actually led me down a path that I think that we'll all appreciate, video games.
Patrick: [00:25:10] Yes.
Josh: [00:25:10] Because one of the arguments that people bring up is video games have actually had artificial intelligence for quite a while.
And right now, artificial intelligence doesn't quite reach the same level as human intelligence. As a matter of fact, we're quite far away from creating intelligence that matches our own. Haha we're smarter. so. We have video games like the SIMS, City Skylines, Stardew Valley Rollercoaster Tycoon, all of those different simulation games. But artificial intelligence has actually been around in video games since like the eighties.
Cause you all remember space invaders. The way that the, spaceships as they're coming down actually moves is based on a concept of artificial intelligence, whatever you, as the player decide to do. The starships will actually react differently, as you move further on in levels. As we've watched artificial intelligence and simulation video games get stronger by our own technology, we're really aware that our technology still is really in its infancy.
We haven't done that great of a job in terms of artificial intelligence and simulating human intelligence. But we are starting to recognize that we can make video games that do create a small universe. And it has all the same characteristics of random probability and decision making where NPCs, non-player characters, are making decisions that have absolutely no human intervention.
It's just entirely based on random chance and whatever the past environmental stimulus was that caused them to make that decision. So we're actually starting to see simulated universes in our own, very pathetic, honestly, technology.
Patrick: [00:26:57] Man. Could you imagine if like Skyrim's NPCs, all of a sudden became like, Real. And they just started doing their own things,
Josh: [00:27:05] see that terrifies me, like they decide that they're going to kill the dragon.
Patrick: [00:27:10] or ride the dragon or do whatever they want. I'm like kinda nervous as to where it's going to go next. Like what if you're in VR and all of a sudden you have now. Almost sentience NPCs coming to life.
Josh: [00:27:25] Well, here's the scary question. What if a glitch isn't actually a glitch? What if a glitch is an NPC deciding to make its own choice that doesn't work with the game?
Ian: [00:27:35] I wonder if there are any documented examples of artificial intelligence in a video game or in a simulation, making a decision and doing something that was completely unforeseen by the creators of the simulation or the video game.
Josh: [00:27:50] So, I don't know about unforeseen, but there was a really cool experiment where they took a classic, super Nintendo Mario platform and what they did was they designed the little Mario Sprite so that it had coding to learn from its environment. And so it started off by just like walking and falling off the cliff. And what they programmed it to understand was that, that it doesn't want to die. Right. And so it would start walking fall off the cliff and be like, Oh no, cliffs are bad. And so then it would respond, start walking and jump over the cliff. And as it died, it started recognizing what organisms are dangerous.
It started recognizing what organisms help it, what it should seek out. And it was kind of a trippy experiment because by the end of it, the AI could actually play through an entire Mario course, as if it was thinking and adapting to its environment. It just never reached the point of sentience awareness of its own metacognition.
Ian: [00:28:51] Yeah, there's some really cool examples of machine learning or artificial intelligence that actually learns, you know, that's the thing that has the potential to push us into a realm of true AI. Cause it would take so much effort for a human to actually program an artificial intelligence with the intelligence of a human. But if we can program an artificial intelligence with the ability to learn, it will eventually grow itself to the point where it's as intelligent or more intelligent than a human.
Patrick: [00:29:25] Yeah. And make decisions not necessary in their favor.
Ian: [00:29:29] I came across a thing a couple of years ago, some article about this very simple simulation they did where like there was, it was just dots on the screen. But it was basically kind of a predator prey simulation, and the AI that they programmed went through, like rounds of understanding, there were two competing AIs I think is what was going on in the simulation. And for a while they competed with one another over resources and then they started cooperating with one another, in order to ensure both of their survival. And then I think they started to like, not cooperate anymore and like undermine each other.
Josh: [00:30:12] I was just about to say that you provided evidence that we don't live in a simulation because I was like, we do not cooperate with each other. And then you kept going. And I was like, Oh, maybe we do.
Ian: [00:30:22] hope I'm getting that right. I'm paraphrasing something I read years ago, but , just to me at the time, it was like, Oh my gosh, this computer program learned and went through this kind of scarily realistic situation of competition and cooperation and, you know, selfishness within this computer program. It was weird.
Josh: [00:30:42] I see the scary thing to think about is that it's like, at what point. Will we accidentally create AI that is self-aware and capable of sentience and thinking about thinking and recognizing its own existence. And then when that happens, what separates us from that AI and how do we know that we're not experiencing the same thing?
What if we're just an AI program that's managed to become self aware? And we are thinking about our own thinking and we're asking existential questions and we're engaging in philosophical discussions. Meanwhile, there are people watching this video game saying this is getting really boring. They're becoming a little bit too self-aware.
Patrick: [00:31:29] Time to stop them. Yeah, that just makes me a little bit nervous. I don't know, just from watching, iRobot or like some of those other movies where all of a sudden, robots develop some sort of conscious thought to make decisions that scares me a little bit. And then the rate at which they're learning , and having super unintended learning consequences. I remember reading an article the other day about AI, using image searches and keywords with those image searches to actually come up with like bigoted things from just AI.
Right? And it's not that the AI itself has any form of intelligence to be in a bigoted way, but because people have, and they've written a code to identify those markers with that image, they've connected the pieces for it. So it's almost as if AI has determined that these things happen in society and happen in humanity and almost learn those behaviors themselves.
But it's one of those things it's like, at what point would the AI be like, Oh, I've learned that this is bad. I want to destroy those who created that which is bad. Does that make sense?
Josh: [00:32:33] See, that's why we need Asimov's three laws of robotics that guy's going to save us all. Are you ready to go deeper?
Patrick: [00:32:42] Oh, God, we're going deeper?
Josh: [00:32:44] Oh, this goes so much deeper.
Patrick: [00:32:47] I thought we were in the core right now.
Josh: [00:32:49] So, so far we've established that our brain is creating hallucinations. And we've established that we just don't know what reality is. Plus we started talking about artificial intelligence and how those are in simulations. So what you might actually start questioning is, are you actually making the decisions you are making or is it a random algorithm making decisions for you based on what the stimuli in the environment or your coding is actually telling you? So we talk a lot about free will and how human beings we make decisions, we're problem solvers and everything like that. But how do we know that there's not just some algorithm that's making decisions for us. And the algorithm has slowly adapted as the program has gotten older, we've gotten older, so that we can start making decisions based off of new occurrences.
Patrick: [00:33:43] Am I going to be okay after this?
Josh: [00:33:45] No, you will not be okay. No one will be okay after this.
Ian: [00:33:48] What does it mean to be okay, Patrick?
Patrick: [00:33:50] Yeah. My perception of okay is being able to function in my day to day life. Being able to get out of bed.
Josh: [00:33:57] homeostasis is gone, you will no longer be able to achieve it. Just give up on equilibrium.
Patrick: [00:34:03] there you go. I love it though.
Josh: [00:34:05] So some skeptics might start asking questions. If life is a video game and if life is a simulation. So why is it that we can only see what the simulation allows us to? You think about people that play video games. There are always people that are producing mods. there are people that make it so that you can fast travel. so we actually can give ourselves items by clicking up, up, down, down left, right. Left. Right. And all of a sudden you have the best weapons in the entire game. So if all of that is true in video games, why isn't this possible in real life?
Well, the answer to that question is that it is
Patrick: [00:34:42] Do I have to pull out that leg binder that I had with every single cheat code ever on it. That took two days to download off the internet back on like what 56 K internet.
Josh: [00:34:53] Dial up. On the printer paper that has the little holes on the sides and you had to like tear the little strips off each end.
Ian: [00:35:01] Josh. I'm really happy that you brought up the whole concept of freewill in this conversation. I was hoping that we'd talk about that because I was reading some stuff about how there's an argument that freewill is kind of an illusion. You know, it doesn't really exist. I mean, of course we make our own decisions, but we make our decisions based on our interpretations, right. And our brain is basically running algorithms and, those algorithms were put in place partly by our genetics, but in large part, the way that we were raised and, you know, the things that we were exposed to and the people that we are around and we've kind of become the algorithm that's in our head. And so when we think we're making a decision, really what's happening is our brain is just kind of having a response to a stimulus. And so when we think we're like making an honest decision, it's probably a lot more predictable we think it is because it's really just a reaction from our brain.
Josh: [00:36:09] Oh, absolutely. Our brains are just super complex matchbox computers. The first computers were actually just matchboxes, where they use different color beads to represent different decisions. And they used it for winning TIC TAC TOE. When one person made a decision, you would use the matchbox to randomly judge a decision.
But then every time you lost you'd remove the beads that represented those decisions. And so by the end of it, there's enough matchboxes that you can't beat the person that's using the matchboxes because no matter what, they will pull the beads that represent how to win. And that's just how our brains work.
We're constantly trying to achieve certain goals and yeah, whatever the external stimuli is that that's going to determine what the final decision that our brain makes.
Ian: [00:36:58] it's like we think that we are in control of our brains. But it's really the other way around. We are really at the whim of our automatic programming that's been built up over our lifetimes. And at best we have some input, you know, we can learn new things and we can work to either undo or alter the programming that we have.
It actually it's related to what's going on right now for a lot of people with regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, you know and kind of confronting our internal programming with regards to how we see the world and trying to really address that. And there's real data out there to show how difficult it is for us to actually reprogram ourselves.
I think the number is that it takes, depending on the habit. It takes you anywhere from two weeks to two years of sustained effort to change a habit. And so that right there is evidence that we are really slaves to our brains. We can have some input into what we do, but really we're just kind of on autopilot.
Josh: [00:38:05] Oh, absolutely.
Patrick: [00:38:07] It makes it interesting too, as teachers, like almost work programmers ourselves. So we have to be very intentional in the fact of what we're saying is programming a brain maybe in one meaningful way or a different meaningful way or an unintentional way. Right?
That one thing you said could not necessarily write a new line of code or whatever, but create some sort of thought in a brain that now perceives either you or the world or the class or another person or the content, in a little bit different of a way. And so ultimately you've reshaped that reality for that one person, whatever it is.
Ian: [00:38:43] wait, hold on. Are you saying Patrick that we as teachers, we are programmers and we are creating artificial intelligences by teaching our students? And we are creating new autonomous simulations. then they will go on. Sorry I'm spiraling out of control and move on Josh.
Patrick: [00:39:05] maybe it's less of a, we're creating new simulations, but meshing the simulations. because not that I don't think about you guys when we're not doing the podcast. But out of sight, out of mind. Right? So if you're, if I'm not physically texting you guys are talking or something else, are you still in my simulation?
Have you logged out of it? Are you that NPC that's gone off and done their own thing versus you being actively in my simulation. That way it's like, I would say then our students are, we're expanding their simulations where they can reach new areas or understand new things or perceive it in a different way, but not necessarily, I guess, building a new one. I don't know. That could be like...
You did it Josh. You just straight up did it. My mind is just mush.
Josh: [00:39:27] If you think too hard, you're going to accidentally discover the Jeremy Beremy line from Good Place.
So we were talking about cheat codes. And how if life is a simulation and we're essentially in either a video game or some kind of computer program that's far more advanced than any technology that we have. Why don't we have any kind of cheat codes? The thing is we do.
I mentioned fast travel in video games. So you can replay levels in video games to try and level up. Any kind of video games that talk about time travel. There's usually some element where you can go back in time and see things. We can do this to humans. So whenever somebody is undergoing brain surgery, they have the opportunity to participate in some kind of experiment where we will tinker around with their brain to better understand it.
And there are certain experiments where what they'll do is they'll take an electrode and they'll stimulate certain parts of the brain. The scariest thing that we've discovered is that if you stimulate certain parts of the brain, people will actually relive certain memories. So there are stories of people that heard a parent's voice, or they heard the voice of a loved one clear as day. They had images from their past pop up. They had certain smells pop up all depending on what part of the brain was activated. And what's even scarier than that is that we can implant false memories into singular neurons. So we can take a code and put it into a brain cell to make an individual think that they experienced something in their life.
Ian: [00:41:10] How does that work? A memory isn't stored in a single neuron, is it?
Josh: [00:41:15] It actually is. Yeah, because recently some researchers at MIT actually figured this out. This is going to sound really horrible if you're an animal welfare activist, but they caused mice to be scared of particular colors of light and how they did it was they did this basic experiment where they, they found out that you can take photo receptors in the eye and genetically implant them into cells in the brain. And so that way, when you shine particular wavelengths of light onto those neural cells, it'll stimulate them and they'll have an emotional response to it. So what they can do is actually use that light to implant a fear memory. And what they found was when they were shining the light of that particular wavelength on the mice, the mice were remembering some traumatic event and immediately became overwhelmed with fear. The thing is human brains are far more complex than a mouse's brain. So we remember things more in a theory of mind situation because we are capable of sentience. But the mouse did experience fear of an inanimate object if you consider light and object. and it was essentially a false memory. So that algorithm in your brain that helps you make decisions. We can actually alter that algorithm to either make you experience past things, travel to distant locations, remember things that don't really exist. We can do all kinds of things just by changing the coding in the brain.
Ian: [00:43:00] My brain is immediately thinking, how do we know that that's not what's happening right now? You know, how do we know that our memories are real and that we remember everything correctly and that this isn't an artificial experience that we're having at the moment, you know?
And it seems like there's two ways to go about that. you can either deny it and say there's no possible way that that's what's happening, which seems irresponsible. It's probably a lot more responsible to take kind of a spiritual or, philosophical stance and say that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether or not this is real or not, or whether we're in a simulation or not in a simulation. What matters is simply accepting your experience?
Josh: [00:43:54] We talked long enough that Ian Lake has reached the point of saying "who cares".
Patrick: [00:43:59] It was only a matter of time. Right?
Ian: [00:44:02] it seems like people are so keen to, get to the bottom of whether or not we live in a simulation and it's kind of like, well, even if we do live in a simulation, does it make our experiences any less real or any less important ? Or should we live differently in any way?
Patrick: [00:44:23] I don't know if that's terribly live different, but definitely have a different perspective when things happen. if we know that we have control of our own simulation, it's possible that we can alleviate some of those big fears or some of those big things knowing that if I can inject fear into a mouse Why can't I do the reverse, right?
Josh: [00:44:41] Well, one of my favorite parts of that, Anil Seth video, that Ted talk was he showed this video where Google basically created brain filter, where it was picking up certain stimuli in the form of light and then it was attempting to make estimations the same way that our brain makes estimations.
But what's really nice about our brain is that it filters things for us. I love the way that he puts it, that, " reality is a hallucination that everyone agrees upon" because our brain is really polite in that it says, let's think about what the most realistic interpretation of the stimuli is. And then we'll say that that's what it is. But that's how we end up falling for optical illusions. Well, Google, they created this interpretation, device that essentially acted like eyes and a brain. And what ended up happening was the video just made everything look like dog's faces. And so the best way of putting it was that it looked like you found a bunch of mushrooms in the forest, ate them all at once, and then tried walking around downtown Seattle. Because it was just crazy. There were buildings with dog's faces projecting out of it. You really have to watch the video to see how weird it is. But the whole point that he was getting at is that we have this nice little filter device in our brain. But if we removed that filtration device, all we would see is complete and utter chaos.
We would feel the wind hitting us at the same time, as we would feel every hair on our body moving. We would see all the different wavelengths of light at once without actually interpreting what they are. We would smell everything within like a hundred foot radius. We're very lucky to have the program filters that we have in our brain.
Patrick: [00:46:34] It's almost like the brain's protecting us from a harsh reality of the world.
Josh: [00:46:39] Exactly. It's almost as if somebody knew that sentient programs would start to go crazy after a while. And so they implemented a nice little safety device, but some computers glitched out and developed what we call diseases.
Patrick: [00:46:53] so.
Josh: [00:46:56] I feel bad for our viewers for not having a visual of you guys, because your faces are just broken.
Patrick: [00:47:03] Yeah. There's a lot more broken than my face right now, but it's great. there's a show on Netflix that was about people who taken hallucinogens they were saying a lot of what they were doing almost unlocked what humanity actually is for them and what reality actually is for them. Like being able to see a building with a dog's face and like have all of these different patterns swirling where they could see it. They could experience. It was real, but it wasn't real at the same time time.
So they started having these like, almost out of body experiences. Well, if you're out of your body, where are you like, is that. You floating around in the simulation, is that you going third person? Is that plane of existence you're on? so you're having those experiences well, where are you?
But that's, what's a little nerve wracking because that's real. your brain is experiencing that even if it isn't necessarily there, if that makes sense. that has to be your reality.
Josh: [00:48:00] Yes, exactly. You're not perceiving society's interpretation of reality.
Patrick: [00:48:05] So which one's right? Have, we just been forced to think of a specific reality our entire lives. So that's the one we always feel safe in. Therefore our brain tells us that that's the one we should have when in reality it can be very, very different. We could all be for, I guess, lack of a better reference Neo in the matrix who can kind of carve his own path through his simulation in his reality.
Josh: [00:48:29] Or are you a butterfly dreaming about being human?
Patrick: [00:48:33] I love this.
Ian: [00:48:35] It seems like, Oh God, what was I going to say? I literally just lost my thought.
Josh: [00:48:41] You had the answer to all of the universe's questions in your mind. And then the program developer was like, "Well, we can't allow that! Control alt delete."
Ian: [00:48:50] I remembered what I was going to say. I, at least I remember what I think what I was going to say,
Which is that I feel like my takeaway from this conversation is that we really shouldn't trust our own minds and that's not necessarily a weakness. In fact, it's it's kind of a strength.
I think historically people who are really steadfast and who will remain the same and remain committed to the same things and remain with the same values and principles regardless of what they see and what happens to them are seen as being very strong and resolute. But in reality, I think that the better way to examine your own reality is to accept the vulnerability that comes along with the fact that your perception is not reality.
Your perception is your perception. And you can see that in society when, whether it's through social media or on the news or something, when you're confronted with another person who doesn't just differ with you a little bit, but seems to differ with you so much that you're like, wow, the two of us literally perceive reality differently. We see the world differently at a fundamental level. And so I guess what I'm saying is my takeaway is basically I don't trust myself, not saying that I don't know anything, but that moving forward and having humility and humbleness and being willing to basically re-examine my own thoughts and say, what if I am wrong about that?
Patrick: [00:50:33] Yeah. Oh gosh. It's happening?
Ian: [00:50:35] Bring us home, Josh.
Where it's what's home. Where's home home. Oh, no.
Josh: [00:50:43] I guess the important takeaways of this would be that everything that we see, hear, touch, smell is filtered through our bodies. We are a representation of our brain and we take for granted what our mind is and our mind is just the metacognition of the brain. So I'll leave you guys with this. If all of this that we've talked about is true. Cause remember this is a lot of philosophical thinking based off of some laws of physics, some laws of coding, computers, robotics. You might just be a simple computer program interpreting signals that are being sent from other computer programs or not.
Ian: [00:51:26] So you're saying that in answer to the question "Do we live in a simulation?" Who knows maybe the universe is actually a simulation, but whether or not it is, we still live in a simulation because our mind and our brain is a simulation of the world around us.
Josh: [00:51:49] Absolutely.
Yeah, just really depends on what scale you're thinking of it as, because a lot of people, when they ask the question "Is life a simulation?" they're picturing some gigantic planet sized computer that's processing everything about our everyday lives. If you boil it down small enough, we're each living our own independent simulation.
Ian: [00:52:13] I feel like we should leave it at that.
I think that's a good place for us to wrap it up. Thank you so much, Josh. This has been a really fun and fascinating conversation.
Josh: [00:52:25] You are welcome.
Ian: [00:52:26] that's to say, if this conversation even exists or ever happened.
All right. Well that is it for this episode of Yondercast. Everyone thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe to the show and if you have 10 seconds to spare, give us a rating on Apple podcasts. Or if you have two minutes to spare, you could rate us and review us. That is the best way that you can support our growth as a podcast and we would greatly appreciate it. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, just fill out the survey you'll find linked in the show notes. And if you ever want to contact us, send us an email at yondercast@gmail.com. Goodbye, everybody.
Josh: [00:53:08] Bye.
Patrick: [00:53:09] Bye. Bye.