Simulation Theory Part 2 feat. Rizwan Virk

0:00 Hey guys, my name is Kieran and you're listening to the infinite Rabbit Hole. Keep up the good work, guys. Over the years, movies video games, books and TV shows have portrayed, various levels of simulations of life, from the futuristic Holodeck Star Trek to visually and physically immersive virtual reality world. No, As the Oasis from the 2018, major Motion Picture. Ready Player, One, the fantasy of spending time in a virtual world has captured the imagination of many. But today, we are not discussing simply visiting a simulated world like in those pieces of entertainment. But rather we will be continuing a previous conversation and visiting the possibility that we may unknowingly live in a world. That is fabricated for our own existence in 1999. The movie.

1:12 The Matrix introduced the masses to the idea that we are all Pawns in an artificial World, Tethered to our fake Reality by porch located. In our actual bodies, in the real world, this path of the unknown is, filled with questions. That will not only leave you uncomfortable, but we'll have you questioning your literal place in the universe. Do we live in the quote-unquote real world? What would be the purpose of our real world? What would be our purpose? Is this world blessed like that of the Matrix and more like that of the Sims? Are we living our own artificial lives? Or are we simply an avatar of somebody else's actions and desires a setback?

1:55 Hang tight, get ready, question, everything and welcome back to infinite rabbit hole, Well, that sounds familiar.

2:37 It is that is very familiar because I basically took the introduction of the first one and tweet it to our likings for today. We'll dive back into that here in a second. But first, welcome back to infinite rabbit. Hello, everybody. I'm your host Jeremy today. We have a special special episode for you. I'm so excited. I am twitching in my seat right now, but real quick. Let's get everybody else in there. We'll make it quick because you don't want to hear them. You want to hear our guest, and I guarantee you that Jake, how you doing? I'm doing well, man. I'm going to go look for this. How are you doing? I'm doing, fantastic. Thanks for asking. All right, we're gonna go. We're gonna go come here? Yeah. All right, let's go real real quick for those that heard that introduction or like hey, that's familiar. Yes, that is familiar because when we first touched on the simulation Theory, we talk to Grayson one of our biggest fans of the show on a topic that was chosen by him. Basically, what I did was I tweak that a little bit because all of the research that I did for that episode, I actually took from our guest book for tonight's episode. So, you'll see a lot of parallels, but we have the man here ready to talk to us.

3:50 Break it down. Like I couldn't Did I could see the smoke coming out of your ears. Rhinos is crazy. I know, I know. And I'm so excited, but let's go ahead and move on to the real reason. Why everyone is here tonight. On today's episode of the infinite rabbit, hole will be diving back down into the path of our discussion on the simulation theory. For those of you that are new to hang out with us on the Paranormal Network on March 18th of this year. We released our first episode on what we will be conducting as a series of episodes. On the conversation that we all live within a simulated world. Today we continue that conversation with a very special guest. Not only is he the author of the book I used for my primary research on the topic for the previous episode. But he is also a very sick.

4:40 Our he is also very successful in other areas of his life as well. Entrepreneur investor futurist video game industry Pioneer, indie film, producer and author of two books on the physics and technicalities of the simulation hypothesis titled simulation Is and the simulated Multiverse. Here you go. These are these books run and grab them. This guy is amazing sporting a bachelor's in computer science from MIT a master's in management from Stanford Graduate School of Business and currently working towards his Ph.D researching metaverse and Virtual Worlds from ASU, I am extremely proud and excited to welcome and introduce rizwan vert to the infinite Rabbit.

5:24 Hole R is welcome. Thanks for having me on. It's always fun to go down the rabbit hole. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the rabbit hole, so I'm Gonna Catch My Breath here for a second. I tried to get that. Get that I was quick as I can. Thanks rizz. I'm really excited about this. Definitely great to be here. So, let's start off. Well, first of all, let's kid Jake you guys have any questions before. I just take over this entire episode from you guys. No, I'm just ready to hear someone who knows this topic. Talk about it.

6:05 I'm ready for For you to melt my brain. Here is so let's let's start from the beginning. R is for all the listeners of the infinite rabbit hole, in the Watchers of the Paranormal Network, who, who is rizwan vert and how did you get into The the love and the interest of the simulation hypothesis. Sure. Well, you know, as you mentioned in my intro, I've been involved in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur, and an investor for the past decade, particularly in the video game industry. And so it was partly this interest, you know, from my day job at the time which was initially creating video games and then later helping other entrepreneurs who wanted to create.

6:59 Immersive worlds and also video game related, technology companies like Discord. You may have heard of, you know, I was one of the initial investors there. They started off as a game company. The game didn't do so well and they said, well, we made this chat thing, that's kind of cool and so then they release that and that's what we all do Discord for today. And then you know seems to be a common theme where video game technology is really driving Innovation across the computer industry really since you know, back in the 1970s and 80s. Yes and 90s as well as today with computer Graphics, Etc. And and so you know it was during this career that back in 2016 after I sold my last game company.

7:41 I was invited to play Virtual Reality ping pong at a start-up in the Bay Area. In Marin County just across the bay from San Francisco and so instead of admiring the review which was great because you can see the bay and you can see the skyline of San Francisco. You know I got in his dark room and put on this virtual reality. That and I started to play ping-pong. And what happened was, you know, the, the responses were so real that for a moment, I forgot that I was actually in virtual reality me, despite having kind of this big thing on my head because, you know, we're not at the, the west-world levels of small glasses, like this size classes where we could do that. But despite that I actually forgot that I was in virtual reality, and thought I was playing a real game of table tennis.

8:27 So at the end of the game, I tried to put the paddle down on the table and then I try to lean against the table. It just like, I might normally do after playing ping pong which I used to play a lot, you know, as a kid I haven't played much lately and I almost fell over the controller fell to the floor and I had to catch myself. And I said, whoa, you know, we're getting to the point where we could build a virtual reality, eventually. It mean we're not there yet but we're getting to the point where you know, the the virtual world would be indistinguishable. The physical world. And so that was a bit of the spark that got me thinking along this topic, you know, sort of going back to my day job of investing in video game companies.

9:08 I started to think of what are the stages of technology that would get us from here to that theoretical point, which I call the simulation point? And at that point, we could basically build a matrix, right? And then we could plug you in just like Neo and Morpheus, you know, we're plugged in with the brain computer interfaces in the back of the head. Ed and you know once we reach that point, then I wondered well, you know, the could we already be inside a simulation and, you know, turns out there there was a professor at Oxford, Nick Bostrom who had put out a paper in 2003 called are you living in a computer simulation and and basically what he said then you can break it down into a lot of details.

9:50 But basically what he said, was if any technological civilization ever gets to this theoretical point, then they're not just going to create one single. Malaysia are going to create lots of simulations, billions of them. And each of those buildings of simulations might have trillions of simulated beings. And this was the logic that led Elon Musk in that same year. When I was playing the VR ping pong game 2016 to say that the chance that we are not in a simulation at the chance that we are in base reality is one in billions, which means that the chances that we are in a simulation is billions to 1 right? And and so you know that that Really Got Me Down The Rabbit Hole so to speak.

10:32 And that led me to write the book the first book and then I thought I was done with simulation theory for a while and we can get into that story. Later how I got back into it to end up writing a second book about a simulated Multiverse Well, that's fantastic. That's great stuff. I too have. Also put on a pair of VR head pair of VR headset, VR headsets headsets headsets and we're going to that headset goggles are headset. Yeah, yes, yeah, potatoes Tomatoes, right. You know, I just learned this in doing my research for my PhD that the first time, virtual reality was really depicted in science fiction, make a guess, when you think what year that was that there was a Pretty solid description of virtual reality in science, fiction. Anyone want to get 1960?

11:20 Good. Guess anyone else? Yeah, I would say 60s or 70s myself as well. It seems like a good area for that. I actually think it's, you know what, just for the hell of it 50s, good, 15 yeses. And, you know, some electron 3 which was the novel that the movie the 13th floor. Was based on was in the 1960s, but turns out, there's a story from 1935 called Pygmalion spectacles. Wow. That this professor puts on these glasses, and the glasses also had like some liquid in there so that you could actually feel what was going on.

12:02 And so, you know, we think of Ready Player one, right? But I mean, this is 1930 and computers weren't even around like that. And yet they had a pretty solid depiction of virtual reality, that's even more advanced than what we have today. That is sorry to interrupt your dinner, but that was just a no not that is for me. Anyways, Jake before we get into simulation Theory. Did you want to maybe bring up another topic of a belief from one of our other co-host? Real quick, just a big mess. The reason why I think the reason why Jeff didn't show up for this episode, it's not because five voices would be too much. I think it's because Cuz he doesn't believe that space is real and debating that with someone who actually knows something would probably be way more difficult than arguing that with someone like me, who are you pens are, who's never been to space and never studied space? So I think there's a reason why Jeff isn't here with us right now.

13:05 But yeah we have a we have a guy that's more along the conspiracy side of things. And one of his conspiracies is that he I don't think that he really has anything against the idea that we are, in fact, in a simulation know, or that is very, very for this simulation but it but with things that most of us know to exist like space, he is a firm believer that it is not what we are told that it is and that it could very well be like The Truman Show and it's just this big dome of twinkly lights and maybe the main was The the headquarters is in the moon or something, like, it's pretty wild, but I think that there's a reason why he didn't show up today.

13:51 I think it was scared, but I don't know. So you have, who was the actor and Truman Show playing the producer of, as it Ed Harris, you know, sitting up there in the gap on the moon? Yeah, well, you know, that, that ties closely to simulation Theory. I mean, that's more of a physical version of simulation, right? And simulation theory is more about a virtual reality and And, you know, I guess it depends on your definition of real, right? And if you think of that iconic scene from The Matrix where Morpheus who's named after the Greek, god of Dreams takes Neo out of the Matrix and he puts them in this other little simulation where he's sitting, you know, with this kind of leather back chair and it's white and then they show all these guns and NEOS have.

14:35 Whoa, is this real right? And then him Murphy as responsible as well depends on how you define real. If reality is a series of Require multiple signals going to your brain. Then yes, this is real, right? It's as real as anything else might be in. So I guess it gets back to your definition of, you know. What does it mean to be real? I guess would be the bigger philosophical. Question that comes into play. Well, there you go. Jeff is right. Then I guess we are in fact in The Truman Show. Yeah, I got your definition of real, I guess if Jeff believes that that Space was taught to him to be a notion of black liquid, then to him, space would be fake because it's not right.

15:24 All right, so depends on your definition right. That that you know, is whether you buy Into the Dead. I mean, the truth is that physicists don't know what space time is, right? And we don't really know what matter is. So, you know, physicist, keep talking about this thing called matter, but then every time they look for it, you know, they keep going smaller and All right there. Well must be somewhere in this table. Okay. There's a bunch of molecules that are moving around. They're moving around faster in the table than they are in the air. But there's still a lot of space in between them and then you open up the molecules you look at the atoms and it's like 99% empty, right? And then they say well there's the subatomic particles in the nucleus and then they look at those and they can't really find those. And so that, you know, there was a physicist named, John Wheeler, who was at Princeton with Einstein and many others, and he was kind of one of the Giants of 2010 tree physics. And, you know, he said that he looked for you know, he when he started his career they thought that that everything consisted of solid particles of stuff so that there was something called matter.

16:28 It was just these solid objects of atoms and then later he realized it's some kind of field. And then by the end of his career, he got to the point where he said, you know what, there there are no such thing as these particles. There's just properties of the particles, basically their bits of information, and so he came up with this. Famous phrase it from B which says that if you think something is in it, like, you know, this bottle of water, it's really just a bunch of bits of information. When you get right down to it, I you keep opening up the Russian nesting dolls and you look down at the bottom and and that's all it is. Is this and turns out when you're inside a video game. So if your avatar is inside World of Warcraft or inside for night, once it's rendered, but you may have seen video games like when you're, when you're rendering it, you can let go go through walls and stuff, Koreans are solid.

17:17 But then once they get rendered solid, yo, bump up against it, it feels pretty solid from your avatars point of view. And so, you know, that was part of the reason why moving beyond the statistical argument. That Bostrom gave, the more I looked into physics. The more I realized that, you know, there wasn't something really substantial at least that we've been able to find so far and then I looked in the world's religions and my explorations of consciousness. And meditation and lucid dreaming which are all areas that I've explored kind of on the side, you know, kind of leaving this double life. While I was an entrepreneur businessman during the day and exploring this stuff at night. You know. It just seemed that it made more sense to me. If things were virtual than if they were actually physically, I agree.

18:09 Oh Jake you look like you're thinking or trying to put definitely thinking. So with the idea the simulation Theory or hypothesis would that be more along the lines of like, Because there's been some pretty horrific sections of history that we've had right. Where if it was in fact a simulation that be someone would have a lot of explaining to do you know some like I what did this more likely be like as if so. I did world history growing up, right, and school, right, High School law stuff.

19:00 Would it be more along the lines of, like, all that stuff actually didn't happen and us today we just think it happened because we've been programmed to think of that it happened or that it did happen, but the simulation has just grown over time and worked out all of its Kinks and stuff. And some people have had really horrible experiences and stuff along the way inside of their simulation or is it moral The lines of like, I'm real and the rest of you guys are NPCs. Well, you know, these are sort of theories, right? Yeah. And this is where you get into the different flavors of simulation Theory and I think you know, you've kind of pinpointed that. And and I like to say this is actually one of the most important issues related to simulation Theory to this new field called simulation Theory, which is what I call the NPC versus RPG flavors of simulation Theory, and so in the end, NPC version. Everyone is just an AI running in code on the computer and so you're just kind of running kind of like again, I reference this movie the 13th floor earlier.

20:05 I don't know if any of you have seen it. It's it came out in 1999, so I don't think I'm giving anything away. No spoilers. Oh, just give it but, you know, everyone in there in the 90s and they go back to the 1940s inside. Simulation and in the simulation everybody, they're from the 40s in l.a. thinks they're real. And so the in a sense they're NPCs within our non-player characters which is the term, Right video games and in the RPG version you actually are an avatar inside the game and you're in a multiplayer game where other people also are avatars of real players and that's you know, more akin to something like a second life or a fortnight or one of these many online games.

20:52 Games and so you have kind of the Sims versus you know, second life or World of Warcraft as these two extremes. Now what you'll notice in video games those two are not mutually exclusive. I mean, you can have NPCs and you can have PCS or player characters as well. And most of the academics when they talk about simulation Theory, they're talking about the NPC version, right? They're saying it's just happening in a computer and that's it. You have no existence because in They tend to be more materialists, right? And and so, you know, they tend to say there's nothing Consciousness. Nothing outside of what's being written. What, what's there in the physical world, which I like to say, is, what's being rendered at the current moment in time the RPG version hits closer to?

21:40 I think we're a lot of the many philosophers and a lot of the world's religions, particularly Eastern religions, you know, come down where they talked about. But, even the Western religions, like, Christianity and Islam and Judaism. That, you know, you are a soul, you come in to the body, you download into that body, you're kind of stuck there for a period of time. And then everything that happens gets kept track of by sending Universal computer. And then you get uploaded again at the end of that, or you basically take off the virtual reality helmet, if you will, at the end of life and then in some of the religions, you go back and you play again and again and again into the into the game. And so, I know this is kind of a longer way. Of getting to your point 0 4 is perfect and killing us like yeah.

22:26 But it kind of gets to I think what is the core issue of the same? Same issue that physicists have been struggling with since the beginning of physics, which, you know, Max Planck thought that Consciousness was fundamental, and matter was derivative and most physicists today, think matter is fundamental and you just put the right neurons and placing you'll have Consciousness, right? So it's an emergent property of the Consciousness but then getting back to, well, what does this? This mean for history, right? Well, it could go either way, you could have history that hasn't happened, but you think it has. Because that's if you think of a video game if you run like a simulation, you can run the Sims or you can run a simulation of say the pandemic or any other type of rule, whether right? So there's a whole field of kind of running simulations separate from what we're talking about which is we are inside a sandwich, this isn't, you know, like the population Fruit flies. We're going to run a computer simulation and we're going to figure it out and in that whole world of computation, there's there's a guy named Stephen Wolfram who was a physicists dropped out of Oxford and then taught at Caltech and and created the Mathematica software which a lot of Engineers use. And, you know, he came up with a phrase called computational irreducibility and what he said was, if you want to see what's going to happen at Step 1, Lien in any process in certain processes, what he calls complex

23:57 processes. You have to go to step 999, 999 thousand 999 and to see what's going to happen. There, you have to go to 998 and to see what's going to happen. If you go to 97, basically, you have to run the whole damn simulation, in order to figure out what's going to happen. And it's if you do that, you have to run it multiple times, right? And you know, this is where we get into a strange idea. Which is what led me to write my second book which is about the Multiverse. You know, I was interviewing the wife of science fiction writer, Philip K dick and his wife Tessa Tessa dick. You know, as part of my research for simulation Theory because in 1977, Philip K dick, out of Science Fiction conference.

24:42 In Metz, France had a famous statement, which has been quoted a lot and you can find it on YouTube. There's even a song from the group Max though, where that starts with a You know, kind of a digitized version of his voice sounding robotic. And what he said was, we are living in a computer programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, some alteration occurs in our reality. And that's the famous part of the quote turns out, there's more to the quote, there's a whole speech. And so, you know, I went back and I thought of, I interview Jessa just because I thought it'd be fun to get her taken whether you know, Philip thought we were in a simulation and she told me a lot more than That she said, well, he actually thought not only where we in a computer program reality but that there were multiple timelines in this reality and that, you know, Philip wrote a book called The Man in the High Castle, right? Which became an Amazon series recently pretty pretty big hit series and in that in that book which was his only Hugo award-winning book.

25:46 So this is kind of his best-known book while he was alive. Of course, Blade Runner is better now, but In that book, Japan and Germany won World War 2 and basically, they carved up America between them, right? So the Germans ruled kind of eased in the and the Japanese rule to the west and was a pretty brutal reality. And if you watch that show, you'll see what what they put in there. And she said, he came to believe that that actually happened, right? That that timeline was a real timeline. He didn't just make that up because he kept having these visions Of America as a police state and eventually he said, he had what the Greeks call and anamnesis, which means a loss of forgetfulness, where basically, he recovered all of these memories. And so, you know, he came to believe that they went down that timeline and for whatever reason, they didn't like the outcome, right?

26:43 This day, meaning the simulators and that they change the variables. This is what his quote is about. You change the variables and it would feel like you're re running the same events. You're saying the same words, you're hearing the same words but things are happening differently and that now we were on a different timeline. We were on a timeline where the Allies won the Lord and you know, she said he actually thought this happened with these strange beings even more than once. Like it. It's happening all the time which is leading to a lot of these little changes were big changes and you know, she said he got the idea when he went into the bathroom to like turn on the light in this is, you know, back in the sixth. Sir, where they have those chain line? Yeah, you tried to pull the chain light and it wasn't the chain wasn't there?

27:28 There was a light switch and he was like life. I've done this a hundred times, you know, this way. And now it's this way. And so he came up with this idea that maybe there's a team of people that are fiddling with little variables in reality and then you rerun the simulation. But then it got even weirder because he said, that they ended up preventing the assassination of JFK in Dallas in one run of the Ian, but then he got sorry and Dallas and that. But then he got assassinated in Orlando and another city. Or he got his last name somewhere else, or he didn't get assassinated and somehow we ended up in a nuclear war. And so, it was almost as if, you know, he said, each of these timelines is like a suit in a closet, they're next to each other. And that there are individuals that are outside, the simulation that are like fiddling with these variables and he claimed to, you know, now we're getting into something that sounds, you know, sounds very strange but perhaps not for For your podcast daughter.

28:24 Fly effect is pretty much what I'm talking about. We're just like something changes, Della projecting the future. Right? That's right. Right both. So that was a fun one. Yeah. And so that was, you know, what got me thinking? Because I had I had written this book about simulation Theory and it's just the thought, wouldn't leave my mind that. Well, if you can run a simulation, once you can run it more than once and in fact you would change these variables and I was actually sitting down. Down with a friend of mine from MIT, who had just taken a job at Google. And we were just, I was living in Mountain View, which is where the Googolplex is located. And we were just a couple miles from that in downtown having coffee and he said, oh, have you heard of the Mandela fact? Yeah, you have heard of it, but I hadn't thought much about it. And he said, well, you know, one explanation that makes sense for the Mandela fact is that it's a simulation and that you basically change variables and you rerun it and you know, he said it was a pretty deep Rabbit Hole. So he Like you may want to be careful and so between that conversation with this friend of mine forever, my MIT, who typically, you know, that group of people is not talking about things like the mandala of acted UFOs and aliens. And my conversation with Tessa about, Philip K dick. I went back and reread his whole speech and realized, that's what he was talking about.

29:43 And he even said, all we would have to do is find a group of people that had memories of a different timeline. It different alternate Isn't trying to show this because, you know, he had these memories but not that many other people did and it wasn't really possible till the internet came around where you could. And the Mandela effect was coined by this blogger Fiona broom and in 2010, when she was at Dragon Con, which is one of the, you know, the Comic Con like conferences and some of the people had remembered Star Trek episode. And if you know Star Trek fans, I don't know if any of your shark Trek fans but you know, they know, Their stuff, right? Right, yeah.

30:24 Like, you know, trekkies or Trekkers, depending on what you want to call them, they know about this episode and what happened and what line was where, and they kept see the fit there were fans that were insisting. That there was this one episode and the cast of the original series Star Trek was like, nah, we never film that episode. What are you talking about? And, and so, you know, and then she she also found that she had memories of Mandela dying in prison. As did a bunch of other people and that was what led to her coining this term. And talking about it. And so I started to investigate different different Mendel effects, including, you know, ones that I thought there are a lot of small ones, right? There's the spelling of Jif. Peanut butter versus Jiffy. There's a Kit Kat with a dash which is not having the dash so they're obviously, I am your father elusive versus no I am your father. Yes, it's a silent era Wars nerd. Well, there you go.

31:15 Ya around. Remember Luke say, you know, Darth Vader saying Luke. I am your father. Any others just to throw this out there. I will die on this hill, that Fruit of the Loom had a cornucopia, I agree. I - I agree was another one now who my mind's. So you know most most scientists dismiss them and elephant know. It's just all T, memory group of people are having faulty memory be. And I said well what if we took it more seriously than that, right? What if it actually happened? That way it turns out it's not just one Mendel affect each of these. If you think of it as like a grid, right? You can see if we do loom, is this versus that? And then somebody who remembers feeling this way, might remember KitKat this way.

31:58 But you get into this, this basic graph of possibilities, which is exactly what the Multiverse theory is all about. But then I started to look for things that were more significant, right? So that's what I call proximity. If you have proximity to something or it's more significant in your life, you're going to be less likely to just have faulty memory about it. Then somebody else. So the Berenstain Bears, Versus The Bernstein Bears was one of those where, you know, people remember people who are Jewish remember saying why are these Bears Jewish, right? And they remember having that conversation and so there's a proximity there or another one that I liked was that, you know, I don't remember, but the Reverend Billy Graham right there evangelicals, who insist that?

32:42 They, their parents get these magazines in the mail that he died, you know, several years before he actually died with his funeral and they have memories of it. Again, if you're an Evangelical Christian, who follows this particular, you know, Pastor or priest or whatever the terminology is than Europe, it's going to be closer and more significant to you. And if you're a Star Trek fan, who religiously nose or Star Wars nerd, really just needs a nose. Like, I would know if Mark Hamill died, but I wouldn't know if great G died. Did you and you know, man? Yeah, so I kept finding these more significant versions. The Mendel effect to the point of the Bible, you know, the Bible changes that people talk about and and again, people know their scripture.

33:29 I mean, that's an area where, you know, people don't want to screw around and then the whole line about the lion and the lamb in Isaiah, which many of us. Remember, turns out, if you look at the King James Bible, it's not there. It's, you know, the wolf will lie with the lab, right? It's not the lion and the lamb and, and they're even like people have made, you know, artwork that you put on your wall. It has, you know, Lion and the lamb quote from Isaiah, you know, up there, and see if physical objects. And at first, I thought, well, maybe it's just a mistranslation, maybe they're just different translations of the King James Bible, and they're like, no, no, I've had this Bible since I was a kid, and it's physically change in the Bible. And so, this took me down a whole nother Rabbit Hole, you know, it looking into the Mandela effect but turns out as I wondered if there were other religions, because again, people know their scripture, right? The people that are serious about it in the same way that we might know.

34:22 Star Wars lines. And so I looked at Islam in the Quran. And, you know, one strange thing was, there was a, there was an Imam who is a Sufi, which is kind of like the mystical side of Islam. Who says that, there's a reason why these lamech priests they're called, Hafiz is memorize the whole Quran. And the Quran is a big buck. I mean it's not like it'll fuck but they memorized it word for word. I remember, as a kid thinking, why the hell they memorizing this whole thing? And we can we got buds, we got computers, we got other things, you know, and turns out there was Strange reason, and they said, because in the Islamic tradition, there are beings, which are called Jin's Johnny's as we call them from the West, which is, you know, a singular gin, but the Jinn don't live in linear time.

35:07 The same way that we do. They're allowed to go back and change variables and change things, or variables is my term. That's not necessarily what they use for, right? Thousands of years ago, but they're allowed to go back and change a physical objects and change things but they're not allowed to change our memories. He's right there, that's forbidden to them, for whatever reason. And so so we got into this weird place where I was investigating computer science things and I ended up you know looking into like you know beings who read and Philip K dick, okay? So back to Philip K dick you know in his speech he said there's a programmer and counter programmer and it's like they're playing chess. The obvious implication is a God and Satan or is it somebody else but but that they're like changing stuff to see what happens and then they're going back and changing other things. To see what happens and it's like playing a game of chess with each other.

35:55 And so, that led me down, you know, this this path as well, is it possible? And turns out, if it's possible that we can be inside a simulation, it's certainly possible that we can be in one that's run multiple times because that's why you run a simulation, right? What it in order to see what will happen. The only way to see what will happen in a computationally irreducible process that I mentioned earlier is to run the damn thing up to a certain point. And then you might say, okay we're going to cut off that one, we're going To run it again and then you know, if you introduced free will now it's even more random and chaotic. Because now you've got all kinds of stuff branching where people might decide to do things differently. So if you add the RPG element in, it actually, you know, there's this whole idea of the Multiverse the Mandela effect in the simulation or kind of all tied together in a way.

36:43 And anyway, I went on kind of a long diversion there but well, I hear you the answer, the simplified answer which deserved of really Explanation is, yes, if you're looking at the multiple history didn't exist, or the history did exist and it's just been, you know, getting there or like whatever it is that the simplified answer to that. Question is. Yes, yes exactly. Wouldn't make sense without a very thorough answer, which I appreciate that was. Thank you much. Thank you. Mine mind blown officially yeah. So, here goes a few. You know what?

37:27 Let's just jump into the big question, okay? What is the best physical piece of evidence or educational piece of evidence quantum physics, whatever you want to use? What is the best evidence you have, right now for the possibility that we are living in a simulated world? Right? Well, you know, I break it into three different areas. One of which I mentioned originally, which is this idea that if we can create a simulation, it's very possible to One is already created one because if we can do it, so I put the simulation Point as maybe a hundred years from now 200 years.

38:08 Max. Okay. That might seem like a long time to us, but it's really not that long in the overall age of the Earth or the age of the universe. So, imagine a civilization, that was a thousand years ahead of us how good would their computers be? How about a million years ahead of us? Right? Okay. And that's just inconceivable to think what they could have built at that point. And and if they if the physical universe is anything like the Verse that we see then you know those those ages are just a blink of an eye. The second area is the religious areas and we can talk more about that in a minute. But then, the third area is the kind of the, where the physical world and the scientific area. And I think that's what you're kind of asking about here. And so, I will say, first of all, this is still a speculative area, right?

38:53 This is not an area where if you go to physicist, and says, okay, that's been proven or in a simulation that the answer will be no good that they don't. In fact, they're not even sure it can be. Right. And so one of the one of the criticisms of simulation theory is its non falsifiable, which is you can't prove you're not in a simulation right now. My answer to that though is just because you can't prove something is not true doesn't mean you can't find some evidence that it is true, right? And so for example you know a couple hundred years ago in Europe, there were reports of rocks falling from the sky and you know the scientists in Paris if that's ridiculous. You know, there's no way there's going to be rocks, could fall from the sky, these peasants out of the countryside, they're going crazy. Kind of like you know.

39:38 Modern science has been doing UFO Buffs, right? And people have seen UFO sightings and, you know, they said that can happen because there are no rocks this guy. So, how can they be falling? Now, the problem was, they had the wrong model of the universe and so because of that, they couldn't explain these weird things. And and So eventually, there was a Your shower in a town. In rural France, with there were like thousands of witnesses, thousands of individual pieces of this meteorite fell, and then they were able to compare it to other meteorites. That had been claimed to be from from outer space and they found that it was very similar and so they were able to finally get some actual evidence and then they change their mind and they had to come up with a new Theory, this is what are called scientific anomalies right? And they had to come up with a new Theory to accommodate that anomaly.

40:29 And so you know right now, Within quantum physics. There's a lot of anomalies. There's almost too many anomalies right to the point where a simple materialist, you know, model of the world or the past goes to the Future in one single physical universe, doesn't make a lot of sense and for me the best evidence is is quantum indeterminacy you know which is best explained with Schrodinger's cat. Yes it's we've all heard of Schrodinger's Cat and so Erwin Schrodinger, one of the fathers of quantum physics. Came up with this idea. Because he just thought, what quantum physics was telling us was ridiculous. So he came up with his idea to say this is how ridiculous the whole thing. Sounds, he says, if there's a cat in a box and within an hour of the cat is going to be, has a 50% chance of being dead, because there's some poison that can be released and a 50% chance of still being alive.

41:21 The cat Common Sense tells us the cat is one or the other. It's either alive or it's dead, right? Can't be both. It's in the Box. We don't know, but it's got to be one of the other than when we open up the box. We'll find out. Which one it was. And the problem is that quantum mechanics keeps telling us again. And again, that the cat is both alive and dead that it's in a state of what's called superposition, which means both of those positions are there. Or if you think of a cubit a Quantum Computing bit irregular bit has a value of 1 or 0 a cube. It has a value of both 1 and 0 at the same time and it's not until someone observes the cat or measures the cat, right? And so, there's some debate about that. That what happens is, they say, it's a probability wave of cross.

42:06 All of these positions that gets collapsed down to a single solid reality, right? And for me, that is one of the biggest mysteries and to me, is one of the best pieces of evidence that what we have is something that gets rendered as we experience it. So the rule in quantum, physics is only render that, which is observed. If you buy that specific interpretation and turns out, that's how we make video game. So you know, when I was a kid, way back going way back to the 80s. When we used to have video games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders, I remember those. Remember that we could not render something like for night? Especially not on a device.

42:54 This small, like a phone, we can even do it on our computers, right? Because we were like, there's just too much that would there's too many Souls to keep track up. And so, how did we go from there to here? Now, you might say, well, the computers got faster. Yes, they did. But it was actually more important than that. We came up with algorithms to optimize how we rendered 3D models, right? So, we only render, like, if you and I are in the same room or avatars in the same room, we only render what my avatar can see. And you only render what your avatar can see. You don't render the whole world on your computer. That would still He'll be way too many pixels to render and so the rule of thumb in 3D computer games is render only that which can be observed, right?

43:41 Which is exactly the rule according to quantum physics. And so, for me, you know, that's one of the biggest indications that we may be in some kind of a world that gets rendered based on information, which was the other piece of it is that I talked about earlier, which is based on It's of information but it gets even weirder than that. Okay, so your question earlier was if this tragedy happened didn't really happen or not, right? And I said that you and you and you summarize my long answer with the short answer is yes. Well turns out within within quantum mechanics which was the the double slit experiment is where they got all this.

44:22 I explained it with shorteners. Cat young turns out, right? But that is it, that's Young's experiment. Yeah, the original double slit experiment. That's both. Yes. And no, at the same time, it's both yes and no at the same time, it turns out there's a John Wheeler, who I mentioned earlier. Came up with a different version of that. He called it, the delayed, Cosmic Choice experiment, and so the delay, Cosmic Choice experiment is best explained with the cosmic delayed Choice. Did you experiment? Because it's easier to visualize and so imagine there's light coming from a quasar that's a billion light years away from us. That's a long time, right? Yeah. So the light would have had I have left that, you know, back before there were humans on Earth if you buy the standard timelines, right? And then suppose in between between a billion light years and the Earth, maybe a million light-years away. There's a very large gravitational object like a black hole or galaxies and so the light has to go either to the left or to the right of this black hole and turns out we can catch the Light in different telescopes to figure out if it was left to right.

45:29 This is where it's like the delete it. like the double slit experiment, it can go either way, but now the decision of whether to go to the left or to, the right would have had to have been made with It's a million light years away the black hole. Yeah, they'll die. It would have had to been made a million years ago. Yeah, right. So we're talking like dinosaur time, right? And what the, the quantum, the cosmic delay, Choice, experiment and the versions. They've run of that. Now, when wheeler proposed, it couldn't really do it, but we can send it to satellites like two satellites and we can approximate it. It's shown that that decision is not made until today. So both of those possibilities.

46:12 It is exist. Both of those histories exist in a state of superposition and this is where it gets really weird, right? Because now, it's not just, the cat is alive or dead but like, you know, the cat came from Grandma's house or the cat was, you know, given to us by our neighbors, right? Both of those histories exist until the time when they get observed or like as I like to say it gets rendered. And so the way to think about it is there's this long Ang grid of possibilities. And we are basically going through this grid and based upon where we are and, you know, it's all virtual.

46:52 And so for me, the fact that the delayed Choice experiment shows us, that tells us time is not what we think it is. And the fact that the Schr��dinger's cat, the original double slit experiment shows us that things exist in the state of superposition and they only get rendered when they're observed is probably the best indication. That the universe is optimizing somehow, it's doing exactly what we do in and a lot of computer science is all about optimisation. I mean, going back to the Atari days, they only had like I don't know to K of memory literally and they had to write like the whole Space Invaders code and make it all work, you know, and that. And that's why it's okay, if any of you have ever played Space Invaders, what you'll notice is that that you start off with all these aliens and they're going really slow.

47:38 Yeah, and then as you shoot the aliens and their, they start going fast. Stir and faster now. Yeah, seems like it's a difficulty mechanic like normally you would do that well turns out it's because more space every computer was so with but with the It was an area that you could see say like it's an area in the woods, right. And you can see at one point, say, 10 years ago, you went and visited this area.

48:21 No one did except for you, you observed, it in a certain way you left, so it's not observed anymore, no one's around there. So let's say it's in, stasis, and then you go back and then you can see it 10 years later. And you can see that the change has happened over the last 10 years whether some trees have died or, you know, plants have grown in areas where they weren't all sorts of stuff. Like how would that Account for that, or is the computing power? Just so astronomically, large that basically. It's like video games that are coming out now where it has its own weather patterns and stuff and it can account for all that stuff, even though it's not an observable area. Yeah. And that's where because it doesn't have to render it until you look at it, it can store that as information.

49:03 So it actually doesn't have to render the clouds for 10 years, can kind of just run the B and figure out where it would end up after 10 years. So, it's if you've ever run a process on a computer, that's a graphics process. There used to be like, in video games to there. Used to be like a super user mode. So we what we talked about the metaverse today it was the term was coined in a science fiction novel called snow crash which came out in 1992. So this is pretty Ready Player one. And at that time the way it would work is you had a 3D World you put on your goggles and you can be inside this world looking around. That used a lot of computing power. Or you could go into super user mode.

49:44 In which case there were no Graphics being rendered. You could just like type code into the computer and you could just process the code and then you would re render it at the end. And so, you know, that's sort of what we call a lazy evaluation in computer science, where you don't evaluate it until you need to write the very you use the computing power when you need to. But because it hasn't been rendered all that time, it's more of an informational simulation like it's much easier to run a simulation Mission of the fruit flies, because it's just saying, okay, what's the number of fruit flies every year? There's no Graphics involved in running a simulation of the fruit fly population but running a Sim City simulation or in Tokyo.

50:24 They I was on this program with with William Shatner what's it called? The Unexplained trying. And they did an episode on apocalypses and they wanted me to talk a little bit about simulation. And we were talking about how in Tokyo, they ran like the fastest Peter that was all that was available at the time and they wanted to see what would happen in an earthquake. And so they wanted to see what would happen with all of the individuals in the city and how they would evacuate and you're talking millions, millions of people. And so yeah, they had to have like a lot of computing power and today, so I don't think it's, I don't think it's the, the most powerful supercomputer anymore. But it was the time, and that's what they needed, because they were trying to graphically show it all and show each decision being made independently that said, I do think that it's a computer system. That's So Advanced compared to what we think of today that we probably wouldn't even call it a computer. It's that's what quantum computers is about. And I think I know we're running were running short on time so I don't want to get too far in quantum computers but in quantum computers, you have this idea of qubits which lets you have 4 bits.

51:29 Each one can have a variable value of 0 or 1. So that means there are 16 possibilities. Yeah, 2 to the fourth and if you had, you know, a thousand bits, it's to do a thousand. And so these These computers can solve quickly, what are called exponential problems problems that grow exponentially and they do it by just trying out all the possibilities. But like, a normal computer would take, literally thousands of years to solve exponential problems, like click breaking encryption, or like there's the old story of the king and India and the chess player, the wise man, and the King loved to play chess. And the wise man said, well, I don't want to play any goes. Well, I'll give you anything you want.

52:10 If you play chess with me. Otherwise, It said, okay, you give me one rep grain of rice for the first Square in the chest board. Give me two grains of rice for the second one for for the next 18 for the next one. The King was like, yeah, sure. Why not? I mean, yeah. Super nice. No big deal. Well, turns out 2 to the 64 was so much rice that you couldn't fit it all over India by the time, but quantum computers can solve those problems. And now we're just learning to build those now. So that's why I think that's more like it. A more likely solution for how you know we would do that. So we're on the verge of some really cool stuff. Will you come back and blow our minds?

52:52 Explain more about our we're all doomed. Well I think we're all doomed for me personally you know I thinking of this world as a video game gives you this idea of quests. What happens if you don't, you know, you don't Your quest. The first time, you do it again. You keep going. You don't just give up, right? And so, and some people play with real high difficulty and some people play with low difficulty. They wanted an easy game. And so when you know, weird things happen to us in life, thinking of it as a video game, with a higher difficulty is not is a way to kind of stay on top of things and maybe not all doom. But really say, well maybe we signed up for that Quest even though we don't like it and it's super difficult, you know, it's a health problem, or a financial problem or some other problem.

53:40 So anyway, that's just my perspective. The Navy Jag. Yeah, this is. This is a bad Quest. All right. Um, all right so time is up but I have to ask you a question completely, unrelated to the simulation Theory before you go. Okay, we do it with all the guests. Do you believe in Bigfoot? Do I believe in Bigfoot is Bigfoot real risk? Come on. I haven't seen it, but I know people who say they have so really. So yeah, I mean, I was on Coast to Coast with Connie Willis and half the episode. She kept saying, you got to come with me to Colorado like yeah, she will, she will kids say you got to take me out.

54:23 I gotta take you out to these woods and then you'll see Bigfoot is real. So you know, it's very possible that there are, you know, I'm a big believer that we, we don't know a lot. We think we know a lot, you don't really know a lot and so, You know, my perspective is if people have seen it. If enough people see something just like with near-death experiences it's very likely. There's something there. Yeah. Diverse literally like there's a universe out there where it's all big feet and they're talking about people even people. I know people that has 90. Get that I've seen people, you know, I was in Chicago. With the running joke is that we mentioned Bigfoot on every episode?

55:07 It's a sorry had to do it. No worries. Rizz, thank you so much before we go. Can you go ahead and let everybody listening to the infinite Rabbit Hole podcast or watching in on the Paranormal Network? Let him know where where can they find rizwan Virg and follow him and get to know you a little bit more? I know you got a podcast yourself and where they get your books, sure. So, you know, the books, you can get pretty much anywhere. Amazon, of course, I always encourage people to go to local bookstores and you know, even if they don't have it they can they can order it. And if you're in Boston or the San Francisco Bay area, you can get signed copies at either east west. Books in Mountain View or order Square books or seven stars in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

56:01 And my website is Zen entrepreneur.com, which was based on the title of my first book, which was called Zen entrepreneurship, and you can follow me on Twitter at R is Stanford just like the university? Perfect. Perfect. Jake kid, do you guys have anything for risk before we go? Now? Just as long as he promises to come back and keep blowing our minds? Yeah. As soon as we're we close up shop here, I got to pick up my brain off the floor and yeah, I was gonna say I know that I didn't say a whole lot this episode, but there was so much information, my brain instantly went to Mush and I was just so interested in what you were saying. I couldn't articulate my own thoughts. So I've just been sitting here absorbing everything, and I don't even know if my brain is solid anymore. I think it's just a puddle, which is what we wanted now. Now yes, just pure liquid.

56:57 Now, thank you so much. I'll have to come back. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having me on. It has been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you so much for for blowing our minds today. R is so all the Travelers of the infinite Rabbit Hole. You've heard it straight from his mouth where you could follow him, he Our minds today, he's blue, he's blown my mind. When I read his first book, I'm about a third of the way through his second. Right now, the man is absolutely brilliant. I highly highly highly recommend his work. I've listened to a couple episodes of this podcast. He has really good guest on there. Some really good mind-blowing stuff, check it out, follower is on all social media platforms, check out his website. The man does amazing stuff, I took some notes here, I'm going to Check out the 13th floor.

57:57 And I'm also going to watch that episode of The Unexplained. That's some really, really cool stuff. We got everything in we and we even talked about the man in the High Castle. As, you know, Philip K dick is fantastic. I mean, if you guys get a chance to read a book, The Man in the High Castle is just awesome. I've watched maybe like the first five episodes of the show. I'm more of a book reader but the show is pretty good too eventually. I want to get back to it. But with that being said, Travelers, thank you for joining us on this episode of the infinite Rabbit Hole next week, we will be diving into kids. Third topic, kid, would you like to share? What your topic is sure we're going to talk about Loch Ness monster.

58:46 Now we've been doing the show for over two years now and Loch Ness Monster is one of the big hitters when it comes to cryptozoology kids going to blow our mind and no shoes I'll do a great job and then after that, I believe we have stated something with Jake, but that is a mystery, even to myself, right? Well, that is it has been another episode of the infant Revel podcast to all those listening on your favorite podcast platforms or watching in on the Paranormal Network. Thank you. Once again, let us know what you thought of rize's time here in the infinite Rabbit Hole. Let us know, give us some questions because I know for a fact I'm going to be bothering them all the time about coming back on the show. That was an absolute blast.

59:28 Ask us the questions that we can pass on to R is on the next episode and I'm sure he's going to blow our minds. Just like he did today. Thank you. Everybody will see you in the next half of the infinite rabbit. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. We should go say Bye. Bye everyone.