Proof we are Living in a Simulation? In The Matrix?

Show Transcript

Is there proof we're living in a simulation? Are we in the matrix? Simulation theory has captivated the minds of both scientists and the public, merging quantum physics, reality, and consciousness in a thought-provoking debate. Hello and welcome to this episode of Mysteries with a History. We will be taken on a wild ride into the unknown, the strange, and the mysterious. (00:34) Like you, I have questions, and like you, I want answers. And with each episode together, we will peel away the layers to look for the truth. This is a very complex topic, and there's a lot to cover, so I simply cannot do without my co-host, Jimmy Church of Fade to Black Radio. Jimmy, happy Thursday. Hey. So behind the scenes, before we even get into the simulation theory, we are seeing history happen right before our eyes today at this exact moment in time. (01:10) Are we really? Are you sure? If everything goes well, I guess. Are you sure? Man, today's a big day. It is. Today is history day. on histories with the mystery. That's, that's what's going down. It's a, it's pretty exciting. Okay. So let's get to that in a second and I'll let everybody know. (01:33) I do have, uh, I've got a second channel that is running at the same time, uh, which is the live feed of, uh, Odysseus. So we'll, we'll, we'll get back to that. Christina, what inspired this deep, uh, scientific and philosophical show that we are going to do today. This is just out of nowhere. (02:00) Out of nowhere? I wouldn't say that, but... This is something that people have talked about. I've been prompted to cover this over the years of doing this show. But the thing is that, you know, that eureka moment when you're in the shower, in the bathtub or like right before going to bed, you got these wacky ideas and then your mind just keeps going and going and going and you can't make it stop. (02:23) Mm hmm. This is one of those topics. This is one of those. And I get that. I totally get that. And the more that we look into the subject, are we living in a simulation? Is this the matrix? I remember the more that I research it, the more that I sit back and go, man, I I don't know now. I just don't know. (02:46) But this is a deep, deep thought and thought experiment that has gone back thousands of years. This isn't something new. Before we get started on the history, we'll go backwards first. In less than an hour, everybody, in about 50 minutes, the touchdown of Odysseus is supposed to happen. And when it does, we can break in and hopefully have some good news because this will be the first time that we've allegedly been back to the moon since, you know, 1972. (03:23) And we referring to the United States because there have been other countries that have already placed probes on the moon. Crashed on the moon. Right, right. Right, right, right. So, yeah, so it's a big deal. And when it goes down, which is at 324 Pacific Time, 624 Eastern Time, and I'm looking at the clock now, so I've got 235 on my clock. (03:53) But I've also got the live feed, which is happening here to my left. I wanted to say this. Because everybody is spending time with us while this is going on, and we're not going to leave you in suspense. That wouldn't be cool. This is huge breaking news, and we'll bust into the show. But let me back up and say one thing before we get started. (04:16) In the now-now, when The Matrix premiered, I had, there was a magazine here in LA called the LA Weekly. And I would look in the back and they would have all the premieres of movies coming out. I had not heard of The Matrix. And I see it, right? And I see the description of it. Oh, really? Okay. Premiering when? Tonight? I'm there. (04:41) I don't know what this is really about from the description, but it seems like it's going to be really cool. So I go and I see the movie. I didn't get it. I didn't. It was too much all at once. But I went back the next night, and I watched it again. And then I went back a third night, three nights in a row. (05:06) When was the last time you went to see the same movie in the same theater three nights in a row? I've never done it. But I did that with The Matrix. And by the third viewing... I started to get the concepts, but I really started to think about it. And, you know, simulation theory and the ideas behind it, you know, what is our reality? Now, I had always thought about deja vu, and we'll talk about that too as well today. (05:38) I'd always thought about that stuff growing up. And then when you see something like the matrix, then you jump into the research and start looking at this. Many physicists and scientists have surfaced with alternative ideas with this. But we have other thought leaders around the world that are discussing this now. (06:00) as a possibility of our actual reality. And that's the part that I find really interesting because I'm not a PhD. I'm not. I'm simply not. I'm somebody that wonders about the world and what is going on. But when you have these big, big brains discussing this with Christina, I'm going to say it, with a serious face, right? A serious face. (06:26) You have to wonder, what is it that they know that we don't? So let's jump into it. I'm ready. OK, I'm going to share my screen here and first talk about the butterfly dream that was first contemplated during the fourth century in China. So here is an image, kind of a rendition of what was going on. (06:49) And the butterfly dream is a well-known philosophical narrative from the Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese text attributed to the philosopher Zhuangzhuu. commonly known as the same as the title of the book, who lived around the fourth century BCE, which is a long time ago. And this is during the Warring States period. (07:11) So before China became China, it was a part of the Warring States period. And so this is one of the most fundamental texts of Taoism that would also reflects broader Chinese philosophical ideas and is celebrated for its literary qualities, humor, and deep skepticism of controversial values and knowledge. And to write something already like that in the 4th century BCE is impressive. (07:36) But looking at this, in Chapter 2, it talks about the butterfly dream, and another title for it would be On the Equality of Things. And so how the story goes, at least, is that Zhuangzi dreams he's a butterfly, fluttering very happily, completely absorbed in being a butterfly. He is oblivious to his individuality as a person. (08:02) So suddenly he wakes up and he finds himself as himself, human, once again. And then he ponders whether he was Zhuangzi, dreaming he was a butterfly, or whether he is now a butterfly, dreaming he is Zhuangzi. And so this narrative, while it sounds like, why are you guys talking about this with the simulation? A lot, actually, because the narrative is rich in philosophical implications that have been interpreted in various ways. (08:31) And some themes include the nature of reality and identity, because the story questions the nature, just the full blown nature of reality and identity in itself, because it challenges the distinction between a dream. and the real deal, suggesting that we consider what might be real could be an illusion and vice versa. (08:54) So this transition between Zhang Zi and the butterfly blurs the lines between different states of being, inviting us to consider the fluidity of identity and the possibility that our understanding of the self is not only limited, also subjective, but even potentially an illusion. And when we look at, in today's world, virtual reality, the simulation theory, it's displaying that everything that you are seeing, yourself included, is merely an illusion. (09:29) And this thought, when it was first written down to our knowledge, was the 4th century BCE. It's impressive. Yes, it is. It is. And so the complex mind to think like this is not modern. You have to look at it. We have thought about this. And these are deep, deep, deep philosophical and existential influences. (09:59) Very, very, very deep thought. But to come out of that and to—I'm talking about the dream— To remember the dream, but then to flip it over at 400 BC and write it in such a way that would allow others to think, and I like the word ponder, the same situation. And to sit up and go, wow, okay. That dream seemed pretty real. (10:32) I was flying around from flower to flower. I was free. I was happy. I understood I was the butterfly. I understood what it was like to be free, flying from flower to flower. It was real. But wait a minute. Am I now the butterfly dreaming me? And then he put it into words. Here's the other part, though. His own text, when he wrote, was I Shang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I'm Shang Tzu? And it's such a simple concept. (11:18) But it's very, very easy to understand and then just apply that to everything. It has turned into a monumental thought experiment that has gone down for over 2,000 years now. It is much discussed. We're going to get into, it is such a deep subject, and how the brain works, how dreams are, what our reality is, and then, of course, the technical side of it. (11:49) And could this be a binary ones and zero world like The Matrix? When The Matrix started, the film, when the film started, if you remember, it's binary code that was flooding down the screen. That very existence suggested then in The Matrix about a computer-driven simulated reality, which we found out later in the film, of course, was a giant computer. (12:18) Everybody's plugged into it and you're living in this reality. And to you, it's real. And if you remember, the key moment here is unplugging from the matrix, which has now become a pop culture term, hasn't it? So I think we all understand what it is. The question is, are we? And no one has the answer to that yet. (12:44) When it comes to the butterfly dream, it became one of the foundations of Taoism. And while we're still on that thought, before we continue, we can also look at Buddhism and Hinduism and their concepts, their understanding of samsara. of karma of maya because samsara is not only the realm of suffering but it's also the realm of illusions and delusions maya refers to illusions and karma because this is really interesting because the concept of karma and samsara can be likened to the rules of code governing a simulation, (13:18) just as actions within samsara influence future rebirths, actions within a simulation could determine outcomes within that framework, suggesting that this life that we're living could potentially be programmed in the nature of existence. And when we think of it in that kind of concept, because not everyone's going to agree with that and you don't have to, that's totally fine. (13:45) But if we just hold on to that for a moment, Hinduism has been taught for thousands of years, Buddhism for about a little under 2,000 years. People have been thinking about this for a long time, and here we are in present day, and we still do not have the answer, and yet... People are still pondering on this topic because it is in itself a thought experiment. (14:11) But there have been a handful of tests that have been done that lead people to believe that we are living in a simulation while others completely disagree. And they said, nope, this is my life. This is what I'm going for. And there's nothing else. It's a touchy subject because you're really changing and shifting people's paradigms when you say one thing or another depending on their mindset. (14:40) We can no longer use the word ponder in this show. We've done it four times. Can't do it because that's exactly what we are doing, aren't we? We cannot ponder or use the word ponder anymore. But I will ask this question. Is there something, anything that we can know 100% for certain? That's where all of this leads to. (15:11) Right, so just center yourself on that question. Is there anything that we know that is 100% certain? I'll ask you. If we know it's certain, how do we know that it's certain? What do we use to compare? Yeah, that's right. Because the sub-questions in all of those, like that one, right? And then, okay, let's say, as we try to search for something that we know for 100%, right? Then how would we be able to tell, well, you know, if something is real? But then the other sub-question is, How do we know? (16:02) How do we know? How do we know? How do we know anything? How do we know something? It's one thing about 100% certainty or how we would be able to tell what are the signs of that, but then how would we know something? These are deep, deep, deep philosophical questions that are really addressed nearly perfectly in The Matrix because that's Neo's hero's journey. (16:33) He's out trying to seek these very fundamental answers. It's crazy town to me. Crazy. I look at these questions and to me, I love asking these questions at dinner. I love asking these questions of people. When you hear their answers, and they're all different, that it causes, we keep saying thought experiment, right? It causes you to think and maybe wonder. (17:05) I'll say this before we move on. We've got a lot to cover today. When I was a kid, I had a couple that were neighbors in the military. They were in the Army, a married couple, both in the Army. And they were friends of my dad. But they were cool. I liked them. They were all right. And one of them signed my yearbook, like my sophomore year in high school. (17:33) Same as Steve. But he wrote in my yearbook, Christina. Jimmy, nothing is what it seems. Steve, right? That's all he wrote. That's all he wrote. You know, everybody else, you know, doing their thing. And what... A profound thing to say at that age. But it influenced me for my entire life. And it takes me right here to this moment and this show with you discussing exactly what he wrote in 1977 in my yearbook. (18:14) Heavy, huh? Heavy, heavy, heavy. It is for a high schooler, for sure. Even today. It is. I was like, everything? Everything. So, yeah, yeah. So where do we take this next? I think you laid a great foundation to talk about one of the more famous philosophers that has the most famous thought or quote, and that is, I think, therefore, I am. (18:42) And the person that we're looking at right here, Jimmy, take a guess on who this is. His name's Descartes. That's right. Rene Descartes. And he had several things that he wrote in his book called Meditations. And it's not sitting down in a lotus position and clearing out the mind, but it's more so of a literal thought experiment. (19:04) And his most famous one is number three of his meditations being I think therefore I am. But it goes into more detail on these. And there's I think there's five. I would say there's five. But one that is appropriate for this conversation is it is possible that I'm dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false. (19:24) So with all those meditations, they build upon each other. You cannot read one without the other. But the one that we're going to be focusing on is that one in particular, because as it's mentioned, the nature of reality, reality has been pondered by philosophers for For millennia, as you had mentioned, Jimmy. (19:45) But in fact, some of the ideas presented in the simulation theory parallel some of the overarching ideas presented in history's most significant philosophical lessons. And if you take any philosophy class, you will know about him. So have it be Plato or Descartes, we're not really in their sense when covering them talking about the movie, The Matrix, or the entire concept of The Matrix. (20:18) But many people have noticed that the simulation theory is a modern theory. interpretation almost of Plato's analogy of the cave or Descartes' evil demon hypothesis as well. So when we're looking at him in this image here, but also at his work, he provides this foundation that resonates deeply with the simulation theory. (20:45) Because René embarked on a quest to doubt everything he believed to know in order to find the undoubtable truth. He was pulling everything apart, leading him to conclude that while all external reality could be completely deceptive, it could be an entire illusion, and the existence of his own thinking self... was the only thing that was concrete to him, that was a foundation to him, that was undeniable. (21:17) So as long as he was thinking, I think therefore I am, then I know that I'm real. I know that my thoughts are real, but that doesn't mean that the reality around me is real. And so this is just something that catches people's attention, myself included. And if you, if you had your attention caught right there, hit that like button right down below. (21:41) We have 370, 350 people watching this live and 185 likes. If you're enjoying the show, let's get the 200 likes right down below. But Jimmy, I do want to hear your insights when it comes to one of the more famous philosophers. Well, Descartes, his dream argument, which is the way it's framed today, right, his dream argument, it all started with his claim that waking life and a dream can have the same content. (22:18) Therefore, there's a similarity between the two experiences. Dreamers can be deceived into believing that they are having an experience while they are awake, while they are actually asleep and dreaming. It's a paradox. right and the dream argument he took things a step further um when he started to talk about demons and religion and having influence of a demon and the now before you go wait a minute we're talking about two different things no we're not his later argument about demons was that he cannot be sure (23:01) anything I believe, for I may just be, these are his words, being deceived by a malevolent demon. Both arguments have the same structure. Nothing can rule out me being fooled into believing I'm having one said experience when I'm really having another experience. But if I'm... in one and not the other. (23:28) Therefore, my reality cannot have the knowledge of either, and I'm in a third state. That goes right back to what the simulation theory is all about today, right? How do we know? When you start to question everything, what is the real base reality? We simply don't know that. And there are others that that walk around and they can't distinguish or they stop trying to distinguish what is different from the dream state and reality, and they're making it both the same. (24:07) And there's nothing wrong with that either, by the way. Dreams have a heavy influence on people and how they are interpreted. But going into the dream state just may be as real as Another parallel existence as what we consider the waking part of our lives as being the real situation. And that's what's so intriguing about Descartes. (24:34) And for him to think like this back then, it has been debated and talked about and written about ever since. And I just want to bring this in. I really do want to add sprinkles to this layer cake that we're making. I just want to touch on it. Because if we talk about, just for a moment here, astral projection, and you're able to see your body, but you're outside of your body, which one is the real you? Are you looking at it in a simulation? Or is it still a part of you, but not a part of you? Can I plug that in in (25:07) today's conversation? Have you ever dreamed that you were flying? Of course, right? It goes right back to Shang Tzu and the butterfly dream. If you've ever done that, I'm telling you, I haven't done it in a long time. But when I was flying at five years old, having these dreams, that was real to me. (25:36) It was real. How is it possible that a five-year-old mind can go and observe right up and above a playground looking at your friends playing and thinking about a very, very complex narrative like that? How is that possible? Or is it that... it was an astral projection and that it was real. And it goes right back to the butterfly dream. (26:05) Which one? So yeah, absolutely. I think Descartes was right. We need to look at it like this. And if you've ever wondered about an astral body out of body situation, think about when you dreamed flying. Yes. Thank you for indulging me on that little thought right there, because it was burning inside. And I said, it's not in my notes, but I really just want to touch on that. (26:32) So some other things that might lead people to believe that we're potentially living in a simulation. There's a handful of points, and one of them was actually mentioned by Elon Musk in an interview a few years back, actually, of the technological trajectory of these last few years on how our technology has advanced because the rapid advancement of technology, especially in video games and virtual reality, shows that simulate environments are becoming increasingly realistic. (27:07) Good example of this is VR right now, okay? Like the higher version of Sims, someone probably pointed out, maybe Call of Duty as well. And so with this kind of progress, it's theorized that civilizations perhaps far in the future or eons more advanced than ourselves could create simulations that would be indistinguishable from a real civilization. (27:36) So that's one of a handful of points that people kind of look at and they scratch their head and they say, especially in today's world in 2024, where VR is becoming more prevalent, there are videos of people wearing the VR goggles and walking out in the city. It's kind of spooky. But then we can even bring Neuralink into this and having a chip inside where we are always plugged in, where we're always connected, more so than having screens and getting bad eyesight, as Elon Musk has mentioned before. (28:09) But to have it implanted, would that be evidence maybe of living in a simulation in that moment when more people have chips in their mind? I had a friend that I had, I still do, that has a company, and he sent me some of their work. And, and I'm looking at it. And so it was, uh, of a home in Palm Springs in the desert. (28:43) And you could go with your mouse and, or, or your keyboard and just walk around and explore and check things out. Okay. So I'm doing it. It's just incredible. And I'm picturing, so I get them on the phone and I go, Scott, dude, how much video how did you because it's not real I go what because it's not real that's all that's all artificial what do you mean what what part all of it All of it, all of it, outdoors, indoor, everything was a simulation. (29:26) I thought he was shooting with 3D cameras and he had some kind of way of getting this all together. No, it was all simulated. And I'm telling you, Christina... It was real, real, real, real. Now, if you take that idea and that concept and you go into Neuralink, forget about VR glasses, right? Okay, I get that. (29:50) I understand that. I've done that. But if you could plug his software directly into your brain, You wouldn't know. Simply, you wouldn't know. Which takes us to, I'm going to talk about, let's flow right into Nick Bostrom. And the reason why I want to go with Nick, because Nick, when he started talking about this, it's a while ago. (30:17) And everybody can go, and I've read it many times, you can read his original paper, which is called The Simulation Argument. And you can go and read, it's 14 pages, and you can find it online. But he's been talking about this for a very, very, very long time. And then Elon comes along and a few others going, well, you know, I think that there's a 99. (30:42) 9% chance that we are living in a simulation. That's pretty good odds, right? That's pretty good odds, 99.9% chance. So I'm going to read the opening, it's very short, paragraph. written by Nick about his paper, The Simulation Argument. And this is what he writes. He says, this paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true. (31:09) One, the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a post-human stage. Two, any post-human civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history or variations thereof. Or three, we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become post-humans who run ancestor simulations. (31:50) Now, and if you, unless, and that idea is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. Now, it seems deep and it seems complex, but it's really not. The reason why I listened to Nick, but also backed off of his version of this, is he is talking about the future. When we get the ability to have a simulation and we have non-player characters, and then you take those characters and you make those your relatives, and you put your relatives' minds into that, that if we got to that technical advancement, (32:41) that we would interact with our past and our past would be real. And the past would be a simulation. And we could go and experience all of that. And if that is possible, then why wouldn't it be possible? If that is indeed the case, then we could be in a simulation today. And that's what he postulates. (33:02) And it's a very interesting one. The only caveat here is that he is talking about us in the future with the ability to go post-human right now. Right. Would that indicate that in the future, if we could access the future, that this is going on and therefore we would be living in a simulation? You have to test Einstein's theory of relativity, leave the earth and come back in the future and see. (33:29) But wouldn't that be interesting? And the way that Nick does it and the way that he proposes it, it makes sense and it works. The numbers play out. And he was one of the first modern day scientists to dedicate an entire paper to it and really ponder the possibilities as his first version of his paper was written back in 2001. (33:51) And then it was published in 2003 in the Philosophical Quarterly. But when we're looking at this, one big point that he makes is if and if is in all caps, if we do not destroy ourselves and if we are advanced enough, we will be able to create a simulation at some point in time. But he really emphasizes the word if we do not destroy ourselves and the way that things are going and have been, I would say, for a few decades. (34:21) Do you? I don't know how much longer we have left, but when we're looking at this and if we are, I know Jimmy's laughing at me, but if we're able to technologically advance even more, Yeah. The Sims could be real. Here's an example. Have you ever gone out in public? Okay. Which is going to be a yes for a lot of people. (34:43) You go out in public and there's just some people that aren't fully there. Like they're not acting like people in the sense of like, they're just not consciously doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. And they stand out like a sore thumb. And you think to yourself, are they an NPC? Like what's going on? here like their interactions with you maybe aren't fully there maybe they're standing on the busiest road in the middle of the road where cars must be going and they're just not (35:12) aware aware of what's going on right right right can that potentially be an example of a simulation where some are conscious and other ones just haven't upgraded yet well okay it's how you observe it So maybe in their world at that moment that they see the world differently. It's going to take us straight into Schrodinger's cat if you think about it in those terms. (35:47) If you think about it in those terms, which Schrodinger's cat... which is exactly what Christina is talking about, but it gets more complex. And the reason why I bring this up, like I do Rodinger's cat, like even the idea is a very simple one. His, his ideas behind it dealt with physics. All right. But the idea behind it is simple. (36:16) You have a cat in a box and, Until you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Now, don't scratch your head and go, what? Well, you don't know until you open it up. Until you observe it and change its state. That's it. But you can take that into modern physics today in quantum computing because now the phrase cat state refers to the GHZ state where qubits are an equal superposition of all being zeros and all being one at the same time. (37:02) Now, according to... at least one proposal with this, it may be possible to determine the state of the cat before observing it. Now, wait a minute. How is that possible? Here's the thing. Big brains, this very simple idea laid out by Schrodinger was a thought experiment and he wanted everybody's input on this and to cause people to start thinking. (37:33) But then suddenly we had the Copenhagen interpretation. We had the Von Neumann interpretation. We had Bohr's interpretation. We had the Many Worlds interpretation by Hugh Everett. That was in 1957. You think that the Many Worlds idea and that this is all modern Marvel Comics stuff? It's been discussed for a very long time, all because of Schrodinger. (37:57) You have the ensemble interpretation. You have the relational interpretation. You have the transactional interpretation. And each one of these, and when I say here's a list, This is off the top of my head. There's an infinite amount of interpretations that you can apply with this. It is indeed a true thought experiment, and it has extended out beyond that. (38:24) So with Schrodinger's cat and the idea of us living in a simulation is how you perceive it. And when you observe something, you can change its state. And that just right there, when When physicists and scientists and lab experiments, and we'll talk about entanglement and deja vu and everything else here during this show today. (38:53) The science behind looking at something and changing its state so it can be measured is nuts. But this is the basis of quantum mechanics. This is the basis of quantum theory. This is the basis of Schrodinger's cat. And is a particle a wave? Is a light a wave? What is it? Is it matter or not? Well, it depends if you're looking at it and you can change its state. (39:28) And so, yeah, are we living in a matrix? Are we living in a simulation? It's how you may observe it. And this screen will make sense to some people. But before I get to that, HQ says, like in a video game, objects aren't rendered unless it is in view of the player, which kind of touches on Schrodinger's cat. (39:51) But you were touching about quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, and we simply cannot talk about that without giving an experiment. And in this case, it is the double split experiment, which... In many ways, it stumped people during the time frame when the experiment was conducted. And even today, people think to themselves, I get it. (40:12) I get it. I get it in writing. OK, I can see the evidence, but I don't get it. Like, I don't get how it works. And even today, there are potential theories, but there are no extreme definite answers. Whereas you've heard the quote and you can take that to the bank. You can't with this one. And I love it so much. (40:36) So tell us a little bit about the double split experiment, Jimmy. Well, the double slit. Okay. So you can say split. The double slit experiment, again, is framed in such a way. It was designed differently. We have light. We see light. And it was always assumed, we didn't really know, but what is light? Is it a particle or is it a wave? Okay, and how would you prove that? So now you can picture light. (41:16) You've got two slits in a piece of paper, a board, a piece of wood, piece of metal. You've got two slits. And then in front of it, you have a bunch of water. And when you hit the edge of the water, the water makes ripples and waves, right, and moves across. And when it goes through the two slits, those waves are going to break apart and then recombine. (41:45) Okay, so picture that in your mind. Now, when you put light through it, what would happen if light is a wave? Well, what ended up happening and what surprised everybody is that the pickup on the other side, instead of it being what you would imagine, it was specs. and it was divided up. So therefore, when you are looking at light in one state, you're looking at a wave. (42:20) You're looking at it in this other state, and you're looking at particles. Therefore, right it's the same thing at the same time depending on how you observe it now I would call it a phenomenon in that we can't explain it a lot it's very very difficult to understand light and to hear a physicist discuss this you're going to hear different opinions uh there are uh it's it's How long does the en