[00:00:05]
>> So I'd like to introduce 2 members from the Society of Physics Students here at Georgia Tech s.p.s. or the Society for the students put together this event for us tonight. Robin Glasgow a 4th your physics major will be acting as Moderator Thank you and we'll see even Sen 1st your physics major will be introducing the topic tonight thank.

[00:00:39]
Couple of things in physics seem to suggest one way or another as to whether or not we live in a simulation such as the fact that the plant think exists below which no information exists which seems to suggest that our as Universe is being simulated at some finite resolution however if a hypothetical reality level universe were to exist in which ours was simulated the universe would need much more information than ours currently has so there are many other different ways of approaching this question besides the physics one the physics one and those will all be addressed today by our debate is another important question that we will be discussing today is whether or not this question is even meaningful should people act differently if they believe in a simulation and with the act differently and if they would act differently should we potentially avoid asking this question to avoid potential negative societal ramifications all of these questions and more will be addressed by a debate is throughout this debate.

[00:01:34]
Thank you thank you well. So I'm sure all of you have heard of the movie The Matrix chanted us all in the early thousands at the onset of the digital age and with new technologies being developed including new advancements in computation and makes us wonder like my gosh what is possible do we live in a simulation and that's what our debaters are here today for so I will now let them go down the line and introduce themselves by name and what department they're from and what their stances on this discussion.

[00:02:16]
Yes. Because it is you but. Can You Hear Me Ok that sounds a lot better Ok so I'm John Brockman from the physics department and we were told we could say yes no or otherwise so I'm going to be saying otherwise. My name is Greg Turk I'm from the computer science.

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Department I do computer graphics a lot of simulation actually my stance is no we do not live in a simulation. Hi I'm Mary Holder I'm in the school of psychology in the program enters science and my stance is otherwise. My name is Hans Klein I'm in the School of Public Policy I teach a class in philosophy and I have an opinion on whether or not we're live in the Matrix but 1st anybody take my class do are we live in the matrix students yes.

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We are living in a simulation Yes that is my position. My name is something I'm in the School of Computer Science ever could see a point in mathematics and. I was going to say otherwise and specify that as impossible to tell provably impossible to tell but. Greg said no I'm going to say yes and you can prove me wrong.

[00:03:52]
Or my name you spread. My paycheck from school physics and here because I do would never s.p.s. tells me to do. I make sure we have been dropped into the wrong simulation simulation is not perfect you know I was going to go to. Do believe. The very rich I think it's much more timely.

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And what happened to me is my friends went to an art happening they came back with this t. shirt I have no idea what this teaches about I hope somebody here really illuminated me on the matter other than that I would be just preparing my lecture for tomorrow and doing some great big.

[00:04:42]
Thank you thank you everyone fantastic Now something interesting for you guys to do before during and after the debate as the audience we have a poll listed up here which was mentioned earlier follow this link or scan the q.r. code to put in your opinion right now we have mostly people saying yes pretty strong we'd actually under 19 saying yes verses no and no I.

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Said Yes but we will see depending on what is discussed here today if that changes so that will be interesting to look at when we're finished here but for now I will turn it over to my debaters starting with the initial most basic question Do we live in a simulation and why do you think so we'll do popcorn style so just if you feel like speaking Go ahead.

[00:05:44]
So I would say the question of whether we live in a simulation which will attack from different angles throughout the night. I want to talk about 1st as an empirical question so for a question to be empirical there must be some way of demonstrating that it's false so if I have a scientific theory I must be willing to say there's some evidence that would lead me to believe the theory of gravitation or the theory of evolution or whatever might their favorite theory is is false I don't believe that's true of the simulation apotheosis as our hosts have suggested there are some things that might make us think that it's more likely or that it's less likely but ultimately while there are some things that might make us think that certain you know if giant flaming letters appeared in the sky a saying yes you're living in a simulation I can't think of anything that would convincingly demonstrate that we are not living in a simulation any possible observation is consistent with the notion that reliving and simulation because anything could be simulated by a sufficiently advanced person so for that reason there is no empirical way to say that we're not living a simulation so it's not an imperfect question.

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All right I'm going to say there's a social science perspective so my position is yes we do live in a simulated environment and that's because most of our information is mediated and this is a very important concept it's me most of what we know around the about the world doesn't come to us directly it comes through intermediary technologies and intermediary institutions and I accept that there's a reality out there but very little of what we know do we access directly and experience directly in the way that maybe some my colleagues will talk about most of that we get through media technologies television the Internet social media etc and it's mediated those those technologies are operated by institutions by corporations Google n.p.r. c.b.s. News Fox news and television whatever it is so those intermediating technologies and institutions change in effect the information that arrives to us about the world out there and that that change I'm calling I'm treating that as yet.

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It's a simulated world that we live in to the extent that we live in this world that arrives to us through media the nature of the simulation is that institutions have interests and the interests of the media corporations and the interests of the entities that are being reported on by the media corporations they're all actively shaping the information flows that come to the public it's quite significant could be billions of dollars at stake could be national security at stake could be careers at stake so a lot of effort is made to influence how our knowledge of the world is mediated and it's done in such a way so that we will so we end up living in if we if we live on critically we live in a world that's a bit of a bit of a fantasy world and it's a fantasy world that reflects off in the interests of media institutions and powerful societal interests Thank you.

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Ok so everything is a construct by our brain there may not be an objective reality which is why I am otherwise because in addition to the information being filtered by the media public accent or a it's also filtered by our brain that's what the brain does it helps us navigate our environment make decisions by processing information.

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We can have a small apartment of sensory information but until it hits our conscious awareness it's not real to us so from that aspect it could be a construct of everybody else in this room or non playable characters but following up on. Observation this is not something that we could in Paraguay determine we could we can have some brain scans that can say what our brains are doing while we process information that's our best evidence of you know things happening for other people but it's still this construct that our brain is giving to us and so we can't falsify this idea.

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So I'm going to. Take the approach of looking at some of the numbers some of you may know there was a philosopher named Nick both strong who proposed this initial question and the numbers that he gave I completely disagree with he said that it would take $10.00 to 36th.

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Operations to simulate all of human history I think his numbers low I think it's closer to 10 to the 39th because he thought the human brain would be the most complicated thing to simulate it's really our external reality that would be more complicated to simulate by several orders of magnitude he also says that if our.

[00:10:33]
If we harnessed all the energy of the solar system how many people are familiar with the notion of a Dyson sphere just by show of hands Ok maybe a 3rd of you half of you the notion that you are an entirely enclosed the our sun in. A sphere harness all the energy turn it to compute power you would get on the order of 10 to 42nd operations per 2nd that's not enough yes it's greater than 10 to the $39.00 but it's not large enough for me to believe that you would use that much simulation power just to run a simulation of what you've already seen before there's no point to that you've seen it already why run it again.

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So what. It's on yes so. To to get started I have to have a working definition of what it means to be a simulation and what reality means and so simulation for me is a computer the reality. It's it's observations of the things that can actually be computed.

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Ok but by a machine whatever the machine be reality as Mary said could be relative depends on the observer So one quick experiment there is you're traveling in a train with a nice window and you know you might be seen paddy fields outside if you're in India or you know when yards in France or snow in Siberia and then you fall asleep for a bit and you wake up and you don't notice any difference except your window has been replaced by television giving you movies that you can't tell the difference between.

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Nobody would blink at this at this possibility today now if you take the definition of simulation in the computer Bill reality let me go one step further and say that computation is universal What is competition it's it's well defined change of state that's it so so not only are computers computational devices but so are planetary systems so are so so is the weather and so your brain.

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Changes state well defined so if you want to know what the temperature here is going to be tomorrow we'll just wait for tomorrow and you'll be simulated Ok so now it doesn't mean that we know how to simulate it because you don't because we don't know how to do for example artificial intelligence today but that doesn't mean that it can't be done and I think the premise is that everything everything we see is in fact computer.

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Now. There was this issue of how could a machine know that you might need more power than what you're simulating to simulate the machine that's doing the simulation or the agent that's doing the simulation must be more powerful than what's being said made this is a fallacy for this we just go back to the definition of the machine Alan Turing's.

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Tremendous insight. Would says that there is a universal truth machine you know that a machine that can simulate any other machine of the same power you all are many of you have heard of programs that can print themselves it's a starting point of this theory but the point is that a sufficiently powerful machine it doesn't take much power your phone is powerful enough can simulate itself and can simulate any other machine of the same power so therefore I don't think there's any philosophical hurdle to being in a simulation.

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I guess I'll leave my main points for for later. Ops would like to say something or will you maintain just sitting there looking pretty. Totally I mean. I'm like. Ok so if we had someone up here who is arguing that we would be able to perform these simulations any time soon maybe you are not squid like to say that I think we would all like to tear that person to shreds but since no one else seems to do it I'll make the case for saying that it might not be as hard as you might imagine so there's more than one star in the system so we could go out across the galaxy and get 10 of the $42.00 from each star So once you have your backyard consists of a 1000000 stars then maybe it makes sense to grab some of those cycles to simulate what your ancestors used to look like.

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It's also possible I don't know anything about the practicality of this that. Such simulators would not necessarily be interested in performing faithful simulations of all of human history but instead would be willing to settle for sort of tricky simulations where they're about to give us the impression of human history but I don't actually know that human history happened I don't know that yesterday happened I just have my memories of it so if you could simulate my memories if you're really curious about say this debate which a society that is based around simulating people might very well be you might set us all up with enough of our memories that anything we would want to recall during that debate would work and we wouldn't have huge and consistencies but when I actually need to go back and give everyone decades of life to do that so between those 2 things and also the prospect that you know there are just some laws of physics that we haven't found yet that would change how compute of all things are and matter I don't think it's necessarily likely that everything could be simulated I don't want to assign a probability to it but I would say that's impossible.

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Ok fair enough so that so some Someone took up the challenge of the numbers that's great one of the things to think about so you said we could possibly over 2nd centuries harnessed the compute power of different solar systems one of the things I try to keep in mind is the following.

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At a rough cut the rate of brains neurons firing is about $100.00 hertz $100.00 times a 2nd whereas even modern day computers run it close to 10 gigahertz 10 to the 10th times per 2nd so that's a ratio of 100000000 to one so human being that is is running on a computer is going a 100000000 times faster than our organic brains so one second to that person feels like.

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3 years to. Post human think what it would take what that how long not one second would be but the amount of time it would take for a signal to get from our solar system to Alpha Centauri that that 4 years light is is how long they'd have to wait multiply by.

[00:17:35]
You know this enormous factor of 100000000 I don't believe you can have computers doing anything meaningful with that kind of a lack. As to your 2nd point I entirely agree if we're if we're if we're simulating many fewer numbers of people a much shorter history yeah it's perfectly possible yeah.

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So you could simulate one. Definite Well most of them Ok yeah. I don't I don't follow the argument I mean so let's say there are 2 computers that are sitting a couple a few light years apart and you're saying just zooming that in order for the simulation to happen information from one computer must reach the other computer and and vice versa what I mean you just need to know what to expect at the other end why should do what why can't i preprogramed the entire thing in taking care of the communication Also why does the communication actually have to happen or someone has to want to to set this up I can't think of anyone who would be able to any reasonable society that would.

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Want to spend the time doing doing this rather than doing other things with their computation but now you're assuming purpose I am I am yeah I'm assuming that some of our own desires and wants would carry through even to a post human stage when we're all running on so or.

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Something more strange. All right so let me so we're talking about computers and technology but there are let's say these computers that were referring to are actually operated by people or operated by organizations and those organizations bring their own self interest to bear in the way that they transmit the information the way they operate them a given example it from the Internet.

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You probably most of you know about IP version 4 IP version 6 Internet protocol for Internet Protocol 6 Internet protocol for has scarcity therefore they had to create organizations registries to manage the scarcity of addresses which would be a intermediating institution maybe in the communications that my colleagues were talking about it runs over a network say networks have addresses and you have scarcity in the addresses which gives rise to organizations that actually are kind of rich in resources it's a nice job to work in some of these address organizations Well if we as we shift to IP version 6 there's no longer a scarcity in Internet addresses because the address space goes up by a vast amount which means suddenly these intermediating organizations no longer are really necessary and and therefore they might go away which would be very painful for those organisations so there is a little bit of a there's certainly a question mark about the dynamics internally to some of these networks about how they operate and how they process information because the components of networks themselves bring their interests to bear and our interest in their own longevity in that they thrive and so on so sometimes these the interests in the technology in the information systems might distort the content that flows across it and some of the information that's the refer to here.

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For a 2nd thought experiment. This this goes to the stance that it's going to impossible to tell that you're in a submission so here's a thought experiment imagine you there's a program running in front of you on one screen. And you see the code it's it's funny to see the court as program running from it and then another screen is also program running except one of the programs is actually running itself or running some other program so the question is can you tell whether one program is calling another or not and you know both programs Ok so one program supposed to do something other programs do something else and you're just asking is progress program one in its excuse called program 2.

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Can you tell just looking you have the entire you have the programs you have you're observing what they're doing can you tell. And turns out the answer is probably no it's impossible to undecidable no machine however powerful will be able to tell us apart why is this relevant but if you're in a simulation then there's an agent doing the simulation there is an agent is also a computer will reality a brain is a puter so somebody or some entity is running another program if you're not in a simulation is just a program running so are you a simulation to be able to answer you'd have to be able to tell the difference between a program just running and a program calling another program during its execution and this task I claim is impossible for any computer to tell.

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This follows directly from from the work of code Goodell. Showing that once you are as powerful as a 2 machine there will be theorems that are true but you just can't prove. You were no. But I know. It could. Come From. I have a question on that So yes so as a mathematical prospect that's true I think I mean incompleteness is a is a thing but what about as an empirical prospect would would you recognize that there were sets of empirical facts that would demonstrate that we were living in a simulation like this on took us out of the simulation or again just sort of flagrantly violated the laws of physics in a way that indicated that intelligence was demonstrating to us that we were in a simulation.

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Of a bondage group breath you know like well Ok I think. Ok but. I mean I realize one of our ports is but I would like to speak on behalf of the working woman. People understand though I suspect I don't actually do see mutilations now in my maybe I'm wrong on this but in the physics department we work and simulate such simple things as you know a liter of water in the tube or between plates.

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And it takes very good graduate students and Ok professors to spend 2 or 3 years to get one good simulation now you know this is the reality that to work or do you really believe. That you know there's somebody capable. Ever in any organisational sense you know not human superhuman post-human who will be able to do combine a Tony a little r. it's impossible simulations you know I just when I look around me I'm just happy that we even get one liter of water approximately right when it's turbulent and this other things as boggles my mind now I understand my colleagues in philosophy departments also have to make a living so you know Nick Broadstone takes 3 Patchett crazy propositions 123 and then he decides the 3rd one is most likely.

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Now I have a friend who. Used to be able indicate that there's anybody here know what a whole from language is or Alpha does anybody use it is that so you know when he is a wonder kid I used to be so I met him and he was 16 or 17 he showed off as a book on special relativity and stuff like that and his misfortune is this is Mother Teresa feel also fit dawn.

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Sort. And you know since 87 he's railing against He says these people had 3000 years what have they done what have you done so he became a physicist instead and you know he threw a language and I don't think he believed to be a simulated reality even though I realized that the nerds need religion to everybody need some kind of religion but you know if you really do this stuff exception of you who is actually doing it.

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You have very low opinion of what is actually possible and also realize you know if if this debate took place 50 years ago we were doing steam engines or you know 30 years ago we'd be doing television radios whatever and if you did it in $1415.00 cent to be doing either parchment so you know cheap pieces of paper to Gottenburg it so it's totally conditioned by some momentary technology which will be gone in a few years from now you know it's just a momentary thing and we will just as humans we will survive this too and we've survived everything.

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So. I want to jump in and yes. I'm sorry I So I mean interim so my graduate students and I to simulate fluid. This is part of. Some of the computer graphics work that I do and I agree 100 percent with what you're saying about how long it takes and how hard it is to program even one simple phenomena something that we we almost know what's going on with the Navier Stokes Equations one of the other things that is a corollary to this that I'm sure you know you know is that.

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To get that one working simulation it takes dozens or maybe hundreds of day. Simulations So if you all believe that you're living in a simulation you should bet that you're living in one of the tests or the debug runs rather than the final run much more likely. No no I disagree Ok so.

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First of all you might be the surviving test I mean there must be there could be. Millions billions of test runs going on and this is one of them is uming it's a success it's going on right that's 1st 2nd the difficulty of simulation today that's hardly an argument I mean if you go back some number of years we did have computers I mean we couldn't even play back a video today you know our Google translates better than I can into languages that I've learned since birth.

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They they they can recognize you know. These little neural networks can recognize and classify objects better than anybody in this room can Ok so maybe that's not strong yet but just because we don't know how to simulate it doesn't mean it can't be done that surely is the most shortsighted argument.

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So let me be clear on my stance so I believe that we we can and will maybe eventually if we don't blow ourselves up simulate human brains to the level that most store or everybody will say yes this is a conscious person silicon I'm not debating that. The notion that we have a whole planet's worth of people being simulated that the part that I disagree with.

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So far sort of the neuroscience perspective we don't even really know have a good working definition of consciousness so being able to simulate something that we can't even define is a challenge speaking about artificial neural networks. These are coming inspired by what we know of neuroscience and one of the biggest challenges with those artificial neural networks is that they're only looking at the neurons we actually have 4 different types of cells in our brain we have.

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Cells that act as insulation for the neurons which are the electrical the ones that actually fire the action potentials where you know we need your physics to help us figure things out but we also have these other types of cells these CLIA that don't signal with electricity we still don't even know what the hell they do but some of the things that they do is they can move around and break ups and that says so there are these non signalling partners and the brain that can alter the functions of networks and we don't know the mechanisms so.

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If it is a simulation of one consciousness with one brain we're not there in terms of our technologies as to how those or even emerging now so it's. Very technologically advanced with what we understand from neural networks today. Let me jump in and out of the non sequitur got a little bit here but.

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So does it matter whether or not we live in a simulation I think it does matter because oftentimes our belief systems the way we believe the world to be strongly shapes our actions in the world and if we believe that the world is good and just and fair we tend to you know we buy into the system and where we accept the options that are given to us and we play the game as it's given we do the best we can and but if we believe that the world is unjust or unfair then we might not play the game we might sit it out we might sabotage it we might create problems so depending on your belief systems i.e. the world as you believe it.

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You may contribute to the overall well ordered society or you may become a source of disorder dissent you may opt out and so on and. Your beliefs about the world that are prior that influence your actions those beliefs are a focus of a lot of attention so again that's a lot of effort is made in any society to maintain order and to get the consent of the governed by disseminating a certain narratives about the world a certain perspective about the world we live in a free market free freedom is good.

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The rule of law is good quality of opportunity things like that all men are created equal these things that everyone here in this room has heard a 1000000 times and it's not just part of our culture it serves a positive function it makes a difference in getting us to buy into the world that we live in and all get along and keep in an orderly way and it's kind of interesting now because right now with new information technologies we're seeing some attempts to disseminate different narratives in different societies and it can be corrosive to the overall order of the society to it can be corrosive to the extent to which people buy in to living in the world that they live in and there's a lot of experimentation going on it's probably happening to us and to others in terms of changing narratives a change in the simulation and to see if that affects people's behavior and either increases or decreases social order.

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I wonder if I could follow up that non sequitur with another non sequitur recycler returning to Mary's point and so Mary brought up a very important point Wallace forgive me to quote much credit for knowing how brains work. About consciousness and I think that's really what we're mostly interested and I don't know that we're too interested in can they simulate that tend to the whatever number of particles in the Earth's mantle we're interested in whether our conscious awareness is can be simulated And as Mary said I don't think we have an agreed upon definition of consciousness we probably have several definitions of consciousness none of which I'm too familiar with so all I'll propose one and someone else has probably proposed it which is to say a conscious state is just a state that is aware of and dependent on another state so that even very simple systems that we would not in normal discourse call conscious are conscious in the sense that they are informed by states other in the other wise in the universe so I'm conscious that there's a pen here that's a type of consciousness I'm also conscious that I'm an individual that exists in space and time there are all sorts of things I'm conscious of my brain is presumably pretty complex and it can be conscious of many things but it's not necessarily different in mathematical principle from a much simpler thing that is conscious of much fewer things so in that way I would say that one objection that some people raise I don't think anyone here has raised yet or is likely to is that simply consciousness is something that is inherently nonphysical that a computer could not be conscious because there is something in us that simply cannot be simulated I would say and I'll just check to see if anyone disagrees that ultimately consciousness is simply a very complicated physical state that's aware of other states and that it's in principle something that could be simple could be simulated to some degree of precision by say a binary code.

[00:35:01]
I would definitely agree with you that consciousness is sort of the some product of all these physical chemical changes happening in the brain. Because my people take my thoughts because no but we talk about consciousness So consciousness is also arguably the way we experience the world we process it or their own cognitive processes to a certain extent there is there's it's almost like we have algorithms inside our mind this is the simple perhaps view.

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So a famous philosopher and Manuel Khant he once said that we are taught to think through statutes and formulas that the purpose of education is to teach people to basically download algorithms into people's heads and he says you know some of these algorithms algorithms are not totally neutral in fact there's a pretty you know mellow guy usually He said these algorithms are used quote unquote to harness the masses or something like that it's a little like the Matrix right where you're you're you're really lying in a bathtub full of goo while the robots are extracting your energy from you so a money will come to the greatest philosophers of the Enlightenment foundational to Western philosophy and Western culture also made the claim that our cognitive process ease are you know obviously they're based on biochemical fundamental interactions but the software that's running on them is to a certain degree downloaded and it has impacts and it affects your interests it affects the way society works so your consciousness itself is a field of play for interests in the world.

[00:36:45]
Continuing with consciousness I don't know what it is but if I were to try to define it I'd say it would be so what does it mean so I want to be able to say what is a conscious computer because then we will be precise so what is it about does that makes us think we're conscious I think it is the ability to make up tractions.

[00:37:06]
That single power is what makes us conscious so here's an another thought experiment this one is by a nickel I Bernstein and. Someone who studied the. Motor control how the brain controls motions and he said the following imagine teaching a child for the 1st time. A circle is so you maybe he you draw it in the air so he takes his finger and you trace out a circle in the air great now ask the child to draw a circle with his right foot he'll do it no problem ask him to do it lying down while swimming will do it no problem the point is that in each of these cases you have to use a completely different set of sequence of muscle activations so it couldn't be that he just memorize a circle he actually abstracted it or the brain obstructed it and then now is able to generated in one of many different forms today we don't know how to do this with a computer once you can do it I think that's consciousness.

[00:38:14]
Perhaps a interesting follow up to this discussion and it's one of the questions I actually given. Here is if you have this conscious. What happens once realize. Is there any kind of negative effect simulation fall apart like what you guys. Notwithstanding my parents here I'm a pretty practical person so I think that the thing if I knew for a fact that we were living in a simulation if we were in that situation where giant flaming letters had appeared in the sky and there was also some evidence that it wasn't just some sort of local Mister of us demi god but it really was someone who controlled the entire cosmology then I would sort of buy into the simulation and pots this argument that was advanced by Nick Bostrom and say that that means that it is now more likely that we will be able to achieve that sort of simulation power in our own futures than if we didn't have that if we're living in a simulation as a sort of corollary to.

[00:39:25]
Something to Boston's argument. Then it makes it more likely it will eventually reach the point where we can perform such innovations so then I would say well we should prepare for that maybe we should work towards that either by trying to advance the technology or by trying to advance as a society and determine a set of ethics and a set of controls to keep us safe and to possibly preserve the rights of the.

[00:39:49]
Simulated subjects to create. I actually hadn't thought much about this question but it's a really good one if we had evidence that we really were in a simulation I think we'd want to do something similar to if we were marooned on an island would want to spell out hey we're here we see you in big letters and try to start having a conversation with being or beings that are simulating us I think that would be really important is to start that conversation if it's possible.

[00:40:27]
Unless we're submitting our south. So. If you. Remember in the if you for those you saw the movie The Matrix one of the claims the movie The Matrix is the matrix is not perfect There's a scene in which a black cat runs across a doorway and then runs across again.

[00:40:49]
So you can I offer this someone as a support the faith that you can penetrate maybe not all but if to the stuff we live in a world of simulations quite often you can detect the simulation that you can detect. You can detect that the world around you the reality that's presented to you doesn't actually correspond to maybe to another reality and and the going back philosophically the answer to this is science this is actually the scientific revolution the revolution modern philosophy which said.

[00:41:25]
If you're being told something or if you're Or if you seemed if you have a set of beliefs. Be skeptical of what you're told be skeptical of what you know be skeptical of what you believe and rely on science actually which we do hear it or check rely on empirical observation and rely on logic as a way of making testing what you know to see if it can be falsified as we heard as we heard here earlier so this is somewhat of the practical level I'm not saying that this always works but it works in practical terms there's a lot of b.s. in the world around us and testing it against facts and testing against logic can penetrate a lot of simulations in this world so that's the practical if not philosophical or.

[00:42:12]
So with the brain being actually our interpreter of reality so we take all the sensory information and we process it with logic and rationales and reasons it's modulating by things like our emotion if we're tired for hungry what we're paying attention to and this is kind of not a point either for or against being in a simulation but we know that the brain isn't a perfect machine it's a product of evolution there are things about different systems that would make no sense any logical designer would not have put a guy on that controls how we respond to light and dark outside of our brain in a securities fashion is this product of evolution and even still it does a pretty good job of navigating interpret ignore reality.

[00:43:00]
I love the fact that you brought deja vu with cats there's other glitches if there were in the matrix that I just wanted to share because I find them completely fascinated in. There are all sorts of different syndromes we can identify where these there are known collectively as delusional mis identification syndromes things where some people have a.

[00:43:25]
Delusion that they are in fact dead and putrefying so they cannot recognize themselves as a living being there are other ones where they can recognize a person they can recognize the face but they have no emotional response to that person's face so they think that their loved one like their husbands have been.

[00:43:47]
Replaced by imposters so like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers for reals. And so we know we're looking at people with these delusions these dysfunctions that there are certain circuits that are misfiring where we have emotional memory memory circuits that are not being activated in response to some visual cues so it could be that these are glitches of the matrix or it could be that these are actually glitches of the brain.

[00:44:22]
One of the potential glitches also presented here was the middel effect which if any of you are unfamiliar with what that is it is the idea that there are tons of people across the globe that have a certain memory of history specifically the death of Nelson Mandela and other things that doesn't actually like reflect what history says happened it's really weird and it could just be people perpetuating this lie because it's fun.

[00:44:55]
Or they want to believe that it's true but it still raises an interesting question like if perhaps this is some real effect there maybe we've just been transported into an alternate dimension or maybe in the case of this to be living in a simulation. So I want to jump in here and.

[00:45:15]
Pullbacks something subset about memory. I really want to clarify something for the folks in the audience here your memory is not a hard drive your memory is more like a Wikipedia page that can be edited and every time we recall a memory we edit it physically chemically edit the memory there are bio physical changes in the brain in terms of proteins and this is every time we recall a memory when we imagine something we activate the very same brain regions that are involved in processing it in the 1st place so virtual reality imaginings real memories they're indistinguishable for a lot of the neural processing and so things like the middel effect or fun one implanting false memories if we repeat a story over and over to ourselves in imagine it to be true we actually can do it ourselves and strengthen certain pathways where it becomes almost indistinguishable from a true memory.

[00:46:13]
That helps to get through the day I find. So you want to live in a situation simulation to be very practical Yes. Maybe the biggest source of simulation is ourselves right we create our our own stories and narratives and deter potations and and it gets through. So I say to my students a day off many of my students at the Earth when they enter they enter Georgia Tech and they they know they want to be a Georgia Tech and they know they want to major in the thing they major And the reason they know is because their parents have been telling them for 20 years that's what they want to do and a certain number of students actually you can that simulation crumbles and I think a more authentic narrative perspective emerges in a sometimes personally painful process but you can you can you can we have our own naris maybe from our parents maybe the narratives we tell ourselves and eventually we stop telling them or these narratives and we have to reorient our lives and what's sometimes a very painful or difficult growth process but you know a lot of the narratives are internally generated and they give us direction they hold us together and occasionally they get adjusted.

[00:47:25]
Actually every time we tell those narratives they get adjusted. So we're turning to the Mandela effect it always makes me think of something that happened to me in grad school where I went back to my desk and I went there and there was someone else on my desk and it was it looked like my desk but there was this guy there and it sure looked like it was his office and got kind of confused and I walked out and all the posters on the wall were different and I left the building and walked around for a while confused and went back to check to see if you still there and it was back to my desk and I could not figure out what was going on I was thinking you know did I go into an alternate dimension was there some sort of portal because I went.

[00:48:08]
I was I was not on any mind altering substances but I was not under any undue stress or anything else that would lead me to engage in a psychotic break from reality and it was very brief I went back there and. I mean I'm sure there are some people who would think that yes they went to an alternate dimension I couldn't figure it out but I was pretty sure I didn't and then a few days later I realized that I'd come in from a different door that was actually on a different level than the door usually came in so I just got up an actual flight of stairs and floor plans are very similar and I just never met this guy who was working one far above me all day but if you the there's a general principle in science that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and as a general rule the sort of anecdotal evidence even if it happens to you even if you know the person is not lying you remember it you see it with your own eyes that's not enough to make me to conclude something so extreme as to believe in alternate universes or in the simulation hypothesis so if I see a black cat walking past and then seem to walk past again maybe it's 2 black cats maybe I just was misremembering and I had a false sense of deja vu where I thought I saw a black cat but it was just triggering a memory from earlier there are all sorts of the lexical Nations and you have to have some way of assigning prior probabilities you have to say which did I think was more like then which is consistent now with this current set of data and I would say for the simulation I bought this is since it's not really an empirical question we don't have a good way of assigning the prior probability we can't say Ok I assume it's one in a 1000000 but if I start seeing enough weird things like Donald Trump being president it's going to jump up one in a 1000 and then I'm just gonna keep it all Journal and say what's the probably we're living in a simulation is going to go up and down we just don't have access to that data that's going to tell us that.

[00:50:05]
So I think. So I think one of the differences maybe is. Here at the table one of them is this practice practical practical getting through this world and the deeper scientific or philosophical perspective on things and I'd say most of our lives we engage in practical matters and.

[00:50:28]
And you can have some pretty bad simulations that will inform a great deal of your life and so the so simulations even if they don't have to we really get into this the test some of the tests and the rigor that's being discussed here because for practical matters we go to our lives and and to the extent the simulations can have negative effect on the stories you tell the world you think you live in can really have impacts right it says here one of the questions it doesn't matter or not if we have a simulation it doesn't matter and therefore sometimes even just a little bit more rigor in thinking about the world we live in can yield a significant benefit you can really cut through the matrix the matrix much of the matrix is easy to discern if you try and it has practical payoffs so the rigor doesn't anywhere approach the kind of things are being discussed here and that you can still make good progress against some systems of beliefs and sometimes quite quite powerful quite useful too to cut through the systems of beliefs.

[00:51:31]
I'm missing something basic here suppose we're not in the simulation. Then what is this what are we in I mean as far as the notion of planets computing themselves etc is concerned. Sure I mean there's the big bang you start with a little little little thing and then you know as as things.

[00:51:50]
Generate you have more computers I mean imagine every molecule was a computer just a very basic one that has some some some roots so this huge power simulation if you want to call it that but it's just a computer doing it's taking its next step in power so what is the difference being formulated on simulation.

[00:52:16]
I would say there's no difference between a simulation a perfect simulation and simulation you know a parable difference. Coming from consciousness and my brain constructing my reality and don't even know if any of you all are actually here because you think about it when you're dreaming right not to get like Inception on us but when our dream mean we have we've created this reality and then we wake up and now we know something was different without that sort of comparison of something different I can't say if we're in a simulation or not but I don't think it actually matters because if it is a perfect simulation and my brain is constructing my reality is interpreting everything anyway then it shouldn't matter because I'm going to like this is my own turn all subjective reality in my subjective truth so I have to keep living that way.

[00:53:08]
I wonder if people have questions. Like 3 minutes. Ask questions unless you're really want to start asking now. Yes I mean is that is that what you'd like to do or are there like last minute burning things you. Grieve is actually many people on the panel have. You know you can tell me that there is you know a hacker in the sky who hacked this whole thing in 6 days.

[00:53:46]
And to stand by and would tell me that you know I totally understand the logic cold you know. And while I understand the basis so that why that was coming on I don't want to believe that. Hacker in the sky would be so malicious so I cannot accept that the result it reminds me of usual magic tricks you know they do magic they bend spoons but what the hell do I care about Ben school and there's so many things you could do in this world which would be magic I was so grateful to see that you go around bending spoons so you know I don't want this malicious thing you know we are living in a simulated reality is in a very bad inflection because at the same time you know they're going into a grand catastrophe climate change you know it's accelerating you can ignore it but it won't ignore you and via the time where do you dealing with this simulated realities or everybody has a personal reality it's no do way to deal with this problem now I have total faith in humanity that we'll figure this one out too you know in few years we'll figure out how to deal with this just like they figure out how to do is all kinds of bullshit in our past and you know we'll be the real problem but we are in an unfortunate inflection point.

[00:55:16]
You know what you say is very true I mean very affected by abuse simulated we always do this and we're having a hard time you know navigating them but then kind of full of faith in humanity that will be resourceful and you know 3000000000 of us will survive great but you know reveal.

[00:55:35]
Some as their story picks scared but you know in terms of dealing with this. One. Thank you. Now I'm not running for office. Thank you. Now we will open up the floor to questions I will have my helper who will be open this hour take the other microphone if you would like to ask a question which we will probably spend no more than 15 minutes doing these Raise your hand and Ok so our runner go get them.

[00:56:18]
Thank you well. I don't aspire to be 1st but I so we talked a lot about like the possibility of a simulation being real but a question that I have is like deals with personal philosophy So for example hypothetically we get to this situation where we could run a simulation of like our past and each one of you is presented with a key to either turn it on or just not simulate at all which you turn it on knowing that the fact that people will suffer and people feel pain.

[00:56:55]
So he. Saw all of the go my answer is I wouldn't turn it on because you said we were simulating the past if we if we simulate the exact same past as before we're not learning anything that's not why we run simulations we want to see something new.

[00:57:15]
I would say that in some ways not turning it on would be tantamount to ending life on Earth so if you say you don't like suffering why don't you want to end all life on Earth right now to prevent our suffering so I think human life as a whole is a good thing so I wouldn't turn it off and if I had a chance to turn some more on without hurting anyone else I would.

[00:57:39]
Or do understand the question but I would I would simulate backwards. So I came about 5 minutes late so I apologize yes touched on this earlier but in the way that I think about simulation you guys touch on a few different kind of like definitions of it so I guess would you describe when we ask the question do we live in a simulation is are you thinking about do we like you live with a hacker in the sky simulating all these events or do you mean it as like my brain simulates things for me in my life do you see the difference or and there's all sorts of in between so like kind of just what do you mean when you when we ask the question do we live a simulation since there are so many ways to interpret it.

[00:58:27]
Also work from my perspective there you have 2 areas a simulation the world that it presents to you so you may be a perfectly rational individual but the world that's that's presented to you through screens and media and information could be a kind of simulation but simulation can also see inside your head either you can create your own world or you can through socialisation over time become an American become a Georgia Tech student and those that'll give you a certain way of understanding the world that is arguably different than someone else's and that to that extent a simulation so you can both go both consciousness and the world around you can both be the stuff of simulation.

[00:59:08]
I agree and. One of the biggest points would be when we have with our brain interpret everything around us for us it already gives us sort of a frame to work with like well there hasn't been one this year but last year is like the laurel versus Yanni perception things and before that was the dress right so you have this one objective stimulus that's perceived in a couple of different ways depending on who you are so we're already like perceptions are already sort of a simulation.

[00:59:47]
So we just talked about different types of simulations I want to push on the metaphysics here for just a moment because most of our natural scientist and computer science professors talked about a sort of like fundamental ontology perspective simulation but we also heard about a biological level to simulation and a social level to simulation and so I was running if I could push on any of you to make a metaphysical commitment about objective realities and fundamental ontologies or whether when you talk about a simulation from my social or biological perspective you have a real metaphysical commitment to that being sort of the Ontological bedrock of things and to connect that back to the Simulation Argument that we talked about earlier I can't remember if it's discussed earth he discussed it but there is some discussion about whether we should turn on these simulations or not and depending on your metaphysics maybe what you actually want to do is.

[01:00:40]
Cause yourself to think that you're turning on a lot of simulations rather than actually doing it so if are really talking about a sort of utilitarian calculus about simulations here it seems to me like the metaphysics might actually make a difference about what we decide to do in the end whether we actually make simulations or we simulate making simulations to ourselves or something like that.

[01:01:02]
Wow. I point is we have physics graduate students here and this kind of thing happens. I'll quickly invoke the philosophy of pragmatism which is if it makes a certain belief systems make a difference then they're important but if there's speculation about things that you cannot observe and that don't affect your life then I sometimes I enjoy speculating about them but I tend to fit take a fairly pragmatic view so hence my standards of simulation are like yeah there's the simulations the matter of the ones you can detect and that affect your life so you can maybe cut through them and improve your life boy pay attention those simulations and the simulations that are perfect.

[01:01:52]
I just ignore him. My metaphysical commitment would be that. The universe is a computer consisting of many powerful computers each of us is a computer and. That's it so. We're everything we see is different because we're all computers with different different programs and even at the biological and I would argue actually social level these can be related to physical and chemical changes so some of the coolest stuff coming out of neuroscience is that experience can be trans knitted along sperm like you traumatize or a mouse and his offspring are traumatized by the same sort of stimuli so social and metaphysical biological things the way they do turn down to the level of like what's happening at the physics and chemistry.

[01:02:52]
So there's been a lot of talk about a very human it's respective simulations whether we're simulator ourselves or someone is simulating us but what is your opinion on someone just for something to be running a very very large particle simulation where we are just the emergent properties of these very simple particles interacting at a very large scale sort of like a finite element analysis.

[01:03:23]
I think then it would just be really a lot harder because it's really hard to get anything out of something with that level of granularity so I've just kind of been picturing something that cheat some way and doesn't try to get everything down to the standard model of physics so I think that's a really interesting question I couldn't see simulating that number of particles using the physics that we have but perhaps the the the Met a universe that we're simply simply simulated in has a lot more compute power than ours in which case I think maybe you could get some kind of emergent phenomenon like life.

[01:04:13]
So you guys talked about more like stimulating entirely. Like simulate single conscious like you know external stimuli do you think like a more plausible than the entire universe and do you think it would be less of the same because there's still a consistency. And verse it's really ours.

[01:04:37]
That's what our brain does all day every day so light sound touch feeling they're not real and thus I can perceive them with plus I can transduced that into electrical stimuli that hit my brain so when when I say I don't even know if everybody else here is real that's what I'm talking about is that our brightest simulating our reality.

[01:04:59]
And to your question I think the point being that this is in fact what's being programmed to simulate in the far reality so and very effectively it changes our behavior changes in ways that are directly affected by media and. So so it is easier than the whole thing.

[01:05:21]
And pretty. High I just want to say thank you for taking time talking to us today. So my question is I fortunately have life physics major. And by I heard somewhere that. Say take the constants dead defined so precisely that tiny deviations to those constants would make for example the universe expand forever.

[01:05:56]
At a rate that we wouldn't exist or if they were tiny or. The universe will collapse collapse very much so and I don't take a particular stance on this question but it's it's it's hard for me to comprehend how else would you explain that fact had we not lived in the simulation.

[01:06:19]
It makes sense yes so you're referring to the notion of a kind of cosmological fine tuning for life and for intelligence. Some people subscribe to the idea that there are many possible universes with many different laws and we find ourselves in one that's so fine tuned because that's the only place that life could be is a universe like our own I I am really on the fence about that notion of this many different universes with different laws but I I don't have a good way of explaining this so-called fine tuning of the physical laws that make this kind of the universe possible.

[01:07:02]
It could be possible that. It was these constants was just defined in code that someone else wrote and just invent it on the simulator. Well if you're postulating a simulator than you'd either have the same problem where is their universe a fine tune your version or you'd be saying their universe is completely different from ours and not bound by our own physical laws and if you're postulating a simulator who's not bound by said by physical laws in the same way that we are then you're moving away from Boston's argument which is we can think about things that we could simulate to imagine whether we could be simulated in your getting to something more like a traditional notion of dating someone who is just not bound by physical laws so you could label that entity a simulator but you could also just say it's a big bearded guy on a cloud looking down on us from above who who really wants us to heaven is fine too thanks for that purpose.

[01:08:00]
Thank you. For new definition of day that somebody who didn't take so for more physics. We've got plenty of time you have heard of one more question. After this one so my question is is if it's possible to compute an infinite loop and so I ask that because if let's say we start with the simulation what keeps that simulation from creating a simulation because one of the original simulation have to hold the burden of that next simulation and if it is possible make a simulation I mean kind of like we do with computer programs it'll council that it will allow you to do an infinite loop so what let's say it is possible to do an infinite simulation How's it what how do we determine at what point are we in the stack of simulations and if that's even possible.

[01:08:54]
How how would we be able to compute infinitely simulated simulations I mean think about life so we a species reproduce itself if. Your child is like you for all working purposes so there's d.n.a. you can go and it gets generated so if you want to know how far along are you you can look at evolution of trees and make a pretty good guess of how many generations you've been through and unless you know we don't respond to climate change or something will be you could this will continue so it's being done this is an infinite simulation unless the simulation dies.

[01:09:40]
Yes one more. So I forgot who said it when I also. There are programs that can print themselves and that basically you don't have to have a program like a program can run a simulation that's more powerful than the program itself so could you like explain that a little more.

[01:10:01]
So you're asking. Program print itself yes yes that's one line of text in any any of your things and then your question that you said like. Yes yes so all you need to be able to simulate anything computer is something called a universal Turing machine a very basic thing.

[01:10:23]
So for the 1st to understand what a simulator boot we need a definition of computing and this is this was tunings brilliant insight he said we can reduce all of computation to the following bad mindless machine all it does is it has an infinite tape because that's all its memory is just a tape and then it has a state machine Ok a bunch of 5 finite number of states and rules for how you can move between states depending on what you're looking at on the tape it looks at one position on the tape and what's Davidson and decides whether to change the tape content move left all right and that's it that's all it has roots for and this is competition he said this is the church shouldn't this is all of competition is reducible to this fine now here's the brilliant insight you can take any is particular to a machine say one that a computer sorts numbers write or figures out the shortest path on a map whatever it is and I will write one program I'll give it you right now I don't know which one you want to simulate this program will be able to take as input any program on the tape and simulate so your phone can take a description of the phone itself and run it think of your computer running an android simulator you could run the Android some later on your phone there is absolutely no conceptual or practical obstacle to what it's running can be more complex than it can be but the point is the simulator does not have to be more powerful than what is being simulate the simulator can simulate anything of the same power and itself therefore it can't be more powerful does not have to thank you all right.

[01:12:03]
Thank you everybody for coming out and also I think to talk thank. You.