AI Expert Lex Fridman Weighs in on Simulation Theory

I want to talk to you about that too. Because you brought up Bostrom. Bostrom relies on, I mean he was relying on theories in terms of like mathematical theories of probability to say that he thinks it's more likely that we're in a simulation. Yeah, he has a, the thing he's articulated, I don't think he's come up with the idea of the simulation. He just kind of really thought about it deeply. He came up with a simulation argument, which are these three categories that he described to you. Possible outcomes, I think. The first one is we destroy ourselves before we ever create a simulation. The second one is that we would lose interest in creating a simulation at some point. And the third one is we're living in a simulation. Yeah. Where do you lean? I think, too, I think there's going to, the three paths that he highlighted, it makes it sound like it's so clear that it's just three. But I think there's going to be a huge amount of possibilities of the kinds of simulations. Like to me, I keep asking, you know, I must, he's about the simulation. He said, what's on the other side? What's outside the simulation. Yeah, I think I asked, what would you ask an AGI system? He said, what's outside the simulation is the question. He believes in it. Or at least he entertains it as a troll. Elon Musk embodies the best of the Twitter internet troll, a me, and a brilliant engineer and designer in one. It's like a quantum state that you can't quite figure out what's the coupling. Because I don't know if he's trolling, but I'm the same way. I'm just asking people about the simulation, even though I get a little bit of hate from the scientific community. But it pushes... Why do you get hate from the scientific community about the simulation? Because it's a ridiculous notion if you think of it like literally, because it's not a testable thing. We don't know how to test. Like, why are you talking about this? Why do you sit down with Elon Musk and talk about the simulation when you're sitting with a world expert in particular aspects of rockets or robotics? I'm an expert... I can't believe I just said that. I'm not an expert on anything. But I know a few things about autonomous vehicles. Why don't you talk to him about that? Why don't we talk about the simulation? Well, the thing is, the simulation pushes you outside of the muck, the messiness of everyday details of science, and makes you ask big questions about the nature of our reality. And I like to think of it as, how would we build a simulation? What would be a compelling enough virtual reality game that you wouldn't stay there for your whole life? That's a first step there. That's useful to think about, what is our reality? What aspects of the most interesting for us humans to be able to perceive with our limited perception and cognitive abilities interpret and interact with? And then a bigger question then is, how do you build a larger scale simulation that would be able to create that virtual reality game? Which I think is a possible future. We're already creating virtual worlds for ourselves on Twitter and social networks and so on. I really believe that virtual reality will spend more and more of our lives in the next 50 to 100 years in virtual worlds. And the simulation hypothesis is simulation discussion is part of that. I think there's the question of what's outside simulation is really interesting. That's the other way of, because like what created us? What started the whole thing? It's the modern version of asking, what is God? What does God look like? It's asking, what does the programmer look like? I think that's a fascinating question, but arguing that we're already living the simulation. I think you've got stuck on that little point. I think it's not that... There's a bit of a language barrier too. There's a technical... Yeah. I think Nick is legit. It's funny, Nick is a legit philosopher. Yeah. So he's been fighting battles in the philosophy game. Like you asked them, does somebody disagree with him on these hypotheses? And there's a bunch of philosophers disagree with him, but including Sean Carroll on the philosophical level. And a lot of the arguments are in philosophy. And then sort of technical and they're about language and about terms and so on. But I think, yeah, it's very possible that we live in a simulation. I think one of the constructs of... So physics, theoretical physics with many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as Sean has talked to you about, reveals some interesting sort of fundamental building blocks of our reality. There's something I don't think people have talked to you about, which is like the coolest thing to me, the most amazing thing that nobody can explain, yet things called cellular automata. And there's a guy, mathematician named John Conway, who came up in the 70s with a thing called game of life. And cellular automata are these two dimensional or one dimensional, but game of life is two dimensional grid, where every single little cell is really dumb and it behaves based on the cells next to it. And it's born when there's a few... when there's like a certain number, like three cells alive next to it and it dies otherwise. So it's like a simple rule for birth and death. And all it knows it's nearby surrounding in its own life. And if you take that system with a really dumb rule and expand it in size, arbitrary complexity emerges. You can have touring machines, so you can simulate perfect computers with that system. And it can grow and all these behaviors grow. Like if you watch, if people Google like game of life, and you can watch this extremely dumb, simple system, just grow arbitrary complexities. And what you start to realize that from such incredibly simple building blocks, that don't know anything about the bigger world around them, you can build our entire universe. You can build the kind of complexities we see in this. So like we think that God is like designing every little aspect of whatever of our world or a simulation hypothesis. The simulation is designed by hand like, I'm going to craft these things. What you realize is all you need to do is just set some initial conditions, set some really basic rules, and allow the system to grow. As long as it can grow arbitrarily, just crazy stuff, amazing stuff can happen from like, from simplicity, complexity can emerge. And that for like, if you study this a little bit closer, just like watch it, people can watch the game of life on YouTube and think about what it's showing, like for 10 minutes, it'll blow your mind. The fact that from simplicity, arbitrary complexity, beauty can emerge is like incredible. So for the simulation, the creator of the simulation is probably some 13-year-old nerd living in like, in his mom's basement, is probably just set some rules in this video game and press play. And then arbitrary complexity can emerge. You can have a Joe Rogan, you can have an Elon Musk, all the technologies that we've developed, and probably millions of other alien species that are living throughout our universe. Jesus. So the, yeah, that to me, the cellular automata reveals that the simulation is much easier to create than we might think. But there's a lot of variability in the kinds of simulations we'll create. Like, I think the simulation hypothesis thinks like, you know, there's like one. But I think there's going to be a lot of varieties. There's a lot of possible different rule sets. There's a lot of different physical mediums in which these simulations can be created. It can be a completely virtual world. The role of consciousness, whether you make most people conscious or not, whether most of them are philosophical zombies, or they're just like non-player characters, and it's just you, or you have, or is your mind simulated? Like, the role of suffering. So consciousness brings with it this idea of basically, you know, subjective experience. With subjective experience comes the idea of pain and fear and so on. The thing, again, my Russian romanticization of it, but I think fear of death is essential. Scarcity is essential for beauty, for life. Yeah. And that's a nice feature of this little simulation we've got going on, that there could be a lot of different alternatives, I think. It could be less individualistic, less consciousness can be present in different kinds of forms. So I see there's a lot more options than those three that heal highlights. And we can destroy ourselves in a lot of interesting ways. The entire civilization is from AI to nuclear weapons, to biological, to all kinds of weapons. So it's almost like whether it's a simulation or not is almost irrelevant. The complexity of the existence and all of the various pushes and pulls that keep everything together, they're almost operating like some grand plan, whether they like it or not. Whether or not a grand plan exists. All these different things are happening, and everything is moving in a very specific direction, right? It's moving towards further complexity. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night where we were talking about phones, and we were like, when are they ever going to look at a phone and say, I think we're good. We don't have to, the camera works great, signal's great, and call people, you can text people, let's just stop innovating right here. And we were both laughing, like it's never going to happen. But even though we admit, like if you have an iPhone 11 or a Pixel 4, is that what you have? Yeah, Pixel 4, yeah. They work great. You don't really need anything better. Like in terms of the way our culture works, you get so much done on these things, you can bank on them. Is it okay if I'm drinking all your water, by the way? Yeah, we have a lot of water, yeah. Please. It's pretty water. You're so Russian. That's very polite of you. The existence itself, whether or not there's a design to it, it seems to operate in a matter that would indicate there's a design. The design doesn't have to be real. It doesn't have to be a simulation. It doesn't have to be a grand plan. But it moves in the same way as if it's a grand plan. It's weird. It's hard to put into words, but there's a different force and a momentum, like the evolutionary process. The fact that life was created, the fact that there was a kind of progress. And also, just like with the Native Americans, the fact that suffering seems to be a constant story that was weaving in. We constantly progress, but we seem to be creating the other and torturing. There seems to be constant suffering and war and so on through this growth process. And that seems to be... death is a huge part of that. And conflict. Even social conflict. Like we were talking about social justice warriors and that type of thing. I think they almost have to exist. It's almost like the world creates a space for them and people find a way to fill that space.