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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: George and are back with you along with our special

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Speaker 1: guest rizwand Burke with his book called The Simulation Hypothesis

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Speaker 1: and MIT Computer Scientists shows why AI, quantum physics and

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Speaker 1: Eastern mystics. I'll agree, we are in a video game.

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Speaker 1: How universal is that agreement or is well? I'd say

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Speaker 1: that you know that this model of the world that

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Speaker 1: we are inside a video game is something that scientists

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Speaker 1: and mystics can agree upon, but there's differences in how

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Speaker 1: they approach, you know, the topic. So I think one

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Speaker 1: of the big questions is whether we are what we

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Speaker 1: call PCs player characters in a video game or NPCs

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Speaker 1: or non player characters who are ais that you might

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Speaker 1: interact with the game interesting. So I think that's an

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Speaker 1: area where there's a lot of difference. And this is

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Speaker 1: where you know, I realized that I'm really I was

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Speaker 1: really onto something when writing this book. I wrote an

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Speaker 1: article about it earlier. But you know, some of the

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Speaker 1: scientists will say, well, that just sounds a lot like religion.

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Speaker 1: You know, as you start to talk about consciousness outside

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Speaker 1: the video game, coming in and playing a character or inhabiting.

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Speaker 1: And then some of the guys on the more religious

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Speaker 1: side would say, well that sounds you know, a little

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Speaker 1: too scientific, where that we're just a bunch of AI.

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Speaker 1: That can't be the case. But you know, when you've

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Speaker 1: got this kind of disagreement, uh, you know, with one concept,

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Speaker 1: kind of rubbing both ways, it both you know, works

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Speaker 1: for both, but it also raises some interesting questions. So

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Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons the simulation hypothesis, which

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Speaker 1: is you know what we call this this theory. Now,

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Speaker 1: twenty years after the matrix has been taken seriously, there

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Speaker 1: was a professor at Oxford named Nick Bostrom, and he

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Speaker 1: put out a paper are you living in a computer simulation?

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Speaker 1: Now he didn't he hadn't even seen the matrix and

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Speaker 1: was not a video game guy, but he wrote this

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Speaker 1: this paper in a well respect the Philosophy Journal, and

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Speaker 1: his point was more of a statistical argument. He said,

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Speaker 1: suppose there's a civilization somewhere in the galaxy that is

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Speaker 1: able to get to the point of creating a hyperrealistic

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Speaker 1: simulation like a matrix. Well, how many simulations would they create?

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Speaker 1: They could create as many as they wanted. All you

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Speaker 1: would have to do is spin up another computer system,

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Speaker 1: another server in our own parlance, right, and you could

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Speaker 1: literally have billions or trillions of beings in each of

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Speaker 1: these worlds on each of these servers. So therefore, the

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Speaker 1: number of simulated beings is way more than the number

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Speaker 1: of real biological beings in the galaxy. Therefore, we are

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Speaker 1: more likely to be as simulated being than a real

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Speaker 1: being just by virtue of looking at the number. What

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Speaker 1: happens is if the simulator shuts off the game. Basically, well,

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Speaker 1: that's an interesting question, right, Yes, If you look at

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Speaker 1: some of the old Indian texts, you know they talk

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Speaker 1: about the cycles of creation, right, and the way that

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Speaker 1: mmoorpgs were work. If you look at games like Eve

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Speaker 1: Online or even World of Warcraft, they'll have certain servers

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Speaker 1: that have a storyline that's going for a period of

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Speaker 1: time and things will happen in that game and then

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Speaker 1: they'll end that server or that storyline or in the

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Speaker 1: ancient Indian text you know, they talk about ending that

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Speaker 1: cycle of creation. So you know, that's one way of

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Speaker 1: looking at it. Another way of looking at is what

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Speaker 1: if they stop and rewind the simulation and change things,

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Speaker 1: and so you know, as part of my research for

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Speaker 1: this book, I interviewed Tessa B. Dick, who was a

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Speaker 1: wife of Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer, and

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Speaker 1: you know, she says that he believed firmly that we

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Speaker 1: were inside some kind of computer generated reality. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: you know a lot of his novels and novellas were

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Speaker 1: based on this idea that what we're seeing around us

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Speaker 1: isn't real. In fact, he said he remembered a different timeline.

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Speaker 1: When you know, if you've seen The Man in the

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Speaker 1: High Castle the Amazon series, that's really possible now, or

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Speaker 1: read the book, it describes the world where Germany and

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Speaker 1: Japan won the Second World War and not the Allied

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, he believed he remembered that timeline,

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Speaker 1: and that whoever was running the simulation ended up rewinding

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Speaker 1: it because they didn't like the outcome, and then moved

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Speaker 1: it forward again. Well, this is an amazing thing. Now

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Speaker 1: does it also step on the grounds of religion, because

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Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about religion for a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but what does this do about our belief in God?

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Speaker 1: For example? Well, you know, I find that it's actually

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Speaker 1: fairly consistent with what different religious traditions have been telling

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Speaker 1: us right. So you know, if we start with what

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Speaker 1: I call the Western religions, right, the Abrahamic line of Christianity, Judaism,

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Speaker 1: and Islam. You know what's the first thing in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: You know, God said, let there be liked, and there

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Speaker 1: was right. And when you turn on a computer simulation,

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Speaker 1: what is it you're doing. You're illuminating the pi of

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Speaker 1: what I call the rendered world, and so you actually

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Speaker 1: are basically turning on the lights. You know, a lot

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Speaker 1: of scientists have said, you know, they don't believe in

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Speaker 1: the religious traditions because it says God created the world

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Speaker 1: in six days. Well, of course that seems ludicrous from

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Speaker 1: a scientific point of view, unless you adopt the simulation hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: in which case six days I mean if the earth

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Speaker 1: wasn't around, that could be six cycles of anything. So

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Speaker 1: all computer simulations have this idea of a clock speed,

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Speaker 1: which is how often, you know, what is the smallest

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Speaker 1: discrete step inside the simulation that you can see. You

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Speaker 1: can't do anything less than that, And so that's been

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Speaker 1: usually based on the microprocessor that the computer simulation is

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Speaker 1: running on, But it could represent a year, it could

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Speaker 1: represent a day. But if you had to spin up

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Speaker 1: a whole new world, you could certainly see it taking

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Speaker 1: six clock cycles to generate algorithmically you know all of

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Speaker 1: the different parts of the world that you would need

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Speaker 1: to generate. But that's not all. As you look at

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Speaker 1: these religions more deeply, like in Christianity and Judaism, there's

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Speaker 1: this idea of the Book of Life, which is about

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Speaker 1: the deeds that you've done in this life and whether

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Speaker 1: you're going to heaven, purgatory or no. And actually in

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Speaker 1: the Kuran and the Islamic traditions, they're even more explicit.

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Speaker 1: They call it the Scroll of Deeds. So they have

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Speaker 1: two angels that are sitting there recording everything that you do,

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Speaker 1: and then after you die, you are shown those deeds. Now,

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Speaker 1: we just had Danion Brinkley on right, and you know

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Speaker 1: Danian had a near death experience and he had like

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Speaker 1: four of them now, right, And when he describes it,

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Speaker 1: he describes the panoramic life review where you not only

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Speaker 1: see what happened, but you see it from the other

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Speaker 1: person's point of view, right, And that is very much

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Speaker 1: what described in these texts, particularly with the Scroll of Deeds,

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Speaker 1: where they say you have to see what impact your

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Speaker 1: deeds have. Okay, so what does this have to do

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Speaker 1: with video games? Well, just before started writing this book,

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Speaker 1: I was working with a video game company, and what

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Speaker 1: we were doing is we were recording what was happening

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Speaker 1: inside the game. So you might have a particular play

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Speaker 1: where one player or character, you know, shoots another where

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Speaker 1: we could record it in three dimensions in three sixty

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Speaker 1: and we could play it back so that you could

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Speaker 1: see it from the point of view of the guy

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Speaker 1: that got shot, and so that almost that's probably the

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Speaker 1: only way for something like that to be implemented after

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Speaker 1: we die. If we're going to be shown these scenes

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Speaker 1: from different points of view, somebody has to be recording

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Speaker 1: them somewhere. So it's very much like the screen capture

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Speaker 1: that happens in video games today, but obviously on a

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Speaker 1: more of a holographical level and a more sophisticated level.

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Speaker 1: But it actually ties pretty well to that idea. And

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Speaker 1: then you know, do we really have two angels each

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Speaker 1: just recording our das? That would be like fourteen billion angels.

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Speaker 1: If you were God, you were going to set that up,

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Speaker 1: you would probably have those be more like AI or

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Speaker 1: functions they're just recording what you do so that it

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Speaker 1: can be played back later, so that you wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: to necessarily need conscious beings for every single angel, which

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Speaker 1: means messenger right in the as you do the translation.

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Speaker 1: But whereas you might have guardian angels that are more

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Speaker 1: conscious beings that are guiding you. So, you know, as

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Speaker 1: we talk about, particularly the Western religious traditions, you know,

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Speaker 1: the simulation hypothesis fits very well, this idea that there

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Speaker 1: is a here, which is where we are now, and

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Speaker 1: then there is a hereafter after we leave this place,

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Speaker 1: and so the soul kind of uploads or downloads into

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Speaker 1: the body and then uploads out of the body at

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Speaker 1: death and then gets to see all of the things

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Speaker 1: that have been recorded in this video game. You know,

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Speaker 1: while we were playing it, whereas while you were on hold,

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Speaker 1: I was talking about the death of one of our

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast guests who has passed on. Now, if

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Speaker 1: this were a simulation video game, what has happened to

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Speaker 1: him that the simulator or the game runner just decide

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Speaker 1: to take him out? Well, you know, so this gets

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Speaker 1: into he's out of the game now, He's out of

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Speaker 1: the game this time around, right, But if you're playing

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Speaker 1: a video game, you would choose a character, and you

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Speaker 1: might choose for that character to have a certain number

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Speaker 1: of quests or tasks that have to be done and

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Speaker 1: challenges along the way, and then you know you at

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Speaker 1: some point your character might die. You're still there watching

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Speaker 1: the video game, but your character is gone, is gone,

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Speaker 1: But the other characters are still there, right, but they

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Speaker 1: don't know that you're still watching, right, So if we

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Speaker 1: do live in a video game, then you know the

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Speaker 1: colleague that has passed on, just like Danion in his case,

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Speaker 1: right before he went to the Beings of Light, you know,

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Speaker 1: he could see himself. It was sort of an out

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Speaker 1: of body experience where he could see everything that was

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Speaker 1: going on, and that's been described by a lot of

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Speaker 1: people who've gone through that experience. What does quantum physics

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Speaker 1: teach us about all of this? Well, that's where it got,

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Speaker 1: you know, really interesting. So you know, my background is

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Speaker 1: as a video game designer, and so I started to

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Speaker 1: take this seriously as I saw how high fidelity video

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Speaker 1: games were being. I was playing a ping pong game

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Speaker 1: a few years ago, virtual reality ping pong game, and

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Speaker 1: it started to feel so real that I decided to

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Speaker 1: put the paddle down on the table and lean against

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Speaker 1: the table. Now there was no table, was there a panel,

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Speaker 1: There was no paddle. It was the controller that I

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Speaker 1: was yea, so it fell to the ground and I

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Speaker 1: almost fell over. So that was, you know, one of

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Speaker 1: my conversion experiences, saying, Okay, with virtual reality technology, we're

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Speaker 1: getting there. We're not there yet. There's still like six

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Speaker 1: or seven stages we'd have to go before we could

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Speaker 1: build a matrix. But so in video games, the reason

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Speaker 1: we can do three D rendering if you go back

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Speaker 1: to the days of Space Invaders and I used to

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Speaker 1: play a racing game on the Atari called pole Position, right,

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Speaker 1: those were not fully three D worlds and the processors

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Speaker 1: were not fast enough. And so what happened was in

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Speaker 1: the nineties, it was a game called Doom that came out.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you've played it, but probably some

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Speaker 1: of the listeners have seen it. It was really popular.

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Speaker 1: Was the first game that was really popular that had

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Speaker 1: a three D perspective where you felt like you were

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Speaker 1: shooting other people but you can see it from the

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Speaker 1: point of view of the character. And before that, it

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Speaker 1: would take too much processing power to render all the

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Speaker 1: pixels of the world. So the golden rule in computer

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Speaker 1: programming of video games, this is something I learned over

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Speaker 1: time as I built started to build games, is you

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Speaker 1: have to optimize. You only render the pixels that are

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Speaker 1: being observed. So you look at where the character is

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Speaker 1: you don't have to render the pixel behind the dresser.

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Speaker 1: You just have to render exactly what can be seen

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Speaker 1: from the point of view of the character. And that's

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Speaker 1: why we have three D games today. Okay, so now

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Speaker 1: how does this tide the quantum physics. Well, one of

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Speaker 1: the biggest mysteries in quantum physics is this idea of

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Speaker 1: the particle waved reality, the idea that a particle can

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Speaker 1: be both a wave and a single particle. By a wave,

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Speaker 1: it can be a probability of a bunch of different

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Speaker 1: places that the particle might be, and that wave is

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Speaker 1: said to collapse down to a single possibility. Probably an

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Speaker 1: easier way to understand it is the now infamous Schrodinger's

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Speaker 1: cat right, which you've probably heard of, where the cat

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Speaker 1: is in a box with some radioactive material and he

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Speaker 1: has a fifty percent chance of being dead and a

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Speaker 1: fifty percent chance of being alive. So what quantum physics

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Speaker 1: teaches us is when you open the box and look

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Speaker 1: at the cat, that's when one of those possibilities becomes real.

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Speaker 1: Now that's a little counterintuitive because we would think the

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Speaker 1: cat is either alive or dead. We just don't know

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Speaker 1: because we haven't looked in the box yet, right, But

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Speaker 1: quantum physics tells us that both of those possibilities exist.

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Speaker 1: The cat is both dead and alive until we observe it.

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Speaker 1: And so the golden rule in quantum physics is only

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Speaker 1: when something is being observed does the probability wave collapse

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Speaker 1: from a bunch of random possibilities to what we actually

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Speaker 1: see as the real world. And so this happens at

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Speaker 1: the quantum level, but it's a lot easier to understand

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Speaker 1: at that kind of the the level of a cat, or

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Speaker 1: or if we were in a movie theater, the probability

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Speaker 1: wave would be I could be sitting in any one

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Speaker 1: of these seats and it collapses down to one chair,

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Speaker 1: which is one single possibility. Well, it turns out that

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Speaker 1: whole process is called quantum indeterminacy, and in quantum physics,

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Speaker 1: nobody knows why it exists, but they know that it

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Speaker 1: does that it does exist yet, And it turns out

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Speaker 1: it's the same golden rule that I just talked about

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Speaker 1: in video games, which is you've rendered that only that

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Speaker 1: which is being observed. Now, you talked a little bit

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Speaker 1: about synchronicity before, and of course synchronicity being what they

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Speaker 1: call the coincidence of time, and I don't believe in

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Speaker 1: coincidences at all. So where does synchronicity fit into this? Well,

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Speaker 1: that's a really interesting one and it's kind of close

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Speaker 1: to my heart because I've been thinking about synchronicity in

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Speaker 1: different ways and how synchronicity often gives us clues as

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Speaker 1: to where we might want to go. So, if you

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Speaker 1: think of yourself in a video game, the way modern

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Speaker 1: video games work is characters have quests that they have

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Speaker 1: to go and achieve. And you know, in a video game,

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Speaker 1: the quest might be, oh, go find the map to

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Speaker 1: the goblin king, go kill the goblin, game get the treasure, right,

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Speaker 1: But in a video game like we have, the quests

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Speaker 1: might be Okay, you know, you are meant to write

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Speaker 1: this book, you are meant to make this movie, you

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Speaker 1: are meant to meet this person. So those are a

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Speaker 1: very different kind of quest. And so I've used synchronicity

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Speaker 1: as the glitch in the matrix, which is a term

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Speaker 1: you know they used in that movie. But that gives

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Speaker 1: us a sense that we should be moving in a

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Speaker 1: certain direction. And so, you know, Young first defined the

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Speaker 1: idea of synchronicity, and we think of it as a

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Speaker 1: meaningful coincidence, right, and as you said, maybe there are

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Speaker 1: no coincidences. But Young also use a more technical term

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Speaker 1: or defining synchronicity. He said, it is an a causal

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Speaker 1: connection between two events. And so a cargo means you

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Speaker 1: can't say X caused Y. And so as an example,

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Speaker 1: you know, synchronicity. The other day, you know, we had

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Speaker 1: just gotten back to California after having been away, and

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Speaker 1: we were relating a story about synchronicity which dealt with

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Speaker 1: a phrase from the Lord of the Rings, and the

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Speaker 1: phrase is not all those who wander are lost? And so,

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Speaker 1: you know, we had been talking about this and I

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Speaker 1: ended up randomly at Hurts and as I walked in,

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Speaker 1: this guy standing there turns to me and says, there

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Speaker 1: you are. Did you know that not all those who

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Speaker 1: wander are lost? And he said the exact phrase you

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Speaker 1: know that we had been talking about with regards to

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Speaker 1: a totally different synchronicity. Know what was the causgo connection?

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Speaker 1: What we can't say. But it turns out that if

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Speaker 1: we're a computer simulated world, then the way things are

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Speaker 1: stored in computers are based on association. And there's a

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Speaker 1: gentleman named Jacques Valley who sure right, he also wrote

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Speaker 1: a blurb for your book. He did, yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: he and I were talking about this, and you know,

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Speaker 1: he's also a computer scientist who made the first map

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Speaker 1: of Mars for NASA back in the sixties before he

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Speaker 1: was involved with you know, Alan Heineck and Project Blue Book.

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Speaker 1: And you know, he makes the point that, okay, in

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Speaker 1: the library, we would store everything based on physical space

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Speaker 1: like the A the book's authors begin with A, then

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Speaker 1: bed and seed. But if we were to store all

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Speaker 1: of that information in a computer, we would store it associatively,

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Speaker 1: so we would associate different things together in the computer

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Speaker 1: as a way of retrieving that information. So in with synchronicity,

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Speaker 1: it in a simulation, it could just be that's how

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Speaker 1: it's organized. So the fact that we were saying one

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Speaker 1: phrase and that this guy. Random guy at the Hurts

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Speaker 1: said that same phrase right to me is because that's

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Speaker 1: how the code it. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more