Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Speaker 2: Our colleague Nol is still on an adventure, but will
Speaker 2: be returning very soon.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joyed as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Michig, controlled decad Most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Let's begin tonight's exploration with a fantastic, if arguably a
Speaker 3: bit pretentious quotation from the excellent writer David Foster Wallace.
Speaker 3: There are these two young fish swimming along, and they
Speaker 3: happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way,
Speaker 3: who nods them and says, Martin, boys, how's the water?
Speaker 3: And the two young fish swim on for a bit,
Speaker 3: and then eventually one of them looks over at the
Speaker 3: other and goes, what the hell is water? That's by?
Speaker 3: This is water? David Foster Wallace.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, beautiful. That describes exactly what each and every one
Speaker 2: of us does when we open our eyes in the morning.
Speaker 3: Right, and we have to participate in this thing that
Speaker 3: civilization has decided to call reality. Spoiler, no one knows
Speaker 3: how it works. What is reality? It's a question that's
Speaker 3: haunted philosophers, profits, and scientists throughout the span of known history.
Speaker 3: Conundrum that probably, to be honest, pre dates technology like
Speaker 3: fire or the written word. We're still trying to figure
Speaker 3: it out, and in tonight's episode, we are returning to
Speaker 3: our own exploration of these strange, heady concepts. Here are
Speaker 3: the facts, Matt. Since we're both fans of small talk,
Speaker 3: how would you explain reality?
Speaker 2: Oh? Hey, pal, how's the air? Reality is the collective
Speaker 2: thing that we all experience that we then get together
Speaker 2: and say, hey, this rocks sure seems hard and solid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this water sure seems wet and kind of cold at times. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's existence. Reality is experience through a meat body.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you know, I like that, because we're talking
Speaker 3: already about sort of the filters through which reality is experienced.
Speaker 3: For human beings, reality comes through a surprisingly small set
Speaker 3: of inputs and filters. You know. Most of them are
Speaker 3: what we call physical senses. You taste or smell things,
Speaker 3: you touch things, you see them. You might hear them,
Speaker 3: but there are deeper cuts. We've talked about pro preception.
Speaker 3: You know, that's why you can close your eyes and
Speaker 3: touch your nose and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But it all goes back to a physical piece in
Speaker 2: your ear right and some of the other things in
Speaker 2: your body that give you those things like balance. And
Speaker 2: in the end, it is a physical sense. But it's more,
Speaker 2: as you're saying, than the five right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then also one thing that philosophers
Speaker 3: quarrel over pretty often is the other aspect of what
Speaker 3: determines reality, which is the internal or cognitive processing of
Speaker 3: past experiences, the attempts at predicting future changes in your environment.
Speaker 3: And you know, we give humans a hard time on
Speaker 3: this show, but they're not bad at it. They're not
Speaker 3: bad at that one.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I don't know. I think I think a
Speaker 2: lot of us are a little bad at it.
Speaker 3: I know, a little bad show a little bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we really do color our own lenses, right,
Speaker 2: or the stuff that's happened to us before, that we've
Speaker 2: done before really does shape the way you see things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was listening. I'm glad you said that, because
Speaker 3: I was listening to some conversations with a fascinating scientist
Speaker 3: named Robert Sapolski, and he's talking about some of the
Speaker 3: same stuff we're idating on here. You know. Also another
Speaker 3: thing to add to the bag of badgers is that
Speaker 3: we as a civilization know many other life forms have
Speaker 3: a different sort of kit of sensory inputs, right, like
Speaker 3: electromagnetic sensitivity for birds and sharks. And isn't it can't
Speaker 3: a lot of animals, non human animals, I mean, can't
Speaker 3: they see into like ultraviolet and infrared spectrum?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well, think about a cat's eyes. That's where
Speaker 2: that's why they're so cool to us, because they can
Speaker 2: sense stuff that we cannot.
Speaker 3: You got a ghost hunting cat, I think.
Speaker 2: So Apparently there was a specter right outside my doorway
Speaker 2: last night that I did not observe, but somebody else
Speaker 2: did and the kitty cat I didn't notice, the kitty
Speaker 2: cat notice anything.
Speaker 3: Well, give a time, you know what I mean. New
Speaker 3: at the job. So every ghostthutter has a first day,
Speaker 3: I imagine, And we also know that it gets more
Speaker 3: complicated because not all humans experience reality the same way.
Speaker 3: Your existential mileage may differ, and when an individual or
Speaker 3: group perception strays too far from the majority perspective or consensus,
Speaker 3: we call those people insane.
Speaker 2: But that concept alone gets to the heart of I
Speaker 2: think this episode. In the end, we kind of have
Speaker 2: to choose the way we want to believe the world
Speaker 2: exists entire right, So when you get down into the
Speaker 2: deeper levels, like an individual person and can they actually
Speaker 2: perceive something that we cannot, you have to decide whether
Speaker 2: or not you believe that right now, at.
Speaker 3: Least you have to observe and measure. Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It also blows our mind. We humans can build the
Speaker 2: most sensitive equipment that can find gravitational waves if we
Speaker 2: want them to, which there is no other way for
Speaker 2: humanity or any other life form to detect those things
Speaker 2: that we're aware of. Right now. We can build this
Speaker 2: giant array right that can find gravity waves, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean anything. Those sensors don't mean anything if it
Speaker 2: doesn't have an output that turns it into something we
Speaker 2: can either see or hear or to.
Speaker 3: Get somehow perceive. And also it doesn't solve the problem
Speaker 3: that humanity still quarrels with, with, which is this what
Speaker 3: is gravity? Why, at, how and where and when? Gravity?
Speaker 3: I mean it's the same question with reality. You know
Speaker 3: when gravity is when you know all your gravity are
Speaker 3: belong to us. I don't get it. I don't understand gravity.
Speaker 3: We also know that reality is neither as to your point,
Speaker 3: is neither as consistent nor as constant as it appears
Speaker 3: at first blush. You go through your day to day.
Speaker 3: Stuff tends to fall at the same I'm throwing things.
Speaker 3: Stuff tends to fall at the same measurable pace. You know,
Speaker 3: light usually behaves the way one would expect it, as
Speaker 3: long as you don't look too closely, because the closer
Speaker 3: you look, the weirder stuff gets. There was a great
Speaker 3: quote from a group OF's journalist writing and new scientists
Speaker 3: that were talking about reality, and they said the following quote,
Speaker 3: we don't know when it began, how big it is,
Speaker 3: where it came from, and where it is going. And
Speaker 3: we certainly have no clue why it exists, which I
Speaker 3: think is a question a lot of us don't consider often.
Speaker 3: Why is reality? I think.
Speaker 2: I looked at that article, Ben, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I can read up my New Scientist right now, or
Speaker 2: I can read a different article and I read a
Speaker 2: different article. But that's a great way to open. I
Speaker 2: think I was like one of the first lines in
Speaker 2: that article.
Speaker 3: And it seems something's haunt you. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: These folks are definitely good to hang out with, and
Speaker 3: they're making an excellent point. You know, the rules get
Speaker 3: fuzzy at the very very small and the very very
Speaker 3: large scale. And this brings us to something that I
Speaker 3: think inspired inspired you for this episode this evening, which
Speaker 3: is the double Slit Experiment and observer effect.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have to go way back to ye old
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. In fact, the year after it switched over
Speaker 2: eighteen oh one, when this fellow named Thomas Young came
Speaker 2: up with a thing that we now know as the
Speaker 2: double Slit experiment, which is very very important. That's why
Speaker 2: we're doing this episode. It is the initial experiment that
Speaker 2: led humanity down a bit of a rabbit hole, and
Speaker 2: it's pretty incredible because it's influenced so many other very
Speaker 2: good thinkers to think very hard about the nature of reality,
Speaker 2: and it's attempted to give us a window, maybe a
Speaker 2: two slided window, into what this whole thing is that
Speaker 2: we're going through every day. But why don't you tell
Speaker 2: us about this guy?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, Thomas Young is what we will call it.
Speaker 3: Boffin a renaissance man. You might say he's an egghead.
Speaker 3: He's super into all sorts of stuff. He's really good
Speaker 3: at math. He contributed research to everything from egyptology to physics.
Speaker 3: And then one day, Lakers said, around the turn of
Speaker 3: the century, this guy said, I wonder if Isaac Newton
Speaker 3: is wrong about light. Now, light may seem like an
Speaker 3: academic debate. People were really hot about this at this
Speaker 3: time in human history. There was this ongoing argument, what
Speaker 3: is the substance of light? How does light travel? Should
Speaker 3: we think of it like Christian Hugans propose, like a wave,
Speaker 3: just a maybe wave of stuff emanating from things in
Speaker 3: chemical reactions, or should we think of it like a
Speaker 3: series of little pew pew pew particles.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well, and when we perceive a light again,
Speaker 2: we go back to our base experience. You turn on
Speaker 2: a light and now there's light everywhere that that light
Speaker 2: can basically shine on. Right, And just that concept of
Speaker 2: how does it travel, how does it function? Right? This
Speaker 2: is a huge deal. The I would say, well, no,
Speaker 2: I know. The prevailing thought there is that they are
Speaker 2: light particles. And then there's another school of thought that is, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe it is waves. Maybe it does function as waves.
Speaker 2: So we thought, well, maybe here's a cool way to
Speaker 2: approve that by shining light through two slits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it is one of the most famous experiments,
Speaker 3: as he said, in all of human history. The tools
Speaker 3: are maybe distressingly simple. You can play along at home.
Speaker 3: You just need a light source, a thin card with
Speaker 3: two holes or slits cut within it, side by side,
Speaker 3: and then you need to screen. That's right, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: And so our buddy young, I guess took a took
Speaker 3: a long enough break from Egyptology to conduct this experiment.
Speaker 3: And his idea was pretty simple. He said, look, just
Speaker 3: like you were saying, Matt, if we if we can
Speaker 3: measure the way the light moves, we will determine whether
Speaker 3: it is a wave or a series of particles. If
Speaker 3: the light is content, If the light is comprised of particles,
Speaker 3: then it will shoot through those two slits and at
Speaker 3: the screen you will just see two dots, right, And
Speaker 3: if it's a wave something different, right, well yeah, or you.
Speaker 2: Would at least see the two slits, right, the outline
Speaker 2: of what the slits look like projected on whatever the
Speaker 2: device it is. That you're using to see the light.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and the thing is most of well, a
Speaker 3: great deal of human science is discovered by accident. People
Speaker 3: are looking for one thing and they discover another. Right,
Speaker 3: That's how alchemist ended up with chemistry. So Young also
Speaker 3: follows this sort of tendency. He doesn't see what he
Speaker 3: reasonably imagined or predicted. Instead, when he shines this light
Speaker 3: through this double slit experiment, he sees an alternating pattern
Speaker 3: of dark and light bands on the screen. The best
Speaker 3: way to describe it maybe is it's kind of like
Speaker 3: a Pointillism version of a barcode.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's most intense at the places where you
Speaker 2: would imagine those two slits would have light shine through them,
Speaker 2: and then kind of dissipates, getting lesser and lesser as
Speaker 2: you move away from the two slits.
Speaker 3: M yeah, it looks like someone drew a barcode by
Speaker 3: just sort of putting little dots, yeah around.
Speaker 2: Well, that's when Thomas Young isn't shooting particles of light yet, right,
Speaker 2: Thomas Young is just using a light source, right, So,
Speaker 2: like you're not getting as much of the dots as
Speaker 2: like the lines.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, he is at he has not yet
Speaker 3: well The better way to say it is the double
Speaker 3: slit experiment is still in its infancy. It still has
Speaker 3: that new car smell. It hasn't been reproduced and refined
Speaker 3: over and over. But the patterns that we see remain inexplicable.
Speaker 3: So our buddy Young is trying to explain this. He's surprised.
Speaker 3: He wants to understand it, and he says, okay, well,
Speaker 3: this means light travels through space like a wave of water,
Speaker 3: highs and lows, crest and troughs. And thinking this way,
Speaker 3: he said, all right, here's what's happening. Light waves are
Speaker 3: traveling through these two you know tunnels, right, very small tunnels,
Speaker 3: and when they get out, they are they are like
Speaker 3: expanding on the way when they emerge from these restrictions,
Speaker 3: these two slits. And what I'm seeing, he says, is
Speaker 3: that bright bands are forming where these two waves of
Speaker 3: light overlap, they add together, so they make things brighter
Speaker 3: because they're light. And when I see the dark bands,
Speaker 3: he says, it's where the crested troths somehow cancel each
Speaker 3: other out. That makes sense, he thinks, kind of, Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very similar to observations that had been
Speaker 2: done with fluid dynamics and water, and when you've got
Speaker 2: interference patterns. Basically, if you try to imagine dropping two
Speaker 2: things in the water about let's say, four feet away
Speaker 2: from each other in the same body of water, when
Speaker 2: those things hit that body of water, you get the
Speaker 2: waves that move out from it right in circles. We've
Speaker 2: all seen this before. Imagine those two sets of circles
Speaker 2: start to interact with each other as they're moving, and
Speaker 2: you get the exactly what Ben's describing, these interference patterns.
Speaker 3: And this experiment, as we said, has been replicated countless
Speaker 3: times with very levels of refinement, with varying levels of
Speaker 3: sophistication and measurement. But we're still not at the crazy part,
Speaker 3: and maybe we need a little bit more background for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so Young is using a light source, you know,
Speaker 2: as we were saying, and light sources have gotten more
Speaker 2: and more complicated and intricate over the years. We've also
Speaker 2: humanity has figured out how to shoot basically beams of light,
Speaker 2: think lasers, think very specific photon emitters. These are things now,
Speaker 2: So you can send out a single particle and or
Speaker 2: wave of light, a single instance, let's say, of a
Speaker 2: light and so when you can now do that, and
Speaker 2: you've still got this double slit experiment going. You find
Speaker 2: some weird things because sometimes when you shoot those single
Speaker 2: light particles and or waves out, one will travel through
Speaker 2: either the left slit or the right slit, And it
Speaker 2: gets really weird when you try and detect which of
Speaker 2: the two slits a single particle goes through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the creepy part. If either path through those slits,
Speaker 3: and I hate that we're saying slit so much, but that's,
Speaker 3: you know, the name of the experiment. If either path
Speaker 3: is monitored, then stuff will seem to pass through a
Speaker 3: discrete choice. It will go either through aperture A or
Speaker 3: through aperture B. But if you shoot the light through
Speaker 3: and you do not measure it, and you do not
Speaker 3: monitor it, then those photons, regardless of how sophisticated or
Speaker 3: crude your light emitting device is, those photons will appear
Speaker 3: to have passed through both of those spaces at the
Speaker 3: same time and then interfere with themselves, acting like a wave.
Speaker 3: Poor k Nolos dose. Man, it's nuts.
Speaker 2: It seems to say that our basic understanding for a
Speaker 2: long time of what light and perhaps matter, even at
Speaker 2: the tiniest forms is still elementary, and we don't fully
Speaker 2: understand what it is. And that is freaky because scientists
Speaker 2: since that time, since the eighteen hundreds, as you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: have been attempting to refine this experiment in ways, you know,
Speaker 2: using very different things. We're gonna get in to. But
Speaker 2: nobody still I hate to I feel like I'm spoiling everything.
Speaker 2: Nobody still has an exact grasp on what the heck
Speaker 2: these particles slash waves really are and how they actually function.
Speaker 3: Not even a spoiler. It would be a spoiler if
Speaker 3: someone listening tonight knew what was going on, right to us,
Speaker 3: conspiracy iHeartRadio dot com like help science improve.
Speaker 2: No, there's no end to the number of people who
Speaker 2: have a hypothesis, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we got to get Terrence Howard.
Speaker 2: On the phone one at times one what happened to
Speaker 2: the other one?
Speaker 3: So this is the observer effect, which will be familiar
Speaker 3: to a lot of us. It's the idea that a
Speaker 3: system may be influenced or affected or disturbed simply by
Speaker 3: the act of observing that system in progress, or a
Speaker 3: better way to say it is the idea of measuring
Speaker 3: that system may influence the results of those measurements.
Speaker 4: Right, but it seems to influence the behavior exactly exactly,
Speaker 4: And that's the troubling thing that's kind of our deep water, right,
Speaker 4: whether particles or waves. In the observer effect, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe a metaphor or a comparison, a simile, excuse me,
Speaker 4: it is the best way to think about it. The
Speaker 4: observer effect is kind of like that old story about
Speaker 4: watching a pot of water and waiting for it to boil.
Speaker 4: But in the observer effect, the fact that you are
Speaker 4: looking at the water changes weather or not the water
Speaker 4: boils and how it boils. And that is, by the way,
Speaker 4: as far as we know, looking at a pot of
Speaker 4: water about to boil, your perspective does not influence that.
Speaker 4: You can unless you are unless you have like low
Speaker 4: key pyrokinesis, you are not making water boil faster or cryokinesis.
Speaker 2: That's why this is so frustrating. We've created technology, a
Speaker 2: pot in a way to make fire underneath that pot,
Speaker 2: and some clean water to put in that pot, and
Speaker 2: we put all those things together and we know, hey,
Speaker 2: eventually that water's going to boil, right, I know it.
Speaker 3: For sure, right with based on our understanding of linear
Speaker 3: time as well, which gets even weirder. I mean, this
Speaker 3: takes us to the concept of wave collapse, right, the
Speaker 3: old dilemma of Schrodinger's cat, The cat is both alive
Speaker 3: and dead until you open the box. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I think there was. This is already kind of weird,
Speaker 3: but I was thinking, Matt about different ways to play
Speaker 3: with the concept of observer effect. It's you know, we
Speaker 3: often take it to mean in popular science that a
Speaker 3: conscious mind can somehow affect reality. And perhaps that is true,
Speaker 3: but there's no current proof that the observer or the
Speaker 3: measuring device needs to be conscious. It makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 3: if we got different non human animals together and had
Speaker 3: them watch the double slit experiment, would that affect it?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? And if so, which animals
Speaker 3: count as observers in that regard.
Speaker 2: I think all of them, man, I think anything that
Speaker 2: has senses is conscious in some degree or another. Like
Speaker 2: I've fully come to believe that now. It just over
Speaker 2: the years been we as we've been learning about what
Speaker 2: we would call animal intelligence. Like all honestly, Man, you've
Speaker 2: inspired me a lot with your fascination with it, because
Speaker 2: it makes me want to learn more, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to like Corvid's and some of the things we've
Speaker 2: kind of had a deep dive into and cetaceans. It
Speaker 2: feels like like even plants now when we did that episode,
Speaker 2: even plants may have a consciousness that we have previously
Speaker 2: just kind of thrown out and said, that's not consciousness.
Speaker 2: They're not thinking about thinking like are you sure though?
Speaker 3: You sure about that's why? Yeah, yeah, well I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're we we're often on the
Speaker 3: same page with these sorts of these sorts of questions
Speaker 3: because one thing we can all agree on, hopefully those
Speaker 3: of us playing along at home as well, is this
Speaker 3: every experiment like this. It might be challenging, it might
Speaker 3: be scary. Uh, reality is philosophically terrifying because it's a
Speaker 3: thing that no one can escape and no one understands.
Speaker 3: All of it shows us that there's a there is
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of stuff we do not know about
Speaker 3: the universe or universes. I'm being that guy that we
Speaker 3: in which we reside. I mean, I guess it's an
Speaker 3: ad break. But without getting into further into some of
Speaker 3: the murky waters of quantum thought, McCann. We also know
Speaker 3: that humans, despite not understanding regular reality, are building new realities.
Speaker 3: That's kind of weird.
Speaker 2: It is weird, and I love those realities, a lot
Speaker 2: of them. Some of them might detest, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them I'm really into, especially the ones that have
Speaker 2: good stories and gameplay, which is really just what makes
Speaker 2: a good game. Anyway. What can those virtual worlds teach
Speaker 2: us about this very real world?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What does it mean? What could it mean for
Speaker 3: reality today? For reality in the future. Here's where it
Speaker 3: gets crazy. All right, how would we explain virtual reality?
Speaker 3: The most crappy explanation is it's a version of a
Speaker 3: thing that was around earlier that we still don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well, yeah, it's it's a simulated closed system reality.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's a device, a system of devices that can trick
Speaker 2: your meat sensors into believing that those sensors are interacting
Speaker 2: in some other place, at some other time, in some
Speaker 2: other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, put, I think what personal experiences do you
Speaker 3: recall the first time you engaged with something we'll call
Speaker 3: virtual reality in like the technological sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was a friend. It was my
Speaker 2: cousin who had one of these like an early oculus
Speaker 2: that you had to plug in, so it was your
Speaker 2: computer was directly plugged into it through cables. It wasn't
Speaker 2: one of these little, you know, wireless guys that are
Speaker 2: running around today. And I remember the feeling specifically of
Speaker 2: doing the It's kind of like the playing thing that
Speaker 2: Noel's talked about on the show here before, where you're
Speaker 2: up at a very tall height and this device tricks
Speaker 2: you into feeling as though you are very high up
Speaker 2: and you have, or at least I experienced bodily reactions
Speaker 2: to that feelings the way my body would react if
Speaker 2: I was on the edge of a.
Speaker 3: Building because it hacked your pro preception exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And I like the idea of emulating input such that
Speaker 3: the body's sensory filters say this is real, or it's
Speaker 3: real enough that we're not going to take the chance
Speaker 3: of you falling off this plank, exactly.
Speaker 2: And that goes to everything in some of the zombie
Speaker 2: games that have come out over the years, some of
Speaker 2: the games where there's a real fear, a fight or
Speaker 2: flight response to something that you see as adversarial coming
Speaker 2: at you, or you can hear it right, it sounds
Speaker 2: like it's around the corner. It hacks you in ways
Speaker 2: that I'm still uncomfortable with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we need to know more. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is the surprising thing. All right, brief history of virtual reality,
Speaker 3: and we're going somewhere with this, folks. The term itself
Speaker 3: is relatively new, Like when most people hear the phrase
Speaker 3: virtual reality, you're thinking of immersive technological experiences. But the
Speaker 3: concept is inarguably ancient. It's metaphysical belief, it's gnosticism, it's
Speaker 3: Plato's cavern, it's imagination. Every time you have a dream,
Speaker 3: you have created a virtual reality or just a day dream.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, like you said, a closed system
Speaker 3: of experience. That's what a virtual reality is, which means
Speaker 3: that every thought you have that you really think about,
Speaker 3: you're kind of making another world. Nothing weird, we're fun
Speaker 3: at parties. It's a Matroshka doll of nested realities, worlds
Speaker 3: within each other.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and how you think about yourself affects the
Speaker 2: worlds you create, and then all the other characters that
Speaker 2: inhabit those worlds. Right, And the way you think about
Speaker 2: individuals and the way you hear a phrase from somebody, right,
Speaker 2: or if you're walking down the street and somebody says
Speaker 2: hey to you, What what does that mean? When somebody
Speaker 2: says hey to you when you're walking down the street,
Speaker 2: your little your bubble of reality that you're projecting ends
Speaker 2: up changing. Oh my god, it changes that source, right
Speaker 2: it We all do it.
Speaker 3: It's a You know what's interesting about that that concept
Speaker 3: as well is that it leads us to the argument
Speaker 3: that one is never truly interacting with another or instead
Speaker 3: interacting with your perception of a person.
Speaker 2: Oooh no, totally, wow.
Speaker 3: Sanias have us over. But like I think you raise
Speaker 3: an excellent point there, Matt. I mean, the rules get
Speaker 3: fuzzy when we talk about virtual reality. You can witness,
Speaker 3: like you were talking earlier about Catharsis right, you can
Speaker 3: witness versions of reality in film, in books, in a
Speaker 3: good song. And on some level we could say, oh,
Speaker 3: I know, this isn't the real world, but experiencing those
Speaker 3: glimpses outside of agreed upon analog reality has this crazy effect.
Speaker 3: You said something I want to go back to. I
Speaker 3: was not aware of this. In the early days of film, right,
Speaker 3: no one has seen a film. What is that In
Speaker 3: the early days of film, One of the famous stories
Speaker 3: is a group of people a symbol to watch some
Speaker 3: moving camera and it's still all silent film at this point,
Speaker 3: and it the part of what they're seeing features a train, Paul,
Speaker 3: can we get like a scary train noise? Perfect? They
Speaker 3: see a train moving toward the camera, hurtling along the
Speaker 3: rails from the camera's point of view. We've all seen
Speaker 3: stuff like that before, right, but these folks had never
Speaker 3: seen a film before. They freaked out. They're like, jump
Speaker 3: it away, like, is.
Speaker 2: That an actual train that is coming at us right now? Well,
Speaker 2: then forget about the first time a gun was pointed
Speaker 2: at the camera. That was horrifying as well. And those
Speaker 2: little tricks, like even the movement of trees in the background,
Speaker 2: just sitting in a darkened theater and there's light projected
Speaker 2: on the wall and it looks as though the trees
Speaker 2: are moving. Love I man, I wish Paul was on
Speaker 2: this episode because he could tell us all about the
Speaker 2: history of some of this stuff with his film knowledge.
Speaker 2: But man it it is weird how we've been tricking
Speaker 2: ourselves mostly with light and sound for so long for fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Profit, well, there there's a profit motive. But you
Speaker 3: could say we've been tricking ourselves with the concept of
Speaker 3: currency in general. But also there's interesting there are these cyclical,
Speaker 3: interesting breakthroughs in olfactory smell technology, and it just hasn't
Speaker 3: caught on yet because you know, it's weird.
Speaker 2: That's the sixty experience.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean this sounds funny. Now maybe with the
Speaker 3: benefit of retrospect we can say, oh, those folks were silly.
Speaker 3: But even just the idea of putting yourself in a
Speaker 3: moment where a gun is pointed at you in any context,
Speaker 3: that is a frightening thing, and it shows us a
Speaker 3: very important lesson perception is kind of reality. You know,
Speaker 3: at this point, perception is reality. You could also say
Speaker 3: perspective is power. We'll get to it. But humans have
Speaker 3: been creating new realities all the time forever, and with
Speaker 3: each technological innovation, like you were saying, the ability to
Speaker 3: create these worlds only expands, and these worlds become more sophisticated,
Speaker 3: they have a closer fidelity to the world you're used to.
Speaker 3: They may one day become indistinguishable. And I was surprised
Speaker 3: to learn just the term virtual dates back to the
Speaker 3: fourteen hundreds. Had no idea, well.
Speaker 2: What okay, if it goes back that far, what is
Speaker 2: the even what could it mean?
Speaker 3: It comes from It ultimately comes from a Latin phrase
Speaker 3: meaning excellence, potency or efficacy or literally manliness. That's a
Speaker 3: weird one, oh yeah. But the idea is, if something
Speaker 3: is virtual, it is it has for similitude, it is
Speaker 3: very much like the real thing. So, okay, you know
Speaker 3: when some we say in American English, pretty often it's
Speaker 3: virtually impossible to blah blah blah, or it's virtually certain
Speaker 3: that so and so, and usually I think colloquially that
Speaker 3: means there is a ninety percent plus chance of something.
Speaker 3: But virtual in the fifteen or fourteen hundreds and so on,
Speaker 3: it basically meant really close to real, right, not concrete,
Speaker 3: but close enough that unless you actually smack the stone,
Speaker 3: you would think this was the thing. It wasn't used
Speaker 3: in computing until nineteen fifty nine. So the fast forward
Speaker 3: through the etymology here. The earliest use of the full
Speaker 3: term virtual reality is actually French la realite that you,
Speaker 3: and it comes from nineteen thirty eight, and it is
Speaker 3: entirely from this playwright who talked about theater as an
Speaker 3: alternate version of reality, curated reality theater is double and
Speaker 3: that so he writes that in thirty eight. It gets
Speaker 3: published in nineteen fifty eight, and then just a year later,
Speaker 3: the boffins and the pioneering parents of computing start using
Speaker 3: the phrase virtual reality to talk about software.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well I would just say software and hardware, right,
Speaker 2: because the virtual realities that have been created don't do
Speaker 2: anything for your appropriate reception if they're just on a screen.
Speaker 2: Because humans, as you said, have been exposed to light
Speaker 2: projected for a long time, which is just our screens now, right,
Speaker 2: So if you're playing a video game system, it's not
Speaker 2: really a virtual reality experience. You got to have that trickery, right,
Speaker 2: which is this is Jerrem Lanier, I think, is how
Speaker 2: you say it. He's a big, big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agreed. A legend in his own right. He's
Speaker 3: often called the founding father of virtual reality. He's a
Speaker 3: fascinating guy. We've referred to his work in previous episodes.
Speaker 3: I love, love, love love hearing this guy talk. I
Speaker 3: love learning his thoughts, even if I don't always agree.
Speaker 3: He he worked at Atari in the eighties. He left
Speaker 3: and he founded the first company to sell VR goggles
Speaker 3: and wired gloves like you're talking about the hardware you need.
Speaker 3: Did you ever have a power glove?
Speaker 2: I did have a power glove, for sure, but I
Speaker 2: never got to mess with this stuff. And I think
Speaker 2: we mentioned it on a different episode maybe last time
Speaker 2: we did a simulated reality episode or something. We talked
Speaker 2: about how simple the software was, like what you actually
Speaker 2: saw and interacted with when you had those goggles on
Speaker 2: and wore those gloves. That was just a couple of
Speaker 2: polygons basically that moved super slowly. But still that the
Speaker 2: real hack in there is that your hands and head
Speaker 2: movement are controlling what you're experiencing.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And you know, there might be some of
Speaker 3: us tonight who say it's wrong for us to call
Speaker 3: it trickery, but it is. You know, they are just polygons.
Speaker 3: Come on, come on, we're not being jerks. We're telling
Speaker 3: you it's not the same as the other world world prime,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And this is this can
Speaker 3: be a beautiful and terrifying thing. You know. Lanier has
Speaker 3: talked at length about the online world, and the funny
Speaker 3: thing is the further we get in this new arms
Speaker 3: race of innovation, the more prescient his statements become. He
Speaker 3: knows what he's talking about. He wants people to be
Speaker 3: ready for some very weird stuff, you know, like I
Speaker 3: don't know. Fiction is priming as for it too, Like
Speaker 3: remember a Ready Player one?
Speaker 2: I do, Yes, we're I guess it was a lot
Speaker 2: of the economy then at that point is wrapped up
Speaker 2: in those virtual worlds that are creating. There's like a
Speaker 2: one there's one company that rules all of those words.
Speaker 2: And I've watched it not that long ago, and I
Speaker 2: really do enjoy the story. But I don't think we're
Speaker 2: there yet, but we're getting closer and closer to the
Speaker 2: point where people want to spend time in those virtual
Speaker 2: worlds the same way. I'm literally sitting here thinking about
Speaker 2: the world of Fallout four, and I want to get
Speaker 2: back in there for just a little bit because I haven't.
Speaker 2: I haven't played it in a couple of days. But
Speaker 2: it's not it doesn't have no bearing on anything in
Speaker 2: my life, but I still want it.
Speaker 3: And it does have I mean, those experiences are close
Speaker 3: enough to you know, your experience walking around in this environment, right,
Speaker 3: Those experiences are close enough that they can trigger neurological reactions,
Speaker 3: even hormonal changes. I think there is something real about them.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean to some degree. And of
Speaker 3: course everybody's been a gamer or reads a lot, you
Speaker 3: might have that weird feeling when you beat a game,
Speaker 3: you know, and the credits roll, or you finish a
Speaker 3: book and you think, oh, I'm back, Yeah, what do
Speaker 3: I do now?
Speaker 2: Well, and you also are gifted with this feeling of accomplishment,
Speaker 2: even though all you did was press some buttons for
Speaker 2: a long time and set on the couch for too long.
Speaker 2: But you know, look, and I say that as a
Speaker 2: lover of games, and I will defend my right and
Speaker 2: you're right to play them, and that it's actually pretty
Speaker 2: good for us in a lot of different ways. But
Speaker 2: in the end, in this reality, it truly is at
Speaker 2: best sharpening your perception.
Speaker 3: Right right perception, and right now, as we record on
Speaker 3: June third, four, it is virtually certain there we go
Speaker 3: that people know when they are in one of these
Speaker 3: human created environments. They know when they are in a curated,
Speaker 3: constrained experience. That's why and Ready Player one, everybody knows
Speaker 3: they're logging into a thing and they're going online. Everybody
Speaker 3: knows that they're incentivized socially and economically to do so,
Speaker 3: but they are very much aware there is a different
Speaker 3: preceding world. But then there's another thing. One of our
Speaker 3: favorite films on this show throughout its history is The
Speaker 3: Matrix in The Matrix's nested reality, and most people don't
Speaker 3: know they're in it. They don't get to consent.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, all of their sensory systems are hooked up
Speaker 2: to hardware that makes them believe they are in reality,
Speaker 2: which is a creepy thing to think about. And I've
Speaker 2: been thinking about it since nineteen ninety nine and iils
Speaker 2: shall never cease thinking about it until I'm unplugged Trinity
Speaker 2: or whoever she drops down and gets me out of here.
Speaker 3: I also I keep thinking, you know, I think you
Speaker 3: can be haunted by good thoughts, just the way you
Speaker 3: could be haunted by a spirit.
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 3: Will never forget the explanation line. It's a throwaway line
Speaker 3: in this amazing film where they say maybe we're something like,
Speaker 3: maybe we're in a simulation. Now they didn't know what
Speaker 3: everything tasted like. That's why everything tastes like chicken. Oh God,
Speaker 3: do you remember that line?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I couldn't tell you what it's from. Right
Speaker 2: to us, it's from the Matrix. Oh it is from
Speaker 2: the Matrix? Yeah, is that when they're talking about steak,
Speaker 2: he's trying to what's his name, Joey Pantoli one Joey
Speaker 2: Pants is like, man, this steak is so good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want steak.
Speaker 3: I think maybe that's it. We got to rewatch it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, right to us, because it'll give us an
Speaker 3: excuse to rewatch the film. You know, it's weird and
Speaker 3: we've known each other for so long and I don't
Speaker 3: think we've ever watched it together. Just keep talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, hey, quick shout out for the episode of
Speaker 2: Movie Crush where I talked to Chuck about the Matrix
Speaker 2: and we go deep on. I think that line is
Speaker 2: in there in our discussion bit about the chicken.
Speaker 3: Nice. Movie Crush is great. I never got a chance
Speaker 3: to be on it, but I loved hearing the conversations
Speaker 3: and Chuck is a phenomenal interviewer.
Speaker 2: We need to bring it back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see what he says. You know, and I
Speaker 3: think they're on tour right now, so check out stuff
Speaker 3: you should know on the road if you get a chance.
Speaker 3: Show not to be missed for the nature of like,
Speaker 3: if we wanted to or if some entity wanted to
Speaker 3: arrive at a seamless virtual world, a matrix level world
Speaker 3: in which people could not distinguish between the world d're
Speaker 3: in now and a created or curated one. Lanier had
Speaker 3: a couple of big speed bumps, and in twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: he talked about something that Matt you would mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: the two big problems hardware and software. He said, hardware
Speaker 3: is going to solve itself eventually, just with economy of scale.
Speaker 3: The more you make, the more iterations you make of
Speaker 3: a thing, the cheaper the thing becomes in the grand
Speaker 3: religion we call economy. But the software is the pickle. Right.
Speaker 3: Virtual worlds have to respond much more quickly for human users,
Speaker 3: but you have to have multiple people coming in and connecting.
Speaker 3: The network has to be seamless, and he says it's
Speaker 3: going to take a while to figure out how to
Speaker 3: make the network work without hiccups, and that you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you about this, Matt. It reminds
Speaker 3: me of the concept of lag when you're playing video games.
Speaker 3: Have you ever played online and got caught up in
Speaker 3: a like a lag situation? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've broken several controllers because of Lad's broken them.
Speaker 2: I've lost several very important to online characters due to
Speaker 2: lag and getting logged out because I think my family
Speaker 2: needed to make a phone call. My fifty six K
Speaker 2: modem was attached and when they unplugged it and it
Speaker 2: was over. But yes, this concept of lag, if your
Speaker 2: perception of reality could be so easily interrupted by like
Speaker 2: a couple of frames getting dropped or skipped right, then
Speaker 2: you would lose that proprioception trickery and it would no
Speaker 2: longer feel like a virtual world of connecting this back
Speaker 2: to our shared reality, this one that you're listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast in. I've never experienced lag like that we've experienced. Maybe, well,
Speaker 2: I know I have experienced some weird things with reality,
Speaker 2: like a blip in time, or when the lights all
Speaker 2: flicker at once, or a weird sound, or you know,
Speaker 2: seeing a specter in my doorway where it makes you
Speaker 2: feel like, oh, well, maybe this reality isn't exactly what
Speaker 2: we all think it is, or it doesn't function the
Speaker 2: way we all think it does. But I've never seen
Speaker 2: anything like lag, which is a terrible and real problem
Speaker 2: when it comes to processing that much information at once
Speaker 2: for multiple people. But I would argue, and what'd you say?
Speaker 2: Linear said this a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Twenty thirteen, it's about ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So I think we're actually there now. If you think
Speaker 2: about some of these large scale games that are run
Speaker 2: in the cloud essentially at once and served to everybody
Speaker 2: essentially via a supercomputer of sorts, I think we might
Speaker 2: be there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're getting very close, right. And one thing that's
Speaker 3: fascinating about human technology is as it improves, it tends
Speaker 3: to emulate parts of nature. Right, the most sophisticated systems
Speaker 3: and structures and processes are echoing things that already naturally occurred,
Speaker 3: because that's the most efficient way for that stuff to work,
Speaker 3: and natural reality also already needed hardware and software. The
Speaker 3: hardware is your body and all the physical forces surrounding
Speaker 3: you've seen and unseen. And the software is your mind
Speaker 3: as you're listening now. I'm trying to make my eyes
Speaker 3: look less crazy. Sorry, your mind as you're listening now,
Speaker 3: and the minds of every other living thing you encounter.
Speaker 3: The tricky part is not all the software is the same.
Speaker 3: And I'm still stuck to your point. Yes, I agree,
Speaker 3: massive online role playing or massive online gaming in general,
Speaker 3: is reducing a lot of lag I'm just thinking about
Speaker 3: waking up one evening and you walk outside and you
Speaker 3: have a laggy connection with the world. You know, that
Speaker 3: would be so weird.
Speaker 2: Ben, you said that in your video. Froze as you said,
Speaker 2: and then it picks back up. That was nuts.
Speaker 3: Let's not let look too closely, right, Let's take reality
Speaker 3: at its word. All right, Well, we'll check our connections.
Speaker 3: Uh and uh, you know, play some mats. Okay, we
Speaker 3: have returned, as we said, Matt, you and Paul and
Speaker 3: I are recording this on June third, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: And I love the point you made that we are
Speaker 3: in an era of breakthroughs, right, escalating breakthroughs, feedback loops
Speaker 3: of innovation, and I think a lot of the stuff
Speaker 3: that was once considered science fiction is becoming science fact. Right.
Speaker 3: Do you think we'll reach a point where someone would
Speaker 3: be unable to distinguish a virtual reality from a physical reality.
Speaker 2: Hopefully not, and hopefully creators of such realities would know
Speaker 2: how dangerous that could be. I think you would build
Speaker 2: in something, whether it's a hud like a head's up display,
Speaker 2: or something that would make you aware at all times
Speaker 2: that you are not in actual reality.
Speaker 3: At that up.
Speaker 2: Well, it could be that, but just something in the
Speaker 2: corner that's literally a menu or something, or a place
Speaker 2: where you could place your hand, and everybody knows if
Speaker 2: you put your hand here, you will bring up the
Speaker 2: menu every time, or a button or something to where
Speaker 2: a human being, you'd make it a lot less likely
Speaker 2: that a human being could get fully.
Speaker 3: Lost, right yeah, kind of similar to I think in
Speaker 3: some countries it was China, there were moves to restrict
Speaker 3: the amount of time people could spend immersed in like
Speaker 3: you know, an internet cafe, right, yeah, because people were
Speaker 3: going so deep, going so hard, to the point where
Speaker 3: the only thing that took them out of that experience
Speaker 3: was the physical need for stuff like food, water, and excrement,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Which was often solved by getting a little creative with
Speaker 2: your seat.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, getting a little spicy with the seat. And
Speaker 3: we know, like, I appreciate what you're saying there, because
Speaker 3: I think it is statistically inevitable that humans and machines
Speaker 3: will continue to meld together like increasingly inextricable. You know,
Speaker 3: it sounds it sounds nuts to say, what if there's
Speaker 3: a world in a few years where you have an
Speaker 3: AI avatar that legally represents you. It does. It's like
Speaker 3: your valet, your digital doppelganger. It does all the stuff
Speaker 3: that you need or that you don't want to do. Uh,
Speaker 3: And that sounds nuts. But not too long ago, people,
Speaker 3: I thought it was ridiculous that someone would always have
Speaker 3: a cell phone or a smartphote. You know, why would
Speaker 3: you spy on yourself? And now billions do it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you can see it already in the workings
Speaker 2: of things like Siri and Alexo, where you can program
Speaker 2: those pieces of hardware and software to give you an
Speaker 2: update on your day. Right here. You can give it
Speaker 2: access to your email, right in your schedule and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. And even in Microsoft with ourly enterprise systems,
Speaker 2: you can it will say, Hey, morning, Ben, here's what's
Speaker 2: on your plate for the day. This person has a
Speaker 2: question about this, this person has a question about that.
Speaker 2: You need to do this, and you can. It's I
Speaker 2: don't think it's automated fully to the point where you could,
Speaker 2: through that system just give it a couple of quick
Speaker 2: answers and then it would reply to all the emails
Speaker 2: and do the things exactly the way you'd want it to.
Speaker 2: But I imagine that's coming up very soon where you have
Speaker 2: like a meeting in the morning, you know, five minute
Speaker 2: meeting to get the rundown, take care of all all
Speaker 2: your stuff, and then anything else that pops up, you
Speaker 2: get alerted to it.
Speaker 3: And it's normalized now because it's a common thing that
Speaker 3: people can experience. Right, Google or Alexa. We have given
Speaker 3: these identities to these things. We have put a language
Speaker 3: and nomenclature upon them. I mean, also, let's just say
Speaker 3: it out loud, a lot of us are listening to
Speaker 3: this on those same smartphones we're describing, or on the
Speaker 3: Alexa right or the Amazon Echo or what have you.
Speaker 3: I also, I think what's gonna happen is humans are
Speaker 3: gonna finally get past the hands. I think that's another
Speaker 3: step too.
Speaker 2: I hope not. I like the hands.
Speaker 3: I like, you know, I'm a fan of hands. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of hands. I will die of that
Speaker 3: hill if I have to, if need be. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's gonna sound crazy like for anyone who just had
Speaker 3: a child this year, first off, congraduate relations. Secondly, if not,
Speaker 3: by the time your kid is thirty, by the time
Speaker 3: your kid has a kid that turns eighteen. If the
Speaker 3: world doesn't collapse, it is going to sound crazy that
Speaker 3: you used to type with your hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, used to type with your hands, used to do
Speaker 2: so many things with your hands. But now you kind
Speaker 2: of just you can wave if you want in a
Speaker 2: couple of different ways. You can still use them. Just
Speaker 2: don't like touch anything.
Speaker 3: Why would you touch stuff? What are you old? You know? Like,
Speaker 3: I do think it's funny how we normalize these things.
Speaker 3: But it'll maybe go the way of the old modem
Speaker 3: scream like we were talking about with the fifty six
Speaker 3: bit connection. Was that one of those things where it
Speaker 3: goes through the phone line and it has that weird noise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ultimately it's using your phone system, the same lines
Speaker 2: that connect your phone to the outer world in the network.
Speaker 2: It's using that to dial literally dial in to the
Speaker 2: Internet to a server somewhere.
Speaker 3: And we don't even have to play the noise. I
Speaker 3: think we can all hear it. Oh, well, should we
Speaker 3: play it?
Speaker 2: Anybody born in the nineteen hundreds, Yes.
Speaker 3: Dary Fault, Yes, please play it. Oh, you'll love to
Speaker 3: hear it. You'll love to hear it. Do you think
Speaker 3: it's likely, though, or possible that a that within the
Speaker 3: lifetime of people listening. Now, would it be possible for
Speaker 3: an individual to one day live entirely within a constructed
Speaker 3: reality and not know?
Speaker 2: I think maybe someone's born into a system.
Speaker 3: Like matrix style. Could it happened.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like that's not going to
Speaker 2: happen unless it plays out literally like the matrix where
Speaker 2: man versus machine and man for some reason is useful
Speaker 2: to machine. But I don't think it would be right.
Speaker 3: That was the nicest part of the Matrix mythos was
Speaker 3: the computer Empire, the robot Empire. Machine Empire decided, well,
Speaker 3: we'll keep them around for something.
Speaker 2: Batteries, Yeah, batteries and goo. They make such good goo.
Speaker 3: Guys, have you ever had quality human goo? Oh? Boy,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we should keep that one.
Speaker 2: We take it over. You want all kinds of different.
Speaker 3: Good perception and perspective. Yeah, this might be helpful when
Speaker 3: we're talking about this before we get to a back
Speaker 3: to observer effect, which is what we're kind of setting
Speaker 3: up here, right, It may be helpful given that every person,
Speaker 3: a meat person or a digital person, what have you.
Speaker 3: Everyone is living in a kind of self constructed reality.
Speaker 3: Perception is your reality. But it is your specific reality.
Speaker 3: It's the stuff you experience assume to be correct. Other
Speaker 3: perceptions are not the same as yours, and that's part
Speaker 3: of the reason people argue so often. So it might
Speaker 3: be better to think in terms of perspective. You know,
Speaker 3: perception says, I am the ultimate arbiter of my world, right,
Speaker 3: I am the protagonist the way I encounter and experience
Speaker 3: and understand things, that's the main thing. And if someone
Speaker 3: has a problem with that, they're wrong. But if we
Speaker 3: move from perception to perspective, then we can ask how
Speaker 3: a reality is different, what is it that this person
Speaker 3: or this entity is experiencing, And we can try to
Speaker 3: The weird way to put it is it's like trying
Speaker 3: to understand the alien software of another mind, and it's
Speaker 3: a tough thing to do. You know, I guess it's empathy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for empathy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's going a long way. You know,
Speaker 3: we'll see how it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I have an eight year old, so I know that
Speaker 2: the only way for him to truly learn lessons doesn't
Speaker 2: matter how many times I tell him what the lesson is,
Speaker 2: what the parameters of it are, what the outcomes potentially
Speaker 2: are Unless he does a thing and experiences the consequences
Speaker 2: of that thing, it doesn't seem to sink into his head.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure I was the same way. I'm sure
Speaker 2: most of us are the same way. I just don't
Speaker 2: know how any of us can truly understand something until
Speaker 2: it has happened to us, right, or we have observed
Speaker 2: it and perceived it and then basically applied our perspective
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it reminds me of It was a little bit
Speaker 3: of a personal thing. I'll keep it short. It reminds
Speaker 3: me of an adage I learned from my mother before
Speaker 3: she passed. She was a teacher for some time, and
Speaker 3: she had some I'm trying to remember. It was something like,
Speaker 3: when I hear, I forget. When I see, I remember
Speaker 3: when I do, I understand that.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Maybe you know, maybe I feel that way.
Speaker 2: I totally feel that way, except well, well, yeah, the
Speaker 2: only the only thing I Some people learn really well
Speaker 2: when they hear and not well when they see. Right,
Speaker 2: So just that's the only thing, buttally exactly, but I
Speaker 2: totally understand exactly what that means. If I haven't done
Speaker 2: a thing, I don't really understand what it is or
Speaker 2: how it feels.
Speaker 3: Also, there's nothing in that little proverb about the smell,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, what happens when you smell?
Speaker 3: How does that? What if someone what if someone said, oh,
Speaker 3: my primary learning style is smell? Could you explain algebra
Speaker 3: in like a more old factory way here?
Speaker 2: Try this, I understand.
Speaker 3: Take a whiff of this calculus. I mean, okay, so
Speaker 3: now we're we're ill exploring questions that spoiler, people haven't answered.
Speaker 3: But it does bring us back to the observer effect,
Speaker 3: the double slid experiment, the thing no one can really explain, like,
Speaker 3: when we observe a thing, to what degree are we
Speaker 3: participating in that particular perspective of experience? When that person
Speaker 3: to your earlier example, Matt, when that person walks by
Speaker 3: and says hey, you hear them say hey, whether or
Speaker 3: not you say something back to them, to what degree
Speaker 3: are you, by observation, participating in and affecting their reality?
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's maybe that's just too fluffy.
Speaker 2: No, No, it goes back to maybe my my most
Speaker 2: weird thoughts on this whole thing, And it goes back
Speaker 2: to virtual worlds, and it goes back to imagining what
Speaker 2: it would be like if this world, this reality we experience,
Speaker 2: is some kind of information field of potentials, and in
Speaker 2: everything that we know and think we know and experience.
Speaker 3: Is a potential.
Speaker 2: And I imagine it as a chair in an empty room.
Speaker 2: This room you've been into before. You constructed that chair,
Speaker 2: You made it out of wood, right, and it's just
Speaker 2: sitting there. You know that it's there, but you leave
Speaker 2: and you die and you're gone. But then a couple
Speaker 2: hundred years later, another human being finds this room and
Speaker 2: walks into it and looks at that chair. What I'm
Speaker 2: imagining is that in between those two instances where this
Speaker 2: chair was seen, you know, separated by hundreds of years,
Speaker 2: is that chair actually sitting there in that room? Or
Speaker 2: is the potential of that chair, the information that is
Speaker 2: contained of what that chair is. Is it just sitting
Speaker 2: there idly, almost as data that isn't being currently processed.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of it is the information field that
Speaker 2: is a chair that has constructed very specific materials in
Speaker 2: a specific way, and all that information is there at
Speaker 2: all times. But until somebody opens that door again and
Speaker 2: looks at that chair, is it actually sitting in there?
Speaker 2: And I really it feels to me the way a
Speaker 2: virtual world is created, especially a very very large one,
Speaker 2: where certain parts of a map of a world are
Speaker 2: not loaded, but it is known the hardware is not
Speaker 2: processing any of that stuff, but the software knows what
Speaker 2: is supposed to go.
Speaker 3: There, right, Yeah, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Just hasn't injected it through the hardware system.
Speaker 3: It hasn't loaded the map, so you speak, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's a beautiful thought.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I feel like there's something to that here,
Speaker 2: but you know, it then goes back to the observer
Speaker 2: and what is the observer? Is it an animal? Is
Speaker 2: it a plant? It is? What is consciousness? What is
Speaker 2: the thing that observes so that the everything is and
Speaker 2: exists and is being processed through hardware?
Speaker 3: Yeah, send us your pets for some very not weird experiments. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just in the mail, just in the just please don't,
Speaker 3: please don't. We love your pets and we love the photos,
Speaker 3: but we we think they enjoy their lives with you folks.
Speaker 3: I think that is a fascinating thought, Matt, because it
Speaker 3: reminds me again right now, probably in the old in
Speaker 3: the old evenings, the best comparison would be losing oneself
Speaker 3: in a story, right, But I think now the best comparison,
Speaker 3: the most relevant and immediate, is what you're describing the
Speaker 3: experience of gaming, especially in an immersive game. I sometimes
Speaker 3: will log into my old Skyrim stuff where i've i've
Speaker 3: and I'm not bragging here. I got one hundred percent
Speaker 3: and completion because I didn't want to go outside. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not proud of it. I should have done better
Speaker 3: things with my time. But now I just walk around
Speaker 3: in this made up world. I don't even fighting body.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm just like buying soup.
Speaker 2: I'm genuinely impressed at one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: It's not cool. Don't like, it's not something to be
Speaker 3: proud of.
Speaker 2: You should start making videos. One of my favorite ASMR guys,
Speaker 2: I think his name is the ASMR Nerd, and he
Speaker 2: does a bunch of videos, the whole series where he
Speaker 2: walks around Skyrim, just the sounds of the footsteps and
Speaker 2: the ambience and the wildlife sometimes the music, and he's
Speaker 2: just talking. Oh and here we have a lovely fjords.
Speaker 2: It's amazing beautiful, I mean.
Speaker 3: But also, you know, like you said with another video
Speaker 3: gaming sample, like you beat elden Ring, right, like you
Speaker 3: you you knocked the crap out of that, and it's
Speaker 3: still party is still kind of in there sensing. But
Speaker 3: that that's another example of this observation in an immersive
Speaker 3: world because things will take time to load, you know,
Speaker 3: And the question is the question is where do things
Speaker 3: go when you're not looking at them? And I love
Speaker 3: the point you're bringing up about theory of mind. When
Speaker 3: you're seeing your your son grow cognitively and physically and
Speaker 3: think through things. Right, you watch that guy learn language,
Speaker 3: which is amazing. And this I think part of the
Speaker 3: theory of mind is the idea of object permanence. Right
Speaker 3: does the thing exist when I do not physically see, touch,
Speaker 3: or hear the thing?
Speaker 2: But what if it's object permanence for all things that
Speaker 2: have eyes and ears and noses.
Speaker 3: Right in tongues? Yeah, yeah, that's That's where I'm going
Speaker 3: to man like think about. It's the old tree falling
Speaker 3: in a forest concept, and I'm wondering. You know, it
Speaker 3: reminds me of since we're talking about games, it reminds
Speaker 3: me of extraordinary objects or artifacts of power in control.
Speaker 3: What are they called? Ah something? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Objects of power is real? Okay, objective power. I think
Speaker 3: one of those spoiler folks. There, there's something I can't
Speaker 3: remember what it was, Maybe it was a refrigerator or whatever,
Speaker 3: but it's locked up and someone has to stare at
Speaker 3: it all the time because if they don't, if someone
Speaker 3: is not looking at it, stuff goes horribly wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's so cool, I think. Now I'm sorry I've derailed this.
Speaker 2: I loaded that game back up again to show my
Speaker 2: girlfriend and she was genuinely interested. And she does not
Speaker 2: like video games, but it's because of all those artifacts.
Speaker 2: You get to find, all the papers that documents, all
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 3: God, that's so great. Can't wait. If you are interested
Speaker 3: in learning, if you like this show and video games remotely,
Speaker 3: you will love the show Control Matt, I can't thank
Speaker 3: you enough again for putting me onto that game. They
Speaker 3: have another the studio as one called Alan Wake. Alan
Speaker 3: Wake two recently came out and we're waiting for Control too.
Speaker 3: Are that which point they're gonna do another one? At
Speaker 3: which point I cannot wait to see what kind of
Speaker 3: ridiculous excuses you and Noel Barcelona Brown and I send
Speaker 3: to our colleagues right like, how are we going to
Speaker 3: explain that we're calling in sick for video game. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna be honest. I'll be like, guys, I gotta.
Speaker 2: I've been banking vacation days since twenty nineteen in hopes
Speaker 2: that Control two would one day be released.
Speaker 3: It'll just be a run of classic episodes. But there's
Speaker 3: something else to Matt. This is what it leads me
Speaker 3: to think. And I'm very interested in your observations here, observations. Okay,
Speaker 3: what if we created a virtual space, a virtual world
Speaker 3: or reality, and we conducted the double slit experiment there?
Speaker 3: What if we you know, what if we had everybody
Speaker 3: listening at home, and you and me and Paul and
Speaker 3: Noel physically at a great distance from each other, logging in,
Speaker 3: and some portion of the group just looks at one slit,
Speaker 3: some portion looks at another. They're not in contact with
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: This is I love the idea, Ben, I love this idea,
Speaker 2: and let's do it.
Speaker 3: First of all, I don't know if it'll I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's worth doing. I just think it's trippy.
Speaker 2: Well, the second thing is I think it would The
Speaker 2: outcome would depend exactly and precisely on the physics engine
Speaker 2: that functions in that virtual world.
Speaker 3: Because that's the observer, right, that's the ultimate observer.
Speaker 2: Well, because the physics engine has code that says, this
Speaker 2: is how light functions in this environment, and this is
Speaker 2: how light interacts with these materials in this environment. Right,
Speaker 2: So you would I think you'd be able to predict
Speaker 2: that every time, simply because we know the underlying.
Speaker 3: Code, we know the engine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but in our reality, we still don't know what
Speaker 2: that is. We don't know what it looks like, we
Speaker 2: don't know who wrote it, if anybody wrote it, if
Speaker 2: it even is code. Maybe it's just something else.
Speaker 3: And that's the question too. As civilization arrived at the
Speaker 3: point where just from scrabbling around at the corners of experience,
Speaker 3: we found, you know, a chink in the armor, right,
Speaker 3: a gap in the plates. And if that is true,
Speaker 3: if that is the case, what happens when we worry
Speaker 3: at that crevice? What happens when we pull the plate
Speaker 3: or the surface back? What do we see beneath?
Speaker 2: Mister Anderson?
Speaker 3: That's great? Oh, and then what if we set up
Speaker 3: the okay real world? Then what if we set up
Speaker 3: the double slit experiment and we let it run somehow
Speaker 3: for a thousand years? And we never intervene and we
Speaker 3: never check on it until a millennia has passed, and.
Speaker 2: Then we'll be like, oh, look it's an interference pattern. Well,
Speaker 2: like that's what that's why there there are people to
Speaker 2: this day as of April twenty twenty three. Uh there, well,
Speaker 2: I mean it's still right now, it's probably happening. There
Speaker 2: are people who are trying to modify the experiment even further.
Speaker 2: There's a group, uh they just published in Nature last
Speaker 2: year from Imperial College. They were trying to do the
Speaker 2: double slit experiment but with time dilation and like could
Speaker 2: like I don't understand it, y'all. I'm gonna give you
Speaker 2: this so you can look it up on your own.
Speaker 2: It's in the Quantum Insider. It's written by Matt Swain,
Speaker 2: April fourth, twenty twenty three. The title is Time is
Speaker 2: on My Sides with an s researchers show double slit
Speaker 2: experiment also applies to time and it has to do
Speaker 2: with putting some kind of material in front of the
Speaker 2: slits that basically slows down the light. I think I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's right or not. I've read the
Speaker 2: entire article and I still couldn't tell you exactly what
Speaker 2: it means, but it was iridium tin oxide that they
Speaker 2: used to make time slits in quotation, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: Sorry, we have to tell you the research. No, this
Speaker 3: is also I mean, this is another thing that maybe
Speaker 3: a future episode with your help, fellow conspiracy realist. Because
Speaker 3: time is part of reality, or at least the way
Speaker 3: your perception and perspective of time. Right, we all just
Speaker 3: sort of agree that it's Monday, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We all sort of agree that in one part of
Speaker 3: the world it's three pm, and then in another part
Speaker 3: it's two pm at big because you know, yeah, at
Speaker 3: railroad tycoons or whatever, and farming. But when you when
Speaker 3: you drill down into the concept of time, things also
Speaker 3: get fuzzy because time is just like reality, part of
Speaker 3: a thing everyone has collectively agreed that they pretend to understand.
Speaker 3: And just don't make it complicated, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Someone asks you about your schedule, don't don't say, here's
Speaker 3: the history of why the calendar is weird and it's
Speaker 3: not perfect, you know, and we're actually a few seconds
Speaker 3: off all the time.
Speaker 2: I just got the first weapon in control too.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, I think you mean Pervis day, right, whatever,
Speaker 3: I don't know. In any case, Matt and Paul and I,
Speaker 3: we think you can agree, the mystery only deepens. We
Speaker 3: are now at a point with scientific evidence where we
Speaker 3: can say reality seems to be dependent on factors human
Speaker 3: civilization does not understand. The scariest thing that this teaches
Speaker 3: us is that it appears that when one observes reality,
Speaker 3: reality looks back at you. It might know that you're watching, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It might change itself to either accommodate you or to
Speaker 2: trick you.
Speaker 3: And to this date we have not interviewed an electron
Speaker 3: nor a photon for their perspectives on the confounded nature
Speaker 3: of reality. If they are particles, even if you know,
Speaker 3: even if they just are particles that wave at us
Speaker 3: sometimes right, if they see us on the streets the
Speaker 3: mean streets of reality. If you are a photon or
Speaker 3: an electron, or a person or a digital intelligence, and
Speaker 3: you have some thoughts here, again, like Matt and I
Speaker 3: said at the beginning, if you can explain the double
Speaker 3: slit experiment, like if you can solve light, you know,
Speaker 3: please write to us. We don't know if anybody's ever
Speaker 3: asked you. If you have the answer to that, find
Speaker 3: us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You could also give us
Speaker 3: a phone call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could call one eight three three std WYTK
Speaker 2: right after you call Fermilab and explain to them whatever
Speaker 2: you figured out because or well, you know whatever, those
Speaker 2: other places are that are doing this all the time.
Speaker 2: But if you call our number, you can leave us
Speaker 2: a three minute voicemail message, give yourself a cool nickname,
Speaker 2: and say whatever you'd like do. At some point say
Speaker 2: whether or not we can use your name and message
Speaker 2: on the air. If you got more to say, they
Speaker 2: could fit in that three minutes, Attachments, links, whatever you got.
Speaker 2: Why not send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every email. We get
Speaker 3: the well aware of folks, just like reality stares back.
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