Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. So today I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have my buddy David Chalmers on the podcast. David
Speaker 1: is a philosopher at New York University and the Australian
Speaker 1: National University. Officially, he's Professor of Philosophy and co director
Speaker 1: of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at NYU,
Speaker 1: and about twenty percent of the time he's Professor of
Speaker 1: Philosophy at ANU. His work is in the philosophy of
Speaker 1: mind and in related areas of fullilosophy and cognitive science.
Speaker 1: He's especially interested in consciousness, but he's also interested in
Speaker 1: all sorts of other issues in the phosphy of mind
Speaker 1: and language, metaphysics and epistemology, and the foundations of cognitive science.
Speaker 1: Lots of I just had a nerd gasm there with
Speaker 1: all the all those words. Thanks David so much for
Speaker 1: Chad with me tonight. Thanks Gott, it's great to be
Speaker 1: with you in your podcast. Yeah. Well, you know there
Speaker 1: we you know, we're talking about you know how I
Speaker 1: wanted to get you on the podcast in Schuch. You know,
Speaker 1: I promised you I wouldn't just ask all the standard questions.
Speaker 1: You know that everyone always asks you over and over
Speaker 1: you and what is conscious news? What is free? Will?
Speaker 1: You know? But I think what is really interesting is
Speaker 1: that you're telling me that you estimate about thirty percent
Speaker 1: probability that we are living in the matrix. Is that right? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go, I go back and forth anywhere between ten
Speaker 1: percent and fifty percent, but definitely greater than zero. Definitely
Speaker 1: definitely some chance. What do you think those are big numbers? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I never estimated it as that high. But I think
Speaker 1: that we need to like really totally define our terms
Speaker 1: and tell you what what living the matrix would mean
Speaker 1: to you. Well, the extreme case is that of an
Speaker 1: entirely simulated universe. So you know, right now we know
Speaker 1: how to make simulated worlds like virtual reality. You know,
Speaker 1: there's sim City or sim life or sim Earth. But
Speaker 1: the extreme case is simulating the whole universe sim universe
Speaker 1: if you like. Then there's really two ways this could go.
Speaker 1: It could be a simulation that we go into that
Speaker 1: we're interacting with. You know, our brain is outside the simulation.
Speaker 1: That's how it goes with ordinary virtual reality, and that's
Speaker 1: how it was for Neo in the movie The Matrix.
Speaker 1: His brain was outside the simulation. Or it could be
Speaker 1: that the brain is simulated too, and we are ourselves
Speaker 1: entirely creatures of the simulation. And it could be that
Speaker 1: as technology goes on, people are going to make simulations
Speaker 1: of universes like this, of both of those forms. That
Speaker 1: just raises the question, might that be the reality that
Speaker 1: we're in because we're in. Yeah, there might be no
Speaker 1: way to tell from the inside. There is no way
Speaker 1: to tell, but it would It seems like it would
Speaker 1: be quite an elaborate setup when you think of how
Speaker 1: many players there are in this world, down to like
Speaker 1: the very microscopic ants. You know what I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean is in this idea is what every I mean,
Speaker 1: everything has to be simulated. If you can't have like
Speaker 1: part simulated world in part note right, well you can try,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna get in trouble. You know, I once
Speaker 1: saw this movie The Thirteenth Floor. Well, oh, I love
Speaker 1: that movie. I love that movie. Yeah, we know in
Speaker 1: that movie that turns out they just simulate southern California.
Speaker 1: And then the guy gets in the car and starts
Speaker 1: driving towards Las Vegas. And at certain point the road
Speaker 1: says close for repair, go no further, and he keeps
Speaker 1: going and eventually the mountains turn into faint green lines.
Speaker 1: Remember that, I remember that. Well, you know what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that, I mean, a really clever way to do
Speaker 1: that would be obviously to in plant the memories and
Speaker 1: not you know, I think that you know, there exists
Speaker 1: all this big production, you know that someone would have
Speaker 1: to simulate, when in reality it's much smaller than that.
Speaker 1: Just I just have the memories of it, right. Yeah, though,
Speaker 1: what happens when you try to go there? You know,
Speaker 1: you get on a plane to Yes, for a while,
Speaker 1: they just simulated Australia. Then I went to New York
Speaker 1: for the first time. I flew to New York and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh shit, now we've got to simulate New York.
Speaker 1: Well we don't have free will, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we really I mean, the implication of the fact
Speaker 1: that we if we live in this kind of world,
Speaker 1: is that, I mean, we really don't have free will.
Speaker 1: Right in that world we could have free will. We could.
Speaker 1: It's possible. Oh, I don't think it's inconsistent with free will.
Speaker 1: We could be living in a simulated universe but still
Speaker 1: be making our own decisions about what to do in
Speaker 1: that universe. That's a great point, I assume. Almost as
Speaker 1: I came out of my mouth, I then wanted to
Speaker 1: take it back because I then thought about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: what about genetic algorithms that we use with computers and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, they are warning you know, machine learning and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not like we, in a way machines have free
Speaker 1: will when we you know, just program in probabilities and
Speaker 1: they kind of warn themselves. I mean, you might think
Speaker 1: that if our brain is part of the simulation, then
Speaker 1: that's worse. Then somehow, you know, we're going to be
Speaker 1: computers too, so we won't have free will. But it's
Speaker 1: not obvious what's worse about a computer here compared to
Speaker 1: just you know, the kind of computers that our brains are.
Speaker 1: You know, either whether our minds are implemented in physical
Speaker 1: brains or on computers. You know, maybe they're both deterministic,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's a worry about free will in either case,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear why it's worse to have a
Speaker 1: silicon computer for a mind than to have a biological
Speaker 1: brain for a mind, or are free will is concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have a very interesting take on consciousness. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're most people when they say they're a dualist,
Speaker 1: people kind of laugh at them, you know, or they
Speaker 1: kind of like kind of say in academia, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like or especially and I should even be clear,
Speaker 1: I say, neuroscientists laugh at them. But you're a unique
Speaker 1: kind of dualist, right, Yeah, Well, dualism means many different things.
Speaker 1: I think when many neuroscientists here dualism, they think, you know,
Speaker 1: something like there's a soul interacting with the brain that
Speaker 1: will survive your death and so on. I'm a duelist
Speaker 1: in a much weaker sense, and that I think consciousness
Speaker 1: is an irreducible property of the brain or of ourselves,
Speaker 1: one that can't fully be explained in terms of underlying
Speaker 1: goings on in the brain and ordinary physical processes. But
Speaker 1: this is something we're used to in the physical sciences.
Speaker 1: We take some things as fundamental, like space and time
Speaker 1: and mass and charge. I think consciousness has to be
Speaker 1: taken as fundamental too. Now this is very controversial. You know,
Speaker 1: plenty of people disagree. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything remotely unscientific about this view, and
Speaker 1: it's totally consistent with all the work going on right
Speaker 1: now in the science of consciousness. No, I agree. We
Speaker 1: had an interesting chat with doctor Single who talked about
Speaker 1: how the mind is not you know, purely in our skull.
Speaker 1: He very much is this believer in the mind as
Speaker 1: being this integrated, full flow of information that is deeply
Speaker 1: connected to the universe. And this is this is a
Speaker 1: scientist saying this, So you know, oh yeah, well this
Speaker 1: is a place actually where a bunch of my different
Speaker 1: views and interests into sect because yeah, number one, I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, the brain could be computational. Number two,
Speaker 1: I think consciousness may be irreducible. But number three, in
Speaker 1: another line of work, I'm very much interested in the
Speaker 1: idea that the mind is partly a product of the environment.
Speaker 1: This is something that Andy Clark and I called the
Speaker 1: extended mind, where our interactions with the environment around us.
Speaker 1: Often parts of our environment play the role of parts
Speaker 1: of our mind, as in the case where, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, phone numbers in my smartphones memory is taking
Speaker 1: over the role of my biological memory. I now remember
Speaker 1: phone numbers with my phone rather than with my brain memory.
Speaker 1: So you know, my environment there here, my smartphone is
Speaker 1: becoming literally part of my mind. I think that's consistent
Speaker 1: of this idea of integrating the brain with the environment.
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, but just from like a
Speaker 1: personal perspective, when I have existential dread, it's not comforting
Speaker 1: to me to know that when my con when my
Speaker 1: brain stops functioning, and therefore this form of consciousness no
Speaker 1: longer exists. Even if my iPhone or all the things
Speaker 1: I've created, or all the extensions of me still continue,
Speaker 1: I will not there's a part, there's an eye that
Speaker 1: will never be aware of that is it? So that's
Speaker 1: not how comforting is that to me? I think that's right,
Speaker 1: I mean, at least in so far as the extended
Speaker 1: mind hypothesis is concerned. There's always you, the conscious biological
Speaker 1: being at the center, and the claim would not be
Speaker 1: that the iPhone has a mind itself. The claim would
Speaker 1: be that it's kind of an extension of your mind
Speaker 1: that extends your campait. But if your brain was to die,
Speaker 1: then the iPhone going on, that wouldn't be much comfort
Speaker 1: for you. To get something a bit more comforting, we
Speaker 1: might move to a slightly different scenario and think about
Speaker 1: the possibility of uploading your brain onto a computer. We
Speaker 1: can't do that yet, but just say, eventually we could
Speaker 1: record all the information in your brain and the connections
Speaker 1: among all the neurons and their states and activation patterns,
Speaker 1: and gradually, you know, load them into a computer one
Speaker 1: at a time, until you know, for a while you
Speaker 1: were ninety percent brain and ten percent computer, and then
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty, then ten ninety ultimately one hundred percent computer. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a kind of gradual uploading process, and some people,
Speaker 1: including me, are sympathetic with the idea that you could
Speaker 1: survive that process and at the end of that you
Speaker 1: might really be there. That wouldn't so much be extending
Speaker 1: the mind as uploading the mind. But since our focus
Speaker 1: here seems to be you know, technology of all sorts,
Speaker 1: that might be one way to use technologlogy to achieve
Speaker 1: some kind of immortality. Well, my gosh, that is, you
Speaker 1: raise so many interesting questions without that the little thought
Speaker 1: experiment there, you know, of course, you know, you know
Speaker 1: the plank by plank, you know, issue about what what
Speaker 1: extent do we cease being who we are? Right? And
Speaker 1: I mean I I mean that I would be very
Speaker 1: interesting to like like self experiment in myself with that
Speaker 1: and and one and because I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: analogous is like when we start getting dementia. When we
Speaker 1: start it's almost like when our break starts, when our
Speaker 1: brain starts breaking down when we get really old. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a natural experiment of what happens, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of plank by plank when you lose that. I
Speaker 1: feel like if I'm when I once I start feeding
Speaker 1: that into the system, there will be a certain point
Speaker 1: where I really do no longer feel as though I
Speaker 1: am myself, and then I will lose awareness. Eventually I'll
Speaker 1: lose awareness of myself and and then even though it's
Speaker 1: fed all to the computer, I'm just critical that that
Speaker 1: what I'm feeding to the computer there, like the computer
Speaker 1: kind of is taking over that consciousness. If we stipulate
Speaker 1: that the computers, the computer chips are playing exactly the
Speaker 1: same role in your cognitive system that the neurons were playing.
Speaker 1: So maybe you wouldn't even notice the difference, and you
Speaker 1: keep behaving exactly the same way, in that same wonderful
Speaker 1: old Scoult way that we're all used to. You'll carry
Speaker 1: on doing your podcast with your computer brain, and the
Speaker 1: list is not going to be able to tell the difference.
Speaker 1: You won't be able to tell a difference from the inside.
Speaker 1: But in that case, might you be prepared to say
Speaker 1: it's still you. That's so interesting, because I mean, what
Speaker 1: is the objective truth? I mean, is it a was
Speaker 1: that just a is that just an illusion? You know,
Speaker 1: like I mean, we technically, I'm definitely not this. I'm
Speaker 1: a completely different person than I was when I was
Speaker 1: ten from a cellular level, right, So you could make
Speaker 1: the case that it's an illusion that I'm the same
Speaker 1: person that I was when I was eleven. Right, Some
Speaker 1: people thing it's an illusion that we're the same person
Speaker 1: from moment to moment. Now, that's where it gets interesting,
Speaker 1: That's where it gets yeah. Or maybe every night when
Speaker 1: we go to sleep, you know, we become unconscious and
Speaker 1: then in the dawn, a new consciousness breaks, you know,
Speaker 1: a new consciousness breaks open, a new person is born
Speaker 1: every day. I mean that, Look, that's a very interesting proposition,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem consistent with some facts, like when
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning, I have a great
Speaker 1: continuity of memories that I had the day before. Okay,
Speaker 1: memories help, But you know, you could I could create
Speaker 1: a tele porter duplicate of me who remembers being me
Speaker 1: the previous day, but isn't me? But who Okay, then
Speaker 1: who's creating you know, who's creating that? I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: be back to the simulation idea here again, Like I
Speaker 1: think we I think we're giving someone too much something,
Speaker 1: too much credit there, you know, for that it doesn't
Speaker 1: you know. My point of though, is that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: most parsmonious. I mean a lot of these thought experiments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a simpler view that we're the same person
Speaker 1: who continues over time, and most people don't really believe
Speaker 1: that we change our identities from day to day. But
Speaker 1: I think for similar reason reasons most people think the
Speaker 1: most pasimonious view is that we continue over our lifetime
Speaker 1: despite the change it matter, and extending that it's then
Speaker 1: tempting to say the most pessimonious view is if I
Speaker 1: uploaded my brain gradually and continuously to a computer, then
Speaker 1: I could continue that way. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: I mean, this is so interesting, I don't know. If
Speaker 1: the best solution is to gradually do it, then I
Speaker 1: almost feel like for that continuity, I'd want to be
Speaker 1: one big dump immediately to kind of just jump snap
Speaker 1: into this new stage. I think once it's gradual, I
Speaker 1: feel like it just is not going to feel it's
Speaker 1: going to be very confusing. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: the case, though, if we do it non gradually? How
Speaker 1: do you feel about the case where we keep the
Speaker 1: old brain around, still still functioning, and upload it onto
Speaker 1: a computer and there's a new person there too. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, right, the great great quest. I was actually
Speaker 1: just going to post, not like the fifty to fifty thing,
Speaker 1: but you know like that, like I like, I get
Speaker 1: fifty percent on the computer, and we know that fifty
Speaker 1: percent is enough all you need for conscious to emerge,
Speaker 1: and but but I like yours thought experiment better where
Speaker 1: it's one hundred hundred. Yeah, now that's fascinating, and I I,
Speaker 1: my gosh, what would what would be the case there?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like you have a you've duplicated yourself,
Speaker 1: but you know you've duplicated your consciousness. You know, I
Speaker 1: we can kind of duplicate. You know. It's funny when
Speaker 1: you have like marriage, people who are married after a
Speaker 1: certn amount of years, they start looking the same, they
Speaker 1: started talking the same, and in a sense, little by little,
Speaker 1: when you're married, you're like duplicating consciousness with two people
Speaker 1: are still two people, though he's still two separate people
Speaker 1: will think with each other. So likewise, you and your
Speaker 1: twin would probably you're uploaded twin would probably rapidly become
Speaker 1: two people. You'd be in different environments, having different experiences.
Speaker 1: But maybe it would be as if you would suddenly
Speaker 1: become twins. Saw something, Hey, here's my twin right over there.
Speaker 1: Here's uploaded skull. He's just like me. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see as well me, you know, because yeah, clearly this
Speaker 1: stuff is not operating at a purely genetic level, because
Speaker 1: we know identical twins are often very different in lots
Speaker 1: of key ways. They don't have the same and a
Speaker 1: very different consciousness emerges. So we can't like just plank
Speaker 1: by plank transfer over genes and expect to get the
Speaker 1: same thing. This one is a really, really tricky issue
Speaker 1: because even from a neuroscience perspective, you can't just completely
Speaker 1: replicate someone's neuronal structure of their brain and expect to
Speaker 1: get the same consciousness and memories out of the person. Right,
Speaker 1: maybe eventually, you know, they are working on this brain
Speaker 1: mapping project and not even close yet. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the aims of the project is to eventually
Speaker 1: be able to map the activity of older neurons in
Speaker 1: the brain and all the connections via the Connectome project
Speaker 1: and so on. So who's to say that maybe eventually
Speaker 1: we couldn't map the whole state and maybe even further
Speaker 1: after that get the whole thing up and running on
Speaker 1: a computer. Yeah, who knows. I'm keeping an open mind.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not. Yeah, it's not gonna happen in the
Speaker 1: next ten years or the next twenty, but eventually, who knows. Eventually? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this a lot of this come, you know,
Speaker 1: raises some fascinating questions about will cryogenics ever be successful.
Speaker 1: You know, there are people that are freezing themselves in
Speaker 1: the hopes that someday they will be able to up
Speaker 1: for exactly that's the hope, right or or the hope
Speaker 1: is that they'll find some sort of medical way to
Speaker 1: solve something that we don't currently have. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are hoping that you'll be frozen,
Speaker 1: so that like, even if it takes like twenty thousand
Speaker 1: years from now, oh you know, cryogenics is a kind
Speaker 1: of intermediate stop gap. You know, right now the technology
Speaker 1: is not ready, But just freeze my brain well enough,
Speaker 1: and maybe eventually the technology will be ready to unfreeze me.
Speaker 1: I mean, one worry is that right now the technology
Speaker 1: is not good enough even to do freezing properly, and
Speaker 1: probably a lot of information is being lost in the
Speaker 1: freezing process. But yeah, I suppose people are just hoping
Speaker 1: that enough information is kept around that in that you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand years time or whatever. Yeah, some really smart
Speaker 1: super intelligence of the future will be able to reconstruct us.
Speaker 1: My advice is always, hey, we'll leave your don't just
Speaker 1: leave your brain around. Leave a bunch of books and
Speaker 1: you know, videos of you and tapes and so on,
Speaker 1: so they have all the information they possibly can about you,
Speaker 1: and then they can try and reconstruct you from that.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. Have you ever thought about getting
Speaker 1: that done? Yeah? Could you make sure we leave this
Speaker 1: podcast in the cryogenic chamber with me that way and
Speaker 1: same for you, and then we'll have these Well, do
Speaker 1: you want to be in the same chamber Psychologists Reconstructed?
Speaker 1: Do you want to be in the same chamber with me?
Speaker 1: Oh for sure? Oh yeah, Then who are they going
Speaker 1: to wake up? First? Well, I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: it certainly is very optimistic that like, well, ever, I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like humanity is going in a direction
Speaker 1: right now where we're gonna like, you know, that that
Speaker 1: will be the case. Look, I sound very pessimistic right now,
Speaker 1: which I know is not good for a positive psychologists,
Speaker 1: But I don't, you know, I don't with everything's going
Speaker 1: in the world right now, I think it's much more
Speaker 1: likely that I don't know, it's twenty year, thousand years
Speaker 1: from now, are we going to reach a point where
Speaker 1: there's this great utopia and that it's like, oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: we're going to remember these people from twenty thousand years
Speaker 1: ago and restic and and try to resuscitate them. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of ways things can go wrong,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think we're entering a danger
Speaker 1: period right now at the at the human level, at
Speaker 1: the international level, but you know, a few years down
Speaker 1: the line, there's going to be a number of other
Speaker 1: I mean, short term there's nuclear weapons, longer term there's
Speaker 1: climate change. But longer term after that, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of existential risks to the whole human race, including the
Speaker 1: possibility of artificial intelligence and whether we might develop a
Speaker 1: eyes that somehow take over the world and then lead
Speaker 1: to lead to bad consequences. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people thinking about how we can negotiate all
Speaker 1: these things in the right way. So I'm maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not as pessimistic as you are, but I do think
Speaker 1: there's plenty of ways things can go wrong, plenty of ways.
Speaker 1: So that's a triting question. What do you think about
Speaker 1: the singularity idea that Kurtzwell, he puts a sestemate really
Speaker 1: in his own lifetime. I like to separate the whole
Speaker 1: singularity idea of artificial superintelligence. There's the idea of of
Speaker 1: ais getting to be smarter than humans, and then there's
Speaker 1: claims about the time frame. To me, the most interesting
Speaker 1: claims aren't the ones about the time frame. Yeah, racourse,
Speaker 1: while and others sometimes say, oh, it's just twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years off. My own view is that's very implausible.
Speaker 1: AI actually moves very slowly. I mean, lately there's been
Speaker 1: a big bubble of excitement about AI be course of
Speaker 1: deep learning, but hasn't really corresponded to a fundamental advance.
Speaker 1: It's really been more about the technology crossing a certain
Speaker 1: threshold where it's suddenly become useful, and there's still huge
Speaker 1: gaps to be crossed of a level of understanding cognition
Speaker 1: until we get to anything like a human level artificial
Speaker 1: general intelligence. So maybe it's one hundred years, maybe it's
Speaker 1: fifty years, maybe it's one hundred years. But for me,
Speaker 1: the interesting question is what happens next once you go
Speaker 1: to a human level AI. Pretty soon after that, just
Speaker 1: by steady improvements, you're going to get to a better
Speaker 1: than human level AI that's more capable that we are.
Speaker 1: Then it's going to be, among other things, better at
Speaker 1: creating AIS than we are, So it's going to be
Speaker 1: able to create an AI smarter than itself. That one
Speaker 1: will be able to create an AI smarter than itself,
Speaker 1: And this way we get to what some people call
Speaker 1: the intelligence explosion, the idea that there'll be a rapid
Speaker 1: path from human level AI to super intelligent, something way
Speaker 1: beyond what we can comprehend. And this sounds like science fiction.
Speaker 1: But a few years ago, twenty ten, I wrote a
Speaker 1: paper on this, trying to subject it to philosophical analysis,
Speaker 1: and I came to the conclusion there's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: plausible argument here when we should take seriously. So I
Speaker 1: do think we should take very seriously the idea that
Speaker 1: we'll eventually get to human level AI, and not long
Speaker 1: after that there's the possibility of something way beyond us. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that that is true. And what I envision
Speaker 1: is that the first stage of this is that humans
Speaker 1: will be using machines to kind of augment themselves. So
Speaker 1: they'll be used. It won't be such a separation between like,
Speaker 1: you know, machines taking over yet it's almost like humans
Speaker 1: who are part machine part human kind of takes well,
Speaker 1: this is already happening via this kind of extended mind thesis.
Speaker 1: I talked about our smartphones and Google and so on.
Speaker 1: Those are already augmenting us and augmenting our intelligence and
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways, making us much more capable and
Speaker 1: knowledgeable than we were before. I suspected a few years.
Speaker 1: Once we have, for example, once everyone is wearing augmented
Speaker 1: reality glasses that are recognizing things in our environment with
Speaker 1: AI and feeding us all kinds of information and AI advice,
Speaker 1: then we're going to turn There was this great book,
Speaker 1: science fiction novel by Charles Stross Acceleroando, where he called
Speaker 1: these things the exospecs. Everyone uses their artificially intelligent exospecs.
Speaker 1: One guy has his exospec stolen, then he turns into
Speaker 1: a gibbering wreck. He just can't function anymore. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's a realistic that's a realistic future. It will come
Speaker 1: more and more to rely on these devices, and well,
Speaker 1: we will ourselves be augmented partially artificial intelligences for some
Speaker 1: period before we get to fully autonomous AI, for sure.
Speaker 1: And then what it's going to do for medicine, I
Speaker 1: think is going to be huge. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to increase our life extension in the sense that you know,
Speaker 1: we'll have artificial hearts, you know, we'll have artificial you know,
Speaker 1: bit by bit we're going to start because we're already
Speaker 1: starting to see that now, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: take that to the degree, right Yeah, artificial eyes, artificial is,
Speaker 1: artificial nerves, artificial neurons. You know, people worked on neuromorphic
Speaker 1: retinas and so on. Before long it's going to be
Speaker 1: at the level of the neurons. And you know, at
Speaker 1: some point, I don't know when exactly, at some point
Speaker 1: people are going to stop seriously thinking about this idea
Speaker 1: of the you know, the prosthetic implants in the brain. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to I think that's inevitable. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think just going moving moving forward many
Speaker 1: years history, people will walk back on a certain epic
Speaker 1: of humanity that was a new form of human evolution.
Speaker 1: You know, like we haven't seen a really can't imagine,
Speaker 1: although I feel like me and you are kind of
Speaker 1: imagining it right now. There will be this epic of
Speaker 1: humanity where there is this new form of evolution that
Speaker 1: just that that Darwin never could have ever even imagined,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not organic evolution, it's not purely
Speaker 1: human evolution, I should say, it's a it's a new
Speaker 1: kind of evolution where it kind of becomes like this
Speaker 1: interesting arms race of of who and what countries can
Speaker 1: have the greatest augmented technology. Yeah, I do think computer
Speaker 1: technology here is basically the game changer compared to anything
Speaker 1: that came before, because computer technology basically enables you to
Speaker 1: create simulated or artificial versions of almost anything you like.
Speaker 1: It allows you to create artificial minds, as we're seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, in this discussion about AIA. It also allows
Speaker 1: us to create artificial worlds, you know, simulated worlds, virtual
Speaker 1: reality worlds. So it's easy to imagine that at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, a most of the people around are going
Speaker 1: to be artificial minds and be those people made some
Speaker 1: very large extent be inhabiting artificial or virtual worlds. After all,
Speaker 1: Why restrict us to this one world with all of
Speaker 1: its limits and specificity when there could be an infinite
Speaker 1: number of virtual worlds to explore. It's easy to imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, even if we're not already simulated, then there's
Speaker 1: going to be a vast future of simulated universes ahead
Speaker 1: of us. No, I think that's right, you know, if
Speaker 1: we are I keep going back this idea, if we
Speaker 1: are assimilate, how did you come arrived to these? You
Speaker 1: said between ten and fifty percent and you change. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're being tongue in cheek there, or
Speaker 1: do you actually like what's going to this calculus? I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's this nice argument by Nick Bostrom that
Speaker 1: maybe we are in a simulation, and it's a probabilistic argument.
Speaker 1: The naive way to put it is that, look, we
Speaker 1: know that any advanced civilization and it's going to have
Speaker 1: the capacity to create a whole lot of simulated universes,
Speaker 1: so that ultimately there'll be way more simulated universes than
Speaker 1: unsimulated universes, and way more simulated people than unsimulated people.
Speaker 1: Maybe ninety nine percent of all the people in the universe,
Speaker 1: all the conscious beings in the universe, will be simulated,
Speaker 1: and only one percent will be non simulated. And then
Speaker 1: you turn around and say, well, then what are the
Speaker 1: odds that I am unsimulated? What are the odds that
Speaker 1: I'm one of the lucky one percent? And presumably you go, well,
Speaker 1: maybe only one on one hundred, so it should be
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent likely that I'm simulated. But then you say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of loopholes in that argument. Maybe, for example,
Speaker 1: it could turn out that almost no super intelligence civilizations
Speaker 1: will choose to create simulations. They may decide not to,
Speaker 1: or maybe they'll all kill themselves off they before they
Speaker 1: get to the ability of creating simulations, or maybe for
Speaker 1: some reason simulated universes are impossible. So there's a few
Speaker 1: loopholes here, what I call simulation blockers. Maybe we'll die,
Speaker 1: maybe we can't do this, maybe we'll choose not to.
Speaker 1: But then so maybe the conclusion is disjunctive. Either most
Speaker 1: beings simulated or one of these other things happened. So
Speaker 1: following that reasoning, and we say maybe, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know which of those possibilities is the most likely, but
Speaker 1: it still looks to lot, looks like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: at least twenty twenty five percent we're in a simulation
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty five percent for all the others. That's
Speaker 1: one way to get there. A bit of spurious mathematics
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that answer. Actually,
Speaker 1: that helped me understand better what is going into that calculus.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there's lots of things that is
Speaker 1: it possible that lots of these things that we do
Speaker 1: as humans are kind of like kissing off the simulators,
Speaker 1: Like we're kind of like cheating the system in a way,
Speaker 1: like you know, like what if, like we were meant
Speaker 1: to die at age one hundred and and you know
Speaker 1: we in some way that like the computer goes berserk
Speaker 1: if we do actually figure out this way of living
Speaker 1: much longer that we do things with technology where we
Speaker 1: start simulating things our own selves and then I mean,
Speaker 1: it couldn't couldn't. Couldn't, couldn't like we be messing or
Speaker 1: tempting feet in a way. Yeah, it all depends on
Speaker 1: the motives and motivations of the simulators, and it's very
Speaker 1: hard to figure that out. It's almost like a theological
Speaker 1: position wherein these these simulators are our gods. They created
Speaker 1: the universe, and now we're trying to figure out their
Speaker 1: character to figure out how best to please them. You know,
Speaker 1: should I be good the rest of my life so
Speaker 1: I get to so I get uploaded into the after
Speaker 1: life or or what you're saying. Okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they care about this, maybe they care about that.
Speaker 1: Well here's another possibility. Maybe they've just created a million
Speaker 1: universes overnight. They're running for just a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: just for scientific experiments, and they're going to the more
Speaker 1: run and in the morning they're going to gather statistics,
Speaker 1: and this is something they do as a matter of
Speaker 1: course in their labs every day. And they couldn't care
Speaker 1: less what we get up to. We're just we're just
Speaker 1: part of some giant and personal experiment for them. That
Speaker 1: all the appeals, we all the praying we like to
Speaker 1: uh to go it isn't isn't gonna help. We might
Speaker 1: as well just live our lives. Well, that's very possible.
Speaker 1: And you know, what do you what do you make
Speaker 1: about the universe? And it's its scope is so enormous
Speaker 1: and and and you think, you know, there was this
Speaker 1: point where it's all started with a little tiny point,
Speaker 1: a little dot, right, you know, before it started expanding,
Speaker 1: And it's just fascinating to just think to yourself, like
Speaker 1: what was before that? And and and what what like
Speaker 1: what's the point? Like what like? Why why does that?
Speaker 1: Why did that ever exist? You know? And like you know,
Speaker 1: if if time didn't exist before that, fine, you know
Speaker 1: that's fair enough, you know, but why you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are like fundamental questions of human magestions.
Speaker 1: But the simulation hypothesis doesn't answer those questions. It just
Speaker 1: pushes it back a bit. Why do we exist cause
Speaker 1: a simulator of creator? That's okay, great, well, now who
Speaker 1: created this? Why does the simulator exist? I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: this is an exact parallel of what you get with
Speaker 1: traditional questions about God. Some people want to explain the universe.
Speaker 1: Why do we all exist because God created us? Well? Great, well,
Speaker 1: that just now pushes back the question to God. How
Speaker 1: did God ever get there? So, yeah, you know, philosophers
Speaker 1: don't have really good answers. Anybody does open you at
Speaker 1: the answer. Let me tell you my pet theory of everything, Scott.
Speaker 1: But it's it's still fun to talk to you about
Speaker 1: this stuff, like and just imagine what the different possibilities are?
Speaker 1: What are the different possibilities when we die? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it possible that like this consciousness does wake up
Speaker 1: in something that's like oh, and I'm told that I
Speaker 1: was in a simulation? Is that possible? My inclination is
Speaker 1: to think that our brains are needed for our consciousness,
Speaker 1: and as we die, probably our consciousness will die. But
Speaker 1: if we are in a simulation, and the the possibilities start
Speaker 1: to get more interesting. If we are in a simulation,
Speaker 1: they're our brains are basically a bit of software. Correspond
Speaker 1: to a bit of software running on a computer, and
Speaker 1: if someone, if the simulators so choose, they presumably could
Speaker 1: choose that when people's biological bodies die, then they somehow
Speaker 1: they upload all that information from the brain, They extract
Speaker 1: that software, and they put it in some other environment.
Speaker 1: Maybe for example, they would use it to control some
Speaker 1: new body up in their own world, and for us
Speaker 1: that could be experienced. I suppose it's something like moving
Speaker 1: to an afterlife, taking part in some kind of different universe,
Speaker 1: maybe even some kind of heaven. There was actually a
Speaker 1: Black Mirror episode about this in the recent in the
Speaker 1: recent New batch that was that was pretty good. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's the way it is going to go.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that's one one way it could go if
Speaker 1: we are in a simulated universe. That does raise interesting
Speaker 1: quasi theological possibilities. So you know, maybe it just raises
Speaker 1: a tiny bit of hope for immortality and an afterlife,
Speaker 1: even from a completely naturalistic perspective. So one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things that for me, I've always been completely atheistic
Speaker 1: and not much sympathy for any kind of religion, but
Speaker 1: this is interesting to see how this idea of simulation
Speaker 1: technology can start to reinstate some fairly traditional theological questions
Speaker 1: and are quite different naturalistic guys. Yeah, no, I I
Speaker 1: totally see that, you know, as you're as you're describing this,
Speaker 1: it sounds exactly like these ideas we've created of the afterlife.
Speaker 1: What what are some other earning questions that you have
Speaker 1: these days? You've a lot, You have a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you a lot about technology in
Speaker 1: general and it's impact on philosophy, you know, some people,
Speaker 1: and on life more generally. You know, some people are
Speaker 1: very techno negative. They think that it's all kinds of
Speaker 1: doom and gloom consequences. I tend to be techno positive.
Speaker 1: I'd love technology, you know, virtual reality, technology, AI technology,
Speaker 1: the Internet. There's all kinds of wonderful things, although of
Speaker 1: course it can be I've used as well as used
Speaker 1: as well as us well. Lately, I've got myself a
Speaker 1: whole lot of virtual reality tools to play around with
Speaker 1: in the in my in my office, in my study,
Speaker 1: I've got an Oculus Rift and an HGC vibe at
Speaker 1: a Samsung Gear VR, and I've been playing around. Which
Speaker 1: one do you like best? You know, I think so
Speaker 1: far the HGC Vibe, although that's got these very cool
Speaker 1: room scale virtual reality with motion controllers. Although I just
Speaker 1: got the new controllers for the Oculus Rift called Oculus Touch,
Speaker 1: and I still need to set those up. But it's
Speaker 1: been amazing to play around with all this virtual reality.
Speaker 1: It raises all kinds of questions about the metaphysics, the
Speaker 1: ontology of the world's in virtual reality. For example, how
Speaker 1: of these just hallucinations? Are they unreal worlds? Or is
Speaker 1: this some kind of real reality that we're interacting with
Speaker 1: in VR? You know, I'm actually inclined towards the view
Speaker 1: where virtual reality is a real reality. It's a reality
Speaker 1: made of computers, it's digital, but it's still real for
Speaker 1: all that, which I think goes against the most common
Speaker 1: philosophical view, where it's some kind of illusion or fiction. David,
Speaker 1: I have been thinking, I'm so glad you said that,
Speaker 1: and I have been saying to people that I think
Speaker 1: that a human imagination is real in some sense as well.
Speaker 1: That is interesting. I mean, you can make an interesting
Speaker 1: parallel from this. I just read a paper by someone saying, well,
Speaker 1: maybe dreams, maybe hallucinations or analogous to virtual reality in
Speaker 1: this respect, and then once you say, you know, if
Speaker 1: a dream can do this, hallucination can do this, why
Speaker 1: not imagination. Of course, imagination is to some extent under
Speaker 1: our control in a way in which what happens in
Speaker 1: the VR is not, So it's not as independent of us.
Speaker 1: Some people think mind independence, independence of us is a
Speaker 1: strong condition on something being fully real. So maybe the
Speaker 1: imagination is just somewhere on the spectrum. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe still some extent our imagination has a
Speaker 1: certain autonomy. You know, you said dreaming runs wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you said independent of us. And I mean
Speaker 1: that's interesting because there is so many selves. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is there's one sense that there is a simulator
Speaker 1: in our body that is, you know, simulating. You know,
Speaker 1: there's particular brain networks that are doing the simulation of
Speaker 1: the imagination, and there's another part of us that is
Speaker 1: metacognitively viewing the simulation. So I not so sure that
Speaker 1: that is true, that there isn't a we that is
Speaker 1: not in control of it. That seems especially right in
Speaker 1: the case of dreams. Right, there's this dream spinner who
Speaker 1: when you're dreaming, you seem to have no access to
Speaker 1: the dreams. Correct, they're just doing their thing. But imagination,
Speaker 1: I don't know if the two parts feel a bit
Speaker 1: closer together. When I imagine something, it feels like I
Speaker 1: can control it more than I can control what happens
Speaker 1: in a dream. But also it does seem to have
Speaker 1: some autonomy or day dreams will just evolve without me
Speaker 1: trying to do anything. My mind will wonder in different directions.
Speaker 1: So maybe there's Yeah, there's also an imagination spinner who's
Speaker 1: at least to some extent, separate from the agent who's
Speaker 1: experiencing the imagination themselves. Yeah, maybe right. Thank you. You're
Speaker 1: the first person that call me crazy when I say
Speaker 1: I think imagination could I think I couldn't make it
Speaker 1: argument that imagination is real in some sense? So what
Speaker 1: do you play like when you do the oculostorp? Because
Speaker 1: I just my parents just bought me like a five
Speaker 1: year old, did I? But for Haneka, they just bought
Speaker 1: me the police station for vr ther that one I
Speaker 1: don't have so first to hear how that goes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm very interested. I haven't tried the others, so
Speaker 1: I don't know the difference. But what do you play
Speaker 1: on the ocus? Like? What do you do with it?
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of video games available, you know, standard
Speaker 1: video games, space war games and first person shooters and
Speaker 1: so on. Now, I am not myself much of a
Speaker 1: video gamer, so that's not really my thing, so sory
Speaker 1: I find myself doing doing other things, non gaming apps.
Speaker 1: Especially there's Google Earth on the HTC vive. That's extremely cool.
Speaker 1: You can explore the whole Earth, and I can actually
Speaker 1: go down to my home, get on the balcony of
Speaker 1: my apartment really and so it's not quite you know,
Speaker 1: I can fly through New York. It's pretty amazing at
Speaker 1: the level of human beings and cars, and soon it
Speaker 1: gets a bit coarse grained and a bit wonky, but
Speaker 1: you know, flying over New York and VRS is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of cool, little cool other little
Speaker 1: environments you can justin have it. You can see three
Speaker 1: sixty degree movies. There are environments where you can assemble
Speaker 1: little contraptions. There are little lab demo games. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's you know, people haven't developed really full scale, rich realities,
Speaker 1: or when they have, they're typically been ported from a
Speaker 1: pre existing video game. But I think that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: you know, in the future, it's probably going to be
Speaker 1: a technology for social networking. Facebook brought out Oculus, and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably how they see it. In the future.
Speaker 1: We're going to be doing this podcast, not just the audio,
Speaker 1: not even just video. We're going to hang out in
Speaker 1: VR and all have an avatar, and you'll have an avatar,
Speaker 1: and it'll be like we're talking to each other, and
Speaker 1: someone else wants to come in and listen to the podcast,
Speaker 1: then they'll just come into the VR with us and
Speaker 1: watch us talk. Hi, guys. I imagine a world where
Speaker 1: it's all beautiful people in virtual world. But because but
Speaker 1: because of that fact, people have not spent a time
Speaker 1: I'm keeping up their looks in the other the real
Speaker 1: world though, you know, the other world. So you have
Speaker 1: a whole world of like really shall be looking people
Speaker 1: like that are all talking to the looking beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then beauty is not gonna be worth much if
Speaker 1: everyone can be can be equally beautiful. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to find different ways to value people and fitness indicators
Speaker 1: from like a you know, a Darwinian perspective, right, what
Speaker 1: are going to be what are going to be the
Speaker 1: fitness indicators? Yeah, I don't know, Maybe it's just something
Speaker 1: something crappy like intelligence. I don't know, maybe everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: have a super intelligence module too, and after a while,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be no way to differentiate people except little
Speaker 1: random quirks of personality and the quirky guy like you, Scott.
Speaker 1: You know, you just get you're gonna be valued as
Speaker 1: as a unique and wonderful resource. Oh you just maybe blushed, thanks, David, Well,
Speaker 1: yeah I was. You know, I send you this article
Speaker 1: today right with people who try virtual realities environments. It
Speaker 1: was it was written by my friend Rebecca Searles, and
Speaker 1: that article says, you know, shows it like some people
Speaker 1: experience this associative experience where they start to question whether
Speaker 1: or not the real world is real. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's something too that I go into the
Speaker 1: VR and then I come out and things do seem
Speaker 1: a little bit somehow shaky. My hypothesis is something like this,
Speaker 1: Once you hang out in virtual reality enough, you start
Speaker 1: perceiving things as virtual. You start to you know, have
Speaker 1: a sense that you're in a virtual world. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly the same as perceiving the physical world. You actually
Speaker 1: kind of see the sense things as being virtual in
Speaker 1: a mixed reality. For example, you might sense some things
Speaker 1: as virtual and other things as not. So. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when you come out of VR and then go
Speaker 1: into a non virtual environment, you retain that seeing things
Speaker 1: as virtual. And even in the physical world, you're seeing
Speaker 1: some things around you as virtual objects, and your perception
Speaker 1: is as if you're in a virtual reality even though
Speaker 1: you're not so. I call this the phenomenology of virtuality.
Speaker 1: Like there's a whole kind of phenomenal sense, an appearance,
Speaker 1: an experience of things around us being virtual. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that could be allusory. It could be in a non
Speaker 1: virtual world and still sy things as virtual. And think
Speaker 1: maybe this virtual derealization that people talk about in the
Speaker 1: normal world, the post VR sadness, maybe that's an instance
Speaker 1: of that kind of an illusion of the phenomenology of virtuality. Well,
Speaker 1: just to circle back to the whole beginning of this conversation,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, if it is true that we
Speaker 1: live in a simulation, it's possible. It's just very It's
Speaker 1: like VR that's evolved so great that everything just is
Speaker 1: this clear as our eyes can see it. But in reality,
Speaker 1: what I'm in right now, what you're in, you know,
Speaker 1: is actually is actually just another virtual world, right, just
Speaker 1: a better and more optically Yeah, I mean, a good
Speaker 1: enough virtual reality technology is probably going to be indistinguishable, correct,
Speaker 1: from a non virtual world right now? Of course it's not.
Speaker 1: It's pretty right now. Mind you get screen door effects,
Speaker 1: you get picture. But give it a few years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see the thought experiment where I could where that.
Speaker 1: I think it's realistic that someday we will have virtuality
Speaker 1: that is indistinguishable from what our optics can see right
Speaker 1: now and what we are calling the real world. And
Speaker 1: I think things are going to get really tricky then,
Speaker 1: because not only tricky, but but but I actually so,
Speaker 1: I just I want to end this interview by saying
Speaker 1: I started this interview being I think putting the probability
Speaker 1: that we live in the matrix at about seven percent.
Speaker 1: And actually, now that I'm thinking about this and more
Speaker 1: and having this conversation with you, and and realizing that
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing right now could potentially be a very
Speaker 1: evolved simulation, I'm actually up being my percentage as well.
Speaker 1: So where are you now? I'm going to put it
Speaker 1: at twenty six twenty seven percent, Well, twenty six point five,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's that's getting high. I mean, you're right, though,
Speaker 1: if it's indistinguishable from the from the inside, there's no
Speaker 1: way for ours to deciensively tell one way or another.
Speaker 1: So lot's going to rest on your prior probability is
Speaker 1: that you know, these simulated universes are going to be
Speaker 1: created or they're not. The more you think about it,
Speaker 1: the more it could start to seem kind of likely
Speaker 1: that you might be created. And then you start, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at one point, I did a debate recently about this topic,
Speaker 1: and I put it at at forty. Yeah, so maybe
Speaker 1: that's a maybe that's a stable stopping fund. What we
Speaker 1: need to get at some point are about you know,
Speaker 1: like our margins are there or around these numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I said ten to fifty. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's probably it's hard to do better than you know,
Speaker 1: one significant digit on the on these things. Maybe even
Speaker 1: that's even that's too much, But you know the fact
Speaker 1: that it's significantly greater than zero is already that's huge
Speaker 1: where a lot of interest lies. That's huge. Hey, it's
Speaker 1: always great chatting even I really appreciate you being on
Speaker 1: the podcast today. Thanks, this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just to
Speaker 1: stop provoking an interesting as I did. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to read the show notes for this episode or here
Speaker 1: past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com