David Kipping

His words really moved me when he came down.

And I think...

it really captured the idea that we shouldn't really be sending engineers or scientists into space.

We should be sending our poets because those are the people when they come down who can truly make a difference when they describe their experiences in space.

And I found it very moving reading what he said.

No, it's actually probably more similar to my agnosticism about life in the universe, and it's just sort of remaining agnostic about all possibilities.

The simulation argument, sometimes it gets mixed.

There's kind of two...

distinct things that we need to consider.

One is the probability that we live in so-called base reality, that we're not living in a simulated reality itself.

And another probability we need to consider is the probability that that technology is viable or possible and something we will ultimately choose to one day do.

Those are two distinct things.

They're probably quite similar numbers to each other, but they are distinct probabilities.

So in my paper I wrote about this, I just tried to work through the problem.

I teach astro-statistics, actually teaching it this morning.

And so it just seemed like a fun case study of working through a Bayesian calculation for it.

Bayesian calculations work on conditionals.

And so when you hear what kind of inspired this project was when I heard Musk said was like a billion to one chance that we don't live in a simulation.

He's right if you add the Bayesian conditional, and the Bayesian conditional is conditioned upon the fact that we eventually develop that technology and choose to use it, or it's chosen to be used by such species, by such civilizations.

That's the conditional.