Neil deGrasse Tyson

So let me first apologize.

What I had been...

noting is that we do not have the power yet to create a perfect simulation of a world such as the one we're living in.

And so I wasn't thinking that everyone would make these ancestor simulations, which we would be.

And so an ancestor civilization in a cinematic way

a parallel would be a movie about Spartacus or Cleopatra.

Just something, a movie, which is modern technology, telling a story set in a time when they didn't have movies.

So I'm guessing that's what you mean by an ancestor simulation.

And so I was thinking that every simulation would ultimately be able to duplicate themselves as a natural evolutionary arc.

If that's the case, then we would either be the original universe that hasn't yet simulated anybody yet, or we'd be sort of the last one simulated still working our way

towards the power of simulating ourselves, which would be slightly better odds, well, a lot better odds than throwing a dart and landing in all the simulations that had enough power to create simulations of themselves.

um the argument focuses on ancestor simulations just because that's the easiest way to get to the conclusion that one of these three is true but it doesn't imply that there wouldn't be a lot of other simulations as well okay so we we have some data with our own history of cinema and it's some very small percent of movies are set in a time before movies were invented which i would again i would classify as sort of ancestor storytelling

Okay, so Nick, I guess you're allowed to say all this from your armchair, but at some point somebody wants to walk into a lab and make a measurement that says, here's the evidence that supports Nick's argument.

Is there such a...

Anything we can look for?

Is there a sign?

Is there some experiment we can conduct to say, yep, we're not in charge of what's happening here.

This is a simulation.

That would be a really sad argument.

That would be a really sad argument against it because it would say, here's our proof we're not simulated.