Rizwan Virk

So I put on a virtual reality helmet and we started to play a virtual ping pong game.

And the game itself wasn't very realistic.

The graphics were pretty crappy.

This was back in 2016 or so.

And the VR headset had wires coming from the ceiling, so it wasn't even wireless at that point.

So there was no mistaking that I was inside a virtual reality.

But what happened was that the physics engine was so good that it really felt like I was hitting the ball with a paddle and I had to move it just right.

And so much so that it made me forget just for an instant everything.

that I was in virtual reality and not playing a real game of table tennis.

And I tried to put the paddle down on the table and I tried to lean against the table.

Oh, wow.

Just like I might do, right, at the end of a game.

But of course, the controller fell to the floor.

I almost fell over.

And then I started to think, well, how long would it take us to get to that point where we could create these types of simulations?

And that's why I laid out these 10 stages simulation points.

So that's what got me to go down this rabbit hole.

Now, what Bostrom's simulation argument was, was that if anybody ever gets to that point, and he was more concerned with creating AI characters in these simulations, then they would create lots of simulations, not just one.

And so there would be, let's say, a billion simulated worlds, and there's only one physical world.

And he said those simulations could likely be ancestor simulations.