Are we in a simulation? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice take a deep dive into simulation theory, consciousness, and free will with Oxford theorist Nick Bostrom. Is this The Matrix? Originally Aired December 21, 2021.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-living-in-a-simulation-with-nick-bostrom/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Chapter 1: What is the main premise of the simulation hypothesis?
Hey, Star Talkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. The archives run deep. If you enjoy this, take a peek at the full catalog on your favorite podcast platform. There's a lot there to tickle your geek underbelly. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. I got Chuck Nice with me, of course. Chuck, my... What's up, Neil? Faithful co-host. You know, we need you for the Cosmic Queries so that you can mispronounce everyone's name.
Well, that's my purpose in life, Neil. I live to butcher names. Those poor questioners.
How would you attack my name?
Oh, my goodness. So, Nick Bostrom? Is that what you... Is that how... It's pretty good.
Is that all right? In Swedish, it would be Niklas Bostrom, but that was close.
All right. And listen, I'll take close. As far as I'm concerned, names are like a game. That's like a game of horseshoes for me. Close is good enough.
Good enough. So that was indeed Nick Bostrom chiming in. Nick, welcome to StarTalk. Dude, you started something that has got the whole world, you know, spinning in a tizzy. for birthing the concern that we all live in a simulation. And let me just give a fast bio on you. You're a professor at University of Oxford in the Future of Humanity Institute. Oh, that doesn't look very bright.
It doesn't look very bright. Sorry, Nicholas, not a lot of job security in that, buddy. No future for humanity. Looking at the future of humanity, yo.
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Chapter 2: How does Nick Bostrom explain the simulation argument?
I'm sorry, I know you're a genius, but here's the deal. Here's why I'm going to disagree, Nick. Because when movie makers make movies, they do not render the detail in every single little thing. What they have... He didn't get there yet.
That was the next thing he was going to talk about.
Oh, man. You're ahead of me. See, you already thought of this. Like I said. Jesus Christ. Here I am making a discovery, man. All right, Chuck.
Okay, continue. Wait, Chuck, finish the point. And then we'll pick it up there.
Both of you already knew where I was going. But the deal is this. If you actually create a background, that background will pretty much be the same for all the characters that are mapped onto that background. So that's all I would say.
Now, I mean, I think that's the key to understand this whole simulation argument stuff, that if you had to simulate all of the environment in subatomic detail continuously, it probably would be completely infeasible to do that. But I claim that's not needed.
All you would need to do is to simulate enough of the parts that we are observing, when we're observing them, that to the simulated creatures, it looks real and that they can tell the difference. And that's a lot less. All right, wait a minute.
I just thought of something else in support. So what that would mean, Chuck... Chuck, check whether it means whole sections of the Pacific Ocean where there isn't a boat, right? Then no one has, so it doesn't exist until someone has to then see it and process it.
So it's a procedural content generation. So we use it in our computer games today a lot. Like you often only render the parts that some character in the game are observing.
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Chapter 3: What are the three propositions of the simulation argument?
The program would know, the programmer would know you're about to bring out an electron microscope, so they have time to up the calculation right in the beam right there.
And if necessary, I mean, they could even pause the simulation or edit it or erase memories if they really screwed it up. But yeah, I think the kind of capability you would need to even create anything resembling this kind of simulation
is very advanced, and I think with that advanced capability would also come the ability to edit and to monitor human thoughts and intentions and then kind of be able to do this kind of procedural generation that even we do in our computer games today.
That could explain why I've heard Neil say this, that we are terrible data takers. Like, as human beings, we are awful at taking in information. Well, if I'm programming a simulation, I would certainly want to program the people in that simulation to be like that because that way I wouldn't have to program all this detail into stuff. It protects the integrity of my simulation.
Yeah. Although I think, to be fair, I think the difference between one human and another from the point of view of the simulators, it's like, well, there is one ant. It's got a few more neurons. It's a genius ant. But I mean, we all like ants, I think. So I don't think the difference in cost is that big.
Oh, cool.
Very cool.
All right, Chuck, bring on a question. Let's see what you got. All right, here we go. Let's jump into this. This is Dennis Gislain, and Dennis says this. Spell that. G-H-I-S-L-A-I-N. I say Gislain.
It's probably Ghislaine.
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Chapter 4: How does artificial intelligence relate to the simulation theory?
Now all I can think about is a conscious rock. I just love the idea.
So here's what I wonder, Nick. I just have a not deeply thought out hypothesis that having thoughts such as we do that are incomplete and that we wonder and we don't have good memory of things or we make stuff up, the fact that it's not perfect, we interpret as consciousness.
Because if it were perfect, it's just data and our brain is a storage disk that occasionally puts information together with a new result. But the fact that we can sit there and say, oh, I feel this and I don't, and it's mostly how we reckon with our ignorance of our environment, even when we probe it for knowledge.
I'm just putting it out there. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess, first of all, you could have a lot of artificial intelligence even simple systems that would be imperfect in various ways. You could have some faulty hard drives that randomly erase various things. You could also have kind of compressed representations. That's what you have to do if you're trying to do anything with AI.
There's a lot of data coming in and you have to extract some important features based on that and throw the rest away.
Wait, Chuck. What Nick just said, I can't stop thinking about it. So, Chuck, every time you and I forget something, the alien's hard drive messed up.
So every time you go, what did I come upstairs for?
It's a read-write error, an I.O. error in a programmer's disk.
Well, so I don't think so. No, I was just exploring your account of consciousness, that somehow what's necessary or sufficient for consciousness is that there is some kind of faulty or limited information processing. Right.
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