587: MEGA COMPILATION: Dreams & Nightmares
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What are the themes explored in this episode?
Really? Today of all days?
Human, I'm sorry, but what are you wearing? Did I interrupt nap time at the petting zoo?
No, today we're... Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hello, Bo Peep. Yeah, I found him. He's safe and sure.
Okay, that's enough. Yay! Today we're doing the Sleepy Time compilation. Remember the episode to help people fall asleep?
Oh, that's every episode lately. Can you just get in here, please? No can do. A matter of galactic botanical significance has arisen requiring my immediate scientific scrutiny.
What are you talking about?
Oh, well, remember those aliens stopped by after visiting Uranus? Well, they left me those blopper seeds and, uh... You better not have... And the one of them sprouted!
Uh, that plant looks weird. Did it just make a sound?
Yeah, it's trying to communicate.
Uh, yeah, maybe you shouldn't get too close to that thing.
Oh, this is nothing compared to that beaver fight club I ran out of your basement.
You did what?
Sorry, human. Gotta go do science.
I'm sure that's all gonna be fine. Okay, so sleepy time compilation. We cut out all the sponsor ads and all the loud music at the end so you can just fall asleep to these episodes. This was by request. So this is a nice, long compilation tonight. So grab your jammies and let's start with Simulation Theory. Is this reality? Well, we're experiencing something right now, so maybe the better question is, what is reality? Could everything we see, everything we experience, everything that exists in our entire universe be artificial? Supporters of simulation theory believe that not only is it possible that we're living in a simulation, it's likely. And the more we look for evidence, the more we find. Let's find out why.
The idea of the universe being a simulation is not a new one. Theories exist in ancient cultures around the world. Modern simulation theory comes from Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford who wrote an influential paper on the subject in 2003. Assuming that living in a simulation is possible, Bostrom presents the simulation Trilemma, which says one of the following must be true. One, we destroy ourselves before we're able to create a simulation. Two, we're able to create a simulation but choose not to. Or three, we are definitely in a simulation. Bostrom believes each of these is equally likely to be true. Now, I don't think that's controversial. We use computer models to study the human population, predict the weather, for entertainment. We simulate everything.
And when a civilization can create a realistic simulation, the most obvious one to create is that of its own early existence. Bostrom calls this an ancestral simulation. And a civilization that can do this wouldn't just create one simulation. It would create many. And those simulated civilizations might create their own simulations of the universe and on and on like Russian nesting dolls of reality.
Now, you're a character in that world and you think you have free will and say, I want to invent a computer. So you do. Hey, I want to create a world in my computer. And then that world creates a world in its computer. And then you have simulations all the way down.
When Elon Musk was asked what he thought the chances were that our reality is the original base reality.
The odds that we're in base reality is one in billions.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a little more conservative. He thinks the odds that we are in base reality versus a simulated reality is 50-50. A 50-50 chance that everything we experience is artificial, that's still pretty high. And even though we mostly hear what scientists think about this, it's not scientific theory. Simulation theory isn't math, it's philosophy. It isn't physics, it's metaphysics. So what we need is hard evidence that we live in a simulation. And to find proof, all you have to do is look. Let's start at the beginning. There was no space or time. The contents of the entire universe were concentrated to the size of a tennis ball and had a temperature of a quadrillion degrees. Then suddenly, the Big Bang. Everything explodes outward faster than the speed of light.
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Chapters
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