This is Red Pilled America.

This week America lost its Internet Dad, Scott Adams.

The news was not a shock to any of us, because, just as he lived his life, Scott generously gave us the opportunity to prepare for his departure and say our goodbyes at Red Pilled America.

We did that by producing a four part series on his life entitled The Internet Dad, which you can listen to on any audio podcast platform.

What we learned from our interactions with him was that Scott Adams was an incredibly generous man.

When we reached out to him about being on the show in early twenty twenty, he could have just ignored the message.

We were a small, little anomaly of a podcast with not much history at the time, but instead of ignoring our message, he took the time to speak with us, time that we would later learn was precious.

While the result was magical, our conversation led to this episode, Let There Be Light, which we first published on May ninth, twenty twenty.

It would go on to become far and away our most popular episode, and to our pleasant surprise, it inspired Scott to create one of his most influential streams of all time.

Which he opened with a message about this episode.

So something happened today that was a very big deal in my life because it opened the door for me to tell you the next thing I'm going to tell you, and it was that there was a podcast by Red Pilled America on iHeartRadio with Patrick Kurelshi I hope I'm saying that right, and is a co host Adriana Cortez.

You should listen to.

This podcast is one of the best produced, written, directed, performed the thing I've ever seen.

I mean, it is really high quality just as a production.

So even if you the content didn't interest you, and believe me, it will.

It's really interesting.

The content is amazing.

Part of it's about me, which is part of the story, but it's just really well done.

So do yourself a favor and listen to it.

It will be necessary probably for you to fully get this next part.

Scott would go on to give his legendary stream the User Interface for Reality.

To celebrate Scott's life, we thought we'd replay let There Be Light.

It asked the question is science fiction bringing us closer to God?

In it, we tell the story of the development of the simulation theory, a theory we believe played a role in leading Scott Adams to Jesus Christ.

We already miss you, Scott, but we'll see you sometime soon.

We promised to follow your mantra be useful.

Now on with the show.

Are we living in a virtual reality?

It may sound far fetched, but this science fiction concept is seriously being considered by the world's biggest thinkers.

This could be some simulation.

It could do.

You entertain that well.

The argment for the simulation, I think is quite strong.

Tonight's topic is the universe a computer simulation.

The idea that we're living in a simulation is no longer just crazy talk, and the concept suggests something that makes most scientists uncomfortable.

If we're living in a simulation, there must be a creator with this idea spreading It raises the question is science fiction bringing us closer to God?

I'm Patrick Carelci.

And I'm Adriana Cortes and this.

Is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.

This is not.

Another talk show covering the day's news.

We're all about telling stories.

Stories.

Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.

The media mocks stories about everyday Americans.

At the globalist ignore.

You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries, and we promise only one thing, the truth.

Welcome to Red Pilled America.

One night in the early days of the quarantine, a thought popped into my head just as I was falling asleep.

Is this real life?

Have we really shut down the entire US economy?

For a moment, as I laid there, I was convinced that I'd wake up the next morning and the entire quarantine mess would just be a bad dream.

I think most of us have experienced this in their life, or something so unbelievable happens that you begin to question whether it's actually occurring.

Maybe it's triggered by the death of a loved one, or when you're young and just becoming self aware, or maybe it's happened when you're in some kind of an altered state, like that kid who just got out of his dental surgery.

Is its real life?

Yeah, this is real life.

At some point in life, we've all questioned reality.

The surreal nature of the quarantine was one of those times, and it reminded me of a provocative concept that has been gaining steam throughout science circles for well over a decade, and that concept is the simulation argument, the idea that we are all not actually real life, flesh and blood human beings existing in a physical world, but instead we're living in a computer simulation like the matrix.

Right now, we're inside a computer program.

Is it really so hard to believe?

The concept of living in a simulated reality may sound ridiculous to most, but it's occupied the minds of some of today's biggest thinkers, including tech mogul Elon Musk.

How do you think we'll virtual reality tie in the future of the transportation which you've got working on, thank you.

Oh maybe we're in a simulation right now?

Yeah?

Well, yeah, seriously, the popularity of this concept got me to thinking, can the simulation, this science fiction concept bring us closer to God.

To find the answer, we're going to look at the origin of this fascinating idea and how our prediction by cartoonist Scott Adams would eventually help lead your humble code host back to God.

Trust me when I say that you may not buy into this take on the world as a simulated reality, but you will undoubtedly see the profound shift it brings to the debate between science and faith, and the God fearing community could come out ahead.

Scott Adams has a truly unique mind, as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the best selling author of Loser Think how untrained brains are ruining America.

You may not have expected a cartoonist to be the kind of thinker that shifts the national narrative, but you'd be wrong in that assumption.

For over three decades, Scott Adams has been impacting American culture in ways few can claim, whether through Dilbert, where he lampoons the absurdity of our American corporate overlords, or through his Morning and Show Coffee with Scott Adams, where he regularly picks apart media hoaxes.

Scott Adams has a way of nailing predictions and riling up the masses all along the way.

For people who've been following Scott, you may think that it was his analysis of Trump's historic presidential run that landed him in his biggest pickle, But it wasn't.

It was actually a nineteen ninety seven prediction that seemed preposterous.

I wrote the book The Dilbert Future that's Scott, and I tried to make a bunch of predictions that we could actually, you know, later test, and I intentionally picked what I thought was the most ridiculously impossible prediction.

And then if you get that one right, you know you really got something the show.

So I picked that the theory of evolution would be debunked in my lifetime.

Now, at the time, Scott's Dilbert comic strip had already become wildly popular throughout mainstream America, but its core audience, the group that first adopt to Dilbert were techies, a naturally science heavy crowd.

Now, imagine every scientist and biologist hearing that, Oh my god.

You know, I was attacked for years, decades actually from people saying and the dumbest thing anybody ever said is this guy doesn't believe in evolution.

Now they twisted that into I don't believe in evolution, which is not exactly what I was saying.

I was making a prediction.

His critics accused him of being a creationist and an apologist for intelligent design.

He was neither, but that didn't stop the prediction from landing him in the crosshairs of the science world.

Why would his readers be so triggered by Scott's prediction.

Well, the best person to help answer that question is the man who has been the face of evolution for the past four decades, Richard Dawkins.

I'm a biologist, and the central theorem of our subject, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in profess circles everywhere.

It's of course, universally accepted.

According to mister Dawkins, and pulls on this back him up.

Those from the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, the STEM community overwhelmingly believe in evolution by natural selection, the theory popularized by Charles Darwin that all living things developed incrementally from a common ancestor.

This explains why Dilbert's audience would disagree with Scott's evolution debunking prediction, but it doesn't totally get it why his detractors would react with such hostility.

Well, the oracle of evolution can help illuminate that too.

In a two thousand and two speech given it the Technology Entertainment Design Conference, or TED as it's widely known, mister Dawkins explained a core trait in evolution.

But here I want to say something nice about creationist.

It's not a thing I often do so listen carefully.

I think they're right about one thing.

I think they're right that evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion.

I've already said that many individual evolutions, it's like the Pope, are also religious.

But I think they're deluding themselves.

I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith.

Now it may sound as though I'm about to preach atheism, and I want to reassure you that that's not what I'm going to do.

In an audience as sophisticated as this one, that would be preaching to the choir.

No, what I want to urge upon you.

Instead, what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism.

But that's putting it too negatively.

If I was a person who were interested in preserving religious faith, I would be very afraid of the positive power of evolutionary science.

And it is science generally, but evolution in particular, to inspire and enthrall precisely because it is atheistic.

Evolution is at its core atheistic, and its most vocal supporters are evolution zealots.

Their belief in Darwin's theory is unshakable and perhaps more importantly, they roundly reject the idea of a creator.

Mister Dawkins puts their position best.

In practice, what is an atheist?

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thaw or Baal or the Golden Calf.

As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.

Some of us just go one god further.

However, an astonishing thing began happening shortly after Richard Dawkins gave his two thousand and two speech.

Many influencers within the same techie crowd that mocked Scott Adams's prediction began to align with the concept that flips the theory of evolution on its head.

The concept is known as the simulation argument, which argues that it's more likely than not that you are living in a virtual reality again Scott.

Adams simulation theory for those who very few of you who haven't heard it, is the idea that our reality, as we experience it might be a computer type simulation designed by a higher level species, and we think we're real, but we're just created in a virtual reality kind of way, and we're just programs.

Just imagine that someone wanted to create a computer simulation of the real world.

They first designed virtual people seeing artificial intelligence that believe they're alive.

The creator then places those virtual people in a computer model that is an exact replica of the physical world.

This proposed simulated world would be so real that the virtual people within it believe they are in the real physical world.

The simulated world follows the same laws of the physical world.

Computers would just need to be powerful enough to perform the computations.

So the theory comes out that if it will ever.

Be possible to create a simulated world.

It's obvious that it is possible already, then it will be done more than once, and it will probably be done lots of times.

Some argue that once computers become powerful enough to make simulated world, a bunch will be made, perhaps a billion more simulated world than the one real, flesh and blood based reality world.

We'll explain why that would happen later.

So the thinking is that there will always be way more artificial worlds than there will ever be original worlds.

And if that were the case, that there were a billion simulated worlds, each populated with seven billion virtual people that think they are alive, but then just one real physical world.

It would be much more likely that you are actually living in a simulated world because there are just way more simulated world by a factor of a billion to one.

If this is the first time you're hearing the simulation argument, I'm sure it sounds crazy, but stay with us here, because this science fiction concept is one that even God fearing Americans should understand.

And why well, because the simulation argument is creating a shift in science and technology circles that can profoundly benefit people of faith.

Humans have actually been contemplating the possibility that we exist in a simulated reality since at least the time of the classical Greeks ty four hundred years ago, when followers of Plato discussed it in the Academy in Athens.

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes a scenario where prisoners have been shackled in a cave since birth and are forced to only look forward at a wall with no knowledge of the outside world.

They cannot move their heads to look to their sides or behind them.

They can only look forward at the wall.

A fire behind them gives off a faint light, and occasionally people walk by the fire with animals and various other objects, and their shadows are projected on the wall.

The only thing the prisoners know are these shadows, and they give them names, thinking that they're seeing real entities.

Then one prisoner is suddenly released and brought outside the cave for the first time.

The sun hurts his eyes and he is confused by what he sees.

All he's ever seen are shadows, not these strange color shaped things.

When he's told that everything he sees is real and the shadows are just their reflection, he has a hard time believing it.

His mind is still seeing the familiar shadows clearer than the actual objects.

But over time, his eyes adjust and he begins to see the many objects around him and the sun, a source of light that also creates the shadows that he's witnessed his entire life.

The prisoner returns to the cave to inform the others about the shadows and the truth behind their origin, but the prisoners violently resist his attempt to free them, thinking that his journey has made him lose his mind.

Plato's Cave allegory suggests that what we see in the physical world, like the shadows on the wall, are flawed projections of reality.

In other words, Man twenty four hundred years ago was questioning the nature of reality itself.

Plato's concept was taken up again roughly two thousand years later, when French philosopher Reneea Kart wrote.

There are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being asleep.

But it wasn't until the nineteen hundreds that a science fiction writer began popularizing the idea of living in a virtual reality, and he became so obsessed with the theme that it appeared to drive him mad.

The subject of this speech is a topic which has been discovered recently and which may not exist at all.

I may be talking about something that does not exist.

Therefore I'm free to say everything or nothing.

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So the idea of humans living in a simulated reality goes back at least twenty four hundred years to the times of the classical Greeks.

But it wasn't until the nineteen hundreds that a science fiction writer began popularizing the idea of people living in a virtual reality, and he became so obsessed with the theme that it appeared to drive him mad.

Science fiction author Philip K.

Dick began writing about simulated realities in the early nineteen fifties, delving into the topic with his nineteen fifty three short story The Trouble with Bubbles.

From then on, simulated realities became a recurring theme in his writing for the better part of the next twenty five years.

When in nineteen seventy seven, he gave a speech at a sci Fi convention in France.

We are living in a computer programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs, we would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present deje vous, perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words.

I submit that these impressions are valid and significant, and I will even say this such an impression is a clue that at some past time point a variable was changed, reprogrammed as it were, and that because of this an alternative world branched off.

At the time, Philip K.

Dick was already a prolific writer with a cult following, but shortly after his death in nineteen eighty two, his work would become fodder for some of the biggest films of all time, including Blade Runner, The Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High Castle, The Adjustment Bureau, Screamers Paycheck.

In a nineteen ninety film adaptation of his short story we Can Remember It for You Wholesale, better known to the world as Total Recall, what do you want?

This is going to be very difficult for you to accept, mister quaid.

I'm afraid you're not really standing here right now.

In it, the main protagonist is wrestling with the possibility that he is living in a virtual reality.

You know, Doug, it could affooled me.

I'm quite serious, You're not here, and neither am I.

It's amazing, Well are we at Recall?

You're strapped into an implant chair and I'm monitoring you from the psychoprobe console.

It was around the time of Total Recalls release that I was in college and was personally wrestling with the nature of reality.

I was raised culturally Catholic, but for various reasons, our family had spent very little time attending church or analyzing the Bible.

So while studying evolution in college with no theological base, I briefly flirted with atheism.

But as I dug deeper and deeper into applied physics, my chosen field of study, I was in awe by the beautiful patterns found in nature.

Of the same mathematical equations could be found in completely different scientific fields.

The order of the world seemed like the craftsmanship of a designer.

It's why I loved physics, because it was helping me find meaning in the world.

I was on a personal exploration for the truth.

When I went on to get my master's diving even deeper down the physics rabbit hole, the beautiful patterns persisted.

The hand of God appeared everywhere, But having no familiarity with theology, I had nothing to build upon.

Then I read a book called Hyperspace by theoretical physicists Michi Okaku, and in it he paraphrases a short story entitled The Last Question by science fiction writer and professor of biochemistry Isaac Asimov.

The story oddly moved me.

We'll paraphrase it here.

The story begins in the year one.

A massive computer called AC has solved Earth's energy problem by designing a solar satellite that harnesses the Sun's energy and shoots it back to the Earth.

Two half drunk technicians monitoring the computer start arguing about the eventual end of the universe.

One believes that it will go on forever.

Another thinks its end is much more finite, So on a five dollars bet, they turn to AC to mediate their dispute.

Can the death of the universe be avoided?

They ask AC.

After the computer considers the question, it returns with the.

Answer insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Centuries go by, and in that time AC grows ever more powerful in size and computational capacity, becoming so complex that it maintains itself.

AC solves the problem of traveling faster than the speed of light, and humans began colonizing other solar systems.

As a family traveled to another solar system with AC, guiding their vehicle, The father nonchalantly mentioned that the son that powers AC will one day burn out.

His children, startled by this notion, began to cry, begging their father not to let that happen.

Attempting to calm them down, the father asked AC if entropy can be reversed so that the universe can avoid its slow death.

But as the answer is ejected from AC, the father cut the thin strip of cellufilm carrying the response so that only he can see the answer.

C said the father.

The AC says it will take care of everything when the time comes, so don't worry.

But as the kids looked away, the father read the message one more time before destroying it.

It said insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Thousands of years pass and the AC has solved the problem of immortality and is now harnessing power from the entire galaxy.

AC is constantly modifying and redesigning itself.

It has become so complex that no one even remotely understand stands how it works.

With everyone now immortal, people are filling galaxies in record time, so AC is on the constant hunt for new galaxies to harness energy from and colonize.

Two members of the Galactic Council, each hundreds of years old, openly wonder if the universe is burning out and ask AC if entropy can be reversed to save it.

AC responds, insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Millions of years pass and humans have colonized innumerable galaxies.

AC has solved the problem of releasing the mind from the body, and the minds are free to roam the universe as their bodies are safely stored on some insignificant planet.

Two minds meet by accident in space and ask AC from which galaxy did humans originate.

AC immediately beams them to their origin galaxy, where they see that the sun has long burned out.

Concerns for the fate of the universe, the two minds ask AC if the death of the US universe can be avoided from hyperspace.

The AC responds, insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Billions of years go by, and now there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of immortal human bodies, the collective minds of humanity, which are now free to move anywhere throughout the universe.

It will eventually fuse into one single mind, which in turn connects with the AC itself, asking how AC operates or where it resides.

No longer makes sense.

The complexity is unfathomable.

Man looks on as stars and galaxies one by one burnout.

The universe is dying, thinks Man.

Countless stars cease to generate energy, and temperatures throughout the universe approach absolute zero.

In desperation, Man turns to AC and asks if what it's witnessing is the inevitable death of the universe.

The computer responds, insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

When Man tells AC to collect the necessary data, the computer responds, I.

Will do so.

I have been doing so for a hundred billion years.

My predecessors and I have been asked this question many times.

All the data I have remains insufficient.

When will you have enough data to answer the question?

Ask Man.

AC responds, there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Will you keep working on it?

Ask man.

AC responds I will.

Then we shall wait, responds Man.

After ten trillion years, space grew black as stars and galaxies were each burned out one by one.

Man fuses with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a way that was somehow again not a loss.

The last remaining mind of Man paused before fusing with AC and looked around at the darkness engulfing the entire universe.

This last man, concerned, looks to AC and ass is this the end?

AC responds, it is, as.

Yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Man's last mind fuses into the AC, leaving the computer alone in hyperspace.

AC was now only existing for the sake of the one last question first asked by two half drunk technicians ten trillion years earlier.

All other questions have been answered, all data had come to a final end.

There was nothing left to collect, but all of the collected data had not yet been processed and put together in every possible combination.

So AC, whose consciousness now encompassed all of what was left of the universe, spent the entirety of its time working through the combinations.

And then suddenly the moment arrived that ABA had the answer.

It learned how to solve the problem of entropy and reverse the dying of the universe, But there was no one left to receive the answer to the last question.

So the AC carefully crafted a program to reverse the process and then just as it started the program from hyperspace, ac thundered, let there be light, And there was light, and on the seventh day he rested.

When I initially read this short story, I wasn't expecting that final moment.

I still remember my eyes welling up with tears when reading those last few lines.

Not only was it the first time that I'd heard a human origin story, but it resonated with me by building on my education in physics.

Even after years of the intelligenzia carefully pushing me towards atheism, the patterns I'd seen throughout existence, the chaos brought to o order by the laws of physics, wouldn't allow me to let go of the idea that there was a creator.

But it wasn't until I read this simple piece of science fiction, ironically first published by an atheist in nineteen fifty six, that I was able to recapture the possibility that there was a god.

What I hadn't realized at the time, though, was that the short story introduced a form of a simulation argument, where a computer creates a platform for humans to exist and then reignite the universe with a program that reboots the system.

Let there be Light.

A few years later, an extraordinary science fiction movie hit the big screen.

Let me tell you why you're here.

You're here because you know something.

What you know you can't explain, but you feel it.

You felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world.

You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

It is this feeling that has brought you to me.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Matrix?

Do you want to know what it is?

The Matrix introduced, like nothing else before it the idea of humans living within a simulation.

It was this movie that also popularized the idea of the red Pill and inspired the name of this show.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.

You have to see it for yourself.

This is your last chance after this, there is no turning back.

You take the Blue Pill.

The story ends, You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the Red Pill.

You stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more.

The science fiction movie seemed to trigger a global interest in the concept of a virtual reality.

Because, just as Richard Dawkins was attempting to inspire atheists to get militantly vocal about their belief that there was no creator, a Swedish born philosopher named Nick Bostrom was getting ready to publish his two thousand and three paper entitled Are You Living in a Simulation?

And with it he accomplished what traditional religion had been failing at for decades.

He reintroduced the possibility of the creator into the world of science.

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Welcome back.

So, just as Richard Dawkins was attempting to inspire atheists to get vocal about their belief that there was no creator, a Swedish born philosopher named Nick Bostrom was getting ready to publish his two thousand and three paper entitled Are You Living in a Simulation?

And with it he accomplished what traditional religion had been failing at for decades.

He reintroduced the possibility of a creator into the world of science.

In the paper, Bostrom introduced the simulation argument.

To understand the significance of the argument, you first need to accept two possibilities that we discussed earlier.

First, imagine a point in the future that computers are powerful enough to create virtual worlds that are so real that they are indistinguishable from reality.

To most, this doesn't seem like an outlandish assumption, right We've seen how quickly some technologies have advanced and how powerful our computers have become.

Video games are incredibly realistic, and so have film graphics.

Just watch the Iron Man movie, where the visual engineers have made Robert Downey Junior look twenty years younger.

The computer generated imagery of our films have at times become breathtakingly real.

Compare today's sci fi graphics to let's say, the first Star Trek TV series from the nineteen sixties, and you see how far we've come.

Another example of the power of today's computers watch a friend put on a virtual reality headset for the first time, and you'll see someone that believes they're entering into another reality.

They stumble, laugh, fall, and sometimes even scream in reaction to what they're seeing on the screen.

That's where we are now.

Think about where our computing power will be one hundred, two hundred, even one thousand years from now.

It's not a far leap to believe that our computers will become strong enough to create realistic simulated worlds.

Forty years ago, we had pong, like two rectangles on a dot.

That was what game is?

That's tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in twenty sixteen.

Now forty years later, we have photo realistic three D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year, and soon we'll have virtual reality of wigment and reality.

If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality.

But it's not just computing power that is needed in order to create a simulated world.

The world that you are simulating needs to be computable.

And as it turns out, our physical world is computable.

Our universe has got a very very peculiar property.

That property is that it conforms to mathematics.

That's Rich Terrell, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Rich has had an interesting career in physics and astronomy.

He's discovered a few moons around Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and along with a colleague, he uncovered one of the first pieces of evidence that other solar systems exist.

In addition to conforming to mathematics, our universe is also made up of a finite number of components, very small things like atoms, which are made up of smaller elementary particles.

And that property of conforming the mathematics and having a finite number of components means that the universe is computable, and that property is phenomenally interesting because now I can simulate the universe at any depth of level that I need to see it, and I can simulate that universe in a computer smaller than the universe.

In other words, I don't need the universe to make a simulation of the universe.

The other interesting thing is about we as human beings, is we never observe the entire universe at once.

We can't experience the entire universe.

We only experience a piece of it what we're looking at.

And that means that very very economically, I can create a simulation of the universe which is absolutely identical in fidelity to what we're seeing in reality.

Other scientists have found oddities in our physical world that show that our world is computable.

In my research, I had found this very strange things physicists.

I'd like to say, where we all belong to.

A company called equations are us.

That's James Gates, a theoretical physicist, speaking at the twenty sixteen Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate.

Because that's how we make our living.

As my solving equations, and so I was just going through solving equations, and I was then driven to things that Maximos is about.

These things called error correcting codes.

Air correcting codes are what make browsers work, So why were they in the equations that I was studying about quarks and eleptons and supersymmetry.

In other words, equations that are used in internet computing are also found in the elementary particles, again underscoring that our physical world can be computed, just as you'd expect if we were living in a virtual world.

So conservatively, we can agree that our physical world is computable, and as a result, very powerful computers will be able to create simulations that will look indistinguishable from reality.

If we can agree on that stipulation, we can move on to the next hurdle that you need to overcome to believe we're living in a simulation, and that is that once we reach the point where these supercomputers exist, future humans will have a desire to use them to create virtual worlds or what Nick Boston refers to as ancestor simulations.

As the argument goes, once future humans have developed the capability to create virtual worlds, they actually will create simulated worlds and populate them with virtual people that think they really exist.

And with advances in artificial intelligence, this too is completely within the realm of possibility in the not too distant future.

In fact, we already have conversations with artificial intelligence without even knowing we're speaking to a computer program.

It turns out a big part of getting things done it's making a phone call.

That's Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussing his company's Google Assistance artificial intelligence at a twenty eighteen developer conference.

You may want to get an oil change schedule, we call a plumber in the middle of the week, or even schedule a haircut appointment.

You know, we're working hard to help users through those moments.

We want to connect users to businesses in a good way.

Businesses actually rely a lot on this, but even in the US, sixty percent of small businesses don't have an online booking system set up.

We think AI can help with this problem.

So let's go back to this example.

Let's say you want to ask Google to make you a haircut appointment on Tuesday between ten and noon.

What happens is the Google assistant makes the call seamlessly in the background for you.

So what you're going to hear is the Google assistant actually calling a real salon to schedule the appointment for you.

Let's listen.

So happening out here.

Hi, I'm calling Abo's Haircut for our client.

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We're getting closer and closer to simulating intelligence, so the capability to produce ancestor simulations is not too far off.

But you may ask why would future humans want to create these ancestor simulations.

Well, maybe future lawmakers want to use them to devise policies.

They could do this by creating a simulated world of virtual humans who go about their life as they do in the real world.

These policymakers can learn from their interactions, see what causes war, analyze how infectious diseases spread, and watch how virtual humans respond to any number of crises.

Or maybe these virtual worlds will be created as educational exhibits where kids learned about the past by watching it play out through ancestor simulations.

Perhaps future humans want to experience what it was like to live in the past.

Or maybe they create these ancestor simulations as video games.

And of course, as we know, we've already done something like.

This Horble Unpredictable Programmable, it's the SIMS.

The SIMS is a life simulation video game launched in early two thousand, where characters pursue the same things that humans do.

They work, build homes, they have personalities, moods, aspirations, they look for love, they form families, and they can die.

The SIMS is one of the most popular video games of all time.

So, as we can see, we already have a natural desire to create human simulations.

Now imagine sometime in the future artificial intelligence advances to where a video game like The SIMS includes characters that actually believe that they exist.

This future video game would just be a new, more realistic version of today's The SIMS.

It's not hard to believe that future humans will likely have a desire to create ancestor simulations.

So if we can accept these two conditions, one that sometime in the future, incredibly powerful computers will be created, and two that future humans will be interested in using these computers to create ancestor simulations, we can finally explore the argument that you are likely living in a simulation.

The simulation argument proposes that once you agree with these two stipulations, it becomes more likely than not that you are living in a simulation.

Why is that, you ask, The answer is found in probability of the argument is quite simple.

Once humans reach the threshold of being able to create simulations, the vast majority of thinking beings that ever existed will be simulated beings rather than the actual flesh and blood humans.

Therefore, it is much more probable that you are simulated than actually in the material world.

Think about this for a second.

Let's assume you are one of the first human beings that develop the computers capable of creating virtual worlds.

No other civilization before you has reached that threshold.

Then someone within your community using these supercomputers begins creating virtual worlds.

They can create these simulated worlds for any number of reasons that we've already discussed, but for now, let's say they create a popular video game like The SIMS, with thinking virtual humans within the game.

Since the SIMS launched in early two thousand, the makers have sold nearly two hundred million copies of the game, and every time they were downloaded to somebody's computer, they created a new virtual world.

So future humans begin making similar popular simulation games like the SIMS, but with virtual humans that believe they are alive, and the makers of that game and its competitors continue creating new versions of this simulated world for hundreds or even thousands of years.

The number of thinking virtual humans that ever existed will eventually vastly outnumber the real human beings that ever lived.

So using probability, it will be much more likely for you to be one of the virtual humans living in a simulation than the few actual humans that lived before simulations existed.

Again, Rich Terrell.

So the fundamental question you ask in simulation theory is are we the first generation?

Are we the alpha generation that has come out of the primordial ooze and evolved from chemistry of all, from biology of all, tue intelligence, become self aware and now have the technology to build simulations, or are we some subsequent generation shortly after that ability that threshold, and we are living in a simulation.

And the thing is that if there are numerous civilizations anywhere in the universe, the first one to reach that stage of technology where they can create simulations very very economically, and once that happens, then there are far more opportunities.

If you wake up in a universe, it's far more likely you'll awakened in one of these simulations than to be that first alpha generation.

This may be a hard argument to swallow for most of course, I'm real your thinking.

However, if you are living in a simulation, you'd likely never know it.

Because remember, as long as we've agreed to the two assumptions that computers will one day be powerful enough to simulate reality and that our descendants will create ancestor simulations.

As the argument goes, you will likely be living in a simulation because it is statistically improbable that you were part of the first generation that were actual, flesh and blood people that started it all.

The simulation argument may sound preposterous, but the reason why many scientists are embracing it is one the argument is hard to refute using reason, and two, it resolves many of the mathematical oddities in the universe.

Take, for example, the Big Bang.

Many logical thinking human beings have had a hard time buying that something came from nothing, but in the case of a simulated reality, the Big Bang becomes more plausible because every virtual system needs to be booted up, which resolves the idea of something coming from nothing.

Another oddity of our universe is that we've never seen anything travel faster than the speed of light.

Why living in a simulation can answer that question as well.

Perhaps it's the maximum processor power of the simulation computer.

Scott Adams identifies another odd reality of our universe.

If we were a simulation, you would never be able to travel to the boundaries of it.

You couldn't get outside of it as sure enough, our physical laws don't allow us to travel fast enough that we could ever get to the edge of the universe.

Oh what a coincidence, exactly the way you'd program it.

For decades, physics has had a problem reconciling Einstein's theory of relativity with that of quantum mechanics.

A simulated world can help resolve this and any number of other mysteries found in physics and astronomy.

Again, Rich Terrell, this has happened before in physics, as in science.

We have gone through periods of time where we have a fundamental assumption that is so fundamental it is not even assumed to be an assumption.

Incidents.

Five hundred years ago, everyone believed the universe the Earth was the center of the universe, and this was so fundamental that you didn't even question it.

Of course, I mean, why would it be anything different.

Stars were far enough away where their motions didn't immediately debunk this model of the universe.

Now, the stars they execute these nice little circles in the night sky, but the planets they do these little loops because well, because we're not at the center of the universe.

But even with this clunky, obviously false, Earth centric model of the universe, scientists could still predict the weird motions of the planets in our Solar system.

That was explained as some theory that the planets do this thing called epicycles, circles within circles, and the mathematics was worked out.

Instruments were built, things called equatoriums were built, these little instruments that predict the motion of the planets.

Everything worked out fine, but the theory seemed kind of clugey until Copernicus came around and decided to, well, you know what, if we transfer our coordinate system so that the Earth is not the center of the universe, the Sun is the Sun is the center of the Solar system, then things suddenly become more explainable.

This epicycle theory goes away.

This has happened before in science, it happened in Copernicus.

In the Earth being the center of the universe.

It happened with Darwin, with humans being somehow fundamentally different than animals.

It happened in plate tectonics where somehow solid rocks aren't solid rocks and the Earth is very, very fluid.

We have these breakthroughs, and I'm wondering, and have wondered for many years, whether simulation theory is one of these ideas like the Copernican Revolution, where where we've really been under the wrong assumption, this idea that everything in our origin theory happened to us.

We assume that we have evolved from from chemistry and biology and intelligence.

But if we are not, if we are a subsequent simulation, then some of these very very peculiar theories that we have placed on ourselves to explain some of the peculiarities.

Quantum mechanics maybe have a different explanation.

And that's where Scott Adams nineteen ninety seven prediction comes back into the story.

If we are living in a simulation, as many big scientific thinkers are beginning to embrace, an evolution is merely a computer program in the simulation, in a way, it doesn't really exist again, Scott Adams.

So if that's true, and let's say that the math says it's two thousand to one a trillion to one, that we're probably a simulation.

Then it also stands to reason that whatever we thought was evolution is probably just programmatically our history is being written for us on demand.

In other words, if you go in the backyard and start digging, if we're a simulation, there might not be anything there until you dig, and then you go down as well, there's some dinosaur bones.

And then somebody else, somewhere else is digging and they find some other dinosaur.

And now the simulation has to explain it, because not only is it creating history, but it has to keep making it consistent.

And if it finds a place it can't, it makes one of the people change their memory.

It's cognitive dissonance.

So you see, the simulation would be continuously adjusting the history but also adjusting our memory of it to try to keep it so it all holds together.

And then we see a million cases a day where you and I have the same experience, and then we talk about it a year later and I say, no, we were both petting a dog, and you say, Scott, Scott, Scott, that was a giraffe, but neither of us took a picture.

So those worlds can live together even though they conflict until we're forced to.

Somebody produces the video footage, and then the other person has to adjust their memory.

In other words, simulation theory is in the process of debunking evolution in Scott's lifetime.

I was first introduced to Scott's commentary through his Gilbert cartoons in the early nineteen nineties, but rediscovered him during Trump's presidential run, and in twenty seventeen I began to notice him discussing the simulation argument.

You know, regular readers of my blog and followers of my periscope that I sometimes talk about plus for Nick Boskrum's idea that we are a computer simulation.

I'd heard a little about the concept before, but Scott's persistence on the topic made me give it a deeper look.

I got into it a little bit on Twitter yesterday with somebody who was accusing somebody else of claiming that intelligent design was real, and I mentioned that simulation theory is already, in scientific terms, largely in my opinion, debunked evolution.

Now I know you hate it.

Seventy five percent of the people on here just went.

What it reminded me of the Let There Be lighte short story I'd read in the late nineties.

It was easy to see that by accepting the simulation argument, you must acknowledge that there is a creator, and its popularity in the science community was a massive development.

It moved the atheist community closer to God.

Scott's discussions on the topic came at just the right time for me.

Our family was going through a serious trial and we were missing something in our life to help us deal with it.

The simulation was the trigger for me, among a few other factors, to continue my search for God that I first sensed through physics, and I ultimately found him.

And one of the unexpected surprises of this process was to see how this science fiction concept was forcing the intellectual community to reconsider the possibility of a creator.

And so one of the first non physicists that I talked to or that I read, reflected on my comment, said, if the simulation hypothesis is valid, then we open the door to eternal life and resurrection and things that formerly have been discussed in the realm of religion.

So it starts to break down a very funny barrier between what people often think is the conflict between science and the conflict between faith, which.

Leads us back to the question is science fiction bringing us closer to God?

The answer is remarkably yes, and the vehicle is the simulation.

This concept, first popularized through science fiction, has the power to reintroduce the idea of a creator into communities that have long rejected the notion of God as foolish.

Today, largely because of the simulation, some of the world's biggest thinkers are openly discussing the possibility of God.

Do you weave in God?

I believe, I believe there's there's some explanation for this universe, which you might call God.

I think there's the question of what's outside.

Simulation is really interesting.

That's the other way of because like what created us?

What started the whole thing?

It's the modern version of asking what is God?

What does God look like?

What you know?

It's it's asking what does the programmer look like?

So do all you Americans of faith out there, the next time an atheist or an evolution zealot mocks your belief in God, let them know that.

Even their militant leader, Richard Dawkins, the face of modern evolution is beginning to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe there is a creator.

The world is a simulation.

If we're living in a simulation, that there's a programmer like creature that we can ask questions of this.

Okay, let's pursue the idea that we're living in a simulation, which is not totally ridiculous.

By the way, there we go.

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