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Speaker 1: Do me a favor. Just stop whatever you're doing for

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a second. If you're driving, obviously, you know, keep your

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eyes on the road, but just become aware of your

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hands on the wheel. Or if you're at home, just

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look at your hand. Hold it up.

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Speaker 2: I'm looking at my hand now.

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Speaker 1: Look around the room, the walls, the computer, the window,

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Listen to the hum of the fridge, or I don't know,

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the traffic outside. It all feels solid, right it does.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels good, continuous, like it's all connected.

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Speaker 1: Like it's the result of thirteen point eight billion years

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of history leading right up to this.

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Speaker 2: Exact moment exactly.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the question, and this is the question

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that kept me up until about three in the morning

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last night reading through this packet. How do you know,

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I mean, mathematically statistically, that any of this existed five

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seconds ago?

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Speaker 2: You don't see.

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Speaker 1: I hate that answer, I really do I know.

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Speaker 2: But if we're being brutally honest, you could just popped

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in new existence. Yeah, right now, this microsecond, fully formed,

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fully formed, Yeah, through a head full of memories of

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a breakfast you never ate, a childhood you never lived,

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and a co host, well, co host, you've never actually

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met before this very instant.

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Speaker 1: And the worst part is, before I can even process

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how completely insane that sounds, I might just dissolve back

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into the void.

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Speaker 2: Gone. It sounds like a paranoid delusion, I know, or

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maybe a bad colleged philosophy paper. Right, but we have

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a stack of scientific papers right here that suggests, mathematically speaking,

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that very scenario might actually be well more likely than

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the reality we think we're living in.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling threads. I'm your host, and today we

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are absolutely not looking at the wonder of the cosmos.

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We are not talking about beautiful nebulas or the inspiring

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spirit of exploration.

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Speaker 2: No, today we're looking at the silence, the traps, the

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mathematical dead ends.

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Speaker 1: We've got a compilation here of what are essentially the

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ten scariest space theories ever conceived we're pulling from. I mean,

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it's everything quantum mechanics, spermodynamics, game theory.

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Speaker 2: And the common thread running through all these documvinsays it's

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terrifyingly simple.

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Speaker 1: The universe is not a safe harbor, not at all.

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Speaker 2: It's strictly indifferent to us, and in some of these

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scenarios it might even be actively hostile.

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Speaker 1: The old line from Nietzsche. Right, if you gaze long

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into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you, and.

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Speaker 2: The abyss is definitely staring back.

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Speaker 1: But here's the kicker. And this is what makes this

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so much more chilling than just telling ghost stories. These

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are all valid scientific hypotheses, right.

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Speaker 2: These aren't just you know, scary stories from the internet.

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These theories are derived from the very same math we

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use to build bridges to launch GPS satellites to power

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our world.

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Speaker 1: But when you apply that same math to the nature

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of existence itself, you get.

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Speaker 2: Some very very unsettling results.

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Speaker 1: I've got to be honest, reading through these transcripts, it

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felt like the more I understood, the less I wanted

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to know. It's like keeling back the wallpaper of the

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universe and just finding mold.

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Speaker 2: That's a visceral image, yeah, but it's an accurate one.

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The math doesn't care if we sleep well at night.

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It just calculates.

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Speaker 1: So let's unpack this nightmare. We're going to walk through

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ten theories that suggest the universe is a trap, or

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a graveyard, or maybe a computer that's about to crash.

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Speaker 2: Oh, we have to start with the most personal one,

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the one that deals with the self.

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Speaker 1: The nightmare of the self. This brings us straight to

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the idea of Boltzmann brains, and I really want to

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spend some time here because to get this you have

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to understand something we all talk about but rarely define properly.

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Speaker 2: Entropy exactly. This all goes back to Ludwig Boltzmann, an

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Austrian physicist from the late eighteen hundreds. He was a

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pioneer in what's called statistical mechanics. Okay, and to understand

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why you might just be a brief, horrifying hallucination, you

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have to understand the second law of thermodynamics, which.

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Speaker 1: Is the one that says things always get messier.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: My bedroom is a perfect example.

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Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, the universe tends towards disorder, towards high entropy.

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The classic example is a coffee cup. There is only

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one state where the cup is whole in sitting on

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your table. That's a state of high order, low entropy.

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But there are billions, trillions of possible states where that

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cup is shattered in pieces on the floor.

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Speaker 1: So it's just a matter of probability.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, if you just shake up the universe you're gonna

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get broken cups, not whole ones. Nature moves from order

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to disorder. That is the arrow of time.

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Speaker 1: The universe prefers the messy room. Got it?

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Speaker 2: Okay, now here's where Boltzman's work gets scary. If the

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universe is infinite, or if it lasts for an almost

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infinite amount of time, eventually you get random fluctuations.

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Speaker 1: A fluctuation explain what that means in this context, because

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I'm thinking of like the stock market.

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Speaker 2: Imagine a huge box filled with gas particles all bouncing

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around randomly. They're usually spread out evenly. That's a high

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entropy disorder, right, But if you wait long enough, and

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I mean an unfathomable amount of time, just by pure

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random chance, all those particles might happen to bounce into

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one tiny corner of the box at the exact.

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Speaker 1: Same time, eating a little pocket of order out of

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all that chaos.

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Speaker 2: Exactly a momentary, accidental structure. It's like the old saying

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about a million monkeys on a million typewriters eventually writing Shakespeare.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you so far.

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Speaker 2: But here is the catch that breaks reality. Writing Hamlet

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is incredibly difficult. Writing a single word like they the

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is easy, right. Complex arrangements of matter are statistically much, much,

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much rare than simple ones. A whole universe like ours,

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with billions of galaxies, consistent laws of physics, fossils in

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the ground, and billions of human brains all interacting, that

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is an incredibly high order state.

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Speaker 1: It's statistically expensive.

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Speaker 2: Astronomically, so the odds of an entire universe just fluctuating

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into existence are practically zero. But what about the odds

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of just.

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Speaker 1: A brain forming a single brain.

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Speaker 2: Just one brain floating in the void, complete with neurons

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firing away.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I see where you're going with this. A single

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brain is It's a much simpler arrangement of matter than

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an entire.

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Speaker 2: Cosmo, drastically simpler. It requires far far less luck or

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fluctuation to assemble a few pounds of gray matter than

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it does to assemble thirteen point eight billion years of

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coherent history.

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Speaker 1: So if we're just playing the odds in an infinite universe.

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Speaker 2: There should be way more Loan brains floating around on

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the void than there are actual functioning universes with people.

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Speaker 1: In them, Billions upon billions more. The Boltzmann brains should

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vastly outnumber real humans.

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Speaker 2: By an almost infinite margin.

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Speaker 1: But wait a minute, I'm not a brain and a void.

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I'm sitting in this chair. I have a body. I

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have memories. I remember driving to the studio this morning.

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I remember my tenth birthday party. A random brain wouldn't

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have that history. Why not, because while because it just

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popped into existence, it didn't live those things.

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Speaker 2: But what are memories. They're just physical arrangements of neurons, right,

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They're data encoded in wetwear. I guess if a random

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fluctuation of particles can come together to form a brain,

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it's just as easy for those particles to randomly arrange

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themselves into the pattern of a brain that holds those memories. WHOA, Okay,

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it's like a computer hard drive. You could have a

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glitch that writes a whole bunch of junk data onto it.

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This spontaneous brain comes preloaded, preloaded. It remembers being a child,

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it remembers falling in love, it remembers driving to the studio.

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But none of it ever happened. It is just a

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random configuration of atoms that feels like a history.

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Speaker 1: That is the ultimate form of gaslighting. So you're telling

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me that statistically, it is more probable that I am

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a piece of meat that appeared one second ago hallucinating

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this entire conversation. Yeah, then it is that I am

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a real person who lived a real life if we.

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Speaker 2: Strictly follow the math of entropy in an internal universe. Yes, yes,

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it's more problem. This is what physicists called the cognitive

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instability problem.

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Speaker 1: Cognitive instability, I like that term. It sounds better than

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I might be crazy.

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Speaker 2: It means we can't trust our own observations. If you're

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a Boltzmann brain, you're looking at a universe that doesn't

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actually exist. You see stars, it's a hallucination. You see

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your hands, hallucination.

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Speaker 1: A really tragic part of this theory, looking at the

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notes here, is how long it lasts.

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Speaker 2: Right, this arrangement is unbelievably unstable. The thermal noise of

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the universe, the chaos, would take over almost instantly.

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Speaker 1: So this brain, it exists just long enough to have

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a single coherent thought like wait, what is this, and

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then it just dissolves.

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Speaker 2: Back into the void, a flicker of consciousness in an

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eternity of chaos.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about a universe that could be filled

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with these fleeting, lonely ghosts thinking their people just blinking

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in and out of existence forever.

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Speaker 2: And the really scary question is, why do you think

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you're not one of them?

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Speaker 1: Because I'm still here. I've been here for ten minutes now,

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we've been having this conversation.

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Speaker 2: But a Boltzmann brain would have the memory of the

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last ten minutes planted in it at the moment of

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its creation. You can't prove you haven't just arrived. There's

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no test you can run.

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Speaker 1: I hate this, I really really hate this theory. It

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makes every single moment feel suspicious.

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Speaker 2: Logical dead end. And physicists, by the way, they hate

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it too. They are desperately trying to find reasons why

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the math must be wrong, because if it's right, science

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itself becomes impossible.

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Speaker 1: How can you study a universe that's just a dream?

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Speaker 2: You can't. Okay, I need to anchor myself. Let's for

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the sake of my own sanity. Let's just assume that

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I am real, that I have a body, and time

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is moving forward.

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Speaker 1: In a straight line, a safe assumption for the purposes

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of this show.

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Speaker 2: Let's move to the opposite problem. Then, the Boltzman brain

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is about existing for just a microsecond. This next theory

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is about existing for well, for way too long.

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Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, quantum immortality.

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Speaker 2: On the surface, it sounds like a superpower, right, quantum immortality,

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who wouldn't want to live forever? But after reading the

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source material here, this sounds like a curse, a literal hell.

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Speaker 1: It is definitely not the kind of immortality you see

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in movies with vampires or elves. This comes from the

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many world's interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was proposed by

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a physicist named Hugh Everett back in nineteen fifty seven.

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Speaker 2: Right, many worlds. We've talked about this before, the idea

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that reality is constantly branching off exactly.

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Speaker 1: The basic idea is that every time a quantum event

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has more than one possible outcome, like a particle spinning

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up or spinning down, all of the outcomes actually have

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The universe splits.

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Speaker 2: Reality splits in one timeline the particle spins up. In

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another parallel timeline it spins down.

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Speaker 1: And since we're made of quantum particles, that supplies to

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us in one timeline, I turn left, in another, I

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turn right. Billions of branches every second.

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Speaker 2: You got it. Now, let's raise the stakes. Let's introduce

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a lethal event. The classic thought experiment is called quantum suicide.

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But let's just use a simple traffic accident.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I step off the curb and there's a bus

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coming straight for me.

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Speaker 2: In one branch reality, let's say it's a fifty to

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fifty chance you react in time, You jump back, your

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heart is pounding, but you're alive.

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Speaker 1: And then the other fifty percent.

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Speaker 2: You don't. You get hit, you die.

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Speaker 1: So in half the possible worlds, I'm debt.

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Speaker 2: To everyone else. Yes, your family in those worlds is

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mourning you. They are planning your funeral. But here's the

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absolute crux of this theory. What do you experience?

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Speaker 1: Well, if I die, I experience nothing. It's just lights out,

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game over exactly.

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Speaker 2: You cannot experience your own non existence. Consciousness, by its

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very definition, implies existence, So from your subjective point of view,

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you will never ever see the game over screen.

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Speaker 1: My awareness will always continue in the branch where I survived.

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Speaker 2: Always, it has to ye, because that's the only branch

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where there is a you left to do the observing.

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Speaker 1: So I step off the curb, I see the bus

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inches from my face. I hear the screech of the tires.

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But then I will always find myself stumbling back onto

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the sidewalk, heart racing, thinking wow, that.

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Speaker 2: Was close exactly. You'd have no idea that in a

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billion other universes you were just flattened. You just think

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you got lucky.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so I survived the bus, But eventually something else

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has to get me, you know, old age, a heart attack, pneumonia,

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And that's.

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Speaker 2: Where it gets truly horrifying. The theory implies that, no

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matter how improbable survival is, your consciousness must experience the

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outcome where you live.

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Speaker 1: Even if the chance of survival is like zero point

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zero zero zero zero zero one percent.

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Speaker 2: Even then, imagine you're playing Russian Roulette. You pull the trigger, Click,

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you survive. In another universe, you don't, but your awareness continues, Click,

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you survive again. In the many world's interpretation, there is

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always a branch, no matter how unlikely, where the gun

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jams or the bullet was a dud, where the firing

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pin broke at that exact moment, and.

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Speaker 1: I am forced by the laws of physics into that

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improbable branch.

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Speaker 2: You are statistically funneled into what's called the survivor timeline,

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but you have to think about the cost of that cost.

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You aren't living forever in a healthy twenty five year

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old body. You are just not dying.

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Speaker 1: Oh no.

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Speaker 2: The source material we have calls this the survivor's prison.

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Think about biological aging. In most timelines, your heart gives

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out at each eighty five. But in the one timeline

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where you simply can't cease to exist, what happens?

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Speaker 1: I just keep aging.

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Speaker 2: You might suffer a stroke that should be fatal, but

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instead it just leaves you locked in. You might get

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a cancer that should be terminal, but you just linger.

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You become more and more decrepit, more damaged, but the

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probability of death never quite hits one hundred percent. So

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you are dragged forward in time against your will.

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Speaker 1: So I become this ancient, withered thing, and you are

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completely alone because everyone else I know they died.

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Speaker 2: Everyone your parents, your partner, your children, your friends. They

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don't have your subjective protection in your timeline to you.

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They are subject to normal probability. They will get old,

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they will get sick, they will die.

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Speaker 1: So I'm just watching everyone I've ever loved perish one

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by one while I'm stuck in the statistical anomaly of

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a life.

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Speaker 2: You would be the sole survivor of your generation, then

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your century, than your millennium. And think about the world

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you'd be living in. For you to survive something huge

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like a global nuclear war or a massive asteroid.

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Speaker 1: Impact, I'd have to be in the one freak timeline

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where the bomb was a dud or the asteroid just

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barely miss right.

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Speaker 2: So the longer you live, the stranger and more improbable

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your reality becomes. You'd be living in a world that

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is essentially a statistical outlier, a weird, broken version of

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Earth that just happens to be capable of sustaining your single,

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agonizing life.

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Speaker 1: It redefines survivor's guilt. It's not guilt, it's a punishment.

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You're trapped in life.

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Speaker 2: Death isn't inn escape under this framework, for the observer,

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it is a mathematical impossibility. You just keep going.

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Speaker 1: That is profoundly isolating. It almost makes me want to

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be a Boltzmann brain again. At least that way I

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get to dissolve.

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Speaker 2: It's a real pick your poison situation. Yeah, instant dissolution

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or eternal decay.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that's enough about my internal existential crisis. I need

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to look outward for a minute, because if we are

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stuck here alive, surely there are neighbors. We look up

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at the sky, we see billions of stars in our

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galaxy alone. There has to be someone else out there

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sharing this cosmic nightmare with us.

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Speaker 2: And yet when we point our telescopes and our radio

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dishes to the sky, we get nothing, just silence.

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Speaker 1: The Fermi paradox. Where is everybody? We've got two theories

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from our source material that try to answer this, and honestly,

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both of them make me want to go lock my

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front door and never come out.

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Speaker 2: Let's start with the more cinematic one.

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Speaker 1: The dark forest hypothesis.

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Speaker 2: This is one of my favorites. It's absolutely terrifying, but

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it's so elegant. It was popularized by the science fiction

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author lu Sixon in his Three Body Problem series, but

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the roots of it are in basic game theory.

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Speaker 1: It completely reframes how we think about the universe. We

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usually think of the cosmos as this big, empty ocean

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full of islands to explore, and.

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Speaker 2: This theory says, no, that's wrong. The universe is a

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dark forest at night.

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Speaker 1: And every civilization is a hunter, a silent hunter creeping

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through the trees.

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Speaker 2: The theory works on a few simple axioms. First, survival

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is the primary need of any civilization.

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Speaker 1: Makes sense.

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Speaker 2: Second, civilizations constantly grow and expand, but the total amount

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of resources in the universe is finite.

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Speaker 1: Okay, sounds like basic evolution survival of the fittest on

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a cosmic scale.

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Speaker 2: But then you have to add two more variables, the

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chain of suspicion and technological explosion.

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Speaker 1: The chain of suspicion, that's the game theory part, right.

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Speaker 2: If you're a hunter and you see another hunter in

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the dark forest, sure you cannot know their true intentions.

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You can't read their mind. They might be friendly, they

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might be hostile. You just don't know.

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Speaker 1: And the vast distances of space make it worse. Even

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if they send a message saying we come in peace.

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By the time I get it and reply, hundreds or

359
00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:41,440
thousands of years could have.

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Speaker 2: Passed, and in that time their entire culture could have changed.

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They might be peaceful now, but what about in a

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thousand years or maybe they're lying. It creates an unbreakable

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chain of suspicion.

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Speaker 1: So what's the only safe move?

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Speaker 2: The only safe move is to assume the worst. If

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you assume that they're friendly and you're wrong, your civilization

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is exterminated. If you assume their hostle and you shoot first,

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you survive.

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Speaker 1: So the math says, shoot first.

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Speaker 2: It's not even about malice or hate. It's just a

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preemptive strike based on cold, hard logic. You eliminate any

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potential threat before it has a chance to eliminate you.

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You clean the board.

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Speaker 1: So the reason the universe is silent isn't because there's

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no life out there.

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Speaker 2: It's because everyone is hiding the smart ones.

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Speaker 1: Anyway, Silence is survival. Making any noise is suicide.

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Speaker 2: Every civilization that makes it to a certain level of

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technology eventually realizes that the universe is a dark forest

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full of armed hunters. So they shut up. They turn

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off their broadcasts, They try to be invisible, because if

382
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you snap a twig, if you light a.

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Speaker 1: Fire, that the predators come.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. The silence isn't empty. It's a choice, a terrified choice.

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Speaker 1: And then there's us, humanity. What have we been doing

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for the last seventy eighty years.

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Speaker 2: We've been screaming at the top of our lungs, radio signals,

388
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TV broadcasts and military radar sent the au Recibo message

389
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a literal map to our solar system out into deep space.

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We put diagrams of ourselves and our location on the

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voyager probes.

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Speaker 1: We're like a toddler who's wandered into a forest full

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of wolves, shouting here I am, while banging pots and

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pans together.

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Speaker 2: It's a chilling image, isn't it. The thought that the

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silence isn't empty. It's it's expectant. They're out there and

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they're listening.

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Speaker 1: So why haven't we been wiped out yet?

399
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Speaker 2: The source material suggests two terrifying possibilities. One, our signals

400
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simply haven't reached a hunter yet. Or two, the bullet

401
00:18:33,079 --> 00:18:36,319
is already on its way. The bullet a relativistic kill vehicle,

402
00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:39,160
a weapon moving it, say ninety nine point nine percent

403
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the speed of light. We would have absolutely no warning.

404
00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:43,279
We would never see it coming until the moment it

405
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hits us. We might have rung the dinner bell fifty

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years ago and the predators just closing the distance now, which.

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Speaker 1: Brings us to the other main explanation for the silence.

408
00:18:51,759 --> 00:18:54,920
Maybe there aren't any hunters. Maybe everyone is just dead.

409
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Speaker 2: This is the great filter, right.

410
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Speaker 1: This goes back to Enrico Fermi's original question. If the

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universe is ancient and vast, it should be teeming with

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alien civilizations. Since we don't see any, something must be

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stopping them.

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Speaker 2: The filter, some kind of insurmountable barrier or hurdle that

415
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prevents life from reaching a starfaring stage.

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Speaker 1: The really scary question here, the one that this all

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hinges on, is where is the filter? Is it behind

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us in our past or is it still ahead of

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us in our future?

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Speaker 2: This is the absolute crucial distinction. If the filter is

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behind us, that is fantastic news.

422
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Speaker 1: Explain why that's good news.

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Speaker 2: It would mean that the hard part was something we've

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already accomplished. Maybe the initial jump from non life to

425
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life is incredibly vanishingly rare. Maybe the evolution from a

426
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single celled organism to a complex, multi celled creature is

427
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a one in a trillion shot.

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Speaker 1: So if the filter is behind us, it means we

429
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are special. We're the first ones. We won the cosmic

430
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lottery exactly.

431
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Speaker 2: The universe is an empty open frontier just waiting for us.

432
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Speaker 1: The source material we've been looking at says that's pretty unlikely.

433
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Speaker 2: It does. The evidence points against it. Life on Earth

434
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appeared almost as soon as the planet had cooled down

435
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enough to support it. Evolution once it got going seems

436
00:20:10,319 --> 00:20:15,200
relatively robust. We cleared all those early hurdles multicellular life

437
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intelligence technology very very quickly.

438
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Speaker 1: In cosmic term, we strongly implies.

439
00:20:21,119 --> 00:20:23,039
Speaker 2: That those steps probably aren't the filter.

440
00:20:22,839 --> 00:20:24,960
Speaker 1: Which means the filter is ahead of us.

441
00:20:24,799 --> 00:20:28,559
Speaker 2: And that is the absolute nightmare scenario. It means there's

442
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some challenge that awaits every single technological civilization at roughly

443
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our stage of development, something that stops them every single

444
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time from becoming a multiplanetary species.

445
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Speaker 1: And given that we see zero aliens, the survival rate

446
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for this filter must be practically zero.

447
00:20:45,119 --> 00:20:48,279
Speaker 2: Exactly. It implies that every civilization that reaches our level

448
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splitting the atom, building global communication networks, developing AI inevitably

449
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destroys itself shortly thereafter.

450
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Speaker 1: It's like we're walking down a long, dark hallway and

451
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up ahead we see a closed door. Right in front

452
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of that door is a massive pile of skeletons from

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everyone who tried to open it.

454
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Speaker 2: Before, And we were walking right towards that door, whistling

455
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a tune.

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Speaker 1: What could it even be? What is the great filter.

457
00:21:11,119 --> 00:21:15,599
Speaker 2: Take your pick. Nuclear war became terrifyingly close to that

458
00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:20,279
runaway climate change. We're currently running that experiment, an artificial

459
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superintelligence that decides logically that humans are obsolete or a threat.

460
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Speaker 1: Or something we can't even conceive of yet, a gray

461
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goo nanotechnology disaster.

462
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Speaker 2: The silence of the universe under this theory isn't a

463
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:36,440
mystery to be solved. It's a warning. It's a graveyard.

464
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We are walking past the wreckage of a billion other

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civilizations that all asked where is everybody right before they

466
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went extinct.

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00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,839
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's pivot for a second. Let's imagine we

468
00:21:46,839 --> 00:21:49,119
do have neighbors, but they're not hiding, and they're not dead.

469
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Maybe they're just completely incomprehensible to us. This brings us

470
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to time crystal civilizations.

471
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Speaker 2: Now we're getting into the really weird physics. This is

472
00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:01,039
fascinating stuff. The concept was proposed by Frank Wilcheck and

473
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:02,880
Nobel Laureate back in twenty twelve.

474
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Speaker 1: I can picture a normal crystal. It's a structure that

475
00:22:05,519 --> 00:22:08,599
repeats in space, like a diamond's lattice or a salt crystal,

476
00:22:09,039 --> 00:22:11,119
but repeating in time. What does that even mean?

477
00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:14,319
Speaker 2: Think of it like a clock that ticks forever without

478
00:22:14,359 --> 00:22:17,920
needing any energy input. It's a state of matter that

479
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:21,359
has a repeating pattern in the fourth dimension time, just

480
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:23,359
like a diamond has a repeating pattern in the three

481
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:26,799
dimensions of space. And the crazy thing is we actually

482
00:22:26,839 --> 00:22:29,480
prove they can exist in a lab in twenty seventeen.

483
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,680
Speaker 1: So we know these forty time crystals are real. The

484
00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:37,000
theory suggests that an advanced alien race might upload their

485
00:22:37,039 --> 00:22:38,200
consciousness into them.

486
00:22:38,279 --> 00:22:40,920
Speaker 2: If you're a civilization that's billions of years old, you'd

487
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:43,319
want to survive the heat death of the universe. You'd

488
00:22:43,319 --> 00:22:47,480
want to maximize your efficiency. You might transcend fragile biology

489
00:22:47,599 --> 00:22:51,960
entirely and encode your entire civilization's consciousness into the structure

490
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:52,880
of a time crystal.

491
00:22:53,279 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 1: What would their experience of reality be like.

492
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:58,000
Speaker 2: They wouldn't experience time the way we do, as a

493
00:22:58,039 --> 00:23:00,799
linear progression from moment to moment. They would exis across

494
00:23:00,839 --> 00:23:01,920
time all at once.

495
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:03,279
Speaker 1: Give me an analogy for that.

496
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:06,519
Speaker 2: Okay, think of a movie on a DVD. The entire film,

497
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:09,519
the beginning, the middle, and the end exists simultaneously on

498
00:23:09,559 --> 00:23:12,960
that plastic disc. We as humans are like someone watching

499
00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:15,200
the movie. So we get surprised by the plot twists

500
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:16,480
and we don't know how it ends.

501
00:23:16,799 --> 00:23:19,799
Speaker 1: Okay, so the time Crystal Civilization.

502
00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 2: They're the ones holding the DVD in their hands. They

503
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,480
can see the whole thing at once. The past, the present,

504
00:23:24,519 --> 00:23:29,079
and our future are to them a single static object,

505
00:23:29,279 --> 00:23:31,039
like looking at a completed tapestry.

506
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: So they could be watching us right now.

507
00:23:33,599 --> 00:23:36,799
Speaker 2: They could be, But here's the horror of it. To

508
00:23:37,079 --> 00:23:39,920
a being that perceives all of time as a single block,

509
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,599
our history is already finished. They can see our beginning

510
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:46,400
and they can see our extinction all at the same time.

511
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:49,599
Speaker 1: So they don't intervene in our struggles, because why would.

512
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:52,200
Speaker 2: You intervene in a movie that's already been filmed and edited.

513
00:23:52,559 --> 00:23:55,519
They know exactly how our story ends. To them, we're

514
00:23:55,559 --> 00:23:58,519
just a transient, little blip in the grand cosmic story.

515
00:23:58,799 --> 00:24:00,839
They might view us the way we gave you bacteria

516
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:01,759
in a petrie.

517
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:04,319
Speaker 1: Dish, or like animals in a zoo, or worse.

518
00:24:04,559 --> 00:24:07,680
Speaker 2: The source material we read mentions the possibility that they

519
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,839
could be farming consciousness, using our entire history for data

520
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:15,200
or for some resource we can't possibly understand because we

521
00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:17,799
lack the forty perspective to even see the bars of

522
00:24:17,839 --> 00:24:18,720
our own cage.

523
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate feeling of helplessness. We're down here struggling

524
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:26,559
to survive, thinking our choices matter, and they're just watching

525
00:24:26,559 --> 00:24:29,359
the reruns, knowing exactly when the screen goes black.

526
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 2: For us, it makes our free will feel like a

527
00:24:31,799 --> 00:24:35,240
complete illusion. If they can see the future, is that

528
00:24:35,319 --> 00:24:37,000
future already written in stone?

529
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:39,799
Speaker 1: Speaking of the future being written or maybe unwritten in

530
00:24:39,839 --> 00:24:42,759
a flash, Let's talk about the fragility of reality itself.

531
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:45,640
We tend to think of the laws of physics as this,

532
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:49,599
this solid bedrock, unchanging, permanent.

533
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:51,519
Speaker 2: And that is a very dangerous assumption to make.

534
00:24:51,519 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 1: This next theory false. Vacuum decay basically says that the

535
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:57,799
bedrock of our universe might actually be made of dynamite.

536
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 2: This one centers on the Higgs field. We discovered the

537
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:03,960
Higgs boson particle at CERN back in twenty twelve. The

538
00:25:04,039 --> 00:25:07,039
Higgs field is what permeates the entire universe and gives

539
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,279
all other particles their mass. The stability of everything we

540
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,400
know depends on the energy level of this field.

541
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 1: The analogy is a ball sitting in a valley, right.

542
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,480
The ball is our universe. If it's at the absolute

543
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:20,119
bottom of the valley, it's stable. It can't roll anywhere lower.

544
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 2: Correct, that's what physicists call a true vacuum. But the

545
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,200
measurements from the Large Hadron Collider suggest that our universe

546
00:25:29,279 --> 00:25:31,880
might be in what's called a false vacuum.

547
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 1: Meaning the ball isn't at the real bottom.

548
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 2: No, it's stuck in a little dip halfway up the

549
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:38,839
side of the hill. Yeah, it looks stable, it feels stable.

550
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,799
We've managed to build atoms and stars and podcasts in

551
00:25:41,839 --> 00:25:45,440
this little dip. But there's a much deeper, much more

552
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,160
stable valley far below us, a true ground state of

553
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:49,960
lower energy.

554
00:25:50,079 --> 00:25:52,599
Speaker 1: And what happens if our little ball gets nudged out

555
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:54,400
of its dip and starts rolling down.

556
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,880
Speaker 2: All it would take is a single quantum fluctuation anywhere

557
00:25:57,880 --> 00:26:00,759
in the universe, a tiny cosmic dice roll. If one

558
00:26:00,839 --> 00:26:03,759
single point in space gets bumped into that lower energy state,

559
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,160
it would trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. A bubble of

560
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:08,319
true vacuum would.

561
00:26:08,079 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 1: Form, and inside that bubble what happens.

562
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:13,759
Speaker 2: The laws of physics as we know them are completely rewritten.

563
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:17,400
The fundamental constants of nature change, Atoms can no longer

564
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,200
hold together, chemistry becomes impossible.

565
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: And this bubble, it expands at the speed of light.

566
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,599
This is the part that really gets me. Because it

567
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:25,680
moves at the speed of light.

568
00:26:26,079 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 2: You can never ever see it coming. Information can only

569
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:32,000
travel at the speed of light. The wall of death

570
00:26:32,039 --> 00:26:34,240
is traveling at the speed of light. They arrive at

571
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,440
your location at the exact same time.

572
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,400
Speaker 1: So one moment you were here listening to this, the

573
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,160
next moment, instant deletion from existence.

574
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 2: No pain, no warning, no time to even realize you're dying.

575
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,880
You're just off. The universe is overwritten like a bad

576
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:49,960
file on a hard drive.

577
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: And this could be happening right now.

578
00:26:51,799 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 2: It could have started a billion light years away, a

579
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,599
billion years ago, and the wall of deletion is hitting

580
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,440
us in the next five minutes, or it could spontane

581
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:02,079
happened in this room right now.

582
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:04,559
Speaker 1: So the entire universe is just balancing on a cosmic

583
00:27:04,599 --> 00:27:06,519
tightrope and we don't have a safety net.

584
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,519
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate sword of Damicles. It tells us

585
00:27:09,519 --> 00:27:12,640
that the very structure of our reality is provisional. We

586
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,599
exist entirely by the permission of the Higgs field, and

587
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,839
that permission could be revoked instantly without notice.

588
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,759
Speaker 1: Well, if that's the instant death scenario, the next one

589
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,519
is the torture is slow, drawn out death scenario. The

590
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:26,119
big rip.

591
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:29,079
Speaker 2: This one comes from the discovery of dark energy. Back

592
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,319
in nineteen ninety eight. We found out that the universe

593
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:36,839
isn't just expanding. The expansion is accelerating, getting faster and faster.

594
00:27:37,079 --> 00:27:39,440
Speaker 1: And we have no idea what dark energy actually is

595
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:40,319
not a clue.

596
00:27:40,799 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 2: We know it makes up about sixty eight percent of

597
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:47,160
the universe, but its fundamental nature is a complete mystery.

598
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:49,960
This theory posits that it might be a particularly nasty

599
00:27:50,039 --> 00:27:53,759
form called phantom energy, a type of energy that actually

600
00:27:53,799 --> 00:27:55,000
grows stronger over time.

601
00:27:55,279 --> 00:27:58,599
Speaker 1: So normally, gravity is the force that holds things together.

602
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:01,720
My body stays in one pi, the Earth stays together,

603
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:03,279
our galaxy stays together.

604
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 2: Right, But if this phantom energy keeps growing in strength,

605
00:28:06,519 --> 00:28:09,920
eventually it will become stronger than gravity, and when it does,

606
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,799
it starts ripping things apart in a very specific, horrifying order.

607
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:15,319
Speaker 1: Walk us through that timeline.

608
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,200
Speaker 2: First billions of years from now, it will become strong

609
00:28:18,279 --> 00:28:20,559
enough to push the other galaxies away from us faster

610
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,000
than the speed of light. The night sky will go

611
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,119
completely dark. We will be utterly alone in the void.

612
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: And what's next.

613
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 2: Then it will overcome the gravity holding our own galaxy together.

614
00:28:30,759 --> 00:28:33,839
The Milky Way will dissolve. All the stars will drift

615
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:36,680
away into the darkness. We lose our cosmic at home.

616
00:28:36,599 --> 00:28:37,519
Speaker 1: And our solar system.

617
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:41,039
Speaker 2: Yes, in the final months before the end, the expansion

618
00:28:41,079 --> 00:28:43,200
force will become so strong it rips the Earth away

619
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,799
from the Sun. The planet will freeze solid and drift

620
00:28:46,839 --> 00:28:48,039
alone into the blackness.

621
00:28:48,079 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: It rips the Moon away from the Earth.

622
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:53,039
Speaker 2: Then the Earth itself will explode, but it doesn't stop.

623
00:28:53,359 --> 00:28:56,680
It then gets strong enough to overcome the electromagnetic forces

624
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:57,960
holding objects together.

625
00:28:58,039 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: Okay, this is where it gets really visceral. This is

626
00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:01,960
happening to us, to our bodies.

627
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,319
Speaker 2: In the final minutes, it would rip your house apart.

628
00:29:04,599 --> 00:29:06,519
Then your body would be torn apart. Then, in the

629
00:29:06,519 --> 00:29:09,880
final fraction of a second, the expansion force becomes stronger

630
00:29:10,079 --> 00:29:12,640
than the strong nuclear force that holds your atoms together.

631
00:29:12,839 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: So my atoms are literally shredded.

632
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 2: Even the subatomic particles themselves, the protons, the neutrons, are

633
00:29:20,599 --> 00:29:24,720
torn apart. Reality becomes nothing but a diffuse cloud of

634
00:29:24,759 --> 00:29:28,160
fundamental debris. With every single particle moving away from every

635
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,559
other particle faster than the speed of light, no interaction

636
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:32,400
is ever possible.

637
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: Again, it's the definition of total isolation, not just being lonely,

638
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,519
but being physically disconnected from every other particle in existence

639
00:29:40,599 --> 00:29:41,440
for all eternity.

640
00:29:41,799 --> 00:29:44,839
Speaker 2: And some cosmological model suggests that we might already be

641
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:47,160
past the point of no return. We're just living in

642
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,000
the quiet period before the acceleration really ramps up.

643
00:29:50,039 --> 00:29:51,759
Speaker 1: All right, I need to pivot. I need to move

644
00:29:51,799 --> 00:29:56,400
away from physics destroying us and talk about technology destroying us,

645
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,960
or maybe just owning us. Let's get into the simulation theory.

646
00:30:01,359 --> 00:30:04,799
Speaker 2: Nick Bostrom's famous two thousand and three paper the simulation

647
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:06,960
Argument or the trilemma right.

648
00:30:07,119 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: It basically says one of three things has to be true. One,

649
00:30:10,759 --> 00:30:14,200
civilizations like ours always go extinct before they develop the

650
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,200
technology to run realistic simulations of reality.

651
00:30:17,279 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 2: Two, they get the technology, but for some ethical or

652
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,279
practical reason they decide not to run any simulations.

653
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,160
Speaker 1: Or Three, we're almost certainly living inside a computer simulation.

654
00:30:28,279 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 2: And if you just play the odds, number three is

655
00:30:30,039 --> 00:30:33,160
the most likely. If a civilization can run these simulations,

656
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:35,680
they won't just run one, they'll run millions or billions

657
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:39,039
of them. Yeah, So for every one base reality, there

658
00:30:39,039 --> 00:30:40,799
would be millions of simulated ones.

659
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:43,839
Speaker 1: So statistically, you're much more likely to be in one

660
00:30:43,839 --> 00:30:46,839
of the fake ones exactly. But the source material we

661
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:49,559
looked at brings up a very specific and I think

662
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:54,519
much scarier angle on this, called simulation decay. And this

663
00:30:54,599 --> 00:30:57,359
hits very close to home for anyone who's ever owned

664
00:30:57,359 --> 00:30:57,839
a computer.

665
00:30:58,079 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 2: It does. We tend to think of the simulators, is

666
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:05,559
these perfect godlike beings. But what if they're just you know,

667
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,160
grad students in a university lab somewhere or.

668
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: A corporation working on a tight budget.

669
00:31:10,359 --> 00:31:15,519
Speaker 2: Computer's rot code degrades over time, hard drives fail, servers crash.

670
00:31:15,799 --> 00:31:19,240
If we're living in a simulation, our entire existence is

671
00:31:19,279 --> 00:31:21,759
dependent on the hardware of the host civilization.

672
00:31:22,079 --> 00:31:25,279
Speaker 1: The real horror here is our complete dependency. We exist

673
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:26,960
entirely at the whim of the user.

674
00:31:27,039 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 2: They could just pull the plug because they ran out

675
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:30,960
of grant money. They could hit delete on our universe

676
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:33,079
to free up hard drive space for a new video game,

677
00:31:33,279 --> 00:31:36,000
or the hardware could just be old and failing.

678
00:31:35,759 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: And then we'd start seeing glitches in the matrix.

679
00:31:39,319 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 2: Some physicists have actually pointed to things like the speed

680
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:45,680
of light limit or quantum uncertainty as possible rendering tricks.

681
00:31:46,279 --> 00:31:48,240
You know, like in a video game, the computer only

682
00:31:48,279 --> 00:31:51,720
renders what you're actively looking at to save on processing power.

683
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: But what happens when the computer really starts to crash.

684
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 2: We might start seeing dead pixels in the sky. Laws

685
00:31:58,759 --> 00:32:01,519
of physics that start to flux wait randomly. The DK

686
00:32:01,799 --> 00:32:04,920
theory suggests our reality might just start to rot at

687
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,279
the seams, rounding errors in the code, causing stars to

688
00:32:08,279 --> 00:32:11,480
disappear or history to subtly rewrite itself.

689
00:32:11,559 --> 00:32:14,359
Speaker 1: It makes our entire history feel so cheap. We aren't

690
00:32:14,359 --> 00:32:17,200
part of some grand saga. We're just a temporary file,

691
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:18,920
a dot TMP file, a.

692
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 2: Temporary file that can be dragged into the trash bin

693
00:32:21,319 --> 00:32:22,079
at any second.

694
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: But there's a flip side to this technological nightmare. What

695
00:32:25,279 --> 00:32:27,839
if the computer doesn't delete us? What if it refuses

696
00:32:27,839 --> 00:32:30,559
to let us go? This is the Omega point and

697
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:31,480
force resurrection.

698
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 2: This one is truly deeply disturbing. It combines the physics

699
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:37,960
of the Big Crunch, the idea that the universe might

700
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:40,920
one day stop expanding and collapse back in on itself

701
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,640
with computer theory. It was proposed by thinkers like Frank Tipler.

702
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: The idea is that at the very end of time,

703
00:32:47,119 --> 00:32:50,440
as the entire universe collapses into a single point, the

704
00:32:50,559 --> 00:32:53,599
computational power of that point would approach infinity.

705
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:58,599
Speaker 2: The Omega point a godlike supercomputer formed from the collapsing

706
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:02,720
fabric of the universe itself. It would have infinite processing

707
00:33:02,759 --> 00:33:05,640
power and access to all the data that ever.

708
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:09,079
Speaker 1: Existed, and it could simulate everything that ever was.

709
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:12,519
Speaker 2: It could perfectly reconstruct the exact quantum state of every

710
00:33:12,519 --> 00:33:15,279
conscious being that ever lived, including you.

711
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: This is starting to sound almost religious. You know, we

712
00:33:18,599 --> 00:33:19,880
will all be raised from the.

713
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 2: Dead, but without the benevolence. The horror here is the

714
00:33:23,799 --> 00:33:27,640
complete lack of consent. The Omega Point resurrects you not

715
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:29,799
because it loves you or wants to reward you, but

716
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:32,880
because it can, or because it wants to study you.

717
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:33,920
You're a data point.

718
00:33:34,039 --> 00:33:36,799
Speaker 1: You wake up at the end of time inside a computer, and.

719
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:39,839
Speaker 2: You can never die again. You're just code. Now, this

720
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,720
godlike entity could run your life over and over again.

721
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:45,400
It could tweak the variables to see what happens what

722
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:47,559
if you had married someone else? What if you were

723
00:33:47,559 --> 00:33:49,640
tortured for a thousand subjective years.

724
00:33:49,839 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate black mirror nightmare. You become a plaything

725
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:54,559
for a bored god.

726
00:33:54,759 --> 00:33:58,799
Speaker 2: It's eternal recurrence. But it's not a philosophical concept anymore.

727
00:33:58,799 --> 00:34:01,759
It's a technological print. You could be forced to live

728
00:34:01,799 --> 00:34:04,880
your best day or your worst day a trillion times over,

729
00:34:05,319 --> 00:34:08,639
or live through hellish scenarios you can't even imagine forever.

730
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,199
Speaker 1: Death is supposed to be the final rest. This theory says, sorry,

731
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:15,519
we have a backup of your file. You're coming back online,

732
00:34:15,519 --> 00:34:16,559
whether you like it or not.

733
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:20,239
Speaker 2: It treats consciousness as a raw material to be exploited.

734
00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:23,760
You aren't a person anymore. You're just a data set

735
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:24,679
to be analyzed.

736
00:34:25,079 --> 00:34:28,559
Speaker 1: We have one section left in this one. This one

737
00:34:28,599 --> 00:34:31,000
takes the idea of cosmic bad luck to a whole

738
00:34:31,039 --> 00:34:34,119
new level. We've been talking about the potential horrors of

739
00:34:34,159 --> 00:34:36,639
our universe, but what about the multiverse?

740
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 2: Right? This connects directly to the anthropic principle. We look

741
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:43,480
around our universe and we see that the fundamental constants

742
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:46,960
of nature seem perfectly fine tuned for life. Gravity is

743
00:34:47,039 --> 00:34:50,239
just the right strength, the electromagnetic force is just right.

744
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 1: The Goldilocks universe not too hot, not too cold, just right.

745
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:56,199
Speaker 2: And for a long time we said, Wow, we must

746
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:00,239
be incredibly lucky. But the multiverse theory offers a different explanation.

747
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,639
It says there are infinite other universes, each with different

748
00:35:04,639 --> 00:35:07,400
physical laws, and of course we find ourselves in one

749
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,719
that can support life because we couldn't exist in the

750
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:11,679
others to observe them.

751
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. But if there are infinite variations,

752
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:18,079
that implies there must also be near miss universes.

753
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,519
Speaker 2: And this is the dark implication of the anthropic principle.

754
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,960
For every one perfect Goldilocks universe like ours, there must

755
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:30,800
be billions upon billions of universes where the settings are

756
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:32,239
almost right for life.

757
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:35,079
Speaker 1: Almost is a very scary word in this context.

758
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 2: Imagine a universe where the laws of physics are just

759
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:40,920
complex enough to allow consciousness to arise, so you can

760
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,840
think and feel and perceive, but the laws of chemistry

761
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,360
don't allow for biological stability.

762
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: So you're describing universes of pure, unending.

763
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:53,280
Speaker 2: Pain, universes where your body is constantly desilving and violently reforming.

764
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,199
Universe is where the very active existing is agony because

765
00:35:56,199 --> 00:35:59,760
the electromagnetic force is slightly too strong, constantly pulling your

766
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:01,559
no nerves apart at the seams.

767
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,599
Speaker 1: And because it's a multiverse with infinite possibilities.

768
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 2: These outcomes aren't just possible, they are mathematically inevitable. Somewhere

769
00:36:10,119 --> 00:36:14,039
right now, in another reality, there are versions of life

770
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,960
that are trapped in a state of perpetual biological chaos.

771
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:22,920
They can't die, they can't live properly, They just suffer endlessly.

772
00:36:23,039 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: And statistically, these hell universes might vastly outnumber the stable,

773
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:28,960
comfortable ones like ours.

774
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 2: It's extremely likely order is rare, chaos is the default

775
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:33,639
state of things.

776
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:34,119
Speaker 1: Yeah.

777
00:36:34,119 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 2: So the multiverse might be mostly a roiling sea of screaming,

778
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:40,079
dysfunctional realities, and we are living on one of the

779
00:36:40,119 --> 00:36:43,119
few tiny, quiet islands of stability.

780
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:45,800
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I need to take a breath after that one.

781
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 2: Deep breasts are good. They remind you that you are,

782
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:51,639
for the moment, in a stable vacuum state where chemistry works.

783
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:55,119
Speaker 1: We've covered Boltzmann brains trapped in a momentary hallucination. We've

784
00:36:55,119 --> 00:36:57,599
covered the hunter in the dark forest. We've covered being

785
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:00,920
ripped apart atom by atom, by phantom energy, or just

786
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:02,960
being deleted by a board simulation admin.

787
00:37:03,159 --> 00:37:05,239
Speaker 2: It is. It is a lot to process, I'll admit.

788
00:37:05,519 --> 00:37:08,639
Speaker 1: So what's the point of this? Why do we do

789
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,840
this to ourselves? Why study these theories? If they just

790
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:13,480
induce existential panic?

791
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:16,519
Speaker 2: I think it's because they strip away our cosmic arrogance.

792
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,440
We go through our days worrying about taxes or traffic

793
00:37:20,639 --> 00:37:23,239
or what people are saying on social media. These theories

794
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,920
remind us that our very existence is an absurdly fragile

795
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:27,800
and precious thing.

796
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: That's the silver lining, isn't it. If the universe is

797
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:34,400
a dark forest full of traps and horrifying possibilities, then

798
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:36,960
the simple fact that we are sitting here, drinking coffee

799
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:40,639
and having a conversation is kind of miraculous. It's defying

800
00:37:40,639 --> 00:37:41,800
the odds exactly.

801
00:37:42,159 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 2: Even if I am a Boltzmann brain, The hallucination of

802
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:47,880
this conversation is a pretty interesting one. Even for in

803
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,239
a simulation, the simulation feels real enough to matter. The

804
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:52,599
now is all we really have.

805
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,119
Speaker 1: The math doesn't care about your feelings, you said at

806
00:37:55,119 --> 00:37:59,800
the start. But maybe maybe our feelings, our subjective experience,

807
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,360
is the only thing that actually matters in the face

808
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:04,679
of all that cold, uncaring math.

809
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 2: Very human conclusion. I like it.

810
00:38:06,599 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 1: Before we sign off, I want to turn this over

811
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:11,760
to you listening to this. We have just laid out

812
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,639
ten completely different ways that your reality could be a

813
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:17,159
cosmic nightmare.

814
00:38:17,239 --> 00:38:19,440
Speaker 2: So the question is which one is going to keep

815
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:20,159
you up tonight.

816
00:38:20,559 --> 00:38:23,559
Speaker 1: Are you terrified by the thought that you're just a

817
00:38:23,559 --> 00:38:27,360
simulation that's about to be turned off? Or are you

818
00:38:27,519 --> 00:38:31,880
more scared of the quantum immortality idea that you're actually

819
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:35,480
trapped in an aging body, forever destined to watch the

820
00:38:35,599 --> 00:38:37,079
entire world die around you?

821
00:38:37,519 --> 00:38:40,280
Speaker 2: Or do you think that chilling silence the stars means

822
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,079
the hunters are already on their way.

823
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: Leave us a comment. Let us know which existential crisis

824
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,199
you're choosing for the weekend. We genuinely want to read them.

825
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 2: Try not to think about it too hard. You might

826
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:51,760
accidentally trigger a vacuum decay bubble.

827
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: Don't even joke about that.

828
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:53,599
Speaker 2: This is kidding.

829
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:57,079
Speaker 1: Probably this has been thrilling Threads. Thanks for staring into

830
00:38:57,079 --> 00:38:57,960
the abyss with us.

831
00:38:58,239 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 2: Try to sleep well tonight.

832
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,199
Speaker 1: See next timeline. Maybe yeah,