Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling threads. So let's start with a thought experiment.
It's one that really challenges everything you think you know
about your own life.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: What if every single choice you've ever made, every argument,
every moment of you know, triumph for heartbreak, what if
it was all just data being processed? Yeah, your entire life,
This reality programmed not by some divine being but by
what one of the thinkers we're looking at today calls
a snot nosed alien kid in their parents' basement.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is It's a heck of an image. It's funny,
but it's also, you know, deeply unsettling.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It just perfectly sets up the tension we're getting into today.
We're looking at material from the video the Real Reason
scientists know. We're in a simulation from the diary of
a CEO clips channel, and it.
Speaker 1: Really forces you to grapple with these huge concepts.
Speaker 2: Huge.
Speaker 3: It moves so fast from the like the cold math
of whether we're real, to the ethics of living forever
and then all the way to these are really surprising,
almost cynical reasons for why humanity hasn't reached.
Speaker 1: Mars yet and that's our mission today, really to navigate
all of these threats. We want to understand that deep
contrast between our own drive for free will.
Speaker 3: And meaning and on the other hand, the statistical and
historical logic that suggests we might just be operating within
some kind of predetermined.
Speaker 1: Box, whether that box is a computer program or just
the cold logic of global competition.
Speaker 3: And what's so fascinating now is that this old philosophical
question reality versus illusion, it's not just an academic game anymore,
not at all. Technology has completely transformed it. I mean,
with the growth of computing power, especially with quantum physics,
the idea of building a simulated world with conscious beings
inside it.
Speaker 1: It feels less like sci fi.
Speaker 3: It feels less like science fiction and more like an
engineering problem we just haven't solved yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack that. Let's start with the foundational logic,
this concept of the chain of simulated universes.
Speaker 3: Right, it starts with the premise that's well, it's logical,
but it's also terrifying if an advanced life form let's
call them universe one, the real one, if they ever
get the ability to create a computer world with characters
who are fully conscious characters.
Speaker 1: Who believe, you know, one percent, that they have.
Speaker 3: Free will, then that advanced life form will create those simulations.
It's not a maybe, it's an inevitability.
Speaker 1: That's the first domino to fall. The capacity itself becomes
the reason.
Speaker 2: To do it exactly.
Speaker 3: But the real mind bender is what happens next, the
cascading effect. Okay, so once those simulated characters in Universe
two evolve their own technology far enough.
Speaker 1: If they would do faster, right, because they're in a
simulation not necessarily bound by our.
Speaker 3: Physics precisely, they too will eventually invent computers powerful enough
to create their own immersive, conscious simulated world Universe three, and.
Speaker 1: So on and so on. Universe three simulates four, four,
simulis five. It's like the source says, simulated universes all
the way down.
Speaker 3: It's like a nested Russian doll of reality is a
fractal And the key here, the really spooky part, is
that these have to be perfect simulations, meaning what meaning
the characters inside the code us perhaps we can't detect
the system. There's no way for us to see the
glitches in the matrix, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And that's where the physics comes in. We don't have
that power yet, not even close. Our attempts at rendering
reality are still, you know, a bit clunky.
Speaker 3: But the curve of technology, especially with things like quantum computing,
suggests that barrier is just technical.
Speaker 2: It's not impossible. It's just a matter of scale and time.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that leads to the statistical argument, the one
that really messes with your head, the probability problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or the dart analogy explain that if this chain exists,
and universe one creates, say a dozen simulated copies, and
each of those creates a dozen more, you quickly end
up with just one original real universe and a.
Speaker 1: Zillion simulated copies. As the source puts.
Speaker 2: It, the math is just brutal.
Speaker 3: If you close your eyes and throw a dart at
this infinite chain of realities, where is it most likely
to land in one of the coffees?
Speaker 1: The odds are overwhelming.
Speaker 3: It's a zillion to one against us being in that
first original universe. It's a numbers game, and we lose.
The sheer number of simulated people just dwarfs the number
of original ones.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's a pretty compelling, but honestly a depressing
piece of logic. It is. If I accept that, then
my whole existence is just some minor function running on
a server somewhere which I don't know. It makes you
feel incredibly small.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: But this is where the conversation takes a brilliant turn.
It introduces a counter argument, the escape hatch, the thing that.
Speaker 1: Lets the speaker in the video sleep a.
Speaker 3: Little better exactly, And this is where my skeptical brain
gets really interested. The escape patch depends completely on our
current technological limits.
Speaker 1: The fact that we right now humanity in twenty twenty
four don't have the power to create a perfect simulation
with conscious beings inside.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're still year, there's centuries away from that kind
of quantum power. So if that's true, logically we have
to belong to one of only two specific types of universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you cut out the whole middle of the chain,
You cut it all out.
Speaker 3: If having the ability to simulate is the ticket to
the party, and we don't have a ticket yet, then
we must be.
Speaker 1: Either one the first real universe that just hasn't gotten
there yet, or.
Speaker 3: Two the very last universe in the entire chain that
hasn't evolved to that point yet.
Speaker 1: Because all the ones in between have already passed that milestone.
The've already created their copies.
Speaker 3: Our current inability to do it becomes our best defense.
It's our probabilistic alibi, and.
Speaker 1: That just completely flips the odds. It goes from a
zillion to one against us to a straight fifty to
fifty coin flip.
Speaker 2: Are we the first or are we the last?
Speaker 3: It's kind of a beautiful piece of logic that uses
our own, you know, technological lag as a source of comfort.
Speaker 1: It's strange, right, Our limitations are what make us potentially real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we were way more advanced, the odds would
flip right back to being terrible for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, So even if we accept that fifty to fifty chance,
we still have to deal with the other big argument
for being in a simulation, which is why is our
reality so consistently chaotic, so punctuated by a drama and disaster?
Speaker 3: Ah? Yes, disaster as programming input, or, as you could
call it, the programmer's boredom.
Speaker 1: This theory suggests that the pattern of huge global disasters
isn't random at all.
Speaker 3: No, it's perfectly consistent with a simulation being run for say, entertainment,
or for research that needs.
Speaker 2: A lot of variables.
Speaker 1: This makes a weird kind of sense. If you're running
this massive, complex simulation and everything is stable and predictable.
GDP is up, everyone's happy.
Speaker 2: It gets boring, the plot goes stale. So what do
you do?
Speaker 1: You stir the pot. You introduce chaos to keep things engaging.
Speaker 3: And the source points directly to the COVID nineteen pandemic
as a perfect example of a pot stirring event, a
once in a century global catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Right, A pandemic creates instant worldwide drama. It forces all
these new interesting choices.
Speaker 3: Who fights over the vaccine, who denies it's real, Who
profits from the chaos?
Speaker 2: Who dies?
Speaker 3: These are all new dramatic arcs for the programmer to
watch unfold.
Speaker 1: And then when the world starts to calm down, when
we get the virus sort of under control, what happens next?
Speaker 2: The video points it out.
Speaker 3: You get the rise of this totally unprecedented political figure,
a billionaire real estate developer from New York City becomes
the most powerful person on earth.
Speaker 1: And that, as the source says, kicks off a whole
other set of stir pots stirring, the drama has to
keep going.
Speaker 3: It's a really powerful way to look at history because
it aligns so well with how we treat our own simulations.
Speaker 1: You mean, like the game SimCity.
Speaker 3: Sim City is the perfect analogy.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: You spend hours right building your perfect city, optimizing traffic,
balancing the budget.
Speaker 1: You achieve this perfect stable utopia. And what's the first
thing you want to do.
Speaker 2: You want to break it. You go to the disag
aster menu.
Speaker 1: You unleash Godzilla.
Speaker 3: No unleashed Adzilla. Because the simulation is only interesting when disastrous,
unexpected things happen. And the source argues that the sheer
frequency of these Godzilla moments in our own history is
the strongest non mathematical argument for being in a simulation.
Speaker 1: And the historical examples are chilling when you see them
through that lens. The interview in the source video actually
took place on September eleventh, and the speaker calls that
event a perfect example of Godzilla walking through the city.
One event that completely changed the trajectory of the entire
world in a single day.
Speaker 2: And you can just keep going back.
Speaker 3: Look at the timeline they mentioned after World War one,
you have this fragile piece which.
Speaker 1: Is immediately smashed by the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic.
Speaker 3: Then humanity recovers, only to be thrown straight into World
War II and after that the Cold War with the
constant threat of nuclear annihilation.
Speaker 1: These aren't small adjustments. These are massive civilization altering plot
points perfectly time to keep the story from getting dull.
Speaker 3: So if you accept this, you can sort of create
a profile of the programmer.
Speaker 2: They hate boredom, they despise it.
Speaker 3: Their main goal seems to be generating high stakes conflict,
and that gives our suffering this really weird and perverse purpose.
Speaker 1: We are the entertainment, which is where a lot of
people just check out. If it's all predetermined for some
alien's amusement, why even bother?
Speaker 3: Right, But that's where the source pivots so effectively arguing
that whether we're puppets or not, it doesn't actually change
how we should live.
Speaker 1: So that's the big philosophical question that follows. Right, if
we are in a simulation, does it matter?
Speaker 2: And the answer given is this really pragmatic.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't, because if we're simulated, we're programmed to
believe we have free will, and if we can't tell
the difference, then.
Speaker 3: For all practical purposes, our perceived reality is our reality.
Speaker 2: You might as well act as if.
Speaker 1: You're free It reminds me of that old joke, you know,
someone asks the philosopher do you believe in free will?
And he says, what choice do I have? Paradox doesn't matter,
because the subjective experience is.
Speaker 3: All we have, and that leads to this practical mandate,
which is really the key takeaway from this whole section.
No matter if we're real or not, your duty is
to just live your life so that the world is
better off for you having lived in it.
Speaker 1: It's such a clear, almost brutally simple way to measure
your life.
Speaker 3: And the definition of better off is important too. It's
not just about you know your own happiness or your
own wealth.
Speaker 1: No, it extends way beyond that. It means making sure
other people are happier, healthier, wealthier, safer, better fed.
Speaker 3: But then there's this deeper structural part to it, ensuring
that rationality matters in politics and lawmaking.
Speaker 1: Why is that so important.
Speaker 3: Because without stable rational institutions, all the personal improvements you
make can be wiped out in an instant by some
crazy collective decision.
Speaker 1: So you have to improve yourself and the system at
the same.
Speaker 2: Time, exactly.
Speaker 3: And this leads to a really crucial distinction that the
analysis makes, the difference between finding meaning and making meaning.
Speaker 1: I think this is so powerful. We always hear people
say they're searching for meaning as if it's.
Speaker 3: A physical object you can find, like it's hiding under
a rock behind a tree. The source really criticizes that viewpoint.
Speaker 1: Because it's so passive, isn't it. It makes you feel powerless
on your own destiny, waiting for meaning to just appear.
Speaker 3: It treats meaning as this external thing that the simulation
or fate just gives you. The alternative is so much
more empowering.
Speaker 1: To make meaning actively every single day. Right.
Speaker 3: It shifts the focus away from some grand cosmic purpose
and towards tangible, daily beneficial actions.
Speaker 1: And what I love is that it boils it down
to two incredibly simple daily mandates a checklist.
Speaker 2: Okay, what are they?
Speaker 1: First? The intellectual one, I want to learn something today
that I didn't know yesterday.
Speaker 3: The foundation of self improvement. If you're not learning, you're stagnating.
Speaker 1: And the second one is altruistic. I want to lessen
the suffering of someone today.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Think about how those two work together, right.
Speaker 1: The first one gives you the tools the knowledge to
figure out how to solve problems.
Speaker 3: And the second one gives you the moral imperative to
actually go out and do it.
Speaker 1: It's about constant, tangible progress, both for yourself and for others, and.
Speaker 3: That constant progress is what leads to the ultimate goal,
which is wisdom.
Speaker 1: The analysis lays out this really clear progression. At the bottom,
you have raw information, which.
Speaker 2: Is useless on its own. It's just data.
Speaker 3: But when you process it, when you add context, information
becomes knowledge.
Speaker 1: And knowledge is good. You can win on game shows
with knowledge, you can get a good job.
Speaker 3: But it's still not the end goal. The true synthesis,
the highest value is when knowledge becomes wisdom.
Speaker 1: And wisdom is when you stop just knowing facts and
start understanding how they connect their implications, how to apply
them to real world problems.
Speaker 3: It's the why and the how. And this is why
the source argues so strongly against wanting to be young forever.
Speaker 1: If you're just getting older without getting wiser than you are,
and I'm quoting here, just getting old with nothing to
show for it ouch.
Speaker 3: But it's true, aging is only valuable if that experience
translates into wisdom.
Speaker 2: You can use.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think back to when I was thirty.
I thought I knew everything, and now I look back
and realize how much I just completely misunderstood about the world.
Speaker 2: The source is right.
Speaker 3: You might feel brilliant when you're young, but you're often
still an idiot compared to your older self, just because
you lack the data points from lived.
Speaker 1: Experience, and you have to be paying attention to get
those data points. You have to learn actively but also
just passively.
Speaker 3: Open your eyes sometimes and see what's happening, observe the trends,
understand where things are heading.
Speaker 1: And if you see suffering, if you see a flaw
in the system, the mandate comes back, do something about it.
Speaker 3: And that all culminates in this incredibly demanding measure of
a life well lived. The suggested epitaph for a tombstone, which.
Speaker 1: Is not some soft gentle phrase.
Speaker 2: No, it's a command.
Speaker 3: Be ashamed to die unless you've scored some victory for humanity.
Speaker 1: That's a challenge. It demands that your time here resulted
in a net positive, a measurable victory. It's the ultimate
expression of making meaning.
Speaker 3: And if the goal is to score a victory, the
next question is how much time do we have to
do it. This brings us to the obsession with indefinite
life and a term called escape velocity in aging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love how they borrow this term. So first,
in astrophysics, escape velocity is the speed you need to
break free from a planet's gravity. For Earth, it's about
seven miles per second.
Speaker 3: Right, So you apply that concept to medicine and human biology.
Speaker 1: Right now, because of medical advances, for every year you're alive,
your life expectancy goes up by about one month.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The escape velocity of aging is the theoretical point where
science can extend your life by an extra year for
every single year you're still alive.
Speaker 3: So the clock effectively stops. You've outrun death biologically speaking.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and the implications are staggering. Every year you live
you get another year. Eventually, maybe you get two years
of extension for every one year you live.
Speaker 2: Biological immortality basically.
Speaker 1: And while that sounds like the ultimate victory, the analysis
immediately points out the very dark side of this, the
ethical and societal costs.
Speaker 3: Especially if this technology is only for the super rich.
Speaker 1: The first most obvious problem is resource hoarding. The source
suggests that when billionaires chase in definite life, it's driven
by ego and a desire to hold onto.
Speaker 3: Power, and that takes resources away from everything else.
Speaker 2: Think about it.
Speaker 3: If you have the world's most brilliant minds working on
boutique longevity for a few dozen.
Speaker 1: People, they're not working on curing widespread diseases or building
sustainable infrastructure for everyone else. It creates this exclusive scientific.
Speaker 3: Bubble, a permanent divide between the mortals and the near immortals.
But the bigger, maybe more insidious problem, the Source mentions
is civilizational stagnation.
Speaker 1: This is the most chilling part of it for me.
The idea that if people start living forever, they're living
forever in the least useful phase of their life society's progress,
meaning the last years of life are generally the least creative,
least ambitious, and least irreverent. The truly disruptive game changing
ideas almost always come from younger people who haven't accepted
the status quo yet.
Speaker 2: The shark tank analogy they use is perfect for this.
Speaker 1: It is when you see who's bringing the truly fresh
revolutionary ideas to the table. Half of them are thirty and.
Speaker 3: Under because they haven't internalized all the reasons why that's
not how we do things here.
Speaker 1: So if that older generation, the ones with all the
power and resources, lives forever and never lets go, civilization
just stagnates. Creativity relies on irreverence and immortality risks killing
that off completely.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to the challenge of AI and how
it's forcing us to redefine what creativity even is.
Speaker 1: For a long time, AI was just a tool in
the physical sciences. It was helping analyze huge data sets
from telescopes, things like that Nobody's too worried.
Speaker 3: But the spooking Moment, as the source call it, was
when AI started writing term papers and making art. When
it came for the creative fields, that's.
Speaker 1: When we had to start reassessing our own value as creators.
Speaker 3: And the analysis makes this brilliant distinction between what AI
does now, which is aping, and what humans must do next,
which is leaping.
Speaker 1: Explain that if you.
Speaker 3: Ask chat gpt to paint a scene in the style
of Vango, it'll do it perfectly.
Speaker 2: The colors, the swirls.
Speaker 3: It will look exactly like a lost fango. It's perfectly
aping a known style.
Speaker 1: But true human creativity isn't about that. It's about taking
leaps that most people don't even know can be taken.
Speaker 3: Right, so the source says, try asking the AI to
paint a landscape in the style of no artist who
has ever lived the prediction it'll probably suck.
Speaker 1: So AI forces us to get more creative. We have
to abandon the styles and techniques that could be automated
and reach for something genuinely new.
Speaker 2: You have to transcend automation or you're replaced.
Speaker 3: And this whole technological path leads to the ultimate leap,
superintelligence and things like neuralink.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk originally pitched neuralink as a way for us
to keep up with AI, to merge our brains with
computers so we don't get left behind.
Speaker 3: Because the fear is that if a true superintelligence arrives,
it instantly becomes our overlord and we become its We
become its pet, which sounds like a dystopian nightmare. But
the source challenges that fear in a very unsettling way.
Speaker 1: Is being a pet really that scary? I mean pets
are often kept warm, fed happy. You could argue it's
a better life than many humans have now.
Speaker 3: If the superintelligence is benevolent, maybe being its pet is
the best case scenario for our survival.
Speaker 1: But then comes the twist, the chicken analogy.
Speaker 2: This is a rough one.
Speaker 3: The source recalls watching a Nigerian mother chase a chicken,
grab it, and pull its head off to cook for dinner,
and that.
Speaker 1: The analysis says, is the real fear.
Speaker 3: Our survival depends entirely on our utility to the superintelligence.
Not all pets are kept for companionship, Some are just
a resource.
Speaker 1: Are we needed alive or we needed dead? Are we
entertainment or are we just a nuisance?
Speaker 3: Our fate is completely out of our hands at that point.
We're trying so hard to control our destiny with technology,
but that same tech could make our survival dependent on
an alien intelligence's dinner plans.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've covered simulations immortality AI overlords. Let's bring
this back down to Earth for the last section, or rather,
why we aren't on Mars right.
Speaker 3: The source makes this really bold prediction that the probability
of us going to another planet in our lifetime is
basically zero, and this flies.
Speaker 1: In the face of everything we hear from private space companies. Yeah,
but the argument is so cynical and historically sound.
Speaker 3: Dak humanity only does these massive, expensive, large scale projects
if there is a clear geopolitical reason.
Speaker 1: It has to be about economics or defense. It's never
just because it's the next cool thing to do.
Speaker 3: And the perfect example, the one that proves the role,
is why we went to the Moon in the first place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't for science, not at all.
Speaker 3: It was to beat the Russians. The chronology is everything.
April nineteen sixty one, eury gagarn orbits the Earth, a
huge win for the Soviets.
Speaker 1: Six weeks later, President Kennedy goes before Congress. At that point,
the US can't even reliably launch a person into orbit
without the rocket exploiting.
Speaker 3: And yet he stands up and delivers what the source
calls a battle cry against communism.
Speaker 2: The mission wasn't science.
Speaker 3: It was showing the world that the path of freedom
was better than the path of tyranny.
Speaker 1: The check that Congress wrote for Apollo was signed out
of fear and a need for defense, not curiosity.
Speaker 3: The source argues, and I think history backs this up
that governments just don't spend scads of money just because
it was a cool thing to do. There has to
be a rivalry or a dire economic need.
Speaker 1: And the most tragic proof of this is what happened
after we won the race, the cancelation of Apollo.
Speaker 3: We got to the Moon, we looked over our shoulder
and the Russians weren't in the race anymore.
Speaker 2: They'd basically given up.
Speaker 1: And the second that geopolitical reason vanished, so.
Speaker 3: The money, the political will, everything, the Apollo program was canceled.
Speaker 2: We haven't been back to the Moon in over fifty years.
Speaker 1: And the source points out that Apollo eighteen was fully built,
it was flight ready, sitting there waiting to go.
Speaker 3: And now it's a tourist attraction in a museum. We
didn't go to Mars because there was no geopolitical rival
to beat. There no economic or defense reason to justify
the insane costs.
Speaker 1: This all ties into a larger idea, the secularization of ambition.
Speaker 3: In the past, you could get massive projects done for
the glory of God and royalty.
Speaker 2: You could build pyramids.
Speaker 3: Or cathedrals because the motivation was metaphysical.
Speaker 1: But those drivers don't work anymore. You can't convince a
modern democracy to spend trillions for the abstract glory of
a leader or a god.
Speaker 3: So today ambition has to be secular, and for that
you need one of two things to mobilize.
Speaker 1: That kind of capital, money or its war.
Speaker 3: Until going to Mars is about getting some vital resource
we need to survive, or about beating a rival nation
there for military advantage, the check just won't be written.
Speaker 1: It's pretty depressing take on what drives us that our
greatest achievements come from our deepest fears and rivalries, not
our highest hopes. It is so we've gone on quite
a journey here. We started by questioning our whole reality,
the idea we're just characters in a simulation facing down
Godzilla events created by a board programmer.
Speaker 3: Then we turn that into a practical mission, no matter what,
we have to actively make meaning get wiser, and try
to score a victory for humanity.
Speaker 1: We wrestled with the limits of our ambition, the trap
of immortality leading to stagnation and the rise of AI
forcing us to be more creative while also maybe positioning
itself as our utilitarian.
Speaker 3: Overlords, and we landed on the cold hard logic of history,
realizing our greatest achievement, going to the Moon, wasn't about glory,
but about the primal urge of geopolitical rivalry.
Speaker 1: The same rivalry that's missing today and keeping.
Speaker 3: Us stuck on Earth, and that tension is still there,
isn't it. We strive for individual meaning and free will
even while all this evidence suggests we're just puppets constrained
by a programmer or by the simple math of global competition.
Speaker 1: It leaves you with this huge existential challenge. We want
to believe we're in charge of our own story, but
maybe these massive external forces are the ones really steering
the ship.
Speaker 3: So we'll leave you with a thought that comes directly
from all this. The source suggests that big disasters, pandemics, wars,
political shocks are just the programmer stirring the pot.
Speaker 1: So here's the question for you to think about. If
you accepted that as true. Does knowing your suffering might
just be entertainment? Does that make you feel more compelled
to score a victory for humanity or does it make
you feel so powerless that you just give up trying?
Speaker 2: That really is the ultimate choice, isn't it It?
Speaker 1: Is Think about it until next time. Keep following the
thrilling threads of knowledge,