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All right. So...
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Can you see me?
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Hey!
Yeah, there you are. Hey, Paul.
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Hey! So I'm just now
starting the audio recorder.
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All right, so that's set up.
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And I'm starting
the video recorder.
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And I'm just making sure
that it's recording.
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Okay. So... Hello!
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One of the things that
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you wrote about was sort
of your first primitive idea
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- of simulation theory as a kid.
- Yeah.
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Yeah, can you describe
what that was like?
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Can I do one thing before that?
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Yeah.
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'Cause this is gonna set
the tenor for everything.
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Please.
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Okay. I was in a class
when I was in college,
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I went to the University
of Missouri, Columbia.
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This was in the early '90s.
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And a teacher was
in front of the class
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and the teacher said,
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"Something interesting
about the brain
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is that we actually can map
what we think
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about the human nervous system
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by the highest level
of technology of the day."
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So for example,
when the aqueducts were big,
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people thought that
humors controlled the body.
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That different liquids
would come in and teach you...
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or make you feel
a different way.
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And then whenever
the telegraph came,
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then all of a sudden
we thought,
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"Well, these are nerve impulses
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that go down
sort of like wires."
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And then she said, "Now we know
that the brain is a computer."
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And I raised my hand, I said,
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"Because that's our highest
level of technology."
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And she said, "No, the brain
is a computer."
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And I didn't do that well
in the class, but the thing is,
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so when we talk
about simulation theory...
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we, right now, are living
in a time where,
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you know, you have
the PS4, PSVR,
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you know,
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I'm a Sony brand whore,
so I apologize
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for not throwing out
other things.
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But the basic, you know,
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virtual reality level
of simulation
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is something
that we can use as a model.
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But it isn't necessarily
what is going on,
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and I think that's important.
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That we can use it
and we can understand
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that's what's going on,
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but we aren't necessarily
in a server room somewhere.
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It might be something different.
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You know, if you run into
a thing in the world
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that you don't understand,
your brain is gonna go,
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"Okay, maybe
this is what this is."
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And as technology
gets more advanced
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we'll have better ways
of describing it.
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So,
everything that I describe here
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keep in mind, you know,
I'm a 21st Century guy,
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that's how my brain works.
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If you're watching this
in the future, we aren't dumb,
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it's just that we don't have
the tools that you have
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to think of this stuff.
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In September of 1977,
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the writer Philip K. Dick,
creator of Minority Report,
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Blade Runner,
and Total Recall,
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addressed an audience of fans
in Metz, France.
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They expected a talk
about science fiction but his
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lecture explored religion
and philosophy as well.
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To him, all three subjects
were deeply interconnected.
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The title of my address is...
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"If you find this world bad,
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you should see
some of the others."
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The subject of this speech...
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is a topic which has been
discovered recently,
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and which may not exist at all.
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I may be talking
about something
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that does not exist.
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Therefore, I am free to say
everything or nothing.
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We are living in
a computer programmed reality
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and the only clue
we have to it
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is when some variable
is changed.
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and some alteration
in our reality occurs.
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Philip K. Dick's belief
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that we were living in
a digitally created,
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artificial world
sounded like madness in 1977.
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But then in 1999,
The Matrix introduced
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simulation theory
to the wider world.
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In the years since the film,
this idea has begun
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to be taken seriously
as more than science fiction.
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It is fiercely debated online
and in real life
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in classrooms, laboratories,
design studios and courtrooms.
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So the idea is right,
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any sufficiently
advanced civilization
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could create simulation
that's like our existence,
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and so the theory follows
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that maybe
we're in the simulation.
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- Have you thought about this?
- A lot.
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And are we...
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I am actually in a simulation,
and so are you.
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So, are we living
in a simulation?
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I find it hard to argue
against that possibility.
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If all of this is some kind
of informational process
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running in some machine.
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The machine is not
in this universe,
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it's somewhere else,
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and this universe is
a consequence of its running.
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This is kind of getting that
artifacting or whatever problem.
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Brother Mystwood,
hey, how are you?
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Hello. I am sorry about
the strange lighting.
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All I have is Christmas lights.
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You talked about, you know,
sort of this journey
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starting after a spade
of synchronicities.
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- What were those like?
- Yes.
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There's a number of rather
small examples.
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You know, the kind of everyday
things that you would,
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you know...
I'm thinking of someone,
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and I turn the corner
and there they are.
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I would start giving myself
sort of tests.
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I'm thinking of an orange fish.
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I would like to see an orange
fish in the next 10 minutes.
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And 10 minutes later
in the walk,
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I turn down a street
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and there's a restaurant
with an orange fish on it
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that I'd never seen before.
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So, small things like that
occur with enough regularity.
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I began to sort of track
my days numerically.
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And if you'll allow me to go
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on a tangent a little bit here,
Rodney.
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I don't enjoy the average
five-day week.
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I like to work in weeks
of 12 days.
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I would notice that sort
of on every 12th day
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I would see a certain
type of thing pop up
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and I tracked this over the
course of about a year.
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And long story short,
started to notice
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you know, things that would pop
up with a certain regularity.
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You know, on every third day,
for instance, I would kind of...
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that would be when something
would happen
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sort of related to my career.
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Or every fifth day
I would notice an interesting
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synchronicity related
to my family,
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so on and so forth.
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And at a certain point
of course,
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what becomes hard to delineate,
is this regularity
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something that I'm noticing
or something that I'm making?
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You know, is it a Schrodinger
type of situation,
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where just by virtue
of staring at this thing,
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it becomes something
that it's not.
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One of the big things was
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that I would go to a lot
of places with my parents
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and they would be empty.
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Or very few people.
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Like a shopping mall with not
a lot of people in there.
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Driving down the road
and never seeing another car.
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Things like that.
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This is because I moved
from Pontiac, Illinois,
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which had more people,
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to Dorsey, Illinois,
which had like 500 people.
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Our nearest neighbor was
a quarter of a mile
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down the road
and all that.
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So I didn't interact
with a lot of people.
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And one of the things
that I thought,
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again, this is in my little,
you know,
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I moved there when I was in
like second grade...
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In my little brain
I was like, "A-ha!
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This is a great way
of saving time and money
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because they won't need
to have as many people."
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Occasionally, I would
go to St. Louis...
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which was about 50 miles away.
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But whenever we did,
my Dad had a very tight control
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over our schedule
and our itinerary, you know.
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Once I saw...
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...the idea of a facade,
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you know, this is
on a western movie thing.
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Once I saw the idea of it,
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I was like, "Oh, well,
that's what's happening."
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All this time that
we're spending in the car,
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this 50 minutes
that it takes us,
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we're inside this car
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they're playing, you know,
this film of us driving
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while they're changing all the
sets into the St. Louis set.
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But I'm not gonna get to go
and see everything
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because my dad is gonna
be there to make sure
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that we hit the points
we're supposed to hit
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and then we get back in the car
and we go.
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Can you see me? There!
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I am an East Coaster
who lives in Los Angeles.
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I have an electrical
engineering degree from Harvard.
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I'm an entrepreneur.
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And I've also...
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I've got Crohn's disease.
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And it all plays in
to the simulation.
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I think the sort of
basic idea is that
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if you believed it enough...
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incredibly high-power
computing devices
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are gonna be distributed
in society
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and that the computers
will get stronger and stronger
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like our cell phones...
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Hey, you guys! Hey! No! Quiet!
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So, you know, if there are
in fact...
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enough machines that are running
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video game-style
world simulations
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the question is, you know, if
there's that many fake realities
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and only one base reality,
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what are the chances that you
happen to be in base reality?
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The odds that we're
in base reality
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is one in billions.
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The most
influential statistics-based
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look at simulation theory
was a 2003 article
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by Oxford professor
Nick Bostrom.
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It was titled "Are You Living
in a Computer Simulation?"
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Well, I was at the time a...
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kind of post-doctoral fellow
at Yale University.
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The ideas in some vague form
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have been with me
for quite some time
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that amounted to something more
than just idle speculation.
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And so I wrote that up
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and published that in
Philosophical Quarterly.
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And it immediately evoked
a huge amount of interest.
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And has continued to be
a huge amount of interest.
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It seems to come in waves
every year or two.
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Some new set of people
discover it for the first time.
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So I make a distinction between
the simulation hypothesis
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which is the hypothesis
that we are literally
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in a computer simulation
engineered
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by some advanced civilization.
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And the simulation argument.
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And it uses some simple
probability theory,
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but the basic idea can be
quite easily grasped.
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Which is that at least one
of three propositions is true.
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The first alternative is that
most all civilizations
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at our current stage
of technological development
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go extinct before they reach
technological maturity.
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The second alternative is
that there is
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a very strong convergence
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in virtually all technologically
mature civilizations
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in that they all lose interest
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in creating simulations
of this kind.
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They all lose interest
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in creating
ancestor simulations.
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And the third alternative
is the simulation hypothesis
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that we are almost certainly
in a computer simulation.
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So if you reject these first two
propositions, it follows that
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almost all people with our kinds
of experience are simulated.
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And then, conditional on that
being the case, I argue
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we should think we are probably
one of the simulated ones
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rather than one
of the non-simulated,
251
00:13:51,173 --> 00:13:52,574
exceptional, original ones.
252
00:13:53,076 --> 00:13:55,477
Personally, for me,
it's all about probabilities.
253
00:13:55,611 --> 00:14:01,283
I'm someone who thinks in terms
of probabilities, anyway.
254
00:14:01,985 --> 00:14:04,686
And I've just found in my life
255
00:14:04,821 --> 00:14:08,091
that there's lots
of low probability outcomes
256
00:14:08,523 --> 00:14:10,860
happen again and again
and again, and again.
257
00:14:18,533 --> 00:14:19,468
Bam.
258
00:14:19,635 --> 00:14:21,203
If I keep glancing off
to the side,
259
00:14:21,336 --> 00:14:23,106
it's 'cause my screen's
over there.
260
00:14:23,238 --> 00:14:24,172
Oh, okay.
261
00:14:24,506 --> 00:14:26,042
You're actually
at my drawing table.
262
00:14:26,174 --> 00:14:27,175
So, if I keep
glancing over there,
263
00:14:27,309 --> 00:14:28,577
I'm just looking at you.
264
00:14:29,478 --> 00:14:30,712
And I'll look back to camera.
265
00:14:30,847 --> 00:14:32,481
What kind of drawing do you do?
266
00:14:34,483 --> 00:14:37,653
- It depends. You know Moebius?
- Sure.
267
00:14:37,954 --> 00:14:40,957
Yeah, I re-drew one
of his entire books
268
00:14:41,590 --> 00:14:45,394
with characters from Peanuts
instead of characters from him.
269
00:14:45,895 --> 00:14:48,764
And then I just do
painting and stuff like...
270
00:14:49,431 --> 00:14:52,802
just doodling like
fake Mignola stuff.
271
00:14:53,136 --> 00:14:54,070
Uh-huh.
272
00:14:54,636 --> 00:14:57,006
Nothing that wonderful, but...
273
00:14:57,940 --> 00:14:59,374
I'm working more
on the Moebius-style
274
00:14:59,508 --> 00:15:01,110
for an entire new book
right now.
275
00:15:01,243 --> 00:15:03,880
That's cool.
So, are you a full-time...
276
00:15:04,379 --> 00:15:06,214
- professional comic artist?
- No, no.
277
00:15:06,816 --> 00:15:10,086
I wish. No, I do
Special Ed teaching.
278
00:15:10,953 --> 00:15:12,654
When did you start
thinking that there's more
279
00:15:12,789 --> 00:15:15,424
to simulation theory
than Science Fiction can see?
280
00:15:15,892 --> 00:15:19,028
Well, we know Musk. When he
started talking about it
281
00:15:19,996 --> 00:15:21,630
I really started
thinking about it more.
282
00:15:22,031 --> 00:15:25,534
The strongest argument
for us being in a simulation...
283
00:15:25,667 --> 00:15:27,904
probably being in a simulation,
I think is the following.
284
00:15:29,604 --> 00:15:33,943
That 40 years ago, we had Pong.
285
00:15:34,110 --> 00:15:35,812
Like two rectangles and a dot.
286
00:15:36,145 --> 00:15:37,880
That was what games were.
287
00:15:39,048 --> 00:15:40,415
Now, 40 years later,
288
00:15:40,549 --> 00:15:43,385
we have photo-realistic
3D simulations
289
00:15:43,518 --> 00:15:45,420
with millions of people
playing simultaneously.
290
00:15:45,721 --> 00:15:47,056
And it's getting better
every year.
291
00:15:47,190 --> 00:15:50,893
If you assume any rate
of improvement at all
292
00:15:52,028 --> 00:15:55,564
then the games will become
indistinguishable from reality.
293
00:16:00,402 --> 00:16:04,974
I think that triggered me
to really think hard about it.
294
00:16:12,181 --> 00:16:15,350
Does any one of us remember
in any dim fashion
295
00:16:15,717 --> 00:16:19,354
a worse Earth, circa 1977,
than this?
296
00:16:19,822 --> 00:16:23,525
Have our young men seen visions
and our old men dreamed dreams?
297
00:16:23,692 --> 00:16:24,459
I have.
298
00:16:25,128 --> 00:16:28,663
Nightmare dreams, specifically,
of prisons and jailers
299
00:16:29,065 --> 00:16:30,800
and ubiquitous police.
300
00:16:33,268 --> 00:16:37,240
I wrote out these dreams
in novel after novel,
301
00:16:37,506 --> 00:16:38,774
story after story.
302
00:16:39,108 --> 00:16:41,944
To name two in which
this prior ugly present
303
00:16:42,078 --> 00:16:43,179
obtained most clearly,
304
00:16:43,411 --> 00:16:45,148
I cite
The Man in the High Castle
305
00:16:45,447 --> 00:16:49,384
and my 1974 novel about
the US as a police state
306
00:16:49,651 --> 00:16:52,054
called Flow My Tears,
The Policeman Said.
307
00:16:52,721 --> 00:16:54,891
I'm going to be very candid
with you.
308
00:16:55,191 --> 00:16:59,327
I wrote both novels based on
fragmentary residual memories
309
00:16:59,494 --> 00:17:01,563
of such a horrid
slave state world.
310
00:17:02,031 --> 00:17:04,299
Or perhaps the term "world"
is the wrong one
311
00:17:04,432 --> 00:17:06,035
and I should say
"United States",
312
00:17:06,368 --> 00:17:07,569
since in both novels,
313
00:17:07,702 --> 00:17:09,604
I was writing
about my own country.
314
00:17:10,705 --> 00:17:12,774
Some people claim
to remember past lives.
315
00:17:12,909 --> 00:17:16,344
I claim to remember
a very different present life.
316
00:17:16,979 --> 00:17:20,216
I know of no one who has ever
made this claim before,
317
00:17:20,382 --> 00:17:21,516
but I rather suspect
318
00:17:21,650 --> 00:17:23,485
that my experience
is not unique.
319
00:17:24,020 --> 00:17:26,621
I can even tell you
what caused me to remember.
320
00:17:27,290 --> 00:17:31,127
In late February of 1974,
I was given sodium pentothal
321
00:17:31,260 --> 00:17:33,628
for the extraction
of impacted wisdom teeth.
322
00:17:34,063 --> 00:17:36,665
Later that day, back home again
but still
323
00:17:36,799 --> 00:17:39,501
deeply under the influence
of the sodium pentothal,
324
00:17:39,768 --> 00:17:42,704
I had a short, acute flash
of recovered memory.
325
00:17:43,239 --> 00:17:45,407
In one instance,
I caught it all.
326
00:17:45,842 --> 00:17:48,811
You are free to believe me
or to disbelieve,
327
00:17:49,111 --> 00:17:51,680
but please take my word on it
that I am not joking.
328
00:17:51,814 --> 00:17:54,716
This is very serious,
a matter of importance.
329
00:17:55,084 --> 00:17:57,619
I am sure that,
at the very least, you'll agree
330
00:17:57,820 --> 00:18:01,523
that for me even to claim this
is in itself amazing.
331
00:18:04,759 --> 00:18:07,529
Philip K. Dick
wrote over 8,000 pages
332
00:18:07,662 --> 00:18:09,764
trying to understand
the recovered memories
333
00:18:09,899 --> 00:18:13,735
he experienced in February
and March of 1974,
334
00:18:13,870 --> 00:18:17,106
an experience he called
"2-3-7-4".
335
00:18:17,874 --> 00:18:20,709
This writing is known as
"The Exegesis".
336
00:18:21,244 --> 00:18:22,510
Erik Davis,
337
00:18:22,879 --> 00:18:24,713
working with Pamela Davis
and Jonathan Lethem,
338
00:18:25,014 --> 00:18:27,950
wrestled with this text
to edit a single book from it.
339
00:18:29,852 --> 00:18:31,320
It was a great experience,
340
00:18:31,686 --> 00:18:35,224
although a kind of
crazy-making one in a way.
341
00:18:35,358 --> 00:18:40,695
And you're in the antechamber
of the guy's problems
342
00:18:40,863 --> 00:18:44,432
and his trauma,
and his despair.
343
00:18:44,666 --> 00:18:47,003
It was so... such a vast text
344
00:18:47,136 --> 00:18:50,339
that you kinda had to do it
by attrition, really.
345
00:18:50,472 --> 00:18:52,574
There were a number of things
that really worked.
346
00:18:52,707 --> 00:18:54,643
One is that
when he was really engaged
347
00:18:54,777 --> 00:18:55,945
in his own writing...
348
00:18:56,112 --> 00:18:57,545
...we included that.
349
00:18:57,712 --> 00:18:59,481
When he was
describing experiences,
350
00:18:59,614 --> 00:19:00,783
we included that.
351
00:19:01,017 --> 00:19:02,450
There's a part where
352
00:19:02,818 --> 00:19:05,553
Dick describes the writing in
"Exegesis" as a "hell chore".
353
00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:08,257
I think it really shows
the challenges
354
00:19:08,391 --> 00:19:11,493
of wrestling with
an extraordinary experience,
355
00:19:11,626 --> 00:19:13,095
and particularly experiences
356
00:19:13,262 --> 00:19:16,198
which we can find throughout
religious history
357
00:19:16,332 --> 00:19:20,102
of seeming insights
into reality that,
358
00:19:20,269 --> 00:19:22,437
for whatever positive vision
they give you
359
00:19:22,570 --> 00:19:24,106
about the true
nature of things,
360
00:19:24,673 --> 00:19:26,075
do manage to undermine
361
00:19:26,309 --> 00:19:28,210
your sense
that the everyday world
362
00:19:28,344 --> 00:19:33,448
is at all a coherent,
realistic operation.
363
00:19:33,648 --> 00:19:37,119
And that's quite
a harrowing ride.
364
00:19:44,827 --> 00:19:46,095
I could probably put together
a list
365
00:19:46,228 --> 00:19:49,698
of all the various
small synchronicities
366
00:19:49,832 --> 00:19:51,067
that kept popping up,
367
00:19:51,566 --> 00:19:53,501
but they were just so mundane,
but there was so many of them
368
00:19:53,635 --> 00:19:57,039
that eventually
I took one of these,
369
00:19:57,539 --> 00:19:59,641
you know, a particularly
auspicious day,
370
00:19:59,774 --> 00:20:01,177
I guess, for myself.
371
00:20:01,609 --> 00:20:04,880
And decided I was going to do
a sensory deprivation tank.
372
00:20:06,215 --> 00:20:08,250
Which is not something
I had done before.
373
00:20:08,750 --> 00:20:10,086
But it was just...
374
00:20:11,287 --> 00:20:15,157
something that felt like it'd
be an interesting experience.
375
00:20:15,590 --> 00:20:16,826
And so, I did that.
376
00:20:17,059 --> 00:20:19,462
And there's a guy
in New York here,
377
00:20:19,627 --> 00:20:20,896
on 23rd Street
378
00:20:21,030 --> 00:20:22,264
who has
a sensory deprivation tank
379
00:20:22,398 --> 00:20:23,665
in his apartment,
380
00:20:23,866 --> 00:20:25,201
which is a strange thing,
but you go in,
381
00:20:25,334 --> 00:20:27,069
he gives you the spiel.
382
00:20:27,436 --> 00:20:29,537
You ask him any questions,
and then you go into it.
383
00:20:30,473 --> 00:20:32,674
And I, never having
had done this before,
384
00:20:32,808 --> 00:20:34,743
I kind of went into it
385
00:20:34,877 --> 00:20:36,379
not really knowing
what to expect.
386
00:20:36,544 --> 00:20:38,280
But he said, just sort of
ask for what you want
387
00:20:38,414 --> 00:20:40,715
or ask for, you know,
what you'd like to know.
388
00:20:40,850 --> 00:20:42,985
And the sense I got was like,
389
00:20:43,119 --> 00:20:44,753
"Yes, I'm asking the universe,
or whatever
390
00:20:44,887 --> 00:20:46,322
but I'm also really
asking myself."
391
00:20:46,455 --> 00:20:49,859
And maybe those aren't
different things, right?
392
00:20:58,934 --> 00:21:00,469
The first few minutes
were very...
393
00:21:01,404 --> 00:21:03,372
I was very aware
of where I was.
394
00:21:03,506 --> 00:21:04,807
But after a few more minutes,
395
00:21:05,408 --> 00:21:07,910
I sort of stopped
sensing my body.
396
00:21:08,144 --> 00:21:10,813
I could now hear my eyelids.
397
00:21:11,013 --> 00:21:12,614
I could actually hear
what I thought might be
398
00:21:12,747 --> 00:21:14,150
my nervous system.
399
00:21:14,450 --> 00:21:17,219
I kinda, in that state,
had to come out, and said,
400
00:21:17,619 --> 00:21:18,988
"Listen, I get the sense
401
00:21:19,121 --> 00:21:20,790
that you're trying
to tell me something."
402
00:21:21,357 --> 00:21:23,959
I'm not sure I even knew who
the "you" was I was talking to.
403
00:21:24,093 --> 00:21:26,128
I don't know if it was
the universe or...
404
00:21:26,462 --> 00:21:29,764
I'm also an ordained minister,
so I was raised with that.
405
00:21:30,332 --> 00:21:31,566
So there's, you know,
406
00:21:31,699 --> 00:21:33,235
there's a
God part of it for me.
407
00:21:36,472 --> 00:21:37,840
Just sort of asking it,
408
00:21:37,973 --> 00:21:39,308
come out, just come out
409
00:21:39,442 --> 00:21:41,077
and do what it is
you'd like to say.
410
00:21:54,123 --> 00:21:57,093
Yeah, and I'm not
a New Age guy at all.
411
00:21:57,226 --> 00:21:58,928
Or at least I wasn't
before I did this.
412
00:21:59,061 --> 00:22:01,864
But my head started to buzz.
413
00:22:02,131 --> 00:22:05,468
My forehead just started
to violent pounding.
414
00:22:05,667 --> 00:22:08,636
A swirling buzz that I...
415
00:22:08,971 --> 00:22:10,705
I felt like I opened up,
416
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:12,575
and I just
became aware like, "Okay
417
00:22:13,042 --> 00:22:15,344
I am not a body at all,
I am a code.
418
00:22:15,544 --> 00:22:17,913
I am a string of letters
and numbers
419
00:22:18,047 --> 00:22:19,415
and acids, and so forth.
420
00:22:19,548 --> 00:22:21,150
And I knew this, of course,
from DNA,
421
00:22:21,283 --> 00:22:24,286
but more than that,
it means, you know,
422
00:22:24,854 --> 00:22:28,357
nothing on me is real."
423
00:22:29,125 --> 00:22:30,692
And nothing on anyone is real.
424
00:22:30,826 --> 00:22:33,395
I'm pattern, I'm a code
constantly replicating itself.
425
00:22:33,529 --> 00:22:36,232
I'm a vibration,
and that's what it is.
426
00:22:36,398 --> 00:22:37,632
Got out of the tank
427
00:22:37,833 --> 00:22:39,268
and I started talking
to the guy.
428
00:22:41,103 --> 00:22:42,304
And he was talking about,
429
00:22:42,438 --> 00:22:43,638
"Oh, it's your
third eye opening
430
00:22:43,771 --> 00:22:45,241
and sometimes that happens"
431
00:22:45,374 --> 00:22:46,976
And I asked him,
"Well, what do I do with that?"
432
00:22:47,109 --> 00:22:48,310
And he's like, "I don't know.
Enjoy it."
433
00:22:50,645 --> 00:22:53,849
I've always had a little bit
of a sense of this,
434
00:22:53,983 --> 00:22:55,717
but this is the big event.
435
00:23:00,089 --> 00:23:01,957
I was about 11 or 12...
436
00:23:02,791 --> 00:23:04,860
and I'm adopted.
437
00:23:05,261 --> 00:23:07,463
I'm a pastor's son.
438
00:23:07,930 --> 00:23:09,598
My adopted dad
is a pastor,
439
00:23:09,731 --> 00:23:11,133
so I go to church every Sunday.
440
00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:13,903
And I believe at this point
in time, though,
441
00:23:14,036 --> 00:23:15,404
it wasn't a Sunday service.
442
00:23:15,538 --> 00:23:16,738
I think it was like
an Advent service.
443
00:23:16,872 --> 00:23:17,940
It was at nighttime.
444
00:23:18,507 --> 00:23:23,245
And most people have
some reference for church,
445
00:23:23,379 --> 00:23:24,413
but in case you don't,
446
00:23:25,147 --> 00:23:27,249
there are people,
they're dressed up
447
00:23:28,284 --> 00:23:30,553
and they're sitting in...
this is in the early 80s,
448
00:23:30,685 --> 00:23:33,189
so people dressed up more
than they maybe do now.
449
00:23:33,522 --> 00:23:37,293
And they're seating in pews.
Pews are like long benches.
450
00:23:38,127 --> 00:23:39,428
And they have
their hymnals open,
451
00:23:39,562 --> 00:23:40,462
and they're singing.
452
00:23:42,131 --> 00:23:44,967
And I look around
at everyone singing
453
00:23:45,733 --> 00:23:50,239
and I think to myself, "The way
we're making these noises,
454
00:23:50,772 --> 00:23:55,144
is that we have these meat
flaps and we're forcing air
455
00:23:55,277 --> 00:23:57,813
through these meat flaps
and we're making noise.
456
00:23:58,214 --> 00:23:59,882
And we're animals, basically,
457
00:24:00,015 --> 00:24:02,117
yet we put on all these clothes
458
00:24:02,284 --> 00:24:05,487
and we sit in this place,
and we're making these noises
459
00:24:05,621 --> 00:24:07,289
by forcing air
through our meat flaps,"
460
00:24:07,590 --> 00:24:10,259
and I start thinking about
how bodies move
461
00:24:10,526 --> 00:24:12,760
and how weird it is
that they move that way.
462
00:24:13,028 --> 00:24:14,897
And just the absurdity
of the situation
463
00:24:15,231 --> 00:24:16,966
keeps on going around,
around in my head.
464
00:24:17,299 --> 00:24:19,935
And I'm like,
"Oh, none of this is real.
465
00:24:20,069 --> 00:24:21,370
That's what's going on."
466
00:24:21,570 --> 00:24:23,239
And as soon as I had
that realization,
467
00:24:23,505 --> 00:24:25,574
the only way
I can describe it is,
468
00:24:25,841 --> 00:24:28,611
I was nowhere, I was nothing.
469
00:24:29,744 --> 00:24:33,349
I felt sort of like
loneliness was a thing.
470
00:24:33,482 --> 00:24:35,884
I was the
personification of it.
471
00:24:36,118 --> 00:24:39,021
I was cut off from everything.
It was only me.
472
00:24:39,822 --> 00:24:43,892
And it was soul-crushing
and claustrophobic.
473
00:24:44,526 --> 00:24:47,930
But I didn't see anything.
It wasn't that I saw blackness.
474
00:24:48,063 --> 00:24:50,733
I wasn't seeing
and I wasn't feeling.
475
00:24:50,899 --> 00:24:54,136
It was this
almost negation of self
476
00:24:54,270 --> 00:24:55,838
except that I was there
477
00:24:56,205 --> 00:25:00,442
feeling this weird emptiness,
this gone-ness.
478
00:25:08,550 --> 00:25:11,287
My entire life,
I'm living with family,
479
00:25:11,420 --> 00:25:14,189
and I'm real used to it.
Specifically, my brother.
480
00:25:15,658 --> 00:25:17,126
And then I go off.
481
00:25:17,593 --> 00:25:19,928
You know, the parents
are always like, "You're 18.
482
00:25:20,062 --> 00:25:21,163
We're kicking you out."
483
00:25:21,563 --> 00:25:23,165
But I kinda beat them
to the punch
484
00:25:23,299 --> 00:25:25,367
because, like,
the day after graduation,
485
00:25:25,501 --> 00:25:26,535
I was out of town.
486
00:25:26,735 --> 00:25:27,870
I had moved away.
487
00:25:28,003 --> 00:25:29,004
And I didn't come back
for years.
488
00:25:30,239 --> 00:25:32,875
But during that time,
I was just alone, you know.
489
00:25:33,008 --> 00:25:34,176
I lived with a friend,
490
00:25:34,376 --> 00:25:35,544
but I didn't have
my brother with me.
491
00:25:36,478 --> 00:25:39,581
And all we would do
for like two straight years
492
00:25:39,715 --> 00:25:40,616
is just play video games.
493
00:25:40,749 --> 00:25:42,217
I worked at a Chili's,
494
00:25:43,018 --> 00:25:45,154
and I would always come home,
we would do stupid things
495
00:25:45,287 --> 00:25:49,725
like play Guitar Hero
for two straight days,
496
00:25:49,858 --> 00:25:54,296
or we would get a game
and do it from front to back,
497
00:25:54,430 --> 00:25:56,231
and then just go back in
and just beat it again.
498
00:25:56,899 --> 00:25:59,968
All the time, video games,
for years and years,
499
00:26:00,836 --> 00:26:02,271
that's literally all I did.
500
00:26:03,272 --> 00:26:05,307
Didn't draw,
didn't do anything.
501
00:26:12,448 --> 00:26:14,650
And so I got into
a dark place there.
502
00:26:14,784 --> 00:26:17,821
It's like, "Maybe I'm stuck
in this rut on purpose.
503
00:26:17,953 --> 00:26:20,022
Maybe it's not my design.
It's whatever."
504
00:26:20,189 --> 00:26:21,724
I'm not religious at all,
505
00:26:22,024 --> 00:26:25,761
but how do I reconcile feeling
like I'm in a rut, though?
506
00:26:26,328 --> 00:26:28,497
Like a preprogrammed rut.
507
00:26:28,897 --> 00:26:30,065
I have to go the science route.
508
00:26:30,834 --> 00:26:35,304
And the only really blending
of religion in science there is
509
00:26:35,537 --> 00:26:38,307
would probably be
a simulation theory,
510
00:26:38,941 --> 00:26:40,242
to be honest with you.
511
00:26:42,812 --> 00:26:44,413
When I had that
first experience
512
00:26:44,546 --> 00:26:46,615
in the church,
the analogy that I use is like,
513
00:26:46,749 --> 00:26:50,085
let's say that your grandpa
has a favorite radio.
514
00:26:50,619 --> 00:26:52,421
And he listens to it
all the time, and all that.
515
00:26:52,554 --> 00:26:55,424
And one day, you decide
to take that radio apart.
516
00:26:55,859 --> 00:26:57,626
And you're looking
at all the pieces
517
00:26:58,060 --> 00:26:59,695
and "Hey, hey,
I took this apart."
518
00:26:59,895 --> 00:27:02,598
And then you realize you can't
put it back together again.
519
00:27:03,298 --> 00:27:04,767
That's the feeling that I had
520
00:27:04,967 --> 00:27:07,837
when I was in that sort
of null state, if you will.
521
00:27:08,337 --> 00:27:09,972
And in my mind...
522
00:27:10,874 --> 00:27:15,177
that is what's outside
of the simulation.
523
00:27:24,953 --> 00:27:26,388
Contemplating this possibility
524
00:27:26,522 --> 00:27:28,624
of a lateral arrangement
of worlds,
525
00:27:29,525 --> 00:27:31,360
a plurality
of overlapping Earths
526
00:27:31,493 --> 00:27:34,730
along whose linking axis
a person can somehow move
527
00:27:34,997 --> 00:27:36,532
and travel in a mysterious way
528
00:27:36,665 --> 00:27:38,934
from worst to fair
to good to excellent.
529
00:27:39,301 --> 00:27:41,470
Contemplating this
in theological terms,
530
00:27:41,838 --> 00:27:45,174
perhaps we could say that
here with we suddenly decipher
531
00:27:45,407 --> 00:27:48,010
the elliptical utterances
which Christ expressed
532
00:27:48,143 --> 00:27:49,813
regarding the kingdom of God.
533
00:27:50,112 --> 00:27:51,915
Specifically,
where it is located.
534
00:27:52,514 --> 00:27:54,784
He seems to have given
contradictory
535
00:27:54,918 --> 00:27:55,951
and puzzling answers.
536
00:27:56,385 --> 00:27:58,954
But suppose, just suppose
for an instant
537
00:27:59,488 --> 00:28:01,223
that the cause of the perplexity
538
00:28:01,390 --> 00:28:02,558
lay not in any desire
539
00:28:02,691 --> 00:28:04,593
on his part
to baffle or to hide,
540
00:28:04,828 --> 00:28:06,995
but in the inadequacy
of the question.
541
00:28:07,831 --> 00:28:09,731
"My kingdom is not
of this world,"
542
00:28:09,866 --> 00:28:11,200
he is reported to have said.
543
00:28:11,733 --> 00:28:14,838
"The kingdom is within you,
or possibly it is among you."
544
00:28:15,905 --> 00:28:18,474
It was his mission
to teach his disciples
545
00:28:18,774 --> 00:28:22,277
the secret of crossing along
this orthogonal path.
546
00:28:22,744 --> 00:28:25,280
He did not merely report
what lay there.
547
00:28:25,614 --> 00:28:27,349
He taught the method
of getting there.
548
00:28:27,817 --> 00:28:30,052
But, tragically,
the secret was lost.
549
00:28:30,519 --> 00:28:33,088
The enemy, the Roman authority,
crushed it.
550
00:28:34,423 --> 00:28:36,992
When I saw Star Wars
this morning
551
00:28:37,827 --> 00:28:39,061
I thought to myself...
552
00:28:40,362 --> 00:28:41,463
déjà vu.
553
00:28:46,235 --> 00:28:48,872
The simulation idea
has been around way before
554
00:28:49,004 --> 00:28:52,007
all of us started thinking
about computers.
555
00:28:52,441 --> 00:28:55,477
The concept of people standing
at the Pearly Gates
556
00:28:55,611 --> 00:28:57,579
and looking at their lives,
right?
557
00:28:57,881 --> 00:29:02,618
What is that if not
a debrief, if you will,
558
00:29:02,751 --> 00:29:05,420
after you get out
of a simulation?
559
00:29:05,955 --> 00:29:08,257
Hey, Miller, look what I found.
560
00:29:08,457 --> 00:29:09,324
Wow.
561
00:29:10,125 --> 00:29:12,094
Realistic, isn't it, Mr. Miller?
562
00:29:12,561 --> 00:29:15,497
René Descartes
tried to build an epistemology
563
00:29:15,832 --> 00:29:19,101
from a foundation of skepticism
and radical doubt.
564
00:29:19,468 --> 00:29:21,570
I will suppose
that some malicious demon
565
00:29:21,737 --> 00:29:24,072
has employed his energies
to deceive me.
566
00:29:24,773 --> 00:29:27,609
I shall think that the sky,
the air, the earth
567
00:29:27,776 --> 00:29:30,245
and all external things
are merely the delusions
568
00:29:30,379 --> 00:29:32,782
which he has devised
to ensnare my judgement.
569
00:29:33,749 --> 00:29:37,586
I shall consider myself as not
having hands or flesh or senses
570
00:29:37,887 --> 00:29:40,689
but his falsely believing
that I have all these things.
571
00:29:41,323 --> 00:29:43,692
A slightly more modern version
of the same idea
572
00:29:43,826 --> 00:29:45,962
is the brain in a vat.
Where, again,
573
00:29:46,428 --> 00:29:49,431
you try to challenge
the philosopher
574
00:29:49,665 --> 00:29:51,366
to prove that
the external world exists
575
00:29:51,500 --> 00:29:54,570
and that he or she
is not a brain in a vat
576
00:29:54,871 --> 00:29:56,873
in some
mad scientist's laboratory
577
00:29:57,006 --> 00:29:58,875
being kind of fed inputs
578
00:29:59,308 --> 00:30:01,143
that mimic what
the external world
579
00:30:01,276 --> 00:30:02,678
would have done.
580
00:30:13,455 --> 00:30:14,991
It didn't really matter
how realistic
581
00:30:15,123 --> 00:30:16,325
these thought experiments were.
582
00:30:16,458 --> 00:30:17,827
They were just
logical possibilities,
583
00:30:17,994 --> 00:30:20,362
and the challenge was,
how can you disprove them?
584
00:30:24,166 --> 00:30:25,300
One thousand years
585
00:30:25,434 --> 00:30:27,102
before
Descartes' Evil Demon
586
00:30:27,302 --> 00:30:31,139
a similar idea was put forth
in Ancient Greece by Plato.
587
00:30:31,773 --> 00:30:34,242
He describes, "Imagine,
the situation.
588
00:30:34,643 --> 00:30:38,815
There are figures chained
inside of a cave from birth.
589
00:30:38,948 --> 00:30:41,149
They have no experience
of what's outside of it.
590
00:30:41,316 --> 00:30:42,584
They're looking at a wall,
591
00:30:42,952 --> 00:30:44,453
and on the wall they kind
of see this projection."
592
00:30:44,921 --> 00:30:46,856
You see men
passing along the wall,
593
00:30:47,090 --> 00:30:48,825
carrying all sorts of articles
594
00:30:48,958 --> 00:30:51,226
which they hold projected
above the wall.
595
00:30:51,526 --> 00:30:53,595
Statues of men and animals
596
00:30:53,729 --> 00:30:56,531
made of wood and stone
and various materials.
597
00:31:00,435 --> 00:31:03,940
Of the objects, which are
being carried in like manner,
598
00:31:04,473 --> 00:31:06,575
they would only see
the shadows.
599
00:31:07,076 --> 00:31:08,577
Emily Pothast wrote about
600
00:31:08,710 --> 00:31:10,345
this parable's relevance
601
00:31:10,512 --> 00:31:12,648
to both simulation theory
and other aspects
602
00:31:12,849 --> 00:31:15,885
of digital communications
and miscommunications.
603
00:31:18,453 --> 00:31:20,322
It's a very cinematic metaphor,
604
00:31:20,455 --> 00:31:21,723
and I just love that,
605
00:31:22,190 --> 00:31:25,028
how that sort of imagination
of how film affects us.
606
00:31:25,761 --> 00:31:28,998
And just like there's
like that lossiness between
607
00:31:29,132 --> 00:31:31,968
what is really happening
and what perception shows us,
608
00:31:32,135 --> 00:31:35,337
there's sort of lossiness
between what media
609
00:31:35,470 --> 00:31:37,506
shows us and what
the real world outside
610
00:31:37,639 --> 00:31:39,641
of that media
representation is.
611
00:31:39,775 --> 00:31:40,877
So now,
612
00:31:41,243 --> 00:31:42,879
it's not just what their senses
decide to show them,
613
00:31:43,012 --> 00:31:44,680
it's what the media
decides to show them.
614
00:31:44,847 --> 00:31:47,482
And this is extremely
dangerous to our democracy.
615
00:31:48,051 --> 00:31:50,719
Let's go back to Hindu myths.
616
00:31:54,690 --> 00:31:57,526
You find these incredible myths
of like, you know,
617
00:31:57,726 --> 00:32:00,897
the king's going along and
stops for a well and he drinks
618
00:32:01,030 --> 00:32:03,398
and then he goes and has
a whole other existence,
619
00:32:03,532 --> 00:32:04,967
a whole other life.
620
00:32:05,233 --> 00:32:06,836
And then pop! He comes back in.
621
00:32:07,003 --> 00:32:09,204
And they'll even have worlds
within worlds within worlds.
622
00:32:09,337 --> 00:32:12,141
So, you have the structure
of worlds within worlds,
623
00:32:12,274 --> 00:32:13,408
and once you have that
624
00:32:13,709 --> 00:32:16,344
it undermines the primary world.
625
00:32:16,611 --> 00:32:18,246
It really kind of
crystalized for me
626
00:32:18,380 --> 00:32:19,816
when I started observing
627
00:32:19,949 --> 00:32:22,584
the experience
of the villager in Minecraft.
628
00:32:23,886 --> 00:32:25,888
He's a massively simplified
version of us.
629
00:32:26,122 --> 00:32:30,059
He has free will. He moves
about the space as he sees fit.
630
00:32:30,325 --> 00:32:31,626
But the interesting thing,
though,
631
00:32:31,794 --> 00:32:33,196
is for me what it was
with the villager is,
632
00:32:33,628 --> 00:32:36,398
you know, what does he do
when you, the avatar
633
00:32:37,100 --> 00:32:39,401
come down into the game
of Minecraft?
634
00:32:39,601 --> 00:32:41,670
When you inhabit your avatar
in Minecraft
635
00:32:41,804 --> 00:32:43,505
and you descend to Earth,
636
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,909
what does the villager do
when you encounter him?
637
00:32:47,409 --> 00:32:49,311
He looks at you, you know?
638
00:32:49,779 --> 00:32:52,414
He looks at you as if
you are the same as him.
639
00:32:52,547 --> 00:32:54,549
Of course, you're not.
Because you are being controlled
640
00:32:54,917 --> 00:32:56,451
by an intelligence,
a higher power.
641
00:32:57,053 --> 00:32:59,122
It'd be hilarious if Elon Musk
642
00:32:59,254 --> 00:33:00,288
was a player character.
643
00:33:01,157 --> 00:33:02,825
And he just comes
into the game, like,
644
00:33:02,959 --> 00:33:05,995
"Hey, you guys know...
...we're simulated."
645
00:33:07,230 --> 00:33:08,597
This could be some simulation.
646
00:33:08,730 --> 00:33:10,499
It could.
Do you entertain that?
647
00:33:10,833 --> 00:33:12,869
But then he gets
to log off, go back to...
648
00:33:13,735 --> 00:33:15,270
Artificer, heaven or whatever,
649
00:33:15,403 --> 00:33:19,307
and laugh with his weird
extra-dimensional friends
650
00:33:19,674 --> 00:33:21,576
"Hey, I was just playing around
651
00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:23,045
with that simulation
again today.
652
00:33:23,311 --> 00:33:25,680
And I keep dropping them hints,
but no one's picking it up."
653
00:33:26,883 --> 00:33:28,350
But it's interesting because,
654
00:33:28,617 --> 00:33:30,719
for me, the villager speaks to,
655
00:33:30,853 --> 00:33:33,421
there are a few different
levels of what, you know
656
00:33:33,655 --> 00:33:35,024
being raised in
the Christian faith,
657
00:33:35,158 --> 00:33:36,259
I would call God.
658
00:33:36,926 --> 00:33:38,760
There's the God
who made the world,
659
00:33:38,928 --> 00:33:40,762
and then there's the avatar
660
00:33:40,930 --> 00:33:42,430
who's descending in front
of you, and they're different
661
00:33:42,564 --> 00:33:43,900
because the God
who made the world
662
00:33:44,033 --> 00:33:45,734
is not the person
who's in front of you.
663
00:33:45,868 --> 00:33:47,302
We don't get to see that.
We don't get to see
664
00:33:47,435 --> 00:33:48,905
the creator of the game.
665
00:33:49,337 --> 00:33:53,375
To extend this metaphor
to perhaps ridiculous lengths.
666
00:33:53,542 --> 00:33:56,012
You know, one minute,
a pixel on your screen
667
00:33:56,444 --> 00:33:58,313
will be representing a flower.
668
00:33:59,081 --> 00:34:00,216
And it is that flower.
669
00:34:00,817 --> 00:34:02,450
And then the next minute,
a villager will walk in,
670
00:34:02,584 --> 00:34:04,954
and that pixel represents him.
671
00:34:05,353 --> 00:34:06,588
That pixel is part of him.
672
00:34:06,755 --> 00:34:08,257
It doesn't take much
to think about like,
673
00:34:08,390 --> 00:34:10,325
"Well, if I just extrapolate
that to three dimensions,
674
00:34:11,194 --> 00:34:14,964
it's the same as atom
is in cells. You know, one year
675
00:34:15,397 --> 00:34:16,498
this cell's part of me,
676
00:34:16,631 --> 00:34:17,834
and then tomorrow
it'll flake off
677
00:34:17,967 --> 00:34:19,135
and it'll be part
of something else.
678
00:34:19,268 --> 00:34:20,468
And every seven years,
679
00:34:20,635 --> 00:34:22,671
our cells
replace themselves, anyway."
680
00:34:24,106 --> 00:34:25,607
Artist Chris Ware
681
00:34:25,740 --> 00:34:27,475
was so struck
by the implications
682
00:34:27,609 --> 00:34:30,246
of Minecraft that he created
this cover illustration
683
00:34:30,378 --> 00:34:31,646
for The New Yorker.
684
00:34:33,682 --> 00:34:35,051
Video game itself...
685
00:34:36,052 --> 00:34:37,920
catches this
sort of sense of...
686
00:34:38,720 --> 00:34:40,555
I don't know, more than
anything just like death.
687
00:34:40,722 --> 00:34:42,158
Whenever I play it
with my daughter,
688
00:34:42,291 --> 00:34:44,593
I feel like we're dead
and we're flying around
689
00:34:44,726 --> 00:34:46,162
looking at the world
or something.
690
00:34:46,295 --> 00:34:49,431
It's the only experience
I've had that kind of
691
00:34:49,631 --> 00:34:51,666
closely approximates
what I imagine
692
00:34:52,534 --> 00:34:55,704
a disembodied consciousness
might experience, or something.
693
00:34:55,838 --> 00:34:57,639
I don't know how else
to really put it.
694
00:34:58,707 --> 00:35:01,010
We build these peculiar
sculptures.
695
00:35:01,143 --> 00:35:03,980
She built giant... Well,
"giant" is a relative term
696
00:35:04,113 --> 00:35:05,848
when you're talking
digitally being reality.
697
00:35:05,982 --> 00:35:08,818
But giant sculptures
of myself and my wife
698
00:35:09,218 --> 00:35:12,788
amidst kind of
golden farmhouses
699
00:35:12,922 --> 00:35:16,158
that then would go underground,
700
00:35:16,658 --> 00:35:18,794
and train lines
or mine cart lines
701
00:35:18,928 --> 00:35:22,131
that would go underground
and connect between...
702
00:35:24,432 --> 00:35:26,869
the landscape
that kind of pre-existed.
703
00:35:28,271 --> 00:35:31,941
But now she's 14, so she's
kind of passed beyond.
704
00:35:32,074 --> 00:35:34,576
But now she's in this
sort of baroque phase
705
00:35:34,709 --> 00:35:36,611
where she
and some of her friends
706
00:35:36,745 --> 00:35:38,546
now have gone back to Minecraft
707
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,483
and are now looking at
their worlds that they made
708
00:35:41,683 --> 00:35:44,220
in their preadolescence
and kind of revisiting them,
709
00:35:44,353 --> 00:35:47,622
and listening to the music again
and getting all tearful.
710
00:35:47,756 --> 00:35:49,792
So it's a 14-year-old nostalgia
711
00:35:49,926 --> 00:35:52,128
for a lost world of innocence,
or something.
712
00:35:52,828 --> 00:35:56,698
I guess when she's 40
and I'm 85, or whatever
713
00:35:56,832 --> 00:36:01,203
and downloaded onto
a flash drive
714
00:36:01,337 --> 00:36:03,205
we can continue to visit.
715
00:36:18,254 --> 00:36:20,622
My relationship
with the United States
716
00:36:20,790 --> 00:36:22,224
has always been a very bad one.
717
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:26,162
It has always seemed to me
718
00:36:27,196 --> 00:36:30,399
that I was about to be arrested
by the American police
719
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,002
for some obscure reason.
720
00:36:33,135 --> 00:36:36,038
Perhaps that's because
of reading Kafka's The Trial.
721
00:36:36,339 --> 00:36:38,707
That book influenced me
very much.
722
00:36:38,908 --> 00:36:41,710
You know, where someone
is arrested for a crime,
723
00:36:41,844 --> 00:36:44,546
and he's never told
what crime he's committed.
724
00:36:47,649 --> 00:36:51,153
When I was a kid, and one of
the things I really keyed into
725
00:36:51,921 --> 00:36:55,291
was adults at the time
would repeat things
726
00:36:55,825 --> 00:36:56,859
over and over again.
727
00:36:57,026 --> 00:36:58,361
For instance, Newsweek magazine,
728
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:00,162
my dad used to get it
all the time.
729
00:37:00,830 --> 00:37:02,465
And we'd be sitting around
the dinner table
730
00:37:03,432 --> 00:37:05,434
and he'd say,
"Well, you know..."
731
00:37:05,567 --> 00:37:07,702
and then he'd say word for word
732
00:37:08,270 --> 00:37:11,941
a sentence that was read
from the Newsweek magazine.
733
00:37:14,609 --> 00:37:16,445
So, it was like the magazine
734
00:37:16,912 --> 00:37:19,048
programmed him to say
that thing.
735
00:37:19,181 --> 00:37:21,350
This wasn't an original thought
that he had.
736
00:37:22,051 --> 00:37:24,487
And that's really where
it started, I guess.
737
00:37:24,652 --> 00:37:29,425
You know, in my, like...
early childhood,
738
00:37:29,557 --> 00:37:34,763
the concept that the people
that I was dealing with were,
739
00:37:34,897 --> 00:37:38,067
I used the term
"chemical robots" at the time,
740
00:37:38,566 --> 00:37:42,471
but the concept that
they weren't actually conscious.
741
00:37:42,972 --> 00:37:44,807
They had these
repeated behaviors
742
00:37:44,940 --> 00:37:46,876
that they would do
over and over again.
743
00:37:50,745 --> 00:37:52,014
In his paper,
744
00:37:52,148 --> 00:37:53,715
Nick Bostrom defined
a simulation
745
00:37:53,849 --> 00:37:55,985
of the entire mental history
of mankind
746
00:37:56,118 --> 00:37:57,987
as an "ancestor simulation"
747
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:01,857
when estimating the amount of
computing power one might need.
748
00:38:03,392 --> 00:38:05,895
Does the idea
of ancestor simulations
749
00:38:06,028 --> 00:38:08,064
suggest that we are
retracing the steps
750
00:38:08,197 --> 00:38:13,335
of the genuine society
that created the simulation?
751
00:38:14,036 --> 00:38:16,571
Well, that's one possibility.
752
00:38:16,704 --> 00:38:18,773
There could also be
all kinds of variations
753
00:38:19,707 --> 00:38:21,444
ranging from
complete fantasy worlds
754
00:38:21,576 --> 00:38:22,978
that bear no resemblance
755
00:38:23,179 --> 00:38:26,382
to anything that existed
in physical reality
756
00:38:26,549 --> 00:38:28,650
to variations of history.
757
00:38:30,585 --> 00:38:34,156
All of that
is conceptually possible.
758
00:38:35,091 --> 00:38:38,260
But an ancestor simulation
that I talk about in the paper
759
00:38:38,394 --> 00:38:41,197
which is to consider
the type of simulation
760
00:38:41,330 --> 00:38:44,699
where the simulators
would be creating
761
00:38:45,367 --> 00:38:48,070
very detailed simulations
of people like
762
00:38:48,437 --> 00:38:50,638
their historical predecessors.
763
00:38:50,940 --> 00:38:53,342
Maybe not exactly
the same people,
764
00:38:53,943 --> 00:38:55,578
but the same kind of people.
765
00:38:56,112 --> 00:38:59,849
Back when I was 9?
Nine or 10,
766
00:39:00,216 --> 00:39:02,585
I used to joke about
with my brothers and sister
767
00:39:03,018 --> 00:39:05,421
that people would just go home,
and just like sit down
768
00:39:05,554 --> 00:39:07,156
and stare at walls
while no one was watching.
769
00:39:07,490 --> 00:39:09,091
You know, they would
just like...
770
00:39:10,259 --> 00:39:12,561
you know, go home
and T-pose, effectively,
771
00:39:13,596 --> 00:39:15,531
in their private spaces
when they weren't seen
772
00:39:15,697 --> 00:39:16,664
'cause they would just...
773
00:39:17,533 --> 00:39:19,602
deactivate their programming,
I guess.
774
00:39:20,436 --> 00:39:22,938
I used to joke about that,
but that idea ran with me
775
00:39:23,072 --> 00:39:24,772
a lot when I was older.
776
00:39:26,609 --> 00:39:28,310
It kind of became
a little horrifying
777
00:39:28,776 --> 00:39:30,212
that these people
I would talk to,
778
00:39:30,546 --> 00:39:33,382
since nobody was watching,
the program would stop working.
779
00:39:44,026 --> 00:39:45,594
Does not assume that
780
00:39:46,462 --> 00:39:49,598
all the details of our world
would be simulated
781
00:39:50,399 --> 00:39:52,935
to perfect subatomic precision
all the time.
782
00:39:53,335 --> 00:39:55,171
And indeed,
that kind of simulation
783
00:39:55,304 --> 00:39:57,772
might well be
completely intractable.
784
00:39:58,407 --> 00:40:00,742
Obviously, it depends on
the kind of computer power
785
00:40:00,876 --> 00:40:02,144
available in
the basement simulators.
786
00:40:02,278 --> 00:40:04,413
If you have
infinitely fast computers, sure.
787
00:40:04,746 --> 00:40:06,182
But, no, the idea rather
788
00:40:06,315 --> 00:40:07,850
is that you would
be able to create
789
00:40:07,983 --> 00:40:11,420
a simulation capturing
only enough that,
790
00:40:12,588 --> 00:40:13,889
to the simulated creatures,
791
00:40:14,023 --> 00:40:15,424
they couldn't tell
the difference.
792
00:40:15,658 --> 00:40:18,627
And that would involve
some pretty clever footwork
793
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:20,095
on behalf of the simulators
794
00:40:20,229 --> 00:40:21,964
that they would be able,
for example,
795
00:40:22,097 --> 00:40:23,999
to leave more detail
in a particular part of reality
796
00:40:24,133 --> 00:40:25,601
when we are paying attention.
797
00:40:25,968 --> 00:40:29,338
But then not simulating all
of those details all the time.
798
00:40:31,073 --> 00:40:35,444
I'm occupying maybe
20 square feet?
799
00:40:36,278 --> 00:40:38,847
And yet there's a whole
world that exists
800
00:40:39,048 --> 00:40:40,449
because I know about it.
801
00:40:40,916 --> 00:40:42,251
It is here in my brain.
802
00:40:43,018 --> 00:40:45,788
I worked with a company
for a little while
803
00:40:45,921 --> 00:40:51,060
that launched what is now
a very popular app
804
00:40:51,427 --> 00:40:54,563
that is
an interactive fiction app.
805
00:40:54,830 --> 00:40:56,632
You know, there's an element of,
"Well, it's just like writing
806
00:40:56,764 --> 00:41:00,035
a choose-your-own-adventure.
But what became swiftly...
807
00:41:02,037 --> 00:41:03,239
obvious to me...
808
00:41:05,374 --> 00:41:08,344
how simple some of our
own decision-making is,
809
00:41:08,510 --> 00:41:10,079
from a coding perspective.
810
00:41:11,213 --> 00:41:13,549
A popular recent Reddit AMA
811
00:41:13,682 --> 00:41:14,917
was with a user who wrote
812
00:41:15,484 --> 00:41:18,320
"I am a real life
non-player character."
813
00:41:19,088 --> 00:41:21,724
And... all right,
we're all good.
814
00:41:21,991 --> 00:41:24,193
So, a NPC
815
00:41:24,326 --> 00:41:27,896
is a non-player character
that you will normally see
816
00:41:28,030 --> 00:41:29,198
in a video game.
817
00:41:29,764 --> 00:41:33,202
They're usually the people
that aren't controlled
818
00:41:33,435 --> 00:41:36,372
by the player
of the video game.
819
00:41:36,639 --> 00:41:40,442
They are the characters
that were programmed in there.
820
00:41:41,577 --> 00:41:44,179
It's kind of like talking
to a person in real life,
821
00:41:44,413 --> 00:41:48,217
but they only have a set amount
of things that they can say.
822
00:41:48,484 --> 00:41:51,754
Hey, buddy, got a dead cat
in there or what?
823
00:41:52,087 --> 00:41:53,555
And you only have
specific lines
824
00:41:53,689 --> 00:41:55,958
that you can say back to it
in response.
825
00:41:59,194 --> 00:42:01,363
I can only imagine
if I was really a gamer,
826
00:42:01,697 --> 00:42:03,766
how I would experience
social interaction.
827
00:42:03,932 --> 00:42:07,303
But even as a non-game player,
I sometimes find myself
828
00:42:07,469 --> 00:42:10,172
you know, dealing with
non-player characters.
829
00:42:10,773 --> 00:42:16,545
I work at a grocery store,
and I have a specific...
830
00:42:17,513 --> 00:42:19,481
list of things
that I need to accomplish
831
00:42:19,648 --> 00:42:23,018
when greeting a customer
and checking out their items.
832
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,856
And because of that,
it just made logical sense
833
00:42:27,990 --> 00:42:30,192
that I create kind of
a mental script
834
00:42:30,326 --> 00:42:31,960
that I go through
with each customer.
835
00:42:32,094 --> 00:42:33,262
When this stimuli happens
836
00:42:33,395 --> 00:42:35,397
to him, generally speaking,
837
00:42:35,597 --> 00:42:36,932
he reacts in this way.
838
00:42:37,099 --> 00:42:39,001
It's not terribly
different from
839
00:42:39,401 --> 00:42:41,570
the code that tells
the chickens
840
00:42:41,704 --> 00:42:42,971
of Minecraft what to do
841
00:42:43,105 --> 00:42:44,808
or the turtles
in Mario Brothers,
842
00:42:44,940 --> 00:42:47,710
or the mosquitoes of me.
843
00:42:47,910 --> 00:42:49,211
You know, they're all kind of
844
00:42:49,345 --> 00:42:50,312
operating on the same
principles.
845
00:42:50,814 --> 00:42:52,948
If this then that,
if not then don't.
846
00:42:53,115 --> 00:42:54,750
It's not too much of a leap
to think that
847
00:42:55,017 --> 00:42:56,985
consciousness may mean...
848
00:42:58,788 --> 00:43:00,022
we are being inhabited
849
00:43:00,155 --> 00:43:03,092
by some sort of
player-type intelligence.
850
00:43:03,359 --> 00:43:05,527
The reason everyone loves
to be like,
851
00:43:05,661 --> 00:43:08,297
"Oh, small world,"
is because it is, actually.
852
00:43:08,430 --> 00:43:10,199
There just isn't enough
processing power
853
00:43:10,332 --> 00:43:13,068
to render seven billion
consciousnesses.
854
00:43:13,736 --> 00:43:16,205
There are not seven billion
consciousnesses.
855
00:43:16,338 --> 00:43:18,006
Yeah, there might be
seven billion
856
00:43:18,173 --> 00:43:20,876
in the general algorithm
of how many people are on Earth.
857
00:43:21,043 --> 00:43:22,444
But when you start talking
to people,
858
00:43:22,611 --> 00:43:25,381
there's probably like
a couple hundred thousand AI's,
859
00:43:25,714 --> 00:43:30,886
that are serving as
the substream for the, you know,
860
00:43:31,387 --> 00:43:34,089
"people you know" experience
that everyone's having on Earth.
861
00:43:34,223 --> 00:43:36,759
So, when you find that
you know the same people,
862
00:43:36,892 --> 00:43:40,095
or six degrees of separation,
it's just not a surprise at all.
863
00:43:40,229 --> 00:43:42,231
In fact, it's a flaw
in the system.
864
00:43:42,431 --> 00:43:44,868
And that's just the limit of
the actual processing power
865
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,069
of the machine
that the sims running on.
866
00:43:48,070 --> 00:43:49,238
Well, have you ever encountered
867
00:43:49,772 --> 00:43:51,073
a non-player characters?
868
00:43:51,673 --> 00:43:53,342
I mean,
you encounter them all the time
869
00:43:53,475 --> 00:43:54,910
when you're walking down
the street
870
00:43:55,043 --> 00:43:56,378
and you don't interact
with people.
871
00:43:56,512 --> 00:43:58,380
Like, it's just like
in a video game.
872
00:43:58,547 --> 00:44:00,516
It's just, there's much less
processing power
873
00:44:00,649 --> 00:44:03,218
being attributed
to the automatons.
874
00:44:03,952 --> 00:44:05,287
But once you start interacting,
875
00:44:05,421 --> 00:44:07,523
then something has to
actually serve
876
00:44:07,656 --> 00:44:13,228
as the intelligence behind
that so-called human.
877
00:44:15,164 --> 00:44:17,733
Society is rapidly secularizing.
878
00:44:17,867 --> 00:44:20,536
You know, religion is
completely falling apart.
879
00:44:21,737 --> 00:44:24,473
And there's elements of that
that are wonderful.
880
00:44:24,973 --> 00:44:26,375
You know, I think religion plays
881
00:44:27,543 --> 00:44:30,847
an overly restrictive role
in people's lives too often.
882
00:44:31,848 --> 00:44:33,715
Certainly, the religion
I was raised in does.
883
00:44:34,016 --> 00:44:35,617
But I do know people
884
00:44:36,786 --> 00:44:38,187
from my childhood
885
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,589
in a fairly
Evangelical Christian world
886
00:44:41,123 --> 00:44:44,993
who, you know, wanted to...
887
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,029
would've committed
violent acts,
888
00:44:47,296 --> 00:44:50,299
if only God...
889
00:44:51,266 --> 00:44:53,168
if only God
wouldn't punish them for it.
890
00:44:53,368 --> 00:44:54,904
Now, why it takes God
to do that,
891
00:44:55,037 --> 00:44:56,940
as opposed to one's own honor
892
00:44:57,072 --> 00:44:59,174
and self-worth and love
for thy neighbor, I don't know.
893
00:44:59,308 --> 00:45:00,676
But that was case for me.
894
00:45:01,243 --> 00:45:02,511
I believe that this thought,
895
00:45:02,678 --> 00:45:04,279
that we are living
in a simulation,
896
00:45:04,446 --> 00:45:06,916
I think that is going
to just increase in popularity.
897
00:45:07,583 --> 00:45:10,752
And for people who are
content to see
898
00:45:10,887 --> 00:45:12,054
both sides of an argument
899
00:45:12,221 --> 00:45:13,989
and that doesn't
split our heads in two,
900
00:45:14,623 --> 00:45:17,426
you know, for people who are
content to see shades of grey,
901
00:45:17,593 --> 00:45:20,429
I think that's a fine...
it's a fine idea.
902
00:45:20,562 --> 00:45:23,131
Because we don't... you know,
it doesn't change anything
903
00:45:23,265 --> 00:45:24,766
about my daily life,
necessarily.
904
00:45:24,901 --> 00:45:28,136
And it shouldn't.
So I find the simulation okay.
905
00:45:28,537 --> 00:45:30,907
So, if I was created
by a creator God, okay.
906
00:45:31,039 --> 00:45:33,542
So, if I'm a random sparking
of cells, okay, fine.
907
00:45:33,675 --> 00:45:36,011
It doesn't change much about
how I am living day to day.
908
00:45:36,946 --> 00:45:40,148
But there's a lot of people
with very absolutist mindsets,
909
00:45:40,415 --> 00:45:44,486
and I think once you tell them,
"Hey, you're a simulation,"
910
00:45:45,554 --> 00:45:47,689
the nihilistic
side of humanity,
911
00:45:47,824 --> 00:45:49,224
their first reaction would be
912
00:45:49,525 --> 00:45:50,994
"Well, it doesn't matter what
they do to anyone else,
913
00:45:51,693 --> 00:45:53,897
because I know that I'm real,
and I feel it."
914
00:45:54,029 --> 00:45:55,798
But if there's no proof
that they're real,
915
00:45:56,833 --> 00:45:59,201
you know,
then what's the point of laws?
916
00:45:59,334 --> 00:46:01,169
What's the point of all this,
you know?
917
00:46:05,507 --> 00:46:09,678
I do honestly think there is
a certain degree of...
918
00:46:11,246 --> 00:46:12,982
inability to separate
real world
919
00:46:13,115 --> 00:46:14,116
from digital realities
920
00:46:14,349 --> 00:46:15,852
when you have something like
921
00:46:16,084 --> 00:46:19,187
the shooter in New Zealand
live-streaming what he's doing
922
00:46:19,354 --> 00:46:22,391
and going after people like
he's in a first-person shooter.
923
00:46:22,558 --> 00:46:25,862
And going after the people who
were like Muslims or, you know,
924
00:46:25,995 --> 00:46:27,262
people shoot up synagogues.
925
00:46:27,729 --> 00:46:30,098
Going after someone who is
constructed as an "other"
926
00:46:30,232 --> 00:46:32,501
by the media that they consume.
927
00:46:33,803 --> 00:46:37,339
We must meet the threat
with our valor, our blood,
928
00:46:37,539 --> 00:46:39,408
indeed, with our very lives
929
00:46:39,775 --> 00:46:42,779
to ensure
that human civilization,
930
00:46:42,979 --> 00:46:44,146
not insect,
931
00:46:44,613 --> 00:46:48,483
dominates this galaxy
now and always!
932
00:46:49,117 --> 00:46:52,254
However, you end up
sort of in that place
933
00:46:52,721 --> 00:46:55,757
where everyone you shoot at
just kind of disappears
934
00:46:55,892 --> 00:46:57,492
and they were all pod people,
you know,
935
00:46:57,626 --> 00:46:59,494
and they weren't real,
or the NPC meme,
936
00:46:59,695 --> 00:47:02,431
you get into a place where
you kind of treat reality
937
00:47:02,664 --> 00:47:05,400
like these are digital,
disposable bodies.
938
00:47:17,245 --> 00:47:18,815
And so one guy might plug in,
939
00:47:18,948 --> 00:47:20,182
he's Kanye West.
940
00:47:20,549 --> 00:47:22,384
One person might plug in,
instead of doing that,
941
00:47:22,517 --> 00:47:25,554
he's Michael Phelps.
942
00:47:25,955 --> 00:47:29,524
They plug in and they play
and they stay at the top level
943
00:47:29,658 --> 00:47:32,527
in some way that they can,
doing different exploits.
944
00:47:33,261 --> 00:47:35,631
But then you have people
who log in,
945
00:47:35,764 --> 00:47:37,766
they used to play a lot
and they were really good,
946
00:47:37,900 --> 00:47:39,969
but then they unplugged
and didn't come back.
947
00:47:40,103 --> 00:47:42,237
Years and years since
they were plugged in our reality
948
00:47:42,371 --> 00:47:45,307
would be a celebrity
who was really good,
949
00:47:45,674 --> 00:47:47,776
and then just fell from grace
and never really came back.
950
00:47:47,910 --> 00:47:51,246
I can't name a specific
celebrity here,
951
00:47:51,380 --> 00:47:54,149
plus I don't want to throw
that into your film.
952
00:47:54,716 --> 00:47:58,253
Anyway, so they would
go totally like,
953
00:47:58,420 --> 00:47:59,755
they'd be going straight
954
00:47:59,922 --> 00:48:01,356
and all of a sudden
they'll be doing something
955
00:48:01,490 --> 00:48:02,591
that's totally perpendicular
956
00:48:02,724 --> 00:48:04,192
to their normal
behavior patterns.
957
00:48:04,559 --> 00:48:07,830
'Cause in a video game,
you're doing it well...
958
00:48:08,831 --> 00:48:10,399
then all of a sudden,
you just get bored
959
00:48:10,699 --> 00:48:12,902
and you start doing something
totally different.
960
00:48:13,036 --> 00:48:14,336
I've done that myself, you know.
961
00:48:14,469 --> 00:48:15,771
I'm playing Grand Theft Auto
and...
962
00:48:16,204 --> 00:48:18,941
you know, you have millions
and millions of dollars
963
00:48:19,075 --> 00:48:20,877
and all of a sudden it's like,
"Yeah, okay...
964
00:48:21,077 --> 00:48:22,979
I think I'm gonna hole up
in this apartment building...
965
00:48:23,112 --> 00:48:25,681
and just see how many police
I can get to try to kill me."
966
00:48:26,248 --> 00:48:29,584
You know, then you kind of
just go for something crazy.
967
00:48:36,025 --> 00:48:38,460
I once said to my uncle...
968
00:48:39,361 --> 00:48:41,196
"What if this is all fake?
969
00:48:41,396 --> 00:48:42,764
You know, what if
none of this is real?"
970
00:48:42,899 --> 00:48:44,801
And he said, "Well, then what's
to keep me
971
00:48:44,934 --> 00:48:47,769
from going door to door just
shooting people in the head?"
972
00:48:48,370 --> 00:48:51,373
"Or what's to keep me from,
you know, shooting you?"
973
00:48:51,540 --> 00:48:56,278
And it always struck me as,
"Is that what you want to do?"
974
00:48:56,745 --> 00:49:00,248
"Is the only thing
keeping you from doing that
975
00:49:00,783 --> 00:49:04,486
the fact that the world is real
and there are consequences?"
976
00:49:06,923 --> 00:49:09,058
Did you see that video
of the gentleman
977
00:49:09,192 --> 00:49:10,459
on the East Coast...
978
00:49:11,027 --> 00:49:12,028
West Coast, I'm sorry,
979
00:49:12,461 --> 00:49:14,496
who, he hijacked...
980
00:49:15,965 --> 00:49:18,667
a commercial air flight
that was empty?
981
00:49:19,135 --> 00:49:20,235
It was just him onboard,
982
00:49:20,635 --> 00:49:22,604
and he had no training
whatsoever.
983
00:49:23,572 --> 00:49:25,774
And he started just flying
around the coast.
984
00:49:29,011 --> 00:49:30,479
What the hell?
985
00:49:31,781 --> 00:49:34,217
Oh, my God.
What is happening right now?
986
00:49:34,382 --> 00:49:35,484
Did you ever see that?
987
00:49:48,865 --> 00:49:51,100
He's flying and he's
talking about things.
988
00:49:51,834 --> 00:49:53,169
This is probably like
989
00:49:53,301 --> 00:49:54,603
jail time for life, huh?
990
00:49:54,770 --> 00:49:57,372
I would hope it is
for a guy like me.
991
00:50:03,146 --> 00:50:05,014
One of the things he's doing is
992
00:50:05,815 --> 00:50:07,482
he's kind of breaking
people's perceptions
993
00:50:07,616 --> 00:50:11,419
'cause he's doing stuff like,
he's doing loops and what not.
994
00:50:11,854 --> 00:50:13,555
He's getting remarkably close
to the ground.
995
00:50:13,688 --> 00:50:15,690
He's over the ocean,
over the land.
996
00:50:16,192 --> 00:50:17,559
He's doing tricks.
997
00:50:20,797 --> 00:50:22,697
Just flying the plane around,
998
00:50:22,865 --> 00:50:24,499
do you seem
comfortable with that?
999
00:50:24,633 --> 00:50:26,035
Oh, hell yeah. It's a blast.
1000
00:50:26,202 --> 00:50:28,403
I've played video games
before, so...
1001
00:50:28,637 --> 00:50:31,506
I... I know what I'm doing
a little bit.
1002
00:50:36,913 --> 00:50:40,348
And this is shortly before
he crashes purposefully
1003
00:50:40,515 --> 00:50:43,618
into a, I believe an island.
1004
00:50:45,087 --> 00:50:46,454
Just offshore.
1005
00:50:47,756 --> 00:50:50,525
But yeah, it's nuts,
that one of his last thoughts
1006
00:50:50,659 --> 00:50:53,796
is how much it's like
a video game to him.
1007
00:50:54,864 --> 00:50:55,764
Then he crashes.
1008
00:51:03,705 --> 00:51:07,310
But yeah, there is a dark side.
1009
00:51:07,442 --> 00:51:08,677
There's people out there
1010
00:51:08,811 --> 00:51:10,478
who are gonna be
chaotic about it.
1011
00:51:26,128 --> 00:51:27,897
...very pronounced
impression
1012
00:51:28,030 --> 00:51:32,534
would probably occur to us,
to many of us, again and again
1013
00:51:32,734 --> 00:51:34,904
and always without explanation.
1014
00:51:35,171 --> 00:51:40,243
The acute, absolute sensation
that we had done once before
1015
00:51:40,709 --> 00:51:42,711
what we were
just about to do now.
1016
00:51:42,912 --> 00:51:45,413
We would have
the overwhelming impression
1017
00:51:46,082 --> 00:51:50,119
that we were reliving
the present. Déjà vu.
1018
00:51:52,255 --> 00:51:53,155
Déjà vu.
1019
00:51:56,025 --> 00:51:58,560
- Switch. Apoc.
- What is it?
1020
00:51:58,727 --> 00:52:00,562
A déjà vu is usually
a glitch in the matrix.
1021
00:52:00,863 --> 00:52:02,365
It happens when
they change something.
1022
00:52:02,899 --> 00:52:05,301
What we need at this point
is to locate,
1023
00:52:05,433 --> 00:52:06,701
to bring forth as evidence
1024
00:52:07,036 --> 00:52:09,305
someone who has managed
somehow,
1025
00:52:09,571 --> 00:52:10,940
it doesn't matter how,
1026
00:52:11,539 --> 00:52:13,876
to retain memories
of a different present.
1027
00:52:14,176 --> 00:52:16,478
Latent, alternate
world impressions,
1028
00:52:16,611 --> 00:52:18,580
different in some
significant way from this.
1029
00:52:18,915 --> 00:52:20,415
Philip K. Dick might have been
1030
00:52:20,548 --> 00:52:21,817
surprised to learn
1031
00:52:22,051 --> 00:52:23,853
how common memories
of a different present
1032
00:52:23,986 --> 00:52:26,355
would become
in the 21st Century.
1033
00:52:26,721 --> 00:52:28,858
If you remember a Kit-Kat
looking like this...
1034
00:52:29,191 --> 00:52:31,861
then you could be living
in an alternate reality.
1035
00:52:32,594 --> 00:52:34,496
Welcome to
"Conspiracy Chat N'That."
1036
00:52:34,729 --> 00:52:36,399
Today's topic is the
mind-warping,
1037
00:52:36,531 --> 00:52:38,334
reality-bending Mandela Effect.
1038
00:52:38,500 --> 00:52:39,902
It's called the Mandela Effect
1039
00:52:40,036 --> 00:52:42,038
because hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of people
1040
00:52:42,171 --> 00:52:45,674
remember Nelson Mandela
dying in prison,
1041
00:52:45,808 --> 00:52:47,343
and that actually
never happened.
1042
00:52:47,475 --> 00:52:49,278
But hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of people are like
1043
00:52:49,412 --> 00:52:51,347
"No, I remember Nelson Mandela
dying in prison."
1044
00:52:51,513 --> 00:52:52,747
But like that never happened.
1045
00:52:53,049 --> 00:52:54,616
So, when reports
1046
00:52:54,884 --> 00:52:55,750
of the former South African
president's death
1047
00:52:55,885 --> 00:52:57,186
became news in 2013,
1048
00:52:57,320 --> 00:52:58,720
it re-sparked
the previous debate
1049
00:52:58,854 --> 00:52:59,822
of whether or not
we've somehow slid
1050
00:52:59,956 --> 00:53:01,656
into an alternate timeline.
1051
00:53:01,791 --> 00:53:03,960
The Berenstein Bears
children books have changed.
1052
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:05,995
They used to be called
"Berenstein Bears,"
1053
00:53:06,128 --> 00:53:07,629
and now they've always
been known as
1054
00:53:07,762 --> 00:53:08,798
"The Berenstain Bears".
1055
00:53:09,165 --> 00:53:11,834
Over 10 thousand
Mandela effects
1056
00:53:11,968 --> 00:53:14,403
have been logged and confirmed.
1057
00:53:14,602 --> 00:53:15,704
If you go back
1058
00:53:15,838 --> 00:53:17,639
and literally find
like a VHS tape
1059
00:53:17,772 --> 00:53:20,508
of like Snow White from 1998
1060
00:53:20,642 --> 00:53:22,211
and you put it in a VHS player,
1061
00:53:22,345 --> 00:53:25,047
they say,
"Magic mirror on the wall".
1062
00:53:25,381 --> 00:53:30,353
Tell me! Tell me, bitch, that
you do not fucking remember
1063
00:53:30,485 --> 00:53:31,887
"Mirror, mirror on the wall."
1064
00:53:32,021 --> 00:53:33,789
Well, that doesn't exist.
Mandela Effect?
1065
00:53:33,923 --> 00:53:36,058
Alternate reality?
I think yes!
1066
00:53:51,807 --> 00:53:53,742
When I was young,
I lived in Mexico.
1067
00:53:54,776 --> 00:53:56,212
Very young, like 10 years old.
1068
00:53:56,345 --> 00:53:57,679
And then I returned there
1069
00:53:58,114 --> 00:54:00,883
for the summer
with my mother once.
1070
00:54:01,716 --> 00:54:03,219
I was 18 years old,
1071
00:54:03,386 --> 00:54:04,987
and I really didn't
know anybody.
1072
00:54:05,254 --> 00:54:07,423
I finally get a call
from some friends,
1073
00:54:07,857 --> 00:54:09,125
friends of friends.
1074
00:54:09,258 --> 00:54:10,493
These guys pick me up,
1075
00:54:10,658 --> 00:54:14,130
and they're in
a 1970 Jeep Wagoneer.
1076
00:54:14,964 --> 00:54:16,432
Big old machine.
1077
00:54:16,765 --> 00:54:19,235
It immediately becomes clear
that they have been drinking
1078
00:54:19,368 --> 00:54:22,737
because they say, "Hey,
help yourself to a beer."
1079
00:54:22,905 --> 00:54:24,373
And I look in the back
of the Wagoneer,
1080
00:54:24,507 --> 00:54:26,208
and there's all
these empties rolling around
1081
00:54:26,342 --> 00:54:28,743
and couldn't find a seat belt,
and I just said,
1082
00:54:28,878 --> 00:54:30,346
"All right, fuck it,"
I opened a beer.
1083
00:54:30,946 --> 00:54:33,249
Then, we were driving
down a major street
1084
00:54:33,382 --> 00:54:34,784
in a city called Cuernavaca.
1085
00:54:35,184 --> 00:54:37,920
It had a cement divider
between the two sides...
1086
00:54:38,054 --> 00:54:39,989
...and the driver
1087
00:54:40,456 --> 00:54:44,626
for shits and giggles
decided to pop...
1088
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:47,729
in an opening,
pop onto the wrong direction
1089
00:54:48,230 --> 00:54:50,598
and drive until
there was another opening.
1090
00:54:51,067 --> 00:54:53,035
So we were driving
against traffic
1091
00:54:53,269 --> 00:54:54,602
in the wrong side
1092
00:54:55,371 --> 00:54:59,075
and no cars came, you know,
we didn't get in an accident.
1093
00:54:59,208 --> 00:55:02,644
So that was the first near miss
but I don't count that.
1094
00:55:02,878 --> 00:55:04,146
And so we headed off.
1095
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:05,915
They...
We went to a liquor store.
1096
00:55:06,048 --> 00:55:08,284
They bought some more liquor.
1097
00:55:09,218 --> 00:55:12,254
They said, "What should we do?
Let's go to the pyramids."
1098
00:55:12,388 --> 00:55:16,325
So there was a pyramid in town,
and so we head over...
1099
00:55:16,459 --> 00:55:19,161
we climb a fence, we're
walking on a Mexican pyramid.
1100
00:55:19,761 --> 00:55:21,564
It's, you know, it's...
1101
00:55:22,565 --> 00:55:24,934
kind of an awesome experience
in and of itself.
1102
00:55:26,634 --> 00:55:28,104
And they're getting bored.
1103
00:55:28,237 --> 00:55:31,073
They say, "All right,
that's it. Let's go home."
1104
00:55:32,674 --> 00:55:34,276
And we get back in
the Wagoneer, and in Mexico
1105
00:55:34,410 --> 00:55:35,978
at that time of year,
this was summer,
1106
00:55:36,112 --> 00:55:39,048
they have monsoons
that last five minutes.
1107
00:55:39,714 --> 00:55:43,751
Now the road's completely wet,
and these guys are drunk
1108
00:55:43,886 --> 00:55:46,188
and I'm sitting
in the back seat.
1109
00:55:47,456 --> 00:55:50,359
The driver says
to the passenger,
1110
00:55:50,493 --> 00:55:54,662
"Hey, man, why don't you take
the wheel for a sec?"
1111
00:55:55,197 --> 00:55:56,999
And I'm sitting in the back
and I'm like...
1112
00:55:57,500 --> 00:55:59,335
"That's the worst idea
I've ever heard!"
1113
00:55:59,468 --> 00:56:02,071
But it's too late, right?
It's too late.
1114
00:56:02,670 --> 00:56:05,574
And he grabs the wheel...
1115
00:56:05,707 --> 00:56:08,944
...and the car hits the side
of the road right away,
1116
00:56:09,211 --> 00:56:11,480
but hits the curve and slides...
1117
00:56:11,914 --> 00:56:13,149
So it hits one side
of the street
1118
00:56:13,282 --> 00:56:15,251
and slides in
the other direction,
1119
00:56:15,417 --> 00:56:17,987
hits another curb
and flies through the air...
1120
00:56:19,555 --> 00:56:22,958
...probably about
a thousand feet through the air
1121
00:56:23,092 --> 00:56:25,127
and lands on the roof.
1122
00:56:30,166 --> 00:56:34,036
All the windows shattered,
and I broke ribs...
1123
00:56:34,336 --> 00:56:37,506
'cause I took the impact
of the roof.
1124
00:56:38,174 --> 00:56:40,876
And gasoline
started pouring out of the car,
1125
00:56:41,010 --> 00:56:42,744
and I got the wind
knocked out of me.
1126
00:56:42,912 --> 00:56:48,716
I crawled out of the window
and got as far away as I could,
1127
00:56:48,851 --> 00:56:51,954
and then a truck pulls up.
1128
00:56:54,156 --> 00:56:57,226
And they say,
"Oh, great. Banditos."
1129
00:56:58,861 --> 00:57:01,830
And then another car pulls up,
and it's the Federales,
1130
00:57:02,097 --> 00:57:03,698
the Mexican police.
1131
00:57:03,899 --> 00:57:05,467
You know, the banditos
just leave.
1132
00:57:05,601 --> 00:57:07,203
And I'm like, "Oh, great,
the police are here."
1133
00:57:07,369 --> 00:57:09,071
And they're like,
"No, actually, it's worse.
1134
00:57:09,205 --> 00:57:10,539
It's worse that they're here."
1135
00:57:11,073 --> 00:57:13,842
"Once they learn
that we've been drinking,
1136
00:57:13,976 --> 00:57:15,511
they're gonna arrest us all,
1137
00:57:15,678 --> 00:57:18,480
and then they're gonna ask
for a big bribe for you,
1138
00:57:18,614 --> 00:57:19,782
because you're American."
1139
00:57:20,816 --> 00:57:22,551
So I was standing
in the darkness,
1140
00:57:22,952 --> 00:57:25,187
and then another car pulls up.
1141
00:57:25,688 --> 00:57:28,190
A guy gets out, and he says...
1142
00:57:29,291 --> 00:57:32,161
"Excuse me.
I am the chief accountant
1143
00:57:32,361 --> 00:57:34,630
of the Cuernavaca
Police Department",
1144
00:57:34,897 --> 00:57:36,632
so the local city police.
1145
00:57:37,633 --> 00:57:40,836
And he knows about the
corruption of the Federales.
1146
00:57:41,303 --> 00:57:47,109
And my hosts managed
to get the information to him
1147
00:57:47,243 --> 00:57:50,913
that they had hidden
an American in the darkness.
1148
00:57:51,780 --> 00:57:54,316
And they got me out of there.
1149
00:57:54,984 --> 00:57:57,586
But the whole thing,
it seemed so...
1150
00:57:57,886 --> 00:58:01,890
so implausible
that I had survived.
1151
00:58:02,291 --> 00:58:05,995
The likelihood of all of that
was just so low.
1152
00:58:06,562 --> 00:58:09,265
Somebody's gotta be
putting their hand on the scale
1153
00:58:09,431 --> 00:58:11,367
'cause I kinda just
looked at it in terms of
1154
00:58:11,500 --> 00:58:14,536
the algorithm tweaking
probabilities,
1155
00:58:14,769 --> 00:58:18,073
so that things are essentially
more interesting
1156
00:58:18,941 --> 00:58:20,342
'cause it's a game.
1157
00:58:24,513 --> 00:58:27,983
Okay, so I think the first
like "public" place where
1158
00:58:28,117 --> 00:58:31,353
I actually was able
to put a name to an idea,
1159
00:58:31,987 --> 00:58:34,990
probably the Matrix movies,
you know?
1160
00:58:36,625 --> 00:58:40,763
You can't mention simulation
without mentioning that.
1161
00:58:41,764 --> 00:58:44,600
The book he keeps
all of his stuff in is...
1162
00:58:45,301 --> 00:58:47,436
what is it called,
Simulation & Simulacra?
1163
00:58:49,071 --> 00:58:50,406
It's right there,
beginning of the movie,
1164
00:58:50,539 --> 00:58:52,174
just throws it
right in your face.
1165
00:58:52,541 --> 00:58:56,178
After the trilogy was over,
they released that animation
1166
00:58:56,812 --> 00:58:57,980
The Animatrix.
1167
00:58:58,247 --> 00:59:00,949
Yeah, I think that one
really hit it home.
1168
00:59:01,083 --> 00:59:02,217
Like, the idea was planted
1169
00:59:02,351 --> 00:59:04,553
and that thing really
pressed on it.
1170
00:59:05,287 --> 00:59:08,824
In Renaissance, Part I
and II, it's kinda hosted by
1171
00:59:09,091 --> 00:59:10,993
almost like this
technology demigod.
1172
00:59:11,694 --> 00:59:13,562
Just kind of bringing you
in and out of reality.
1173
00:59:13,962 --> 00:59:16,865
You know, as far as like what's
going on inside the Matrix,
1174
00:59:16,999 --> 00:59:18,500
what's going on outside
the Matrix,
1175
00:59:18,634 --> 00:59:21,503
the history of
how the simulation was built.
1176
00:59:25,774 --> 00:59:27,209
I moved to Canada,
1177
00:59:27,343 --> 00:59:28,744
I lived in Canada
for a couple of months.
1178
00:59:28,977 --> 00:59:34,950
And so my friend from Illinois
drives up to Canada,
1179
00:59:35,217 --> 00:59:36,485
we're hanging out.
1180
00:59:36,618 --> 00:59:38,253
"What do you want to see?"
"I don't know.
1181
00:59:38,420 --> 00:59:40,856
Let's go and see this dumb
Keanu Reeves action film."
1182
00:59:42,991 --> 00:59:44,828
So we go and see this movie
1183
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:46,495
and it's pretty good,
pretty good, pretty good.
1184
00:59:46,628 --> 00:59:48,497
And then he gets out
of the tank,
1185
00:59:49,965 --> 00:59:51,533
and we're like, "Whoa!"
1186
00:59:57,940 --> 00:59:59,174
Joshua Cooke
1187
00:59:59,308 --> 01:00:00,844
was a Virginia
high school student
1188
01:00:00,976 --> 01:00:02,411
when he heard about the film.
1189
01:00:04,913 --> 01:00:06,982
So, I was riding in a car
1190
01:00:07,282 --> 01:00:10,319
on the way home,
and a friend of mine
1191
01:00:10,519 --> 01:00:12,254
- was in the car.
- Get in.
1192
01:00:12,488 --> 01:00:14,256
She mentioned this movie
1193
01:00:14,390 --> 01:00:16,658
Matrix that people
were going crazy over.
1194
01:00:16,793 --> 01:00:18,394
People were going
to the movie theaters
1195
01:00:18,527 --> 01:00:20,262
15 times in a row to see it.
1196
01:00:20,896 --> 01:00:23,565
And that people were getting
obsessed about it,
1197
01:00:23,699 --> 01:00:24,700
raving about it.
1198
01:00:24,834 --> 01:00:26,268
"Oh, man, you gotta see it!
1199
01:00:26,568 --> 01:00:28,070
You've never seen anything
like it. And the graphics.
1200
01:00:28,203 --> 01:00:29,204
Oh yeah!"
1201
01:00:29,638 --> 01:00:31,173
And then I heard him
say something
1202
01:00:31,306 --> 01:00:32,741
about a black trench coat
and stuff.
1203
01:00:32,876 --> 01:00:35,611
And that really hit me
for a few reasons.
1204
01:00:35,845 --> 01:00:38,213
One is, I had already had
a fascination,
1205
01:00:38,380 --> 01:00:40,282
an obsession really,
with the black trench coat
1206
01:00:40,649 --> 01:00:42,985
because of the movie
The Crow,
1207
01:00:43,452 --> 01:00:45,721
which was my first
movie obsession.
1208
01:00:45,889 --> 01:00:48,323
So I went to the
Blockbuster Video store.
1209
01:00:48,690 --> 01:00:52,194
And, from the very beginning
of the movie,
1210
01:00:53,095 --> 01:00:54,363
it had my attention.
1211
01:00:54,630 --> 01:00:58,567
And it had kind of like
a rough, aggressive,
1212
01:00:59,268 --> 01:01:00,870
you know, Rob Zombie,
1213
01:01:01,003 --> 01:01:02,872
heavy metal theme to it.
1214
01:01:03,005 --> 01:01:04,173
The Matrix.
1215
01:01:04,373 --> 01:01:05,574
The soundtrack
that makes you go...
1216
01:01:05,741 --> 01:01:06,910
Whoa.
1217
01:01:07,042 --> 01:01:08,043
See, I thought about
the structure
1218
01:01:08,177 --> 01:01:09,378
of the whole thing,
1219
01:01:09,511 --> 01:01:11,146
like, what would it be
structurally?
1220
01:01:11,380 --> 01:01:13,982
And an idea came to my mind
of what it would look like.
1221
01:01:15,751 --> 01:01:18,855
I don't think it's just people
in pods somewhere else.
1222
01:01:18,987 --> 01:01:21,623
I think it's something
completely different than that.
1223
01:01:22,524 --> 01:01:24,760
I don't know. When I think
about it, I think of like
1224
01:01:24,928 --> 01:01:28,096
a giant white, brilliant white
marble hallway, right?
1225
01:01:28,230 --> 01:01:29,899
And then there's like a
pedestal in the center,
1226
01:01:30,032 --> 01:01:32,401
and this giant black sphere.
1227
01:01:32,936 --> 01:01:36,371
And that black sphere, to
these people in this reality,
1228
01:01:37,272 --> 01:01:39,675
that's effectively a computer,
you know?
1229
01:01:40,409 --> 01:01:42,110
No, and that
computer's running...
1230
01:01:42,377 --> 01:01:44,179
There could be
a little art museum card
1231
01:01:44,313 --> 01:01:46,682
next to it that says
"Universe... whatever".
1232
01:01:47,316 --> 01:01:50,185
And they just see what happens
out of that black mass
1233
01:01:50,652 --> 01:01:53,823
of stars and clouds, and deep,
deep, deep down,
1234
01:01:54,356 --> 01:01:55,624
people, like us.
1235
01:01:57,426 --> 01:01:58,760
And then you go on
from that model,
1236
01:01:58,895 --> 01:02:02,097
you wonder, "Okay
is it important to them?"
1237
01:02:02,397 --> 01:02:04,333
"Are we a very special case
1238
01:02:04,466 --> 01:02:07,436
that the entire reality
is focused on?"
1239
01:02:07,703 --> 01:02:08,905
'Cause they're trying
to figure out
1240
01:02:09,037 --> 01:02:10,339
what the point of life is,
1241
01:02:10,606 --> 01:02:12,307
and so they just keep
rerunning the universe.
1242
01:02:14,476 --> 01:02:18,447
I think what they want us
to do is improve upon
1243
01:02:19,414 --> 01:02:21,583
the simulation that
they've already made.
1244
01:02:22,184 --> 01:02:25,320
And this was where
we get into GANS.
1245
01:02:26,154 --> 01:02:29,291
I don't know if that's how you
pronounce it, but G-A-N-S.
1246
01:02:30,827 --> 01:02:33,930
Generative Adversarial Networks.
1247
01:02:34,596 --> 01:02:37,332
Basically, the idea is
that you have two AIs...
1248
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:39,936
and they're competing
with each other.
1249
01:02:40,469 --> 01:02:42,371
AI number one is the Forger.
1250
01:02:43,071 --> 01:02:46,675
It wants to make pictures
of human beings...
1251
01:02:47,276 --> 01:02:51,346
that look like human beings,
enough to fool someone.
1252
01:02:51,747 --> 01:02:54,182
And then you have another one
that's the Inspector.
1253
01:02:54,449 --> 01:02:56,285
The Inspector's job
is to tell the difference
1254
01:02:56,418 --> 01:02:58,186
between fake pictures
of people
1255
01:02:58,320 --> 01:02:59,856
and actual pictures of people.
1256
01:03:00,355 --> 01:03:02,658
And the two of them just run
at each other,
1257
01:03:02,792 --> 01:03:04,027
boom, boom, boom...
Trying to fail,
1258
01:03:04,159 --> 01:03:05,795
trying to win, all that...
1259
01:03:06,061 --> 01:03:09,231
until, eventually, you and I
look at the pictures,
1260
01:03:09,598 --> 01:03:11,000
and they look real to us
1261
01:03:11,633 --> 01:03:14,269
because they've gone through
all these iterations.
1262
01:03:17,539 --> 01:03:21,677
But what are people if not...
1263
01:03:22,411 --> 01:03:24,246
generative
adversarial networks?
1264
01:03:28,150 --> 01:03:30,252
Cop tries to solve crime.
1265
01:03:30,452 --> 01:03:32,287
Criminal tries to beat cop.
1266
01:03:32,956 --> 01:03:34,356
I'm gonna kill you.
1267
01:03:35,223 --> 01:03:38,560
You idiot! You made me!
1268
01:03:42,264 --> 01:03:44,067
Hacker tries to hack a system.
1269
01:03:44,333 --> 01:03:46,301
A programmer tries
to fix the system.
1270
01:03:46,702 --> 01:03:50,405
Audience gets jaded
with this type of media.
1271
01:03:50,539 --> 01:03:51,908
So somebody new comes along
1272
01:03:52,041 --> 01:03:53,642
and tries to make
something better.
1273
01:03:53,943 --> 01:03:56,411
We are constantly getting back
and forth at each other.
1274
01:03:56,545 --> 01:03:57,746
If you look at social media,
1275
01:03:57,914 --> 01:03:59,782
maybe this is why we're
always arguing
1276
01:03:59,916 --> 01:04:05,088
because we exist specifically
to refine and hone things.
1277
01:04:05,788 --> 01:04:09,959
In the end,
what do we want to create
1278
01:04:10,192 --> 01:04:12,294
if not another simulation?
1279
01:04:17,366 --> 01:04:18,700
Yeah, I mean,
1280
01:04:19,035 --> 01:04:20,535
there were a few lines in there
that were pretty deep.
1281
01:04:21,637 --> 01:04:24,040
Neo asked Morpheus,
"Why do my eyes hurt?"
1282
01:04:24,874 --> 01:04:28,243
And Morpheus looks at Neo
and says...
1283
01:04:28,410 --> 01:04:30,278
"Because you've never
used them before."
1284
01:04:31,014 --> 01:04:32,915
Well, I felt the same way.
And I felt like,
1285
01:04:33,082 --> 01:04:34,917
"Man, there's gotta be
more than this."
1286
01:04:35,350 --> 01:04:36,752
Okay, "You've never used
1287
01:04:36,886 --> 01:04:39,454
your eyes before"
when he gets out of the Matrix
1288
01:04:39,588 --> 01:04:41,556
and everything's blurry,
1289
01:04:41,723 --> 01:04:44,593
that's very, very similar
to sort of what happens
1290
01:04:44,726 --> 01:04:48,363
in Plato's Cave, when he goes...
1291
01:04:48,764 --> 01:04:50,432
When you're taken
outside the cave,
1292
01:04:50,565 --> 01:04:52,601
it takes a while
for your eyes to adjust
1293
01:04:52,835 --> 01:04:54,569
to what you're seeing
outside the cave.
1294
01:04:54,871 --> 01:04:57,305
And then, when he comes back
inside the cave
1295
01:04:57,472 --> 01:04:59,641
he can't see either
1296
01:04:59,775 --> 01:05:02,045
because he's used to seeing
things as they really are.
1297
01:05:02,177 --> 01:05:03,745
And so, you know, it says,
1298
01:05:03,880 --> 01:05:05,547
"Oh, and your friends
are sort of watching
1299
01:05:05,681 --> 01:05:08,583
on the projection screen,
things.
1300
01:05:08,717 --> 01:05:11,888
And they give themselves awards
for being the fastest
1301
01:05:12,021 --> 01:05:13,990
and best at spotting
what's going on.
1302
01:05:14,123 --> 01:05:16,625
And you just aren't
interested in this anymore
1303
01:05:16,758 --> 01:05:18,427
because you've seen
so much more."
1304
01:05:18,928 --> 01:05:21,530
It's funny how this
just sort of like
1305
01:05:22,031 --> 01:05:25,902
value system
that allows us to believe
1306
01:05:26,035 --> 01:05:29,072
that we know something
that everyone else doesn't.
1307
01:05:29,471 --> 01:05:31,306
Like also contributes
to that othering,
1308
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:32,708
when he's walking
down the street
1309
01:05:32,842 --> 01:05:34,509
and everyone is fake,
you know?
1310
01:05:34,643 --> 01:05:36,145
And then, yeah,
the person in the red dress,
1311
01:05:36,278 --> 01:05:39,381
and later the guy's like,
"Oh, I engineered her."
1312
01:05:40,449 --> 01:05:42,217
Yeah, that seems like...
1313
01:05:42,350 --> 01:05:44,854
that is such
a school shooter fantasy.
1314
01:05:47,890 --> 01:05:51,359
You have these unique eyes to
see what no one else can see.
1315
01:05:51,560 --> 01:05:53,729
and everyone else
is just like...
1316
01:05:54,529 --> 01:05:57,200
they're just asleep.
1317
01:05:57,365 --> 01:06:01,303
Sleep. Sleep.
1318
01:06:02,471 --> 01:06:04,040
Having told you my story
1319
01:06:04,173 --> 01:06:07,944
about when I was a kid,
when he got out of the tank...
1320
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:14,249
the immediate thing that
flashed in my mind was, "Okay,
1321
01:06:14,817 --> 01:06:18,253
this is kind of like what
happened to me at that point,
1322
01:06:18,788 --> 01:06:20,355
but there was no tank
to get out of."
1323
01:06:21,023 --> 01:06:24,961
And I maybe didn't even
have a body, per se.
1324
01:06:28,931 --> 01:06:30,499
I went to a store
1325
01:06:30,732 --> 01:06:32,667
in the mall near my house,
it's called Hot Topic.
1326
01:06:32,802 --> 01:06:34,302
I don't know
if you've ever heard of it.
1327
01:06:34,837 --> 01:06:37,305
And they had all kind of
goth wear,
1328
01:06:37,439 --> 01:06:39,142
black clothes,
black everything.
1329
01:06:39,775 --> 01:06:44,013
There was a line of
trench coats hanging on a rack
1330
01:06:44,279 --> 01:06:45,547
in the corner of the store.
1331
01:06:45,714 --> 01:06:47,549
And I was with my sister,
Tiffany.
1332
01:06:47,784 --> 01:06:51,788
And I made a beeline straight
for the trench coats, you know.
1333
01:06:52,287 --> 01:06:55,091
I ran. I ran to them
and I grabbed one,
1334
01:06:55,258 --> 01:06:57,160
and I held it to my chest
real tight...
1335
01:06:57,392 --> 01:06:59,361
like it was like
my girlfriend or something.
1336
01:06:59,494 --> 01:07:00,797
It was, you know...
1337
01:07:01,164 --> 01:07:02,330
My sister's looking at me like,
"What are you doing?
1338
01:07:03,298 --> 01:07:05,467
Whenever I would be going
through something really bad,
1339
01:07:05,600 --> 01:07:07,804
whether it was
being bullied at school
1340
01:07:07,937 --> 01:07:09,839
or whether it was
being abused at home
1341
01:07:10,206 --> 01:07:12,008
I could escape.
I could leave the room.
1342
01:07:12,141 --> 01:07:15,011
I could escape
with the black trench coat on.
1343
01:07:15,744 --> 01:07:17,213
It was like the trench coat
1344
01:07:17,345 --> 01:07:19,548
was like a living,
breathing organism to me.
1345
01:07:20,348 --> 01:07:22,717
You know. It made me feel...
1346
01:07:24,153 --> 01:07:26,289
when I put it on,
it made me feel strong
1347
01:07:27,056 --> 01:07:30,193
it made me feel powerful,
unassailable.
1348
01:07:30,358 --> 01:07:32,829
It made me feel closer
to Neo than I ever been.
1349
01:07:33,196 --> 01:07:36,866
I would wear the trench coat
to the mall mainly.
1350
01:07:36,999 --> 01:07:39,302
I would walk around the mall
just all day
1351
01:07:40,303 --> 01:07:43,005
with the Matrix music
on my headphones.
1352
01:07:43,139 --> 01:07:45,707
I had the soundtrack...
it was in my CD player,
1353
01:07:46,641 --> 01:07:48,144
and people would
see me come in,
1354
01:07:48,311 --> 01:07:50,146
and they would just kind of
back away, you know.
1355
01:07:50,279 --> 01:07:53,115
And I had this sick thrill
of wearing it.
1356
01:07:53,682 --> 01:07:55,750
So being Neo, being Neo was...
1357
01:07:56,319 --> 01:07:58,653
I felt for a long time
it actually saved me,
1358
01:07:58,788 --> 01:08:00,555
but 'til a certain point.
1359
01:08:01,290 --> 01:08:03,326
You know, everything
that's really happened
1360
01:08:03,458 --> 01:08:05,127
with me
has kind of dichotomy,
1361
01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:06,628
sometimes a paradox.
1362
01:08:08,197 --> 01:08:10,765
I've probably watched
The Matrix movie...
1363
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:12,935
I don't know exact,
1364
01:08:13,102 --> 01:08:14,603
but I know
it was hundreds of times.
1365
01:08:14,971 --> 01:08:17,073
After I saw it the first time,
I had to watch it again.
1366
01:08:17,505 --> 01:08:18,875
And then I had
to watch it again,
1367
01:08:19,008 --> 01:08:20,877
and I watched it again
and again and again.
1368
01:08:21,043 --> 01:08:22,644
There were days
when I would watch it
1369
01:08:22,777 --> 01:08:24,412
two or three times in a row.
1370
01:08:25,314 --> 01:08:27,682
And like the world
that they are in,
1371
01:08:28,184 --> 01:08:32,054
this boring, you know,
trite, mundane...
1372
01:08:32,855 --> 01:08:36,325
you know, just sickening world,
I felt the same way.
1373
01:08:36,792 --> 01:08:38,526
I just felt like
nothing was going right.
1374
01:08:38,660 --> 01:08:39,862
What the hell am I doing here?
1375
01:08:40,096 --> 01:08:41,163
And I felt like, "Man,
there's gotta be
1376
01:08:41,297 --> 01:08:42,530
more than this."
1377
01:08:42,932 --> 01:08:44,233
Maybe there's something
with this Matrix thing.
1378
01:08:44,633 --> 01:08:46,102
Maybe it's real.
1379
01:08:46,302 --> 01:08:48,938
Maybe it's not so fake
after all. You know, who knows?
1380
01:08:58,814 --> 01:09:00,983
One thing I really
want you to know,
1381
01:09:01,217 --> 01:09:03,551
these claims
can neither be proved
1382
01:09:04,053 --> 01:09:07,089
nor can they be even
made to sound rational
1383
01:09:07,223 --> 01:09:08,858
in the usual sense of the word.
1384
01:09:10,092 --> 01:09:12,929
It has taken me over
three years to reach the point
1385
01:09:13,062 --> 01:09:14,864
where I am willing
to tell anyone
1386
01:09:14,997 --> 01:09:17,599
but my closest friends
about my experience
1387
01:09:17,867 --> 01:09:21,569
beginning back
at the vernal equinox of 1974.
1388
01:09:26,574 --> 01:09:28,344
One of the reasons
motivating me
1389
01:09:28,476 --> 01:09:30,346
to speak about it publicly
at last
1390
01:09:30,745 --> 01:09:32,480
to openly make this claim
1391
01:09:32,614 --> 01:09:35,084
is a recent encounter
I have undergone
1392
01:09:35,818 --> 01:09:39,621
which, by the way,
bears a strange resemblance
1393
01:09:40,189 --> 01:09:42,825
to Hawthorne Abendsen's
experience in my novel
1394
01:09:42,959 --> 01:09:45,995
The Man in the High Castle
with the woman Juliana Crain.
1395
01:09:51,733 --> 01:09:54,136
Juliana read Abendsen's book
about a world
1396
01:09:54,270 --> 01:09:56,839
in which Germany and Japan
and Italy...
1397
01:09:58,640 --> 01:10:01,743
Now this is a little difficult
if you haven't read the book,
1398
01:10:02,178 --> 01:10:05,680
but he wrote a novel
in which Germany,
1399
01:10:06,182 --> 01:10:09,952
Italy and Japan
lost World War II.
1400
01:10:10,618 --> 01:10:11,887
And he was living in a world
1401
01:10:12,054 --> 01:10:13,990
in which
they had won World War II.
1402
01:10:16,926 --> 01:10:18,094
She felt she should tell him
1403
01:10:18,227 --> 01:10:20,196
what she comprehended
about the book.
1404
01:10:21,596 --> 01:10:24,133
In other words,
that his novel was true.
1405
01:10:25,533 --> 01:10:27,303
When I was working
on Jimmy Corrigan,
1406
01:10:27,436 --> 01:10:29,905
the main character meets
his dad, and then his dad dies.
1407
01:10:33,042 --> 01:10:35,177
And as I was working
on the story itself,
1408
01:10:35,311 --> 01:10:38,180
I met my dad for the first time
and then he died.
1409
01:10:39,915 --> 01:10:41,851
John Updike said something
once about...
1410
01:10:42,251 --> 01:10:44,954
about the strange predictability
of fiction.
1411
01:10:45,354 --> 01:10:46,989
And he just kinda
let it go at that,
1412
01:10:47,123 --> 01:10:48,590
and didn't really
follow up on that.
1413
01:10:48,791 --> 01:10:50,259
But there is something
when you get into this...
1414
01:10:50,525 --> 01:10:52,061
imaginary world
1415
01:10:52,194 --> 01:10:54,430
of writing stories,
or reimagining memories
1416
01:10:54,562 --> 01:10:56,899
where you can kind of
start to feel like you're...
1417
01:10:57,632 --> 01:11:01,871
not necessarily predicting
the world, but having some play
1418
01:11:02,004 --> 01:11:03,806
in the stream of it,
or something.
1419
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:09,677
For several years, I've had
the feeling, a growing feeling,
1420
01:11:10,012 --> 01:11:13,449
that one day a woman, who would
be a complete stranger to me,
1421
01:11:13,816 --> 01:11:16,318
would contact me and tell me
1422
01:11:16,584 --> 01:11:19,522
that she had some information
to impart to me.
1423
01:11:20,189 --> 01:11:22,124
And then she would appear
at my door
1424
01:11:22,458 --> 01:11:25,828
just as Juliana appeared
at Hawthorne Abendsen's door.
1425
01:11:26,128 --> 01:11:29,664
She would tell me exactly
what Juliana told Abendsen,
1426
01:11:30,032 --> 01:11:33,803
and that is that my book,
like his, was in a certain,
1427
01:11:33,936 --> 01:11:36,439
real, literal
and physical sense,
1428
01:11:36,571 --> 01:11:38,140
not fiction but the truth.
1429
01:11:40,176 --> 01:11:42,211
Well, this did
finally happen to me.
1430
01:11:43,446 --> 01:11:45,848
I even knew
that her hair would be black.
1431
01:11:47,917 --> 01:11:49,584
One of the first things
that a lot
1432
01:11:49,717 --> 01:11:51,020
of science fiction critics
remind you
1433
01:11:51,153 --> 01:11:52,654
when you're talking
about science fiction,
1434
01:11:52,788 --> 01:11:54,256
"Science fiction is
not about prediction."
1435
01:11:54,390 --> 01:11:56,058
But of course people
think about it anyway.
1436
01:11:56,258 --> 01:11:59,228
And Dick has quite a few.
Like he's no slacker
1437
01:11:59,361 --> 01:12:03,866
in the actually anticipating
the future department,
1438
01:12:04,033 --> 01:12:06,135
especially around
consumer gadgets
1439
01:12:06,268 --> 01:12:08,104
and ideas about
consumer gadgets.
1440
01:12:08,270 --> 01:12:10,806
But I think
what's more prophetic
1441
01:12:10,940 --> 01:12:12,141
is just...
1442
01:12:12,842 --> 01:12:16,345
what if feels like
to be alive right now.
1443
01:12:16,678 --> 01:12:21,616
You know, to be confused...
ontologically confused.
1444
01:12:21,749 --> 01:12:25,154
Like, I'm not really sure
where reality is exactly.
1445
01:12:25,620 --> 01:12:28,723
I'm certainly convinced
that there's a lot of
1446
01:12:28,858 --> 01:12:31,293
very dark forces on the rise,
1447
01:12:31,427 --> 01:12:33,796
and there are things that
are trying to manipulate me
1448
01:12:34,029 --> 01:12:35,898
using information
or using my...
1449
01:12:36,065 --> 01:12:38,501
the fact that I'm still
a subject of capitalism,
1450
01:12:38,633 --> 01:12:41,070
and they're kind of
manipulating that.
1451
01:12:41,270 --> 01:12:42,770
And, at the same time,
there's sort of like
1452
01:12:42,905 --> 01:12:44,507
deeper rumblings
1453
01:12:44,639 --> 01:12:47,843
in the nature of the world
that seem really unclear.
1454
01:12:48,110 --> 01:12:52,014
And at the same time,
people seem potentially drawn
1455
01:12:52,148 --> 01:12:55,317
into their own sort of
solipsistic world
1456
01:12:55,451 --> 01:12:58,020
of like manipulating
with the world
1457
01:12:58,154 --> 01:12:59,588
through all these interfaces
1458
01:12:59,721 --> 01:13:01,457
and kind of detaching in a way,
1459
01:13:01,723 --> 01:13:04,126
even at the same time
you're completely bound up.
1460
01:13:04,293 --> 01:13:06,295
And that's a primal theme
in Dick,
1461
01:13:06,428 --> 01:13:08,864
is the tension between
our social reality,
1462
01:13:08,998 --> 01:13:10,866
the reality as
a social construction
1463
01:13:11,300 --> 01:13:14,537
that we are always able
to kind of fragment away from
1464
01:13:14,702 --> 01:13:17,206
in generally harrowing ways.
1465
01:13:17,339 --> 01:13:20,742
We go into solipsism,
we go into psychosis,
1466
01:13:20,976 --> 01:13:22,378
we go into paranoia.
1467
01:13:22,511 --> 01:13:24,446
Hey, guys, I used
to be one of you!
1468
01:13:24,813 --> 01:13:26,081
- Stop selling...
- And so,
1469
01:13:26,415 --> 01:13:29,751
I think he captures
the texture of our life.
1470
01:13:29,885 --> 01:13:32,221
I mean, especially, like,
just as a trivial example...
1471
01:13:32,354 --> 01:13:36,192
the texture of like lots
of little alerts all the time.
1472
01:13:36,325 --> 01:13:40,062
You know, pings on the phone
and here's your e-mail, ding!
1473
01:13:40,196 --> 01:13:41,564
And then,
"Oh, don't forget this."
1474
01:13:42,164 --> 01:13:45,201
That kind of mind
that's constantly distracted
1475
01:13:45,334 --> 01:13:48,204
by these little bits
of information tugging at us.
1476
01:13:48,337 --> 01:13:50,439
Some of which are
advertisements trying to like...
1477
01:13:50,738 --> 01:13:52,374
Or you start thinking
about a trip
1478
01:13:52,508 --> 01:13:54,476
and then you write
somebody an e-mail,
1479
01:13:54,610 --> 01:13:56,145
and Goggle reads your e-mail
and then suddenly
1480
01:13:56,278 --> 01:13:58,047
all the adds are like,
"Trips! Trips! Trips!"
1481
01:13:58,280 --> 01:14:02,918
It's just like, "Whoa," that
fabric of consciousness
1482
01:14:03,118 --> 01:14:06,922
is just straight out of this...
1483
01:14:08,958 --> 01:14:10,292
I remember typing
1484
01:14:10,426 --> 01:14:11,660
"guns for sale"
1485
01:14:11,794 --> 01:14:13,195
on like Google.
1486
01:14:13,929 --> 01:14:15,831
And... In Fairfax, Virginia.
1487
01:14:15,965 --> 01:14:19,134
And I saw this place called
Galyan's Sporting Goods Store.
1488
01:14:19,468 --> 01:14:21,237
And I remember...
1489
01:14:22,838 --> 01:14:25,773
like a few days after
I looked that up, my father.
1490
01:14:25,908 --> 01:14:27,876
I was in the basement
with my father.
1491
01:14:29,011 --> 01:14:30,946
And he said,
"I've seen your searches
1492
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:32,381
for guns for sale."
1493
01:14:33,949 --> 01:14:35,217
And looked at me,
1494
01:14:35,618 --> 01:14:39,054
he had like this
worried/angry look on his face.
1495
01:14:40,022 --> 01:14:41,590
And I didn't say anything,
and I...
1496
01:14:42,157 --> 01:14:43,993
We looked at each other
for a good minute,
1497
01:14:44,660 --> 01:14:46,128
almost like a standoff.
1498
01:14:46,428 --> 01:14:48,364
And then I just walked up
the basement steps and left.
1499
01:14:48,497 --> 01:14:50,899
So we never had another
conversation about it.
1500
01:14:53,168 --> 01:14:55,271
He had this great line
about, that he thought
1501
01:14:55,404 --> 01:14:56,939
that the contemporary world
1502
01:14:57,072 --> 01:14:59,508
was sort of recreating
the animist world
1503
01:14:59,642 --> 01:15:02,511
that people,
pre-modern people saw.
1504
01:15:04,013 --> 01:15:06,081
And his work captures
that sense
1505
01:15:06,215 --> 01:15:10,486
of a kind of
profane technological animism,
1506
01:15:10,653 --> 01:15:11,820
and aliveness
1507
01:15:12,187 --> 01:15:14,323
that is not very trustworthy.
1508
01:15:14,723 --> 01:15:15,758
I love you, daddy.
1509
01:15:16,292 --> 01:15:19,094
Dick was
always aware of the broken.
1510
01:15:19,228 --> 01:15:22,264
People are broken.
Technologies are broken.
1511
01:15:22,398 --> 01:15:25,834
Cosmologies are broken.
Gods are broken.
1512
01:15:28,170 --> 01:15:29,638
Even though it seems like
other people
1513
01:15:29,772 --> 01:15:31,573
are just always paying
attention to like the new
1514
01:15:31,707 --> 01:15:33,542
and how the new technologies
can solve this thing...
1515
01:15:33,676 --> 01:15:36,979
Your plastic pal
who's fun to be with!
1516
01:15:37,112 --> 01:15:40,683
...what I experience
my technological life is like
1517
01:15:40,816 --> 01:15:42,985
is just a lot of broken things.
1518
01:15:47,456 --> 01:15:49,491
So, you have
your giant developers.
1519
01:15:49,625 --> 01:15:51,093
You have Activision Blizzard,
1520
01:15:51,827 --> 01:15:54,563
they do World of Warcraft
and Overwatch.
1521
01:15:55,097 --> 01:15:57,599
You have EA, which is...
1522
01:15:59,702 --> 01:16:02,538
I think I've seen EA
related to the Nazis
1523
01:16:02,671 --> 01:16:04,840
more than I've seen them
related to video games.
1524
01:16:05,374 --> 01:16:06,975
They're pushing out
these things now
1525
01:16:07,109 --> 01:16:08,677
where you're paying full price
for a video game,
1526
01:16:08,812 --> 01:16:12,114
but you're only getting like
40% of a video game.
1527
01:16:12,581 --> 01:16:17,219
And the portion you get
is broken and buggy.
1528
01:16:17,453 --> 01:16:20,656
And sometimes like literally,
in the case of some games,
1529
01:16:20,889 --> 01:16:24,660
like I think the latest one
was Atlas, it's unplayable.
1530
01:16:24,794 --> 01:16:26,796
Like it's literally dead
on arrival.
1531
01:16:26,929 --> 01:16:28,697
People were still paying
full price for it
1532
01:16:28,864 --> 01:16:30,999
and getting tricked into it.
You can't get refunds.
1533
01:16:31,400 --> 01:16:33,235
They get patches
that don't work.
1534
01:16:34,036 --> 01:16:35,137
You're stuck
in these digital worlds
1535
01:16:35,270 --> 01:16:36,538
that aren't going so well.
1536
01:16:36,739 --> 01:16:37,873
And then,
when you get out of them,
1537
01:16:38,040 --> 01:16:39,308
you're stuck in a reality
1538
01:16:39,441 --> 01:16:40,876
that's not going so well
either.
1539
01:16:42,111 --> 01:16:44,079
And you can't help
draw parallels.
1540
01:16:44,646 --> 01:16:47,516
The grass is dead
on both sides of this thing.
1541
01:16:48,884 --> 01:16:50,586
Perhaps right now,
maybe our artifices
1542
01:16:50,886 --> 01:16:53,455
are a little bit more active
than we thought.
1543
01:16:53,655 --> 01:16:55,657
And they're just like really
hot-fixing a lot of things,
1544
01:16:55,792 --> 01:16:57,960
and they're quick-patching
reality right now,
1545
01:16:58,093 --> 01:16:59,261
and it's just like,
1546
01:16:59,428 --> 01:17:00,362
shit's hitting
the fan right now.
1547
01:17:01,397 --> 01:17:02,765
That's what's happening
1548
01:17:02,898 --> 01:17:05,667
outside the Matrix
in Neo's world, too.
1549
01:17:05,802 --> 01:17:07,102
It's like the real reality,
1550
01:17:07,236 --> 01:17:09,104
if you get outside
of the Matrix
1551
01:17:09,571 --> 01:17:10,874
is terrible.
1552
01:17:11,039 --> 01:17:14,109
The real reality is like war,
and you can't breathe.
1553
01:17:14,243 --> 01:17:17,012
To me, the subtext of that
is maybe there was
1554
01:17:17,379 --> 01:17:19,548
a taboo that we transgressed,
1555
01:17:19,681 --> 01:17:22,384
that we went past
the point of no return.
1556
01:17:23,252 --> 01:17:27,689
February 17th, 2003.
1557
01:17:27,923 --> 01:17:29,124
It was a Monday.
1558
01:17:30,993 --> 01:17:33,495
I woke up. There was
a whole lot of snow outside
1559
01:17:33,629 --> 01:17:36,231
from a recent blizzard
we had just had.
1560
01:17:36,698 --> 01:17:40,837
And I walked downstairs,
I saw my father shoveling snow.
1561
01:17:40,969 --> 01:17:44,139
So I got my clothes on
and helped him shovel the snow.
1562
01:17:44,640 --> 01:17:48,610
And in the middle of doing that
I remember my mother came out
1563
01:17:48,812 --> 01:17:51,613
and she looked up and she said,
"There's so much snow.
1564
01:17:51,747 --> 01:17:54,149
We're gonna remember this
for a long time."
1565
01:17:55,517 --> 01:17:57,953
I spent the rest of the day
in my room
1566
01:17:58,086 --> 01:17:59,889
playing violent video games
1567
01:18:00,022 --> 01:18:03,559
and watching The Matrix movie
with my black trench coat on
1568
01:18:03,927 --> 01:18:05,561
and my gun in my hand.
1569
01:18:07,396 --> 01:18:09,331
As evening time continued...
1570
01:18:11,366 --> 01:18:14,536
paranoia sunk in even further.
1571
01:18:15,170 --> 01:18:16,972
Lightning struck my brain.
1572
01:18:18,474 --> 01:18:19,508
And this is what hit me.
1573
01:18:20,209 --> 01:18:24,680
I said to myself, the only way
I could find out for sure,
1574
01:18:24,848 --> 01:18:26,982
I could find out for sure
1575
01:18:27,416 --> 01:18:29,151
if the Matrix was real
1576
01:18:29,418 --> 01:18:30,954
and I wasn't losing my mind
1577
01:18:31,687 --> 01:18:35,190
was to simply pick up
the phone and call them.
1578
01:18:36,458 --> 01:18:40,797
I left my room
and I walked precariously
1579
01:18:41,597 --> 01:18:44,233
over to the house phone
in my parents' bedroom.
1580
01:18:58,247 --> 01:19:00,716
I slowly picked the phone
up off the hook
1581
01:19:01,316 --> 01:19:04,520
and then, taking a deep,
nervous breath
1582
01:19:05,020 --> 01:19:08,023
I spoke those powerful words,
his words,
1583
01:19:08,757 --> 01:19:09,926
the final words of Neo,
1584
01:19:10,659 --> 01:19:13,897
"I know you're out there.
I can feel you now.
1585
01:19:14,463 --> 01:19:15,832
I know that you're afraid.
1586
01:19:16,966 --> 01:19:20,269
You're afraid of us.
You're afraid of change.
1587
01:19:21,537 --> 01:19:22,939
I don't know the future.
1588
01:19:23,272 --> 01:19:25,808
I didn't come here to tell you
how this is going to end.
1589
01:19:26,174 --> 01:19:29,611
I came here to tell you how
it's going to begin.
1590
01:19:30,445 --> 01:19:31,915
You're gonna hang up
this phone,
1591
01:19:32,314 --> 01:19:33,582
and then I'm going to show
these people
1592
01:19:33,715 --> 01:19:35,317
what you don't want them
to see.
1593
01:19:35,852 --> 01:19:37,152
A world without you.
1594
01:19:37,854 --> 01:19:40,155
A world without rules
and controls,
1595
01:19:40,289 --> 01:19:41,490
without borders or boundaries.
1596
01:19:41,723 --> 01:19:44,760
A world where
anything's possible.
1597
01:19:47,997 --> 01:19:50,833
Where we go from there
is a choice up to you."
1598
01:19:51,099 --> 01:19:52,467
And I hung up the phone
1599
01:19:52,701 --> 01:19:56,039
and I walked calmly back
to the TV in my room
1600
01:19:56,405 --> 01:19:58,808
and began watching The Matrix
all over again.
1601
01:20:00,776 --> 01:20:03,278
And I remember
sitting there on my bed
1602
01:20:03,412 --> 01:20:04,847
looking up at
The Matrix poster,
1603
01:20:05,014 --> 01:20:09,151
just saying basically,
"Fuck my life," you know?
1604
01:20:09,618 --> 01:20:12,287
I got my shotgun out and I...
1605
01:20:14,556 --> 01:20:17,225
I put some slugs in there,
in the chamber...
1606
01:20:18,160 --> 01:20:22,764
and I slid the action forward,
and I left my room.
1607
01:20:22,899 --> 01:20:28,437
But before I did,
I put a CD player on my head,
1608
01:20:28,871 --> 01:20:30,172
headphones on my head.
1609
01:20:30,305 --> 01:20:31,707
And this one was
a little different
1610
01:20:31,841 --> 01:20:33,009
than The Matrix.
1611
01:20:33,308 --> 01:20:35,477
This one was by a band
called Drowning Pool.
1612
01:20:36,345 --> 01:20:38,447
The words to the song were,
1613
01:20:38,982 --> 01:20:42,351
"Beaten why for
Can't take much more
1614
01:20:42,684 --> 01:20:45,554
Something's got to give
Let the bodies hit the floor"
1615
01:20:52,895 --> 01:20:55,631
That's what I was listening to
as I left my room
1616
01:20:56,099 --> 01:21:00,202
and I went downstairs to get
to the basement.
1617
01:21:20,957 --> 01:21:22,491
And I remember
1618
01:21:22,624 --> 01:21:24,760
when I got to the
bottom of the basement stairs
1619
01:21:25,028 --> 01:21:27,462
I saw my mother was sitting
there at the computer
1620
01:21:27,629 --> 01:21:28,697
with a smile on her face.
1621
01:21:29,364 --> 01:21:32,935
And she turned, she swiveled
in her chair to face me
1622
01:21:33,069 --> 01:21:35,637
and when she saw the gun
in my hand,
1623
01:21:35,771 --> 01:21:38,875
which she's seeing
for the first time ever,
1624
01:21:39,508 --> 01:21:42,912
her smile disappeared,
and I shot her.
1625
01:21:43,512 --> 01:21:44,914
I shot her in the chest.
1626
01:21:45,747 --> 01:21:47,649
And I turned my attention
to my father,
1627
01:21:47,784 --> 01:21:49,418
who was on the other side
of the basement
1628
01:21:49,685 --> 01:21:53,188
and he dove.
He was at his computer, too.
1629
01:21:53,388 --> 01:21:55,091
And he dove under the table,
1630
01:21:55,357 --> 01:21:57,426
and he was looking at me
1631
01:21:57,559 --> 01:22:01,030
with a look I've never seen
on him before.
1632
01:22:01,463 --> 01:22:04,266
And just that look of shock
and disbelief.
1633
01:22:05,034 --> 01:22:08,403
And I remember I crouched down
to be level with him
1634
01:22:08,537 --> 01:22:10,706
and I shot him about
three times.
1635
01:22:26,089 --> 01:22:28,825
I went upstairs to reload
1636
01:22:29,257 --> 01:22:30,893
and when I came back down...
1637
01:22:31,593 --> 01:22:34,596
Oh, I still had
my headphones on.
1638
01:22:35,098 --> 01:22:37,834
The words that were forced
into my ears were,
1639
01:22:38,600 --> 01:22:41,336
"Skin against skin
Blood and bone
1640
01:22:41,804 --> 01:22:44,207
You're all by yourself
But you're not alone
1641
01:22:44,673 --> 01:22:46,675
You wanted in
Now you're here
1642
01:22:47,043 --> 01:22:49,344
Driven by hate
Consumed by fear
1643
01:22:49,745 --> 01:22:51,480
Let the bodies hit the floor"
1644
01:22:52,414 --> 01:22:53,783
That's what I was listening to
1645
01:22:53,950 --> 01:22:55,985
when I went down
for the second time
1646
01:22:56,119 --> 01:22:57,319
to the basement.
1647
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:06,996
I was standing at the top
of the basement staircase,
1648
01:23:07,130 --> 01:23:09,966
and my mother was standing
at the bottom of the staircase,
1649
01:23:10,665 --> 01:23:12,334
holding her chest
as she bled out.
1650
01:23:12,902 --> 01:23:17,907
And I lifted the gun up
and I aimed it at her face.
1651
01:23:18,107 --> 01:23:19,942
She looked up at me
and she said...
1652
01:23:20,675 --> 01:23:23,179
she said, "Joshua."
1653
01:23:23,846 --> 01:23:25,280
She said, "What did you do?"
1654
01:23:26,215 --> 01:23:30,485
And she kept looking at me
for a minute, and she said...
1655
01:23:31,788 --> 01:23:33,022
she said, "You wouldn't."
1656
01:23:33,722 --> 01:23:35,057
And I pulled the trigger.
1657
01:23:37,392 --> 01:23:39,494
When I pulled the
trigger and...
1658
01:23:40,662 --> 01:23:41,964
her face exploded.
1659
01:23:43,732 --> 01:23:46,368
Half her face, her eye
and her face exploded out
1660
01:23:46,501 --> 01:23:47,469
through the back of her head...
1661
01:23:48,237 --> 01:23:52,241
and her flesh was just
turned into like ripplets,
1662
01:23:52,374 --> 01:23:53,608
a bloody mess.
1663
01:23:53,742 --> 01:23:55,812
And it messed me up
really bad
1664
01:23:55,945 --> 01:24:00,149
because it wasn't anything like
I had seen on The Matrix.
1665
01:24:00,850 --> 01:24:04,319
You know? Real life
was so much more horrific.
1666
01:24:04,653 --> 01:24:07,290
It kind of jarred me.
I was still pretty numb,
1667
01:24:07,824 --> 01:24:09,491
but I remember it jarring me
1668
01:24:09,724 --> 01:24:12,627
'cause it was different than
what I thought of The Matrix.
1669
01:24:15,798 --> 01:24:18,034
So I turned around
and I went upstairs
1670
01:24:18,333 --> 01:24:20,937
into the dining room.
1671
01:24:21,170 --> 01:24:23,172
I picked up the phone
in the kitchen,
1672
01:24:23,738 --> 01:24:25,574
and my sister was on the phone.
1673
01:24:25,707 --> 01:24:27,076
I didn't realize at the time
1674
01:24:27,210 --> 01:24:29,544
that my sister
was on the phone with my father
1675
01:24:30,012 --> 01:24:32,747
at the exact moment that
I killed him and my mother.
1676
01:24:33,115 --> 01:24:35,852
She heard the whole thing,
and I didn't realize it.
1677
01:24:35,985 --> 01:24:37,053
So here I am,
1678
01:24:37,452 --> 01:24:39,487
I'm at the phone in the kitchen
and I said, "Hello?"
1679
01:24:40,189 --> 01:24:43,292
And my sister said, "Josh?"
And I said, "Tiffany?"
1680
01:24:43,592 --> 01:24:44,861
I said,
"What are you doing here?"
1681
01:24:45,061 --> 01:24:46,628
And she said,
"Josh, where's Daddy?
1682
01:24:46,761 --> 01:24:48,097
I wanna talk to Daddy."
1683
01:24:48,630 --> 01:24:50,099
And I told her, I said,
1684
01:24:50,266 --> 01:24:52,335
"Hang up the phone, Tiffany.
I gotta call someone."
1685
01:24:53,102 --> 01:24:55,570
And she didn't hang up,
so I let the phone hang
1686
01:24:55,704 --> 01:24:59,008
and I went to,
my father had a cell phone.
1687
01:24:59,141 --> 01:25:01,344
I went to his cell phone.
I went outside.
1688
01:25:02,311 --> 01:25:06,581
I took a Coca-Cola
out of the refrigerator
1689
01:25:07,183 --> 01:25:08,550
and I started to drink...
1690
01:25:08,750 --> 01:25:10,019
I popped the top
and I started drinking it,
1691
01:25:10,152 --> 01:25:11,586
and I called 911.
1692
01:25:12,654 --> 01:25:14,090
When I hung the phone up...
1693
01:25:15,191 --> 01:25:18,794
I got a call on my dad's phone
from a friend of his.
1694
01:25:19,095 --> 01:25:23,698
And my dad's friend said,
"Hey, Josh, is your dad there?"
1695
01:25:24,233 --> 01:25:26,768
And I said, "He can't come
to the phone right now."
1696
01:25:27,535 --> 01:25:28,838
And he said, "Oh, okay.
1697
01:25:28,971 --> 01:25:30,505
Will you give him
a message for me?
1698
01:25:30,639 --> 01:25:31,640
Just tell him I called."
1699
01:25:32,275 --> 01:25:34,676
Said, "Will you give him that
message for me?"
1700
01:25:35,278 --> 01:25:36,345
And I said, "Sure."
1701
01:25:37,113 --> 01:25:39,714
And he hung up the phone,
I hung up the phone.
1702
01:25:39,882 --> 01:25:41,416
And moments later,
1703
01:25:41,549 --> 01:25:44,387
the police arrived
at the driveway of my house
1704
01:25:44,552 --> 01:25:45,955
with their guns drawn.
1705
01:25:46,289 --> 01:25:49,591
About five or six of them
with their guns drawn on me...
1706
01:25:50,592 --> 01:25:52,328
told me to get
down on my knees,
1707
01:25:52,460 --> 01:25:54,496
and of course they arrested me.
1708
01:26:07,276 --> 01:26:09,045
I, in my stories
and novels,
1709
01:26:09,178 --> 01:26:11,113
often write about
counterfeit worlds
1710
01:26:11,613 --> 01:26:15,483
semi-real worlds, as well as
deranged private worlds
1711
01:26:15,717 --> 01:26:17,954
inhabited often
by just one person,
1712
01:26:18,254 --> 01:26:20,222
while meantime
the other characters
1713
01:26:20,356 --> 01:26:22,557
either remain
in their own worlds throughout
1714
01:26:22,925 --> 01:26:25,828
or are somehow drawn into
one of the peculiar ones.
1715
01:26:26,461 --> 01:26:29,932
This theme occurs in the corpus
of my 27 years of writing.
1716
01:26:30,433 --> 01:26:32,802
At no time did I have
a theoretical
1717
01:26:32,935 --> 01:26:35,670
or conscious explanation
for my preoccupation
1718
01:26:35,905 --> 01:26:38,274
with these pluriform
pseudo-worlds.
1719
01:26:38,573 --> 01:26:40,376
But now I think I understand.
1720
01:26:40,675 --> 01:26:42,744
What I was sensing
was the manifold
1721
01:26:42,878 --> 01:26:46,315
of partially actualized reality
lying tangent
1722
01:26:46,449 --> 01:26:49,251
to what evidently
is the most actualized one.
1723
01:26:49,584 --> 01:26:54,522
The one which the majority of us
by consensus gentium agree on.
1724
01:26:56,392 --> 01:26:57,726
The real nub of it,
1725
01:26:58,194 --> 01:27:01,864
morally, ethically,
even kind of cosmologically...
1726
01:27:01,998 --> 01:27:04,166
is how we deal with each other.
1727
01:27:04,566 --> 01:27:06,902
Like, okay I'm in a simulation.
1728
01:27:07,036 --> 01:27:08,804
Okay, I'm in a false,
phenomenal world.
1729
01:27:08,938 --> 01:27:11,874
How do I deal with this person
I'm in love with?
1730
01:27:12,008 --> 01:27:14,676
How do I deal with this person
who is my enemy?
1731
01:27:14,910 --> 01:27:17,313
How do I deal
with a dying parent?
1732
01:27:17,579 --> 01:27:20,950
But if I have the hunch
that this is a simulation
1733
01:27:21,217 --> 01:27:23,786
and there are other people
like me there
1734
01:27:23,919 --> 01:27:26,122
who aren't just simulations,
1735
01:27:26,255 --> 01:27:28,924
it puts weird pressure
on my ethics.
1736
01:27:29,492 --> 01:27:32,461
How do I deal with somebody
else who's in a false world
1737
01:27:32,627 --> 01:27:36,866
but who's actually behind
that avatar is someone like me,
1738
01:27:36,999 --> 01:27:38,801
that I really want
to communicate with,
1739
01:27:38,968 --> 01:27:41,170
fall in love with,
bond together with.
1740
01:27:41,303 --> 01:27:43,638
And that's really key
to Phil Dick.
1741
01:27:43,772 --> 01:27:45,508
Like yeah, Phil Dick
was kinda crazy.
1742
01:27:45,774 --> 01:27:48,144
He had visions
1743
01:27:48,277 --> 01:27:49,778
he could never decide
what they meant,
1744
01:27:49,945 --> 01:27:52,614
he's neurotic and pathological
and paranoid
1745
01:27:52,747 --> 01:27:53,849
and all those things,
1746
01:27:54,083 --> 01:27:56,819
but at the same time,
constantly,
1747
01:27:57,053 --> 01:27:58,788
throughout all of the texts,
1748
01:27:59,155 --> 01:28:03,359
there's this
very grounded empathy
1749
01:28:03,558 --> 01:28:08,064
with people suffering
under these false conditions.
1750
01:28:09,865 --> 01:28:12,334
This very real portrayal,
1751
01:28:12,468 --> 01:28:15,570
very sobering portrayals of
human beings that are still...
1752
01:28:15,971 --> 01:28:17,206
they have a heart.
1753
01:28:17,540 --> 01:28:19,875
And that heart is what
kind of keeps you going
1754
01:28:20,009 --> 01:28:23,946
as you suffer these various
nightmare scenarios
1755
01:28:24,113 --> 01:28:26,482
that he throws your way,
including the ultimate one
1756
01:28:26,614 --> 01:28:27,850
of just not knowing.
1757
01:28:28,384 --> 01:28:30,752
And I think that that's
one of the ways that people
1758
01:28:30,886 --> 01:28:33,055
get attracted
to simulation hypothesis
1759
01:28:33,255 --> 01:28:36,624
is because it seems
to maybe solve problems.
1760
01:28:37,259 --> 01:28:40,595
But I think it just makes
the problems even more...
1761
01:28:41,363 --> 01:28:44,133
you know, kind of poignant
and in your face.
1762
01:28:47,436 --> 01:28:49,704
So when I met my lawyers
1763
01:28:49,839 --> 01:28:52,308
for the first time
in Fairfax jail
1764
01:28:52,441 --> 01:28:55,777
they asked me about
my crime and...
1765
01:28:55,945 --> 01:28:57,346
and I told them I said,
1766
01:28:57,612 --> 01:28:59,448
"I did my thing
just like Neo in The Matrix.
1767
01:29:00,182 --> 01:29:02,218
Like I was in virtual reality."
1768
01:29:03,319 --> 01:29:06,789
And that really took them
by surprise.
1769
01:29:06,922 --> 01:29:08,090
They weren't expecting that.
1770
01:29:08,524 --> 01:29:10,993
I also told them
that the moment of my crime,
1771
01:29:11,794 --> 01:29:13,761
I had also felt
a tinge of remorse,
1772
01:29:14,163 --> 01:29:16,764
because it was
two strong things
1773
01:29:16,899 --> 01:29:18,300
at the same time,
1774
01:29:18,534 --> 01:29:21,070
that I was entering the world,
or exiting the world
1775
01:29:21,203 --> 01:29:22,238
of the Matrix.
1776
01:29:22,670 --> 01:29:25,007
And then real life,
with what I did to my parents.
1777
01:29:26,041 --> 01:29:28,244
My lawyers later
went to my house,
1778
01:29:28,444 --> 01:29:30,212
and they went upstairs
to my room
1779
01:29:30,346 --> 01:29:35,951
and they saw my enormous
Matrix movie poster on my wall.
1780
01:29:36,385 --> 01:29:38,187
And they saw
my black trench coat
1781
01:29:38,320 --> 01:29:40,556
laying out on my bed,
smoothed out on my bed.
1782
01:29:40,688 --> 01:29:42,057
They saw my black boots.
1783
01:29:42,958 --> 01:29:44,426
The ones like Neo wore.
1784
01:29:45,528 --> 01:29:46,896
And they began to think
1785
01:29:47,263 --> 01:29:50,232
that they may have
an insanity defense.
1786
01:29:53,235 --> 01:29:56,605
They said that I, quote,
"Harbored a bona fide belief
1787
01:29:56,738 --> 01:29:59,774
that I was living in
the virtual world of The Matrix
1788
01:30:00,209 --> 01:30:01,743
at the time of the murders."
1789
01:30:02,545 --> 01:30:04,180
That was part of my defense.
1790
01:30:05,314 --> 01:30:07,516
- This isn't real?
- What is real?
1791
01:30:07,749 --> 01:30:09,485
Which was later dubbed
1792
01:30:09,618 --> 01:30:10,685
The Matrix Defense.
1793
01:30:10,920 --> 01:30:12,254
The Matrix Defense
1794
01:30:12,388 --> 01:30:14,123
is a version of
the insanity defense
1795
01:30:14,290 --> 01:30:16,659
and is a descendant
of The Taxi Driver Defense
1796
01:30:16,792 --> 01:30:17,826
of John Hinckley.
1797
01:30:18,760 --> 01:30:22,064
It has been used multiple times
since Joshua's trial,
1798
01:30:22,298 --> 01:30:26,468
most notably by Lee Malvo,
aka The D.C. Sniper.
1799
01:30:27,303 --> 01:30:29,171
The doctor, the psychologist,
1800
01:30:29,905 --> 01:30:31,574
Dr. Shostak, he diagnosed me
1801
01:30:31,706 --> 01:30:34,310
with a form of schizophrenia
called simple schizophrenia,
1802
01:30:34,510 --> 01:30:36,579
and that's when he made
the declaration
1803
01:30:36,711 --> 01:30:39,747
that people are scarcely real
to me and things like that.
1804
01:30:40,683 --> 01:30:43,886
There were different events
that happened in my life,
1805
01:30:44,453 --> 01:30:47,623
different things I was feeling
that were in a combination
1806
01:30:47,990 --> 01:30:49,491
led up to me exploding.
1807
01:30:50,526 --> 01:30:51,961
The abuse I had been suffering
1808
01:30:52,094 --> 01:30:54,230
from my parents at home
for many, many years.
1809
01:30:54,430 --> 01:30:56,198
And then I had the bullying
at school
1810
01:30:56,599 --> 01:31:00,436
and the undiagnosed
mental illness I had for years.
1811
01:31:00,569 --> 01:31:01,971
And all of that together
1812
01:31:02,104 --> 01:31:03,973
kind of formed
a ticking time bomb.
1813
01:31:04,772 --> 01:31:06,408
I call it the perfect storm.
1814
01:31:06,542 --> 01:31:12,014
But I, myself, I never made
any excuses for my crime.
1815
01:31:12,381 --> 01:31:14,516
And I just wanted to die,
you know?
1816
01:31:14,650 --> 01:31:17,586
It was like, just forget about
all of this stuff, you know.
1817
01:31:18,254 --> 01:31:19,455
And as a matter of fact,
1818
01:31:19,588 --> 01:31:21,090
at the end
of my sentence hearing
1819
01:31:21,223 --> 01:31:23,559
I got to say
a written statement
1820
01:31:23,692 --> 01:31:25,160
to the judge out loud there.
1821
01:31:25,294 --> 01:31:28,264
And there I just,
I told him that
1822
01:31:28,697 --> 01:31:29,898
I wasn't making any excuses,
1823
01:31:30,032 --> 01:31:31,433
and I deserved
the death penalty,
1824
01:31:31,567 --> 01:31:32,468
I deserved to die.
1825
01:31:33,102 --> 01:31:35,404
And I think about
what I did every day.
1826
01:31:35,604 --> 01:31:37,606
I wish I could take it back.
You know?
1827
01:31:38,307 --> 01:31:40,409
Ultimately, Joshua decided not
1828
01:31:40,542 --> 01:31:43,045
to pursue The Matrix Defense
and pled guilty.
1829
01:31:43,612 --> 01:31:46,015
He was 19 years old
when convicted.
1830
01:31:46,682 --> 01:31:50,519
He is not due to be released
until 2043.
1831
01:31:52,087 --> 01:31:53,622
The movie,
The Matrix movie
1832
01:31:53,756 --> 01:31:56,091
has affected people
in all sorts of different ways.
1833
01:31:56,292 --> 01:31:57,960
It all depends
on where you're coming from
1834
01:31:58,093 --> 01:31:59,228
and the psychology of it.
1835
01:31:59,762 --> 01:32:01,930
Mine is just kind of
an extreme case.
1836
01:32:02,665 --> 01:32:04,700
There are people
out there today
1837
01:32:05,134 --> 01:32:06,635
who may be listening to this
1838
01:32:06,769 --> 01:32:09,338
that are going through
the same things that I was.
1839
01:32:10,039 --> 01:32:11,440
And this is
the whole reason why
1840
01:32:11,573 --> 01:32:13,776
I'm even talking
about this today
1841
01:32:14,410 --> 01:32:17,146
because I know
I have a purpose,
1842
01:32:17,279 --> 01:32:19,348
a calling in my life
to try to reach them.
1843
01:32:20,349 --> 01:32:22,951
Joshua wrote
a book about his experience
1844
01:32:23,085 --> 01:32:25,087
in hopes of reaching
other troubled kids
1845
01:32:25,220 --> 01:32:28,090
and stopping them
from repeating his mistakes.
1846
01:32:29,725 --> 01:32:31,894
Now that I'm in my mid-40's...
1847
01:32:32,661 --> 01:32:36,365
I am actually finally able
to deal with people
1848
01:32:36,498 --> 01:32:37,433
as human beings.
1849
01:32:38,267 --> 01:32:39,935
And you could
think of it one way,
1850
01:32:40,135 --> 01:32:42,538
if people are simulated,
they're getting better
1851
01:32:42,671 --> 01:32:44,006
and they're easier to relate to,
1852
01:32:44,139 --> 01:32:47,476
but is it possible
that I saw everyone
1853
01:32:47,609 --> 01:32:50,612
as these sort of robotic
humans walking around
1854
01:32:50,879 --> 01:32:53,248
because I couldn't
figure them out
1855
01:32:53,415 --> 01:32:55,250
because of a problem
with my brain?
1856
01:32:55,684 --> 01:32:56,885
And that's the thing,
1857
01:32:57,052 --> 01:32:59,121
I never wanna get locked
into the idea
1858
01:32:59,254 --> 01:33:00,456
that this is all fake
1859
01:33:00,723 --> 01:33:02,391
if in fact the reason
I thought it was fake
1860
01:33:02,524 --> 01:33:05,260
is because it was an easier
way for me to deal
1861
01:33:05,394 --> 01:33:08,163
with the complexity
of human existence.
1862
01:33:09,465 --> 01:33:15,871
I feel like being fully
in the body with another
1863
01:33:16,472 --> 01:33:19,408
is like sort of maybe
like seeing the light, you know?
1864
01:33:19,541 --> 01:33:22,611
It's the "petite mort"
of orgasm.
1865
01:33:22,745 --> 01:33:25,981
Or just like the fusing
of consciousness with an other.
1866
01:33:26,115 --> 01:33:27,549
Audre Lorde talks about
the erotic.
1867
01:33:27,683 --> 01:33:33,055
And I think the erotic
as a dynamic in reality
1868
01:33:33,188 --> 01:33:35,457
is an antidote to solipsism.
1869
01:33:35,591 --> 01:33:37,626
It's an antidote
to a lack of empathy.
1870
01:33:37,794 --> 01:33:39,261
Because it allows us to sort of
1871
01:33:39,395 --> 01:33:42,030
have a playful relationship
to the other.
1872
01:33:42,297 --> 01:33:44,533
There's that scene
in The Matrix Reloaded
1873
01:33:44,666 --> 01:33:48,170
where Morpheus gives a speech
and tells everyone
1874
01:33:48,303 --> 01:33:49,938
that they're about
to be attacked
1875
01:33:50,072 --> 01:33:51,273
by the machines.
1876
01:33:51,507 --> 01:33:53,409
This might be
their last night alive.
1877
01:33:53,776 --> 01:33:57,646
The machines have gathered
an army, and as I speak
1878
01:33:58,113 --> 01:34:00,749
that army is drawing nearer
to our home.
1879
01:34:04,086 --> 01:34:05,421
So, what do they do?
1880
01:34:05,822 --> 01:34:07,623
They play music. They dance.
1881
01:34:07,824 --> 01:34:11,059
And in the midst
of this stew of flesh...
1882
01:34:11,560 --> 01:34:15,531
Trinity and Neo sneak off
to this catacomb and make love.
1883
01:34:16,298 --> 01:34:18,467
This is a scene
that gets parodied a lot.
1884
01:34:18,634 --> 01:34:20,736
I think it's easy
to not take it seriously
1885
01:34:20,870 --> 01:34:22,137
because it's so earnest.
1886
01:34:22,839 --> 01:34:24,273
But it's also very tender.
1887
01:34:24,506 --> 01:34:26,575
It shows the characters
at their most vulnerable
1888
01:34:26,708 --> 01:34:27,709
with each other.
1889
01:34:28,343 --> 01:34:31,613
Neo tells Trinity
that he's afraid of losing her.
1890
01:34:32,014 --> 01:34:36,018
And she says,
"You're not gonna lose me."
1891
01:34:36,385 --> 01:34:38,620
She holds his hand,
"You feel this?"
1892
01:34:40,255 --> 01:34:41,990
"I'm never letting go."
1893
01:34:42,658 --> 01:34:43,692
That's love.
1894
01:34:44,359 --> 01:34:46,728
You have to be
very vulnerable to feel it.
1895
01:34:47,763 --> 01:34:51,200
I think loneliness
and isolation and trauma
1896
01:34:51,333 --> 01:34:53,635
play very heavily
in the kinds of realities
1897
01:34:53,769 --> 01:34:56,071
that people construct
for themselves.
1898
01:35:00,776 --> 01:35:02,478
And if there's a player
1899
01:35:02,611 --> 01:35:05,314
that is responsible for me
and is playing me...
1900
01:35:06,615 --> 01:35:09,919
then, you know,
maybe he's a genius,
1901
01:35:10,118 --> 01:35:11,987
but maybe he's like
a 12-year-old kid.
1902
01:35:13,689 --> 01:35:16,992
So the thing I've gotta do
is I've gotta keep leveling up
1903
01:35:17,259 --> 01:35:19,394
and I've gotta stay interesting
for him.
1904
01:35:20,128 --> 01:35:22,698
Do you make different
choices than you might
1905
01:35:22,832 --> 01:35:25,434
otherwise in order to keep
your player interested?
1906
01:35:25,734 --> 01:35:27,236
The way I think about is,
you know,
1907
01:35:27,369 --> 01:35:28,604
if you're playing a video game
1908
01:35:28,938 --> 01:35:31,240
and sometimes you see
like a giant blinking cursor
1909
01:35:31,373 --> 01:35:32,774
telling you to go
to a certain place.
1910
01:35:32,909 --> 01:35:34,510
I keep looking for those.
1911
01:35:34,643 --> 01:35:37,312
And when I see one, I'll stop
and I'll pause and I'll say...
1912
01:35:37,847 --> 01:35:40,282
"Thank you for that,"
and I'll, you know...
1913
01:35:40,449 --> 01:35:41,784
And then every once in a while,
1914
01:35:41,918 --> 01:35:43,285
I'll just make a completely
batshit decision
1915
01:35:43,418 --> 01:35:45,153
that no one seems to understand.
1916
01:35:45,320 --> 01:35:47,155
Including myself!
Like, "Well, well, well!"
1917
01:35:47,289 --> 01:35:48,390
I hope you're interested.
1918
01:35:48,524 --> 01:35:49,792
Just like
all the other theories,
1919
01:35:49,926 --> 01:35:52,728
no one's gonna know
until they're dead.
1920
01:35:54,696 --> 01:35:57,332
And I don't believe
that it's flawed enough
1921
01:35:57,466 --> 01:35:59,201
that it could somehow tear...
1922
01:35:59,836 --> 01:36:04,039
and we'd find ourselves exposed
out of The Matrix.
1923
01:36:04,506 --> 01:36:05,942
I don't think
that's how it works.
1924
01:36:06,074 --> 01:36:08,310
I think that
it's a solid system.
1925
01:36:08,443 --> 01:36:11,046
And whatever it is,
ends when you die.
1926
01:36:11,680 --> 01:36:14,516
But it's totally plausible
that you then wake up
1927
01:36:14,884 --> 01:36:18,487
in an arcade in the year 3000
and put another quarter in
1928
01:36:18,620 --> 01:36:21,423
and do another life on Earth
in the year 2019, you know?
1929
01:36:21,657 --> 01:36:23,960
There are these kind of
fundamental metaphors
1930
01:36:24,092 --> 01:36:28,664
about reality that we develop
through being humans
1931
01:36:28,798 --> 01:36:31,667
moving through time and space
on a planet.
1932
01:36:31,868 --> 01:36:35,671
So the metaphor of the journey,
"Life is like a journey."
1933
01:36:35,905 --> 01:36:38,674
Well, another one we have,
and we all have it is,
1934
01:36:38,942 --> 01:36:41,577
waking up from a dream.
1935
01:36:44,246 --> 01:36:47,516
"What? Oh, I'm in this world!"
1936
01:36:47,716 --> 01:36:51,821
And just that. Not what
the nature of this world was,
1937
01:36:51,955 --> 01:36:53,322
or the nature of that world is.
1938
01:36:53,555 --> 01:36:56,391
We have this fundamental
cognitive experience
1939
01:36:57,125 --> 01:36:59,862
of shifting between
ontological frames,
1940
01:36:59,996 --> 01:37:01,463
sometimes quite abruptly.
1941
01:37:01,630 --> 01:37:03,365
Sometimes with
intense emotions.
1942
01:37:03,632 --> 01:37:05,267
And this is just
stitched into us.
1943
01:37:05,802 --> 01:37:09,738
So it's a fundamental hunch
that we all have
1944
01:37:10,238 --> 01:37:12,474
that the world
is not what it seems.
1945
01:37:12,641 --> 01:37:14,242
There's another world
behind this world,
1946
01:37:14,376 --> 01:37:15,812
or at the very least,
1947
01:37:16,144 --> 01:37:18,982
this world is capable
of falling apart.
1948
01:37:19,114 --> 01:37:20,850
- What's happening?
- Nothing.
1949
01:37:21,516 --> 01:37:22,819
I don't know,
does thinking about
1950
01:37:22,952 --> 01:37:24,586
the simulation,
does that excite you?
1951
01:37:24,720 --> 01:37:28,423
Or does it sometimes
fill you with unease?
1952
01:37:33,062 --> 01:37:34,229
Well, I guess...
1953
01:37:36,065 --> 01:37:39,735
I've had
this simulation argument
1954
01:37:39,869 --> 01:37:43,138
for so long now
that it's hard to sort of
1955
01:37:43,639 --> 01:37:45,140
consider the counter faction.
1956
01:37:45,374 --> 01:37:47,142
'Cause it's kind of become
so much a part of
1957
01:37:47,643 --> 01:37:49,946
the way I view the world,
1958
01:37:50,079 --> 01:37:51,179
the simulation argument.
1959
01:37:53,883 --> 01:37:54,851
I do think that...
1960
01:37:57,352 --> 01:38:00,790
it makes it quite...
1961
01:38:04,192 --> 01:38:05,460
compelling that
1962
01:38:05,862 --> 01:38:09,431
this very general notion,
that there are more things...
1963
01:38:12,035 --> 01:38:13,168
in heaven and on earth
1964
01:38:13,803 --> 01:38:15,905
than are dreamt of
in our philosophy.
1965
01:38:16,072 --> 01:38:20,275
This sense that we are
plausibly very, very limited
1966
01:38:21,044 --> 01:38:23,645
in our understanding
of what the heck is going on.
1967
01:38:25,148 --> 01:38:28,350
We have made progress in that
maybe we have figured out,
1968
01:38:29,085 --> 01:38:31,620
you know, six of the 10 things
you need to have figured out
1969
01:38:31,753 --> 01:38:33,221
to really know what's going on.
1970
01:38:33,588 --> 01:38:36,159
But the thing is that each
of the remaining four things
1971
01:38:36,725 --> 01:38:38,861
might so radically
change the conclusions
1972
01:38:39,896 --> 01:38:41,430
that,
until we get them all right,
1973
01:38:41,563 --> 01:38:43,231
maybe we are as lost
1974
01:38:43,365 --> 01:38:46,234
as you would be if you only knew
one or zero.
1975
01:38:55,677 --> 01:38:57,279
I was lying in bed,
I was thinking about it.
1976
01:38:57,412 --> 01:38:58,747
So hypothetically,
1977
01:38:58,881 --> 01:39:01,416
what if tomorrow
I dress in all white
1978
01:39:01,550 --> 01:39:03,452
I slick my hair back,
and I'm like, "Hey,"
1979
01:39:03,618 --> 01:39:05,253
I tell the local media,
1980
01:39:05,888 --> 01:39:08,457
"Here's the message that we
should be good to each other,
1981
01:39:08,590 --> 01:39:10,258
I'm starting a new thing."
1982
01:39:10,860 --> 01:39:12,728
Building up almost
like a religion,
1983
01:39:12,862 --> 01:39:14,396
or just more of
a philosophy of,
1984
01:39:14,529 --> 01:39:15,865
"Hey, we are in a simulation,
1985
01:39:16,132 --> 01:39:19,701
so let's, let's try and gain
the attention of those people."
1986
01:39:20,569 --> 01:39:22,404
Now, those entities
are running the thing.
1987
01:39:23,005 --> 01:39:25,373
So going forth here,
we could do things like,
1988
01:39:25,908 --> 01:39:28,710
you know, gigantic light,
like...
1989
01:39:30,146 --> 01:39:31,914
simultaneous light displays,
1990
01:39:33,715 --> 01:39:36,953
giant monuments,
just a giant tablet that says,
1991
01:39:37,086 --> 01:39:40,455
"Hey, we know..."
or something profound.
1992
01:39:41,224 --> 01:39:44,526
And then in unison
just flashing lights out.
1993
01:39:44,659 --> 01:39:47,395
So, one person walks
by this black sphere
1994
01:39:47,529 --> 01:39:50,800
in their great
artificer hallway
1995
01:39:51,000 --> 01:39:52,835
and all of a sudden there's
a red light blinking
1996
01:39:52,969 --> 01:39:54,937
that was never there before.
They'd be like, "Oh, hey.
1997
01:39:56,239 --> 01:39:59,374
Experiment whatever
is talking to us."
1998
01:39:59,976 --> 01:40:02,544
I mean, who knows,
if we just keep going with it
1999
01:40:02,677 --> 01:40:04,180
and going with it
and going with it.
2000
01:40:04,346 --> 01:40:09,786
Do things like organize Earth
in a more watchful pattern
2001
01:40:09,919 --> 01:40:11,586
to get ourselves
spread over the universe.
2002
01:40:11,720 --> 01:40:14,257
'Cause the larger screen
we have to display our message,
2003
01:40:14,389 --> 01:40:16,291
the more attention we'll get.
2004
01:40:20,797 --> 01:40:21,898
You're dreaming.
2005
01:40:23,166 --> 01:40:25,734
Doug, was it about Mars?
2006
01:40:30,505 --> 01:40:32,074
Becoming a multi-planet species
2007
01:40:32,809 --> 01:40:35,510
beats the hell out of being
a single-planet species.
2008
01:40:36,411 --> 01:40:37,546
Then we get to, like...
2009
01:40:38,114 --> 01:40:40,850
Star Wars levels
of spread across the galaxy.
2010
01:40:41,117 --> 01:40:43,019
Perhaps our science
will progress enough
2011
01:40:43,186 --> 01:40:44,153
where we can actually
2012
01:40:44,486 --> 01:40:46,555
tap on the membrane between...
2013
01:40:47,223 --> 01:40:50,293
the universe
and what's beyond it
2014
01:40:50,492 --> 01:40:51,828
and perhaps get a message out,
2015
01:40:51,961 --> 01:40:54,696
an active message
to an active listener.
2016
01:40:55,064 --> 01:40:56,799
I don't like to fuss or moan,
2017
01:40:56,933 --> 01:40:58,935
but if it weren't for you,
2018
01:40:59,401 --> 01:41:00,837
I'd be all, all alone.
2019
01:41:01,871 --> 01:41:03,672
It would be hilarious
if we were something stupid,
2020
01:41:03,806 --> 01:41:05,640
like, you know how computers
are in everything.
2021
01:41:07,310 --> 01:41:10,913
I mean, there's a computer...
this is a vape tank.
2022
01:41:11,180 --> 01:41:13,983
There's a computer in here.
There's a microchip in here.
2023
01:41:14,416 --> 01:41:15,885
But if we're something like...
2024
01:41:16,953 --> 01:41:18,420
one of the numerous
computer devices
2025
01:41:18,553 --> 01:41:21,423
that's been thrown
into a basket somewhere
2026
01:41:21,656 --> 01:41:22,792
'cause you have too much crap.
2027
01:41:23,391 --> 01:41:25,228
That would suck, 'cause then
we would never be found.
2028
01:41:25,995 --> 01:41:29,397
Maybe this whole project
that you're doing, right,
2029
01:41:29,799 --> 01:41:33,635
is the simulation sort of
flirting with you, if you will.
2030
01:41:33,768 --> 01:41:36,172
Like it's going,
"Hey, I'm gonna go ahead
2031
01:41:36,305 --> 01:41:37,672
and let you see a little bit
2032
01:41:38,573 --> 01:41:40,076
what I've got going on
under here.
2033
01:41:40,276 --> 01:41:44,446
And I'm okay with it
as long as you respect me."
2034
01:41:46,916 --> 01:41:50,786
What if the simulation
is like anesthesia?
2035
01:41:51,486 --> 01:41:53,122
Imagine, if you will,
2036
01:41:53,622 --> 01:41:56,025
that you're going
through surgery...
2037
01:41:57,360 --> 01:41:58,760
and all of a sudden somebody
2038
01:41:58,895 --> 01:41:59,728
introduces something
in your bloodstream
2039
01:41:59,862 --> 01:42:01,663
that totally makes
2040
01:42:01,797 --> 01:42:04,200
the anesthetic go away.
2041
01:42:04,333 --> 01:42:05,700
Your chest cavity's open,
2042
01:42:05,835 --> 01:42:07,169
there's somebody
with their hand in it
2043
01:42:07,303 --> 01:42:08,905
and they're trying
to massage your heart.
2044
01:42:09,038 --> 01:42:10,806
And all of a sudden
you're back, lucid,
2045
01:42:11,040 --> 01:42:13,042
all the pain in the world,
and everything like that.
2046
01:42:13,209 --> 01:42:14,676
You're gonna mess up
that surgery
2047
01:42:14,810 --> 01:42:16,012
by freaking out
and flipping around
2048
01:42:16,145 --> 01:42:17,346
and all that.
2049
01:42:17,479 --> 01:42:18,915
Maybe that's what
the simulation is.
2050
01:42:19,048 --> 01:42:21,516
And by putting
this project out there,
2051
01:42:21,951 --> 01:42:23,819
we're messing up big time
2052
01:42:24,186 --> 01:42:25,955
and you're gonna cause
a lot of damage.
2053
01:42:30,326 --> 01:42:31,593
The other option, though,
2054
01:42:31,760 --> 01:42:36,165
maybe this is the...
the key, if you will.
2055
01:42:36,832 --> 01:42:40,769
Maybe this is a situation
where the simulation is bad,
2056
01:42:41,304 --> 01:42:45,141
we shouldn't be in it,
and this is a failsafe.
2057
01:42:49,245 --> 01:42:51,080
So the person watching
this goes,
2058
01:42:51,314 --> 01:42:53,916
"Oh, maybe that's
what's happening with me."
2059
01:42:55,717 --> 01:42:57,519
And maybe, who knows,
you know,
2060
01:42:57,652 --> 01:43:01,290
they're in
suspended animation somewhere.
2061
01:43:02,358 --> 01:43:03,725
They're the ones
who are supposed
2062
01:43:03,893 --> 01:43:05,227
to pilot the ship.
2063
01:43:05,428 --> 01:43:07,729
They're knocked out.
They're not responsive.
2064
01:43:08,130 --> 01:43:12,268
And so they create this movie
for them to watch
2065
01:43:12,401 --> 01:43:14,904
so that they start
questioning reality,
2066
01:43:17,440 --> 01:43:19,075
and therefore get out of it.
2067
01:43:57,913 --> 01:44:01,183
I have,
through dreaming and waking up,
2068
01:44:01,516 --> 01:44:03,518
lived thousands
of different lifetimes.
2069
01:44:04,020 --> 01:44:07,456
And so I'm not afraid
of what happens
2070
01:44:07,589 --> 01:44:09,091
when the simulation ends.
2071
01:44:09,458 --> 01:44:14,463
I am certain that when I die,
2072
01:44:14,596 --> 01:44:16,032
I will simply wake up
somewhere else.
2073
01:44:16,165 --> 01:44:18,467
How do I know?
Because I remember doing it
2074
01:44:18,600 --> 01:44:19,902
over and over and over again.
2075
01:44:28,710 --> 01:44:30,346
Good morning.
2076
01:44:30,578 --> 01:44:31,780
This is your wake-up call.
2077
01:44:32,281 --> 01:44:34,549
Thank you for staying
at the New Darwin Inn.
2078
01:44:34,917 --> 01:44:37,219
The time is 10:30 A.M.