 Thomas, you seem particularly triggered right now. Can you tell me what happened? I've had dreams that weren't just dreams. That's right. He's back. Neil's back. The Matrix 4 is rebooted. Maybe Neil can straighten all this out. Speaking of coming back, we have a just terrific interview with a guy I have so much respect for. So, so smart. Riz Verk, new book, the simulated universe, and MIT computer scientist explores parallel universes. The simulation hypothesis, quantum computing, and the Mandela effect. I've been doing a number of shows lately on computing because I think it just fundamentally ties into really all the stuff we're talking about, but not everyone is always making that connection, so I feel the need to do it. Riz, of course, certainly fits in that category as you'll hear in this interview. Here are some clips. I do hope you stick around for the whole thing. I think it's really good. Check it out. Now, in computation, we try to figure out which of those values of this graph are worth traversing, right? And so you can think of any process which is a series of choices as a multiverse. And that's kind of the idea that I'm putting forward. Whether they are physical or not becomes irrelevant because they become physical only when we render them, meaning when we choose to explore that path. Okay, let me go all skeptical on you. Are you stretching the metaphor too far? If we just start down the path of consciousness is fundamental? Well, I think the metaphor fits pretty well. I mean, I spent a lot of time with the near-death experiencers and many of them report that they were able to look back in what's called a life review, right? And so they were able to kind of go back and view the events. And many of them describe it as a room with a big projector, right? And so they're using this metaphor and it's like replaying something that has been recorded. But if you get past that and you look at the account overwhelmingly statistically, number one thing, love, number one thing, connection, number one thing, spirituality that doesn't really conform very well. Well, yeah, it depends which metaphor you're using and exactly how you're using it. I mean, for me, I think let's use a different metaphor instead of a video game. Let's use social networks, right, which people use all the time today and creates lots of angst. But why do we use social networks? We create an identity online, but primarily what makes a social network different from a website is the social part of it. I would say the reason to be here perhaps is relationship, right? It's to give ourselves the experience of having a relationship with different parts of consciousness, which we see as other people, which eventually maybe I'll connect in here. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. And today, well, we have a good one. Riz Burke is back to talk about his new book, The Simulated Multiverse. In case you don't remember who Riz is, he is like this super duper smart MIT computer scientist. We won't even mention the MBA from Stanford. He's also an author, filmmaker, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And we're not going to talk about that, but if that is at all interesting to you, he has some absolutely terrific books on that topic from this very interesting perspective that he has as a very successful game designer, programmer, maker. You know, I've got 30 million downloads on his games. I think while he was still in his 20s or something. So he really has this incredible background. But what we're really going to talk about today is this new book, The Simulated Multiverse. So Riz, first of all, welcome back. Thanks for coming back on. Sure. Nice to be with you again. So I reached out to you because we've been doing a number of shows on AI, quantum computing, and the general angst that so many people are feeling about technology and technology advancement as it pops up all over the place. So who better to talk to about that than not just the game master, but the game maker himself? Are we living in a matrix? That's what we want to know. Well, as you know, that's, you know, my last book, The Simulation Hypothesis was about that idea that we may be living inside some kind of technologically constructed reality and very akin to what was shown in the movie about the matrix. And with that book, I was hoping to tie it to not just the development of video game technology, which is the area where I've spent a good amount of my career as an entrepreneur and as an investor, but also relating it to some of the spiritual traditions from thousands of years ago and talk about the matrix as a metaphor. Whereas if you look at, you know, the religions, they all use different metaphors, you know, in Buddhism, the metaphor of the dream is quite strong and that we are living in a dream and you wake up from the dream. And of course, Shakespeare, you know, used the analogy or the metaphor of a stage play because that's what he did. As did the Leela's Vedas, which had the Leela, which was the grand play in the Hindu Vedas, you know, five thousand years ago or so. And so, you know, my point is that if any of those folks were alive today, they would use the metaphor of a video game, which is like an interactive film script where the script can change based upon the choices of the characters along the way. And so, you know, that's one axis of this whole thing is using the development of technology to look at, you know, the world in a different way. Yeah, my answer last time was that I think it's more likely than not that we are living in some kind of a simulated reality. Right, so I didn't want to, that's great that you did that. I didn't want to totally roll this back to the last book, but now that you mentioned it, I think it's good. What does introducing kind of the multiple timelines, multiverse, how does that change things? And why did you feel a need to go there, I guess? Sure, well, you know, when I finished the first book, I thought I was, you know, had been down the rabbit hole and was pretty much done with the simulation stuff, or at least the big questions resulting from simulations for a while and I could go back to my career in Silicon Valley and academia. And then, you know, I had a lunch with a friend of mine from who had just started working at Google. So I was living in Mountain View at California, which is right down the road from Google headquarters and he had just flown in from Boston. And, you know, we got to talking about the simulation hypothesis and he was an MIT alum as well. So of course we were talking about technology and how these things could be built. And then, you know, he said, well, you know, have you looked at this thing called a Mandela fact. I said, yeah, you know, I've heard of it, but, you know, I kind of dismissed it as many people in the scientific community did maybe it's just a case of faulty memory. And he said, well, you know, the simulation idea is actually the most likely or interesting explanation for something like the Mandela fact. And for those who don't know, many of your listeners have probably heard of it, but the Mandela fact is the idea that a subgroup of people a minority remember certain events happening a different way from the consensus reality. So the name comes after it comes because of Nelson Mandela, who some say died. They remember that he died in prison in the 1980s. And of course, we all know that not to be the case if you just look it up on the internet, or if you live through those events Mandela was released from prison in the 90s became the first black president of South Africa. And then he died in 2013 and yet, many people remember not just that he died but they remember, you know, a whole bunch of festivities around his funeral, including his wife speaking. So these are very specific memories and, you know, mainstream science dismisses this as well that these are just, you know, the case of faulty memory. Perhaps it was this other black leader from South Africa that died in the 80s and therefore people are confusing the two. But it turns out there's a whole series of events like this some some of which are small some of which are movie lines. Some of which are big events. And so, in my case, I thought well that's kind of interesting why don't I you know spend a little more time looking into it. And when I had written the first book I had interviewed the wife of science fiction writer Philip K Dick. And so Philip K Dick had given a very sort of famous within certain circles speech in Metz France in 1977 saying that we are living in a computer program reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is altered. And so I had, you know, talked to her and I thought this was a fun way to talk about the matrix because, you know, supposedly that the Wachowskis who created the matrix were inspired by the work of Philip K Dick. And I thought, you know, it's just a fun way to talk about the idea. Well, after, you know, having my conversation with my friend at Google, I went back to my conversation with with Tessa. And then I went back and rewatched what Philip K Dick was saying back in the 70s. And I read his whole speech and I watched the video and it turns out, the first part of that statement which is the one that most of us focus on that we're living in a computer program reality was not the most important part of his speech. What he said was that some variables would change, and then it would be run again. So, you know, he said we would have this impression of reliving the same events again and again, and he gave the phenomenon of deja vu as evidence that this was happening. And he came to believe that we actually had multiple timelines and that there were people or entities changing small little variables. And he was rerunning the events in his book, The Man in the High Castle. And we might have talked about this last time but you know he actually believed that that was a real timeline where Germany and Japan won the war. And for whatever reason that was not an optimal timeline. So they, quote unquote, they rewound the timeline, change some variables and reran it again. And that's how we ended up in the current timeline. And so this idea of a simulation, you know, why do we run simulations to see what will happen. And we do that. We change variables and we run them again and again. That's how we predict the weather. That's how we predict many things these days. And so this idea, you know, kind of lodged in my mind that said, kind of like, you know, the quote from I think it was Voltaire who said, somebody asked him, do we live multiple times and, you know, I guess he believed we did but he said it's no more surprising that we live multiple times than it is that we live once. So it occurred to me that if they're in a computer simulation, it would be no more surprising for us to have multiple runs of the simulation than just one. In fact, it would make much more sense and explain a lot of the, the weirdness of quantum physics that I came across during my research and simulation. So anyway, that's, you know, a little bit of a story there but that that's kind of what got me back down the rabbit hole and really exploring this idea of a multiverse and multiple timelines. Great. So we might have our own multiple timelines in this little discussion, which would be great. I think it's so interesting, the perspective that you bring the gamer perspective. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that in all aspects of life as an entrepreneur, what that brings to the table as a computer scientist, even spirituality, what the gamer kind of perspective brings. Maybe we ought to, maybe we ought to go there right now since we're going to have multiple timelines and I can come back and hit all those other points. But have you ever thought about that as you've gone through your career? Have you ever thought, you know, I kind of look at things a little bit differently in it. I look at things kind of like a game. Does that resonate with you or no? It does because especially through my research in this area, you know, the more I looked into it, you know, the more I began to see that this was an overwhelming metaphor that can basically explain so many different aspects of life. And I've spent a lot of time with scientists, I've spent a lot of time with engineers and technologists, and I've spent a lot of time with people who we would classify as mystics, you know, who are always exploring different states of consciousness. And I realized that this is a way to really connect all these threads together. And so that's why I became so enamored with it. And that's why I decided to write the book, the first book and the second book. But during that process, you know, people asked me, Well, so what does this mean for me, you know, if I'm just a character to game. Does that mean that nothing matters? And I say, Well, no, it's not quite like that. I mean, the way that I view it is, if you think of how video games are constructed today. We truly have characters of avatars that represent you. And then the avatars have certain storylines and certain characteristics. You know, kind of like in the old days, we used to play Dungeons and Dragons on a sheet of paper and we used to have different attributes for the characters like strength, charisma, intelligence, you know, all these different things. It turns out each character was slightly different. And we'd have storylines for those characters. And I believe that that happens to us in this life, each of us has, you know, different strengths, different proclivities, there are things that we're inclined to do. Like I always knew I was going to be a computer software entrepreneur and eventually become a writer, even when I was like 10 years old. Now how did I know that it was just the sense that I had in the back of my mind. It was the storyline that I had chosen to run. And if you look at how games are constructed today, not only do you have these big storylines, which are based upon the character you choose. But then you have a lot of smaller quests and challenges and achievements along the way. And if we didn't have those, then, you know, the game would get kind of boring. You know, if the game got to be too easy, you know, it wouldn't be fun anymore, right. And so, you know, there's the, there's this phrase that was coined by the guy who founded Atari. Nolan Bushnell was kind of, you know, the grandfather of the video game industry. You know, and he said it was he wanted something that was easy to play or easy to learn but difficult to master. Right. And he said that's what keeps the game interesting. That's what keeps you coming back again and again. And I think we can view life that way right there. It's easy to play, but it's not so easy to master. And so if we look at the challenges that we have in life, which many of us do, especially as we get older, we realize, you know, life isn't all fun and games, even if it is a game. There are challenges along the way. And without those challenges, just like a movie that has doesn't have a lot of obstacles for the main character. Well, that becomes a vignette. That's not an interesting story or like if Indiana Jones just got the map at the beginning and said, okay, here's the Ark of the Covenant. Here's the ex go get it. It's not quite as interesting as having to follow a clue and to overcome that challenge and go to the next one. And so if we view the obstacles in our lives as challenges that perhaps we have signed up for, whether we remember it or not, it can change our perspective on things, you know. Hey, that's, that's super interesting. And that's going to get super spiritual in just a minute. But I am going to try kind of step back a little bit for the for the multiple timeline thing because I think it's super interesting. And I think it's super interesting to connect that to science. And we're going to get to this awesome quote from view computer science is eating all the other sciences which I really want to go to. But when I think of this multiple timeline thing, and I think how uncomfortable it is for all of us, I was going to say folks, you know, but like somebody else but now for all of us, the idea of multiple simultaneous timelines is is kind of uncomfortable. But I always think back to the Dean Raiden pre sentiment experiment. Are you familiar with that? I don't remember that one specifically. I mean, I've met Dean and I know him. Oh, okay. Well, then you probably know maybe. So the most one of the most famous experiments that Dean Raiden did and it was brilliant in the way that he set it up because he just took a standard kind of freshman psychology experiments where you sit in front of the computer and the computer flashes you an image and then we're going to measure how you react to it. And what he did was really quite brilliant. He said, why are we assuming this timeline? Why are we why are we assuming your reaction comes after the computer selects and displays the image? And lo and behold, that was the pre sentiment. We can't really call it precognition because it wasn't at a cognitive level. It was just the sensations in your body dilation, your pupils can change all that kind of stuff. I mean, this is a six sigma replicated throughout the world, multiple labs replicated by him. This would if you really were objective, you'd say this is one of the most reliably statistically one of the most reliable experiments we have all in science and it completely blows away our idea of the timeline. If it's in perfectly with at least the beginnings of what you're talking about that we so here science is telling us forget it. It's the timeline thing. It's just, I mean, we probably knew this since Einstein, but we could never really get wrap wrap our arms around it. Now it's kind of right there in that experiment. What do you think about that? Yeah, well, I think there's, you know, something to that that if we are not only in a single timeline, you know, we are able to know at a certain level how things might evolve, you know, based upon how they've gone in the past, but we may or may not consciously remember, like you said, it may not be at the level of cognition. And, you know, I like to use science fiction as a good way of for people to kind of understand it. And, you know, there's this element of the movie Groundhog Day, which I guess is sort of science fiction sort of not right. But, you know, Bill Murray has to relive the same day again and again. And as he goes through again and again, he learns more and more about what's happening. And he's able to react differently and to kind of master the events of the day. Well, if you think about AI and how it works today, like when we're training AI, we train it by running the same events again and again. And then we use that to for it to become better knowledgeable because it knows what might happen in this situation or that situation. And so, for example, you know, the AI, you know, beat the first chess player that Grandmaster a long time ago, IBM's, you know, a chess playing computer but then more recently, Google's AlphaGo was able to beat, you know, some of the best players that go in the world and the way they train that is through a process called self play. It will play out each of those games millions of times and sometimes it will play with itself, right. So you have this kind of self referential thing going on, where you are doing something multiple times, and then you are learning to pick what is most likely the best outcome of that. And so that is a process that I call the core loop. And it's a process that happens within computer science. We try out different possibilities, even if you go back to like when I used to make, you know, checkers games, you know, when I was first learning computer science, it would go out and it would see what would happen. If I were to do X, Y and Z, and then it would come back and say, Okay, of those paths, this is the most optimal path. And so, you know, my conjecture here is that something like the core loop is happening within our lives. We actually go and we run these timelines to see what would happen. And then we come back and then we pick the next one that we want to be on. So, so that's where we are actually sensing, right, just like in this pre sentiment experiment that you talked about that Dean Raiden did, but also, you know, where we have these sort of hunches or feelings of deja vu or funny feeling clues I call them about what's happening about the future. Now, how can we have clues about the future if the future isn't at least defined in some way right as a set of probabilities now will this is gets into the physics and how things work we can talk about that in a minute if you like. But that to me is a sense that we are outside the timeline, but then we bring ourselves in as an avatar. And if you run the game multiple times each time it'll seem like you're just in that one path. But it doesn't mean that there wasn't another path that had been run before. And so that's kind of what I came to believe and I defined this thing called a multiverse graph. And the core loop in my new book and those, you know, those are the underlying processes of how I think this whole thing works. So let's talk about this computer sciences eating the other sciences. And I want to kind of talk about it from two perspectives. One is the stuff you're laying out, you're making it sound like science in general is right there with you, and is supportive of this kind of speculation that you're doing. But it's it's really not in so many ways. And then the flip side of that is, as you point out if you look at it from a different perspective, particularly as a computer scientist, and I would say particularly as a computer science game designer and developer. It's like, I know how this game is playing out. We don't know what the motive is completely for the resistance. But I don't know why. So first point is, do you think there's general acceptance of at least the framework that you're laying out within science as a whole? Number two is why are they so resistant because I think they are. And three, doesn't that all just crumble as computer science eats the other sciences. Well, you know, those good, good questions there and on all three fronts. But I would say that, you know, my books are in fact speculation based upon scientific findings. Right. And so it's not that science disagrees. But you're right, most scientists don't share my end of perspective, but we're relying on the same findings or set of data within science that's showing us that there's something strange about the world that we live in. Right. And so, you know, in my last book, I laid out the fact that space isn't what we think it is. And that it's really more about information and less about physical objects. In fact, in science, you know, the more they try to find this thing called matter, the more elusive it becomes, they can't really find it. It's like opening up those Russian nested dolls, I like to say. And at the bottom, you open it up and at the bottom, there's really nothing there, but information. And so there was a quote from John Wheeler, who was, you know, one of the giants of 20th century physics. And he worked with Einstein and more and many others and he came up with this phrase it from bit. And he said at its core, he couldn't find matter as particles, but he could find it as information. Right. And he felt that if you had a series of yes no questions, those are the properties of what defines this thing that we call matter. Now, the other big confounding thing that science has found is that time isn't what we think it is. Right. We're used to thinking of time as going from the past, you know, slowly towards the future in one direction. Yeah, there's something called the delayed choice experiment which was proposed also by Wheeler, which was this idea of, you know, are there multiple futures and when does a choice get made. And the best way to understand it is from the cosmic delayed choice experiment. Suppose there's light from a quasar that's like a billion light years away coming to us, and there's a black hole or a galaxy in the middle, say a million light years away. And the light has to go to the left or to the right of that black hole. It can't go both it has to go one way or the other. Now we would think that that choice would have had to have been made a million years ago because the black hole is a million light years away and so it takes light a million years. It does. But what the delayed choice experiment has found is that it's not until you measure the light when it reaches us, which is a million years after it reaches a black hole, and maybe a billion years later from when it left the very distant quasar, for example, that that choice doesn't happen until the measurement. And so what this is telling us is that the past isn't what we think it is. And the future isn't what we think it is that they're related in strange ways. And so science doesn't have a great interpretation for that. And the best interpretation that they've come up with within physics is the multiverse idea right there's like two major interpretations of quantum physics that are kind of considered, you know, accepted interpretations one is the collapse of the probability wave, based upon observation, and then the other is the multiverse idea, and the multiverse idea has more and more adherence over time. Now there's some problems with the multiverse idea it basically says that every time there's a decision to be made, the universe splits off into multiple branches so think of it like a tree a very large tree that just keeps spreading you know it's it's branches outward forever. And so you know this is a matter of debate within science. And the question in my question is, well if you're going to clone something. You know what is it that you clone. There's nothing in nature where you can clone like a giant object in an instant. It takes time, even in biology. Right, you can you can clone a specific plant or if you're cloning a sheep. You know it takes time you have to grow that clone. But the one thing you can clone, almost instantly is information right. And so, you know I believe that this model of a simulated multiverse actually bridges the gap between these different interpretations of quantum physics. Now, the big debate though I think that you're hitting at is this issue of consciousness, existing or not existing and that to me the video game kind of point of view that I have, I like to define as the NPC versus the RPG debate or reversions of the simulation versus NPCs being non player characters RPG being role playing games. And so like whereas if you and I are in a game, we have our avatars, each of us is playing that avatar but then there are other characters that aren't necessarily conscious entities outside the game. And so most scientists tend to go towards that interpretation, which is a materialistic point of view that we're all NPCs. But there's this other interpretation of the RPG that we exist outside and we inhabit that that character. That's where it seems to me that kind of a literal interpretation of the multi year multiverse theory is kind of silly. I mean no one really thinks that because it implies that the whole consciousness is an illusion and it's this kind of weird interpretation I think of ultimately the double slit experiment, which no it's just we're uncomfortable with the idea that we really are the observer that consciousness really is making a difference but again I point Dean Raiden you know no nobody needs to stack up some Nobel prizes on his bookshelf or something because the other experiment that he did that I thought was incredibly you know poignant and relevant to right now is he said okay I'll settle any of this kind of debate what that's not even very hard anymore I can set up a photon beam generator in my lab and I can bring in a meditator and I'll have him you know look the other way and then say okay focus your attention on the photon beam and boom you know what we can control that really well and he does and another six sigma result yeah if I tell this guy who's this Zen Buddhist 20,000 hour meditator to focus on the photon beam he can show an effect so to me it's kind of a I just don't even want to go there in terms of materialistic materialistic science consciousness is an illusion kind of crap it just seems to be a huge anchor holding us down so where I see you really going I mean I know you have to fit it in the multiverse thing but I almost see you doing some kind of hybrid but my wonder my concern my thought is are you being too materialistic in that interpretation of it I mean one of the things we talked about before and I think it's still at play is the kind of infinite regress you know who's simulating the simulation of the simulation kind of thing so I bundled a bunch of stuff there doesn't materialist science consciousness is illusion isn't that kind of out the window in terms of really moving us forward well you know I tend to be very sympathetic with that point of view and also you know you mentioned Dean's experiments but also you know that the pair the Princeton engineering advanced research experiments around quantum random number generators and you didn't even need a Zen monk who's a meditator with 20,000 hours you just got random people to come in right that you sat down and so the way that works is you know the only thing we know truly random are these quantum processes and so you know theoretically over time if you do 10,000 of these it should get closer and closer to 5050 but by thinking about it or not thinking about it they were able to verify they were able to make the variations in those numbers and show that consciousness was somehow affecting what was going on there, but you know, getting back to the multiverse theory and consciousness I feel like this is a way to bridge the gap. And you know there was a there's a well known physicist from University of Oregon named Ahmed Goswami and you know he wrote a few books like the self aware universe and I remember meeting him once when he was in Mountain View and somebody was asking him about these different interpretations and what what are the probabilities that we get into when we talk about the collapse of the probability wave and what does it mean. Similarly, what does it mean to have a multiverse and he said well, all these things that we're calling the probabilities are what would happen if you ran the same process again and again and again, and that's why you get the probability wave. And that's what you know for me was an interesting insight because it ties to this idea of the simulated multiverse that the multiverse is what would happen if you ran the same process again and again. So it doesn't necessarily mean that we're always running an infinite number of processes. It means we run in computer programming. The way that we do it with quantum computers so quantum computer as a whole new area that's quite interesting and I think it reveals a lot about both computation and the physical universe because it tries to to combine the two. Now quantum computers theoretically are able to find an answer to a problem like breaking cryptography, for example, that might take, you know, two to the 256, you know, values and and there's so many values there that it would literally take a classical computer, thousands of years to run through all of those possibilities, right, but a quantum computer is able to find the answer. Theoretically, by doing this computation in multiple universes. So theoretically, because that's still a controversial explanation but nobody's come up with a better one yet for exactly how that works. And so I like to think of the world as a quantum computation which says it's not that we're necessarily spinning off all these realities and they always exist for all time. It's that we as individuals are tapping into this multiplayer quantum computing reality, and we are each able to run as many scenarios as we need to solve the quantum computing problem that we're trying to solve, which for us maybe to have an experience as a player of the video game so now we're tying the quantum computing back to video games. And so that's a way that I kind of like to think about it and it does I believe tie together all of this stuff in kind of a unique way. Yeah, you're gonna have to break that down. I always say Michael Scott, you know, like, I tell it to me like I'm in first grade kind of thing. But no, there's an important gap to bridge there that I think people can understand because enough people have kind of at least done the intro to quantum computing and understand that it's kind of set up at least the way we were able to engineer it now and we should add you know it's not like theoretical at this point there's how many qubits are we up to with the most advanced. You know I don't know the number because it keeps changing every month or two. But you know, a couple like a year or two goes only like four qubits and then it was eight and I believe there's a 50 qubit machine I'm not sure it has been rolled out, but it's getting there and so qubits for most people. I just want you to explain before we even get into that, because the numbers will throw people it's like the way we think about it with the way I think about it is, for certain kinds of problems, I can set up this huge matrix like mathematical matrix, and I can go down all the paths at the same time. And for certain problems, they if we tried to do it linearly like you're saying or I guess whatever you know we just couldn't do it and this way we can do it. But the leap that you're making that I want you to kind of support a little bit more is you're drawing. Are you saying it's analogous to a multiverse, or are you saying at some deep quantum physics level, it is a truly a quantum event to have that massively parallel processing, which is it. Well, you know, so just for people who don't know so a qubit is a bit that can have a value of both zero and one. So qubit is a bit, which normally has a value of just zero or one one or the other. It's in superposition I like to say that it's kind of drunk. It doesn't know which value it has in fact it has both values. So if you were to have like eight bits, most people have heard of eight bits 16 bit. Because you have a series of zeros and ones you have eight of them. And so you can have two to the eight or 256 possible values. If you were to make every single bit have a value of zero and one and so by by its nature what I'm saying is that any process that can be represented as information has this multiverse graph. It's there whether whether we think of it as real or not because those are the possible values. Now, in computation we try to figure out which of those values of this graph are worth traversing. Right and by traversing you know I mean searching for it right so if you want to search. If you you can take two roads from here to you know Philadelphia to New York, and you want to figure out which is the best road well you have to go down each one. But if those two roads have two more roads, you know, it's a new work or someplace right you have to keep making these decisions along the way. And so you can think of any process which is a series of choices as a multiverse and that's kind of the idea that I'm putting it forward, whether they are physical or not becomes irrelevant, because they become physical only when we render them, meaning when we choose to explore that path. And so what I'm saying is that quantum computing shows us that there is something inherent in physical matter that allows us to explore multiple paths simultaneously, and to discard those paths that we don't need it. It's kind of what we call garbage collection in the computer science world where you've got all this extra data that might have been needed at some point but it's not needed anymore. And so, I guess what I'm saying is, I think that the multiverse idea doesn't have to be physical ties back to my statement earlier that computer science is eating all the other sciences that everything can be represented as information. And this is true with biology. This is true with physical objects if you think of like genetics. Well genetics is kind of an information science right. If you look at they theorize the idea of the gene before they actually discovered DNA, but it's just defined as a series of bits of information. And so more and more, you're seeing within university settings like you have bioinformatics, you have kind of these departments that are like a blend of the traditional department, you have physics but then you have digital physics. Well, what's digital physics digital physics is about the information in the universe right and we used to talk about the conservation of energy conservation of matter, all of these types of things. And now we talk about the conservation of information that isn't lost. And so there's this, I think, greater understanding that's developing across all of the sciences that the world is comprised of information. And I don't think, you know, science has quite figured out, how does it go from information to what we think of as physical right, and that's where the video game analogy comes into play, because at the moment you are rendering one of those possibilities and that to you seems like the real physical but that just happens to be physical while it's being rendered out of the information that comprises all of that behind the scenes. So I guess that's kind of an overview of the way that I'm thinking. Yeah, that's, it's amazing. Let me again try and break it down because I think there's layers. I think that the computer science is eating all the other science is kind of a really interesting thing. And especially for me, the more I thought about it is, you kind of step it down, you know, like, first, on a very concrete level, like what you're talking about with biology, they get it from the fact that like the old school guy, you know, who's the head of the department, he's like has to call everybody in how do you run this program that does this thing again you know it got me So in that way, it's kind of eating away at it. And then what you're talking about, though, is kind of this next level of somebody really thinks about it and kind of goes into the future and says, Okay, what are the problems we're really facing, you know, from a biology standpoint, just in terms of academic curiosity, you know, what would we how would we solve that what are the really difficult problems. Boom, they're coming right back to you and they're going, Riz, how would we solve this and you're going, Well, you know, there's some kind of AI learning that we could apply there or hey, that's a problem that seems to fit with what's going on in quantum computing. And suddenly, they've kind of lost lost control to a certain extent. So in that way, it's kind of eating all the other sciences. But then what you're kind of even alluding to is kind of a whole other level of that that is implied by the multiverse kind of thing so what walk us walk us through that and is there. Yeah, just walk us through that any thoughts on that. Yeah, well it's a good point that you know obviously there's the practical. If you're doing any science today you have to like run programs and do simulations right. And so there's the practical side of a let me bring in the computer guy who can know who knows how to run these programs right. But I'm trying to get beyond that to say that the fundamental entities that we have been describing as nature and physical are not nature and physical and so perhaps you know when I say computer science I'm using it as a catch all term for several things computer programming AI but also information science. I get that I wonder and you maybe just totally don't agree with this, but I wonder if we're not kind of converging to the same point to a certain extent in that when that guy at the biology department who's been there forever, or when this sharpest brightest, you know, post grad assistant kind of sees the future and goes and starts diving into AI and starts diving into quantum computing and all the rest of that and says I got to go back and get a PhD in quantum computing as well because that's where everything's heading stuff like that. It's almost like for you to even think along these lines, you had to have everything that you have in your head. Aren't a lot of people in the other sciences going to have to go there to where they can, you know, even get to truly making this leap that you're making. Over time, paradigms shift and people become more comfortable with new paradigms and new ways of thinking about things like 100 years ago in the sciences. You know they didn't like the idea of quantum mechanics right I mean even Einstein said, you know, God doesn't play dice right so he didn't like the idea of probabilities. You know there were people who didn't like Einstein's ideas of relativity and so what happens over time is that we become more familiar with concepts and we're able to integrate them, you know, into our thinking and this happens with scientists as well. And so you don't have to know exactly how, you know, a automobile engine right internal combustion engine works in order to be able to understand the idea behind the car right you don't have to know all the details of the equations of how the gas burns. But you know there's gas you put it in it's converting energy. So that idea becomes something we can use as a building block and so I think, you know within this computing world like for example at MIT, they just established a new college of computing, which is different from the computer or your side or the engineering college which computer science is a part of it's it's like a whole separate like there's the College of liberal arts. You know the business school there's like a whole new college of computing what does that mean. It's about applying computing ideas with emphasis on quantum computing, but not only coming on computing into all the other areas. This does lead us to that point it may take people some time to get there I mean in my own case. I've been thinking about these things. You know, since I was a kid but also by spending people time with people outside of the world of science. And so you know that that leap I think come with with more scientists, acknowledging that everything that they've been studying is information, and then that can get them to the leap around. Consciousness and viewing in the same way that you and I are not really talking to each other right now are we right we're actually in a virtual world if you think about it right I my avatar which is just a series of bits that looks like me is talking to your avatar. Right over the internet. And so I think that idea becomes something that people can understand now. Whereas, you know, 3050 years ago people wouldn't understand that idea like that was strange to think of talking to someone over a computer like that just didn't make any sense. And so I guess my point is that as new generations are up there more comfortable with certain ideas, and then those ideas become easy enough to extend and combine whereas before they were thought to be completely separate, you know, and so I think that's an ongoing process that will happen over time. Okay, let me go all skeptical on you. Are you stretching the metaphor too far. If we just start down the path of consciousness is fundamental take a whole different kind of perspective consciousness is fundamental we starts looking at the data sets that we have out there we start looking at near death experience. You know, science, you know, over 200 peer reviewed studies, all coming back and saying that consciousness is now immediately outside of this time space continuum, that I think you're kind of depending on in a way are you or are you not where would that put us relatively if you look at reincarnation science. Jim Tucker from the University of Virginia on the show. On one hand, you could say, wow, it fits in with what Riz is saying. On the other hand, you could say no there's some kind of fundamental contradictions in terms of, at least in terms of the hierarchy of consciousness, because it's definitely implying some kind of hierarchy that isn't really modeled in what you're talking about. The metaphor fits pretty well. You know, I mean I spent a lot of time with near death experiencers, and you know many of them report that they were able to look back in what's called a life review right and so they were able to kind of go back and view the events and many of them describe it as a room with a big projector right and so they're using this metaphor and it's like replaying something that has been recorded right but what what was interesting to me and why I wrote the second chapter and include a chapter on that you know near the end is that sometimes they report being able to see what would have happened right had they made different choices as if that's wasn't that different from what actually happened. And so I think the metaphor of the simulation or video game works pretty well because it means you can rerun. I mean they're talking about a life review of things that hadn't happened right, but that might have happened and they're watching it as it actually happened. And turns out, you know when when people talk about the life preview, kind of in what the Buddha is called a bardo, which some people remember through whether su hypnosis etc and some people even in Jim Tucker's case, remember that experience of before they were incarnated into this life. They talk about being able to see paths of like these trees that move out and that they're these major decision points, and that they can watch what would have happened in New York. You know, a journey of souls from extra Michael Newton is a good example of a series of case studies along these lines. And they said it was weird it was as if I was actually watching life in New York. Before I had been born and so you know what, what does that mean how do we fit that into a model that we as human beings can understand you know with our with our minds and I think the video game metaphor is a very good one because it means you just run that part of the game, you watch what would happen. And you say well it's as if it was actually happening well that's because when it actually happens it's just the run of the game or the simulation that you've decided to be and it's not that different, like a potential run of the simulation isn't that different from is is actually run. And so I think the metaphor actually works pretty well as a way to understand now it's not exactly that it's you say well in video game I'm a physical person outside of the game. So am I a physical person outside of our simulation right, or am I just pure consciousness. Well that depends right. When people talk about a near death experience, or they remember the the in between state. Some people describe it similarly but differently right. Some people describe something that looks like heaven some people describe a city some people describe a garden. Well those are just additional simulations right that's why they can be different. And so, you know, I guess there is in my opinion, you know, a hierarchy of these types of simulations that get created for us. And in the end yeah, it's probably goes back to pure, pure consciousness. Connect a trying to have an experience. Why do we play video games in the first place. This is a question I like to ask when people say what's the point of having a simulation. There's two two main reasons we play video games or run simulations. One is to see what would happen if we run simulations with different variables. And the second is to have experiences that we can't have outside of that environment like I can't fly in a drag and in this particular physical reality. I can do it inside a video game. So it's possible that you know what we are experiencing here in this reality is something that we can't experience outside and we need to embody ourselves to run the simulation so yeah I mean I do think there is some kind of a hierarchy that goes on I can't claim to have the exact answers for what that looks like. We're talking about God now. I mean you're talking about God if there's a hierarchy of consciousness that's just code speak for God. So essentially there's some entity or kind or thing that we are all a part of that is running this simulation. Now people say well, you know who are the simulators. And I say well first of all it could be us. Right it doesn't it doesn't have to be, you know, one simulator, we could each be having experiences, because we're all running this as players, but you're right I think if you take that you do end up with some kind of single consciousness or eventual simulator if you will that is akin to what some people call God. I mean I think the big question that we're kind of struggling with and I just like I think you're adding so so much to the discussion in a really important way of your grounding it in a way that we're familiar with I think we're familiar with because we think we know how computers work, but the big question like I studied dear death experience for the longest time. And if you look at all the books on and on and on they're talking about evidence and evidence and evidence and this is big battle between science and can consciousness extend beyond bodily death. But if you get past that and you look at the accounts overwhelmingly statistically number one thing love number one thing connection spirit spirituality you know in a way that doesn't really conform very well seems to seems to not fit as comfortably in some of those models what people are saying over and over again is hey you know what religion if that if that floats your boat fine but it's really not about that it's really about this connection this feeling of connection that is fundamental to who we are but is obscured by the game by the simulation and that when people get outside of time space either in near death experience or an OBE or doing psychedelics or whatever they immediately see things differently and there I just think the metaphor if we look at it as consciousness is fundamental and it's all about light and love and hierarchy of consciousness it then it looks like we're kind of stretching the metaphor to me what do you think about that. Well, yeah it depends which metaphor you're using and exactly how you're using it I mean for me, I think let's use a different metaphor instead of a video game. Let's use social networks right which people use all the time today and creates lots of angst but why do we use social networks we create an identity online but primarily what makes a social network different from a website is the social part of it it's that there are other people and we define ourselves by what we're sharing and our interactions within those people. So if you think about it for a second. You know getting away from all the negative stuff around social networks, the purpose of a social network is connections right now you can say people have you know toxic connections they have good actions. They may have spiritual inspiring they may have bad connections, you know, people get more anxious and they, all these things that happen with those connections. Well you could be describing life right I mean that's what happens in life right if we're coming here to have connections and experiences with other people. During that time we have all these problems we have anxieties. Things go wrong, but really it's about the connection so I think that metaphor is a good way to describe this idea of, we're all jumping into this thing to have these experiences but there is an element of unpredictability to what happens, because this is still making choices along the way, and that creates a lot of the friction that we see in the world in the video game and in the social network. But perhaps it's all, you know, carefully crafted illusion and we chose to be here and play, you know in the game so that's kind of kind of how how I think about it and so, you know if you back up. I think that same place of the reason to be here is love, but I would say the reason to be here perhaps is relationship right. It's to give ourselves the experience of having relationship with different parts of consciousness which we see as other people, which eventually maybe I'll connect in here. And let me hit the spiritual angle from one other perspective you know you're always going to be tied to the matrix movies, whether you want to or not it kind of connects connects people to your work I think in a wonderful way I think it's really a positive thing, but there's kind of two ways to read the matrix you know from a spiritual perspective. One of the groups that really latches on to the matrix are the Gnostic people they go that's a Gnostic movie, that's you know right create better than the creator guys and there are some very Gnostic themes to it. And I kind of look at the spirituality thing from kind of. I kind of have a Western yogic kind of philosophy. The Western yogis to me are the best of combining some of that deep deep wisdom with kind of a more current view, but the two ways of looking at it I think is one is kind of the Gnostic is this battle you know the create better than the creator science which is. I think that sums up what the matrix is about but the matrix is very materialistic science right they are you know, Neo really is some place and he really is experiencing something and then he's experiencing a false created false maybe is not the right word you know when he does this what the yogis are telling us is kind of what you're saying that's all Maya you know I mean just you don't even have to engage in any of it. You are instantly connected and it's not a matter of it's just a matter of realizing it. It's not a matter of getting anywhere it's just a matter of accepting that that instant connection is there and that we're going to talk about collapsing collapsing all the that collapses everything. So what about those two competing kind of spiritual ideas what do you make of that. Yeah, you know I find it interesting I mean I don't claim to be an expert on the Gnostic, you know points of view but familiar with some of the broad outlines, but when you think of the Western yogis. Right, I mean one of the yogis from the East that really introduced a lot of the way we think about yoga and meditation was yoga Nanda. I came over back in the 19 days and wrote autobiography the yogi I'm actually working on a book about lessons, you know, for modern seekers, you know from yoga Nanda and his autobiography. But I'm writing it here in the US for Harper Collins in India, which is a whole whole interesting thing. You know, it's a little bit of the pizza effect they call it you know how pizza came from Italy to here but then it went back. You know this pizza and what you find as pizza Italy is not what was originally pizza there. And so you have this mix, you know of East and West but you know one of yoga Nanda's points was and he used a different metaphor. It was in the 1920s and 30s and 40s that he primarily taught, and he's the metaphor of the film projector because that was, you know the new technology at the time. And, you know, he looked at World War One, you know, which which went on during his lifetime and said, you know, look at all the suffering and all these things that are going on. And he said, Well, it's like a movie right that the movie needs to have that there. And we're so engrossed in it that we forget that it's a movie, and that the players are there, you know, they have agreed to be there and go through a lot of that for the purpose of having this experience. So you know personally I tend to to be more on that side. I guess what you the Western Yogis or this mix of Western and Eastern. But you know even Philip K. Dick, who I reference a lot in this book, you know we came up with this idea of the simulation and the multiple timelines. He said well there was a programmer and a counter programmer and it's almost like they're sitting across the table from each other playing chess, and one would change a variable and it would change it in time, like a while ago, and that would change everything today. And you know I found this just an interesting fascinating another metaphor that is a way of looking at things, which led me to the Mandela fact, you know, which is about how I do things change and one of the aspects of the Mandela fact that if you look online is this idea of scriptural changes like is the Bible changing like are the actual you know and with Isaiah about the lion and the lamb and turns out well there you know that that particular verse does not talk about the lion and the lamb it talks about the wolf and the lamb and yet there are people who have pictures that they've created of lions and sometimes, you know, based upon this quote that everybody think they remember and some people say well it was actually my physical Bible has changed. Well, in the Islamic traditions, you know, they actually memorize the Quran word for word, and you know one of the leaders of one of the US two organizations was saying the reason for that is supposedly there are these entities these jins who don't exist in time like you and I do. They can go back and change physical objects and time but they can't change your memory necessarily. And so one of the reasons we don't rely on the written text but we make sure everybody knows every word orally and has memorized it is because it may change. Now that's another interesting perspective, you know, I mean I tend to lean more on the the Yogananda metaphors and that perspective myself but you know it all ties together the one thing they both agree on is what we think of as time and space is a kind of illusion. It's the meaning of the word Maya is a carefully crafted illusion right if you look at kind of the idiom and what it actually means. It's crafted for our benefit and turns out that's something you can find agreement on in the Quran, and across you know all the major religions and so that's you know part of what I like to do with this metaphor is is find the commonalities and say we can at least agree on this. If we can't agree on some of these other things yeah. Yeah, that's that's quite extraordinary you know Yogananda always has a special place in my heart you know when I was when I was an entrepreneur and I started my company at a small AI company in Dallas. I was doing the correspondence classes with Yogananda you know they went back to the way back in the day you know they'd send them to you weekly and now I live right now I live you know seven miles from his ashram out here in San Diego and every week I bicycle up and do yoga. Looking out over this beautiful scenery in Cardiff and you look at the ocean and you look right at his incredible self realization fellowship house that he built and they kind of keep it as a museum and stuff it's very very very special place. It is in fact I was just there this summer as part of my research and so I went to the room where he wrote you know autobiography of a yogi and it's I guess in Encinitas there to Cardiff and they're looking out over the ocean and and and you know so it was quite quite an experience for me to be there was quite fun actually. And just for for people who don't know I mean you talk about a simulated multiverse the title of your latest book. Anyone who picks up that book and reads the first 30 pages. I mean Riz exactly this is your point I guess is you know shape shifting time all sorts of time you know appearing here and then by locating over there. I mean it's just writes like a script for what you're talking about right so it's funny that you're that you're going to write that book. Yeah that's right absolutely and now you know a lot of the I've always been fascinated by the accounts of the Eastern Yogis with you know these different tales of miracles and by location and you know it turns out that you know that's not just in the Eastern traditions and the Catholic traditions right. I spent some time speaking with you know Diana Walsh Pesuca you know who is a professor of Catholic studies that in North Carolina and you know she her research you know went into some of the examples of my location within the Catholic. You know canon within the Americas and Europe and somebody being you know a particular non being seen by the Indians and New Mexico and so I've always been fascinated by all of the stuff and so for me that a simulation and then a simulated multiverse provides you know the best way to bridge the gap between these things. Because one approach that people in the science and technology world to say oh that's all nonsense it doesn't happen and I said well perhaps our understanding isn't quite complete but this idea of the simulation is one that can bridge that gap and now that's really one of the reasons why I felt compelled to spend so much time. And hopefully now in the second book I'm done with the topic for a little while. Great. Okay so I want to wrap it up but you brought up Diana Walsh Pesuca and I thought her book American Cosmic and she was on the show is I got it. What do you think I mean that's one of the most challenging kind of books you talk about screwing with the timeline. I mean as soon as we introduce ET the timeline looks completely different on this other realm of on this other aspect of how long have we been here. Are we part of an ongoing. Physical genetic engineering timeline that spans hundreds of thousands of years when you look at the genealogical record there's something going on a lot of things point to that and then here comes Diana Walsh Pesuca goes yeah I was out collecting space junk in the desert. And then your friend Jacques Valais carrying around you know little bits of spaceships in his pocket that says can't really say how this could be engineered or manufactured in this timeline. So do you even go there or do you just kind of. Well I don't go there so much in the new book but I in the last book I went there a little bit because I feel like there is an overlap here which is that we have to broaden our thinking. You know when we talk about this ET phenomenon that it may not be as Jacques Valais you know has said for many years is that there's an element of the absurd and there's an element of staging. Right it's almost like these things are being staged for us in some way. You know when I interviewed Jacques for my fur for the for the previous book. You know he said there were instances where people say they saw UFO coming at like a 45 degree angle. You know and he went out and he looked at where they were saying it landed, and despite the fact that there was some physical like, you know some burned areas on the ground. He looked at the 45 degree angle he said that would have to go through these massive redwood trees. It would literally had to cut through the trees and they're like yeah but I don't want to say that to the other investigators because it just sounded absurd right so it's almost like the witnesses aren't willing because they know we live in kind of a rational, They weren't willing to speak about these more absurd elements and you know turns out well that the fact that perhaps these things are both physical non physical that they're coming into our reality and rendering at a certain point provides an explanation for how they could go through physical matter so easily. And so you know I don't personally you know speculate too much on what these timelines are but I do think that that some of these visitors, you know, maybe coming from other timelines that we have to broaden our perspective of what we think that it's just, you know, we think that the multiverse is like I mean the reality is our science may only be 7% of what we have to discover which means 90 plus percent has not even been discovered yet. And so the multiverse idea provides a way to think about, at least a framework to think about how these multiple timelines and how each of these are different runs or experiments of that simulation so I think it ties, you know, both in terms of UFOs science and of course science fiction you know it's a very popular topic these days and science fiction with the Marvel multiverse and you know I don't know if you saw the show Loki. It's all about having these different versions of superheroes on these different timelines. And so it's an interesting, you know, I think metaphor that cuts across the worlds of some of the UFOs as well as more pop culture. Absolutely. Our guest again has been Riz Burke you definitely want to check out this book it's already number one as a pre release by the time you listen to this. It'll be out the simulated multiverse and MIT computer scientists explores parallel universes the simulation hypothesis quantum computing in the Mandela effect. Fantastic. You want to check that out. His other books which you'll find at his Amazon page, the one that we talked about last time the simulation hypothesis and then some really, really cool entrepreneur books that have this computer science angle which is so great. This guy we didn't even talk about his experience at Playlabs but I mean he's still an active entrepreneur and he's kind of one of these helper entrepreneurs where he's trying to help other people who are trying to do this and make it happen at a time when so many people have this angst and stuff like that. This is like an exciting time isn't it I mean this is like one of the most exciting times in history for development of new technology there's so many things that are. What do you think about that Riz isn't this a great time for entrepreneurs to jump in the game if they have that skill set. Yeah, I think this is, you know, a great time for entrepreneurs and we're going through a level of technological change, really that hasn't been seen since the industrial revolution right you know I grew up in Detroit. And you know I used to wonder why does GM have Buick and Cadillac and what are not these are all entrepreneurs who created these companies you know back in the day. And today what's happening with you know networking and with blockchain and with virtual reality and with AI. You know computers are touching every part of our lives and so you know that's where I spent you know good part of my career. And so now I try to help other other folks you know sometimes as investor or advisor through different accelerator programs like the one I did at MIT Playlabs but yeah I think this. This this is definitely a great time you know I always wish I was 20 years younger because this is a great time to get back in the game. Yeah, I'm getting a little too old for that now but it's a great time for that. But you're shaping the game to and I think there's an interesting kind of convergence between you shaping the game with younger entrepreneurs and merging with this kind of expanded world view that you're bringing to it. There's again as we talked about there's where these things can kind of come together naturally you know because as more people push that envelope they're more receptive to these deeper big picture things that you're talking about right. Yeah absolutely and today there's a lot of chatter in Silicon Valley and beyond about the metaverse and you know what is the metaverse it's a virtual 3D environment where we can all interact with one another. But we can also have you know ownership of assets and move things around well as that becomes a reality we're seeing a science fiction concept turn into physical reality. But that ties very much to my idea of reaching the simulation point, which is that if we can create something that we get so immersed in that we forget about the physical world. It's probably already happened and that's what ties to all the broader discussions we had here about the spiritual side of things as well. Great awesome way to wrap it up the kind of the Turing test on super steroids kind of when we get to that simulation point. Fantastic Riz Burke has been our guest again Riz thank you so much. Thanks for having me on again. Thanks again to Riz Burke for joining me today on Skeptico the one question I'd have to tap from this interview. What do you think about the simulated multiverse metaphor. We talked quite a bit about it its connection to science hard science also its connection to potentially extended consciousness as we understand it and thirdly its connection to spirituality which we all understand we don't understand. So let me know your thoughts on that question and you know why you're at it I would really like to grow the Skeptico community I would like other people to hear this interview share these ideas. You know the show is totally free there's no paywall there's no advertisements all the past shows are free I'm never trying to sell anything other than the ideas of the people who come on the show and I'd like those ideas to reach as many people as possible. So if you can if you think that's a good idea something you can get behind please do it in any way you see fit and if you need some extra ideas then email me and we'll figure it out together but I think it would be fun to grow this community. I also think it'd be fun to grow the Skeptico forum community come on over love people that have really really smart thinking and are willing to share research and ideas not just opinions so that's really what the Skeptico forums about and if you want to come over and join us I'd love to have you over there. That's going to do it for today until next time take care bye for now.