Are We Living in a Simulation?

Josh Landy
If we were all living in a simulation, how would we know?

Ray Briggs
Wouldn’t there be tell-tale signs?

Josh Landy
If we did learn that nothing is real, would that make our lives meaningless?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs, we’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today, we’re asking: Are we living in a simulation?

Josh Landy
You know, that’s a great question, Ray. Maybe we’re all in The Matrix. We’re all, like, hooked up to a bunch of machines and being fed a computer-generated illusion.

Ray Briggs
Yeah. Or maybe we’re in a version of The Truman Show, where the objects you see are real, but the people are all just actors pretending to be your friends.

Josh Landy
The thing is that I just don’t see how we could know for sure, either way. I mean, what’s to say you’re not a figment of my imagination cunningly crafted by our robot overlords.

Ray Briggs
Hey, I don’t feel like a figment of your imagination. Wait, maybe you’re a figment of mine!

Josh Landy
Well, I know I’m real. I mean, it’s like Descartes said: even when you doubt everything else, your very doubt shows you exist—cogito ergo sum and all that.

Ray Briggs
But Descartes also says that everything is real. He starts out in radical doubt. But at the end of the day, he thinks we can have genuine knowledge based on our senses and our reason.

Josh Landy
I think he was right the first time—his argument for skepticism is way more strong and convincing than his argument for certainty. He had that great thought experiment of the evil demon who keeps us in a kind of simulation.

Ray Briggs
Come on Josh—evil demons aren’t real, we all know that.

Josh Landy
Do we though? Just indulge me for a minute, Ray. Imagine there’s an evil demon. And he’s created the illusion of all the trees and houses and dogs and cats that you see. How would the world look any different?

Ray Briggs
Okay, sure. I wouldn’t know the difference if there was an evil demon. But that’s not what matters. I wouldn’t know the difference if I was dead either. But right now, I still know I’m not dead. So why can’t I be sure that I’m not in a simulation?

Josh Landy
Well think about a world 200 years from now. We’ll have computers of unimaginable power. We’ll have AI and VR up the wazoo will hopefully have solar energy problems and have virtually unlimited processing power. A ton of people are going to be using their copious spare time to run fancy simulations.

Ray Briggs
Oh, sure. Maybe they’ll make Martian palaces or relive Pride and Prejudice. That all sounds like great fun. What’s your point?

Josh Landy
Well, they’re probably also going to simulate Philosophy Talk from the year 2023. And that’s what makes it so likely that you and I are actually sims.

Ray Briggs
We’re the real Josh and Ray—all those sims would just be knockoffs, not the real thing.

Josh Landy
That’s exactly what a sim would say. Think about it, Ray. Those future programmers won’t just make one simulation of 2023—they’ll make thousands. So the chances that you and I the original Ray and Josh, they’re vanishingly small. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Ray Briggs
Ah, now you’re being an evil demon. I can’t help believing that I’m real. And even if your argument works, I’m not going to believe its conclusion. Besides, who would want to make thousands of simulations of you?

Josh Landy
Okay, that’s a fair point. But maybe our guest will help you see that we’re probably in a simulation after all. It’s David Chalmers professor of philosophy at NYU.

Ray Briggs
Are you sure it’s not just one of them?

Josh Landy
You know what, I’m not!

Ray Briggs
You’ve been watching too many movies. And to be fair, there are some great ones out there. So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, find out how simulated worlds had been depicted in popular fiction. She files this report.

Holly McDede
When we think of simulated realities, things like Tron, Star Trek, and The Matrix come to mind

Through the Looking Glass
What’s happening?

Holly McDede
But the groundwork in TV and film was set long before. Take “Through the Looking Glass,” a novel published by Lewis Carroll in 1871. The main character, Alice, steps through a mirror entering an alternative reality. The Red Queen tells Alice she can be a white pawn, but she wants to be a queen.

Through the Looking Glass
You know what it takes to be a queen? Tom told me: I have to go all the way from square one to square eight—ith your permission

Holly McDede
Along the way Alice meets Humpty Dumpty.

Through the Looking Glass
It is very provoking to be called an egg—very.

Holly McDede
“Through the Looking Glass” doesn’t have the kind of high tech we associate with simulated consciousness in science fiction. But Lisa Yaszek, who teaches science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, says the novel is like an early experiment of the genre. The story is bound by the rules of a game.

Lisa Yaszek
And that’s one of other amazing things that we can do with stories about simulated realities. They’re like a funhouse mirror to our own present. They show us the same things, but in a sort of slanted way.

Holly McDede
The late 1800s saw a mini boom in simulated reality stories, more people consumed information through mass mediated forms, new technology is kept shaping fiction. Then in the 1980s, the genre exploded.

Lisa Yaszek
This is the moment as the advent of video games and home computing. And a lot of our other technologies like music technologies are miniaturizing and we can take them places with us, right? You can put on your Walkman headphones, and have this little virtual musical world.

Sony Ad
It’s a Sony.

Holly McDede
The father of cyberpunk, William Gibson, published his novel “Neuromancer” in 1984.

Lisa Yaszek
Not only did he provide us with some of the first really exciting adventures in cyberspace, but he actually coined the term cyberspace. So he really gave us the language that we use today to talk about modern simulated realities.

Alex
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.

Lisa Yaszek
Gibson imagines cyberspace as a totally amoral place. It’s where criminals, corporations and petty thieves will hang out in the future.

Alex
A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system, unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.

Holly McDede
And now here we are. As artificial intelligence and virtual reality surround us, Lisa Yasze, expects fiction to take a nuanced approach, where technology does not need to symbolize death or the transcendence of humanity. It’s just there. If you are interested in dropping into dystopias, try the TV series Black Mirror.

Black Mirror
The magnifying glass through which we observed the human condition, where happiness is an illusion. Here, where the past, present, and future all coexist on the same timeline.

Holly McDede
Just ask Alice: it all goes back to that Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass
Dina—If I ever built my own, everything would be non sex. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Tal,  I’m Holly J. McDede.

Jefferson Airplane
Go ask Alice when she’s 10 feet tall.

Josh Landy
thanks for that really fun report, Holly. I’m Josh Landy, with me as my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs, and today we’re asking, Are we living in a simulation?

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by David Chalmers. He is professor of philosophy at New York University, and author of “Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.” Dave, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

David Chalmers
Thanks. It’s great to be back on philosophy talk after all these years, you know, the first time around 20 years ago, I sent the biological version of me this time I thought, okay, maybe I’ll send along the AI model and see how he does.

Josh Landy
Very appropriate. But I have to say, Dave, you You seem like a thoroughly nonfictional person to me. And I was wondering What first got you interested in saying we might all be in a simulation,

David Chalmers
I actually first encountered this kind of idea of a virtual world. Through my very first computer game when I was 10 years old. I was at my father’s work playing around with the mainframe computer system there and I came across a file that just said adventure. And I went into this and I came across this world that I could interact with is a giant system of caves underground, where I could throw axes and stuff fights and get treasures was what was Colossal Cave Adventure, which was actually one of the first ever video games and from there, that was my first virtual world near I started, video games got better and more sophisticated. We started getting online social worlds, we started getting virtual reality headsets, and so on. And this just makes this whole idea of virtual simulated world so salient, the word simply cannot help but ask the question, could this life I’m living right now be a virtual world? Could it be a simulation? And if it’s a simulation, what does that mean?

Ray Briggs
So Dave, Josh, and I were just arguing about exactly that, whether we’re living in a simulation or whether we could be and I said, I’m pretty sure we’re not and he disagreed. So who do you think is right?

David Chalmers
Oh, I can’t tell you for sure that we’re in a simulation. But I do think it’s a serious possibility. I think we could be in a simulation. And I don’t think we can rule it out. I actually think, you know, there’s a significant chance that we’re in a simulation because it’s very likely that many simulations could be made in Over the course of universal history, so I guess I started with Josh and thinking it’s at least a serious possibility.

Ray Briggs
All right, so hit me with your best argument that we could be living in a simulation.

David Chalmers
Well, I think if I think of it as a challenge, if someone says I’ve got some proof that were not in a simulation, some evidence that we’re not in a simulation, maybe you know, you think your cat is so cute, that this could not possibly be a simulation, I’m going to come back and say that very evidence could itself be simulated. Someone could produce a simulated cat. That is just as cute as your real cat. Actually, in your case, I know it’s a dog. So it’s a simulated dog as cute as your your real dog bow to any evidence you think you have, that you’re not in a simulation? could itself be simulated. So you can’t be sure.

Ray Briggs
So that seems like a pretty powerful argument. Because there are lots of other things that I believe besides that I’m not living in a simulation, like, for instance, that I’m going to be on the radio. But it seems like there is a possible scenario that looks just like this one, where I’m being deceived into thinking that I’m on the radio, and I can’t tell the difference. Like, what if you all were playing a giant prank on me? How would I know? So does this argument just generate the conclusion that I don’t get to know anything? I think I know.

David Chalmers
I don’t think it does, actually. And you know, one reason is that, I don’t think some people think that the idea that we’re in a simulation is a scenario where everything I believe is false. And nothing is real. That’s not my view of a simulation, we could I think we could be in a simulation. But if we are in a simulation, nevertheless, my view is much of what we believe in, still actually exists. You know, I still have a family, I still live in New York, I’m still wearing shoes, and so on. All those things, I think are still happening inside a simulation. So I, many people have seen the simulation idea as a route to skepticism. The idea that we don’t know anything, but I’m gonna reject that kind of reasoning. Yes, we might be a simulation. But still, everything may be real.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about living in a simulation with David Chalmers from NYU.

Ray Briggs
Have you ever been immersed in virtual reality? It make you question your everyday perceptions? How could you tell the difference between the real world and sophisticated simulation?

Josh Landy
Cogito ergo… sim? Along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Beatles
Strawberry fields forever…

Josh Landy
If nothing were real in our entire world, would living be easy? I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program of questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re asking whether we could be living in a simulation with David Chalmers from NYU, author of “Reality+.”

Josh Landy
Got questions about life in a computer program? Email us comments@philosophytalk.org, or comment on our website. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and explore our unstimulated library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
So Dave, you just told me that if we’re living in a simulation, the world is much as we think it is. We don’t lose all of our knowledge. How can that be? Tell me more about that?

David Chalmers
Yeah, there’s a tradition of thinking that simulations are merely a fake or fictional reality that if we’re in a simulation, then none of this is real. I want to say that we could be in a simulation. Nevertheless, if we’re in a simulation, all this is real, here’s how I think about it. If we’re in a simulation, we’re living in a world where the objects around us are made of computer processes, that data structures ultimately made of, of bits inside a computer. But the digital, just because something is digital, doesn’t mean it’s not real. We now live in a highly digital world. But we all know digital processes are real. And I want to apply that that digital way of thinking of like digital metaphysics, to thinking about the whole idea of a simulation. If we’re in a simulation, we’re in a world where objects are made of bits, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.

Josh Landy
I mean, that makes sense to me. After all, you know, a sculptor couldn’t make a statue. Just because it’s made doesn’t mean it isn’t real. So I take that point, but I guess my question is Is that all the reality that we want? I mean, get go back to the matrix scenario, right? I mean, if any of us there hasn’t seen The Matrix, the basic setup is that human beings have been enslaved by a bunch of robots, machines and their bodies are kept as the sort of battery packs out there fed a kind of consistent illusion, which is the world as we know it. So in that case, in that scenario, where at least some of us get the choice to wake up and experience the world, most of us would call the real reality. Well, we kind of that’s the reality we want, right? So at least, you know, some of the characters in the movie, don’t want to sit and live in this other reality, even if it is, even if it is real in a certain kind of sense. It’s not the level of reality want, it’s not really enough. And they certainly before they get to wake up, they certainly don’t have access to all of the reality of the world, right? They don’t have the access to the architects world, the designers world. So would it really, if we were systematically kept out of the architects, well, if there were no red pill to swallow? Would it be enough of the real?

David Chalmers
Yeah, I’m certainly not saying that being in the matrix is great. being enslaved and deceived, that’s not great being imprisoned. That’s not great. But I want to say that’s not a function, just this being digital, or virtual, I mean, just so you had a version of the matrix, where we were still in the physical world, but they locked us away on Earth, and deceived us that somehow this was the whole universe and kept us from getting away from the Earth. And likewise, if we didn’t discover that there’s a giant universe. Beyond this, of course, we’d want to experience that we want to know all of reality, but that wouldn’t mean that your life on Earth was not real, it’s still perfectly real. So that’s kind of my view of life in the matrix, you’re experiencing a real world, your life may even may well be highly meaningful. As far as it goes, you’re still having interactions with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, but you’re being confined and imprisoned in a small part of reality, reality is far bigger than what we’re experiencing right now. You know, reality is what I call Reality Plus, and of course, we want to know reality plus all of reality, not just the literal reality we have here. But it doesn’t mean that our corner of reality even in the matrix, it doesn’t make it unreal.

Ray Briggs
So I can kind of get my head around this for some aspects of virtual reality. So take like a virtual strawberry that’s actually just made of like a string of zeros and ones, but is piped into my brain and tastes like a strawberry. As far as my senses are concerned, like, I don’t care so much about that I can still interact with it, it still causes the great strawberry taste wherever like tastes are made in my mind. But when I think about sort of simulated friendship, like people who seem to all purposes like as far as I can see, like my friends, but who aren’t like my friends inside that really bothers me if you think that like, there are things that can be faked and still be fake, and other things that that can’t be faked because like this suppose and fakes or simulations would be real, like how do I how do I draw that distinction? If that’s a good distinction at all?

David Chalmers
I mean, some people worry about seeing non player characters inside as simulation you know there are the biological beings who are really hooking up to a video game people think that’s real and then there are the simulated beings and people think that’s fake my view is that even a simulated being can really in a certain sense, be perfectly real here the key question actually, a lot of the time comes down to consciousness, simulated beings non player characters inside a virtual world conscious beings with genuine conscious experiences of things like love and friendship, genuine emotions, genuine attitudes and you know you some people might think that a merely simulated being couldn’t be conscious and is incapable of genuine love. That’s not my view. I don’t think consciousness and emotion are merely per views of the of the biological I think, you know, non player characters. Purely simulated beings can have love and emotion to in the matrix, we have the, you know, we have Neo and Trinity who are biological beings woke up to the matrix, we have the agents who were simulated beings, but I think even the proper analysis even those simulated beings are capable of friendship too. So I think simulated friendship can be genuine friendship.

Ray Briggs
So you remember this replica AI companion that was in the news a while ago? Because it got yanked from some markets. So it’s kind of a, an AI like boyfriend or girlfriend, that’s completely artificial. It texts your nice boyfriend or your girlfriend a things. It might text you some spicy things if you pay extra, which I think was part of the the legal issues that the company ran into. But I don’t think that replica is a real boyfriend or a girlfriend like, I don’t think that replica is conscious. Am I? Am I wrong? Or are you saying that, you know, you could have a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend who was conscious, but you can also have some virtual things that are not conscious? Like what do we think about replica?

David Chalmers
I think you’re probably right about replica. I mean, AI is moving fast. But it’s still relatively primitive, I think the consensus would be that we don’t yet have conscious AI systems, certainly not human level, conscious AI systems, I mean, chat, GPT and Molech are impressive, and who knows what whether we might get there soon, but we’re probably not there yet. So replica, I would say is probably a non conscious simulation of a conscious system, you know, impressive enough to really get a lot of people’s emotions going. And some people do report falling in love with the replica. But I’d say right now, that’s not really a warranted emotion, because this is not really a conscious system. But fast forward 20 years to when we really have genuine human level artificial intelligence, which is conscious, which is capable of genuine emotion, I don’t see any obstacle to that. And at that point, I don’t see why a human could not, in principle, have a genuine relationship with the AI system, perhaps in a robot body, perhaps in a virtual world.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about living in a simulation with David Chalmers from NYU. So Dave, you were just talking about what’s going to happen in 20 years time, 50 years. But let’s think about the present again, some people have argued that we should actually believe that we’re already living in a simulation making these interesting arguments that Ray and I were talking about at the beginning of the show, and others say, Well, look how comes razor what’s actually more likely that we’re experiencing reality, or that our descendants have made 1000 simulations of Philosophy Talk in the year 2023. So where are you on that? Do you think there’s some evidence even if it’s not conclusive, that sort of nudges us in the direction of thinking we were already in a giant simulation? Or do you think there’s some kind of evidence going the other direction? What’s what kind of evidence would you want to get?

David Chalmers
Yeah, I mean, some people often say is the simulation idea, just a warmed over version of Descartes evil demon? I think, you know, the one extra thing that maybe gets added with the simulation idea, is the idea that modern tech science and technology have shown us how these simulated worlds can, in principle quite easily be constructed, and might be constructed on quite a widespread scale. So suddenly, you know, we have simulated worlds everywhere. And, you know, every video game involves simulated world virtual reality technology is getting better and better. Apple has just announced their vision Pro, a virtual reality headset, which is going to lead to more and more sophisticated interaction with virtual worlds. Suddenly, this has taken an idea which was just a way out philosophical hypothesis in, say, Descartes, and give it us a concrete path to seeing how simulations May and very likely will be constructed. And suddenly, it seems you can imagine that, over the course of history, there’s got to be in every non simulated world, there will be 1000s, or millions of simulated worlds, constructed, you know, from a statistical viewpoint, it starts to seem as if it may even be quite likely, we’re in a simulation. So I do take that line of reasoning.

Josh Landy
I get that, you know, I have to have to it doesn’t totally persuade me. But my favorite argument in favor of its being in a simulation is Bohr Hass. Barr has said, we’ve dreamt the world collectively, we’ve dreamt is firm, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and dribbling time, but in its architecture, we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason, which tell us it is false. He points to Zeno’s paradoxes. He points to Kant’s antinomies. He says, Look, clearly somebody made that there are glitches in the matrix. Do you like that kind of argument?

David Chalmers
This is a world created by an imperfect God Yeah, some people say that the intelligent design of the universe is a sign that all this was created the alternative use the dumb design arguments. This world is so bad, it’s so bad that it must have been designed by some kind of idiot.

Josh Landy
It doesn’t add up. The physics doesn’t add up.

David Chalmers
Philosophy is so hard. How did consciousness even get in there? It’s like, Man, this world is such a bizarre place.

Ray Briggs
So okay, if I can take a step back. I think I’m losing a little bit of sight of what a simulation is, like is a simulation. Just anything that was designed to create experience in thinking beings, does the simulation have to be a representation of something that is not like a simulated Apple is based on a real apple? So what? What is it that we might be living in?

David Chalmers
I think that’s a basic idea of a simulation, which is, simulation is somehow a simulation of some further system like an apple, or indeed a universe. So you can have an simulated physical world. But then we could have a computer system that simulates that physical world, digitally with digital processes that somehow mirror the physical processes in the world that were simulating. But actually, it was Beaudry on his book simulation, and simulacra, who distinguished various degrees of simulation, from a simulation that actually simulate something which is out there and real and actually happened, like, you know, simulation of the Big Bang, or the Second World War. Two simulations that simulate things that never happened at all for which there’s no corresponding reality, like we could simulate a 26 dimensional universe with totally different laws of physics, that don’t actually exist in our world. So I think all those are simulations.

Josh Landy
Dave, we have a comment from Harold on our website, Harold says, if we were in a simulation, anything in the way of nihilism would be pointless, because it would simply be a fact that nothing mattered. What do you think about that David does nothing matter if we’re in a simulation?

David Chalmers
I think things still matter. If we’re in a simulation, as long as we’re conscious beings, I think consciousness comes with the ability to, you know, to find meaning and value in the world, you know, we submit we invest physical objects, biological systems, and so on, with meaning stemming, at least from our, our consciousness, and I think we can invest digital systems with meaning to and if we’re in a simulation, everything that I take to matter in this world, I think still matters. My family matter, my friends matter, doing science matters, doing philosophy matters, philosophy, talk still matters.

Ray Briggs
So I love this idea that consciousness matters. What does it take for something to be conscious? So you said that digital beings could be conscious as well? What does it take? And how do we know?

David Chalmers
That’s a tiny little question that I’ve never thought about before. But yeah, this is my day job. And we have not figured out we have not figured out consciousness yet. And you’re no one has a good theory of it. But I’m very strongly of the view that the substrate says the biological substrate of consciousness is not essential that what we do with a biological brain, could in principle be done in a silicon brain, if you changed out my neurons, one at a time for silicon chips functioning the same way, then that system would still be conscious. And if that’s possible, then it starts to look like consciousness in a simulated system ought to be possible, as well. It’s true that we don’t know how brains give you a consciousness. So we don’t know how it works. But as long as there’s reasons to think digital systems can be conscious, then it looks like there can be consciousness and indeed meaning in a digital world.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I should point out Dave is famous for having coined the term, the hard problem of consciousness, which is how we get precisely from matter to consciousness. But um, let’s get back to the denialism question if that’s all right. I mean, why, if you’re saying, okay, look, we might be in a simulation without realizing we might even somehow figure out one day that we’re in a simulation. Either way, it doesn’t matter that much. We don’t have to feel like our life is meaningless. We still have lots of areas in which we sort of create meaning just to sort of place you in the existentialist camp. Is this a little bit analogous to what the existentialist say about our mortality? Yes, we’re all mortal. That’s not a great fact about our lives it, it places many of our projects in jeopardy, and yet, it’s within our power to imbue our lives with meaning. Is there an analogy there to what you were saying about the awareness that we may be in a simulation?

David Chalmers
It’s an interesting idea, and I’m not, you know, I’m not really an expert on on existentialism, but I do like the idea that we create our own meaning and we invest our lives in perfect as they are, with with meaning even if we’re in one tiny corner of a giant universe. Our relationships still matter. And the same is true. If we’re in a simulation. I mean, just say we did discover overnight that we’re in a simulation. I’m not saying this would be nothing of course that would be a massive Discovery Oh my good. God, our reality is ultimately digital. There’s more universe out there than we possibly knew. Someone created all this. I mean, all this would have massive reverberations in our worldview, but at the end of the day, I think, you know, we will still go back to our families, and our friends, and our our occupations and so on, and they would continue to be to be meaningful will continue to be, have meaningful conscious experiences in our, in our interactions with others, and that’s ultimately where the meaning of life comes from. I think

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about living in a simulation with David Chalmers from NYU author of “Reality+.”

Ray Briggs
What kinds of simulation does the future have in store for us? Could sophisticated virtual worlds lead us to neglect the real one? Or could they save us from its horrors?

Josh Landy
When virtual worlds get real—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Blondie
I’m not living in the real world no more.

Josh Landy
Maybe I’m not living in the real world. But will I ever know for sure? I’m Josh Landy. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is David Chalmers from NYU. And we’re asking, Are we living in a simulation?

Josh Landy
So Dave, we’ve got an email from Mary. Mary writes, with all the media and social platforms we have now it’s amazing, every one doesn’t live in a simulation of some kind. In this day and age, I’d be afraid of my own shadow if I listened to all the social network media. So I strive to just enjoy every moment and not be influenced by any of that. So what do you think Dave is the world of social media already a kind of simulation?

Speaker 1
It’s certainly a very highly digital world. And we’re interacting in a digital environment. I mean, standard social media, like, you know, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, don’t have full scale, simulated worlds at their core in the way that say, you know, like Minecraft or fortnight or Second Life, those actually have 3d worlds that your avatars are hanging out in. In, you know, Facebook and Twitter, we don’t quite have that mind you on Instagram, people, you know, cultivate the appearance of their lives in a way that might have some element of simulation. But I think by gradually moving in the direction of more and more immersive, social world, you know, when Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to matter, this was to mark their ambitions of creating the so called Metaverse, which is supposed to be a giant network of immersive three dimensional virtual worlds, that people will hang out. And I think they see that as the future of social media. And I think one can see that as having the potential for all the upsides and all the downsides of social media just squared once is a world that we hang out.

Ray Briggs
Dave, when we’re talking about simulation, how important is the kind of 3d immersion so what I’ve seen of virtual reality is that the 3d immersion, immersion is actually really focused on the sense of vision. And I kind of wonder about other aspects of simulation, some of what you can get with really old technology, like reading a novel kind of immerses you emotionally in a character’s world and kind of builds out that world, even though it’s really low tech. And putting on a VR headset, you know, if you have vision that can get me plugged into the VR headset gives you a visual representation. But I wonder how much of the tech is actually necessary to have a simulated world? Like aren’t there already low, low tech simulated world?

Speaker 1
It’s interesting. Yeah, I started the definition of virtual reality that I like because it’s an immersive, interactive, computer generated world where the key thing is, I suppose that it’s computer generated. But it’s also important to be immersive, 3d all around you, and interactive. You can interact with it. And then you can ask question, how important are each of those conditions? For example, is it important that it be 3d I mean, most people these days who interact with virtual worlds don’t do so with a 3d headset. They play video games like fortnight and Minecraft, typically on a 2d screen, and that but they’re still interacting with a computer generated world and I think a lot of the things that we say about virtual worlds might apply in to those 2d screen based worlds. I mean, I think being interactive is important though. Being interactive means you can act back if I go to a movie, I’m immersed in it, but I don’t actually make a difference to what happened. is in the movie. And arguably, I think, you know, reading a novel is a bit like that I’m still I’m a passive consumer, of what happens in the novel, I don’t act back on. I mean, there is interactive fiction, of course. And if maybe if you soup up your novel with genuine interaction, or maybe with enough imagination, then you can get some kind of immersive or interactive world on top of that, but I do think interaction, and agency is very important. I don’t know to what extent you get that with, say, a movie or, or a novel.

Ray Briggs
So I liked your point about interaction agency. I think there are some low tech, virtual reality is that have that without the kind of visually immersive thing. So something like Dungeons and Dragons, which I realized I’m saying things about my own cultural position by mentioning that.

Speaker 1
I remember back in the 1970s, when d&D&D first came out. Colossal Cave Adventure—it was a text adventure, no 3d immersion, it was still a real virtual world.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, the example you started with, in fact, also, fan fiction strikes me as a kind of interactive way of engaging with novels and movies.

Josh Landy
Yeah, these are great examples, I think of extremely healthy interactions with virtual worlds. But of course, they’re not all consuming. I mean, there’s, you know, that’s sort of my bread and butter, right? These sort of fictional worlds, whether the more passive experience, although it’s not totally passive, of watching a movie, or the more interactive experience of fanfiction, or the, you know, adventure games, and so on. I think these are all delightful, pleasing, and in many cases, important aspects of our lives, but just aspects. However, if we get to a matrix, like future, I’m still I like it, you’re saying when and maybe that’s a good thing, because maybe we don’t have a choice. And we better be happy about it. But I want to think back to the the scenario that Ray was sketching out earlier, where we’re all playing a prank on them, you know, we’re telling Ray, you’re gonna be on the radio, and we, you know, we put them on the, on a room somewhere with headphones, you know, we all sort of make it seem like they’re on the radio. And then at some point, we say, Ray, you weren’t really on the radio. Haha, the joke’s on you. Surely at that point, Ray’s gonna think, Well, geez, that wasn’t real. And whatever stock I put into that, whatever meaning I put into that whatever value I thought that that contributed to my life, that kind of evaporates. And so if that’s true for a local situation, like a hoax, or a prank, or, or even an evil demon, tricking you for five minutes, why shouldn’t it also be true? If we were in a global simulation that covers everything in our entire lives from birth to death? Why shouldn’t we be a bit demoralized by that?

David Chalmers
I don’t know that everything that looks like a hoax has to be a hoax. I mean, just say we, we got a new newfangled digital radio and Ray thinks they’re on analog radio, the old fashioned kind, and we say, you weren’t really on. You weren’t really on radio, because you were just on this digital radio. So this is a hoax. I think, you know, Ray might reasonably have the reaction will digital radio, is radio to it’s still real, it’s still meaningful. And that’s roughly my attitude about virtual worlds. Someone might think they’re fake, or fictional, but they’re perfectly real. And by the way, the ones that lie in our future, kind of unlike the matrix world does involve an element of deception. People in the matrix don’t know they’re in the matrix, but virtual worlds we step into with clear eyes in the future. You know, when you enter a Minecraft, you know you’re in Minecraft in the future when we enter the metaverse. We’ll know we’re in the metaverse, I think there needn’t be any deception involved there.

Ray Briggs
A simulation kind of by its nature copies some aspects of the thing. It’s simulating or like the thing that the imaginary thing that would exist that it would be simulating if it existed, I guess, when you’re simulating something not real. And like some of those aspects are important, and some of them aren’t. So medical simulations where people can learn to do surgery without having a real body to do surgery on, it seems like it’s really important to capture sort of the spatial relationships between different parts of the body, you would have messed up if you didn’t do that. But it’s maybe not so important to capture, like the exact color of things. How do you decide which parts of something are important to capture in a simulation? And like what gets you the value?

David Chalmers
Yeah, I guess it depends on your purposes in building the simulation. Like if you’re building a simulation for scientific purposes, as happens today a lot then okay, well, depends on what we’re trying to understand. If we want to understand you know, the history of the cosmos since the Big Bang will simulate things at one level. If you want to understand the dynamics of cells will simulate at another level if we do Now simulations for history are for prediction of the future. It’ll depend what we’re trying to predict. If we’re actually doing this to build a universe for us to live in, in the future, like, as in the so called Metaverse, we didn’t even be a matter of simulating existing reality at all. We might want to build wholly new worlds with wholly new capacities. Yeah, if there are some things about ordinary reality that we like, like aspects of having a body, then great, let’s keep those aspects. But we can also have, you know, wholly new bodies, wholly new ways of inhabiting a world. And if these are worlds we’re going to live in, I think we should be open to throwing away many aspects of existing reality and creating new ones.

Ray Briggs
So what if I disagree with the creators of the metaverse about what’s important to capture? So what if I have physical objects that are really important to me? And the creators of the metaverse say, well, we can give you like digital replicas of this physical objects. And I say, but those don’t have the history. Am I wrong? Are they wrong?

David Chalmers
I don’t think it’s a matter of right or wrong. You know, different people have different values and different preferences. And some people really value nature. For example, they really value being out there in a natural environment that’s not artificial and not constructed. And such a person might reasonably have a preference for living in natural reality, as opposed to virtual reality. But you know, not everyone has that preference. I spend most of my time in New York City, and it’s not terribly natural, but it’s still pretty meaningful. I also think that in the metaverse, I hope there’s more than one Metaverse, I am, the utopian version here is there’s many different virtual worlds and people can choose the kind of virtual world that they want to hang out in, or if they prefer, no way, no one should be forced to live in a virtual world, people can live in the natural world, too. So I’d like to think that in principle, you know, there could be an ecosystem of both bits of physical reality and bits of virtual reality, with something for everybody.

Josh Landy
They might have to say before we let you go and loved your book. It’s fascinating, not just about virtual reality, but all kinds of other philosophical questions. And one of the things I like particularly is how, how it traces kind of a history of philosophizing on this topic, we’ve gone from the cave to the demon to the VAT to the simulation. We’ve, you talked about Hinduism, Taoism, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hilary Putnam, is there something distinctive about today’s thinking on these questions that sets it apart from this long tradition of wondering whether the world might be radically different from the way it appears?

David Chalmers
But what is it they say all philosophy is footnotes to Plato. So I guess all this is footnotes to, you know, to Plato’s cave, and to draw archers butterfly dream and to Descartes evil demon, and you find these ideas everywhere. But I do think, you know, the technological aspect adds at least a little bit. I mean, first of all, the idea of a computer simulation is now concretely anchored in the idea of a digital system, which is something we’ve built up a whole theoretical way of thinking about that makes these ideas, concrete. And also the fact that this technology is now actually starting to exist, takes these wild way out philosophical ideas, and makes them real, you can now enter a simulated world on a virtual reality headset. Once Mehta have their product, Google’s working on glasses, Apple has vision probe before long everyone is actually going to be in these systems interacting with them. And that makes these philosophical questions previously hypothetical. Now suddenly, very much actual. And I think that makes a philosophical difference.

Josh Landy
Dave, it’s been real, I think, anyway, thanks so much for joining us.

David Chalmers
Thanks. It’s been meaningful for me.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been David Chalmers, professor of philosophy at New York University, and author of “Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
While I’m thinking that some simulated realities have quite a lot of potential for creating meaningful connections, I think one amazing thing about the internet is that you can have conversations not in person anymore. And I guess an amazing thing about all telecommunications. I think that the simulated realities of fiction are already awesome. So well, the metaverse sounds like fun. I think there’s already so much rich simulation that we can apply Davis philosophical ideas to that we shouldn’t limit it to just computer simulations.

Josh Landy
I really liked that idea. And I have to say, I’m also excited about this future that Dave sketches for us where we’ll have a choice of many different simulations that are fully embodied, and maybe I’ll get to simulate being out in a beautiful field. With the butterflies flying around which believe, which had a dream that they were me or something like that, but what I don’t want to be in is the matrix. But we’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org and we may feature it on the blog.

Josh Landy
Now… only a simulation could talk this fast—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… From what I’ve heard, virtual reality requires goggles, headsets, special gloves, avatars, 3D landscaping, intricate color palettes, maybe hallucinogens, hypnotism, teams of developers, and it’s still not entirely convincing.  Unless you think, “wow, it seems so real” is the same thing as reality.  Sometimes the real doesn’t seem real, but that’s also proof it is.  Surrealism is its own reward you might say. And we have therapy and therapeutic drugs, also loved ones, to remind us that life, friends, is boring, as John Berryman put it.  That’s why we have Disneyland and sex, to put spice in the mundane.  VR may be too much spice.  Wear the VR helmet to the bus you could get run over.  It needs a viewing distance.  And for VR to be convincing, strangely, you also need proof that it’s not real.  A tromp loeil painting, for instance, is art designed to replicate in aspect and dimension an actual thing, but you also want to see the brush strokes.  You don’t actually want people falling out the painted window by mistake.  That would mean emergency rooms, lawsuits.  The presence of lawyers is always a surefire reality indicator.  Summing up so far, VR must have a creator, a signature, a trademark, a style choice.  If we don’t see that, it’s probably real.  Belief in a creator, or even meaning, is not necessary to perceive reality.  Yet we love to believe and we love being fooled.  In fact, for a nation that loves BS as much as we do, it’s weird that we’re suddenly worried about it.  Now with AI and VR and breakthroughs in propaganda and brainwashing, we’re never been bolder in our embrace.  An inevitable part of pretty much any belief system, BS takes many forms, with some overlap.  Astrology, for example, is followed by all kinds of people.  And there might be something to it. As a kind of a metaphor for what makes us tick and what to do about it.  Then there’s the I Ching, and Tarot, not to mention Christianity and psychoanalysis, which actively require faith in order to work.  Say what you will about plumbing, it only requires running water and a plunger, usually.  You have to have faith in infrastructure, certainly, which seems problematic, as the kids say.  Help after a storm or fire either comes too late, or with strings, and if climate change is involved, Democrats are blamed for creating COVID, or immigration, to make sure that we’ll have still Democrats in 2036 when Republicans are busy goosestepping through Miami on their way to rig the Superbowl.  Delusions depend on whose paranoia you accept.  Charles VI of France, the French king from Henry V, for instance, believed he was made of glass.  Which is kind of a kingly delusion, really.  He’s there yet not there.  He is the king, but you can see right through him to kings past and future.  And history can shatter him like a carnival mirror.  People used to believe in flying saucers, or not, now they believe in unexplained aerial phenomena, or not.  Nothing has changed except the little green men, who are now gray humanoids, or not.  Many Trump supporters believe he was cheated out of reelection, and many of them acted on this belief on January 6, or did as if for surety, as Iago put it.  What with fake news and all, some people worry that we can no longer tell truth from falsity.  It depends on who you ask and when.  Some believe that our world is now a dystopian hell hole, lit by fires set by the woke, that only a return to a guy-run way of doing things, with sports and boats and feed caps worn backwards can bring us back to our true glory, whenever or whatever that was.  Others are just waiting for the true glory of the check to clear so we can buy groceries.  So it’s a looking glass world, which makes it hard to shave yourself.  Of course Grandma was taken by aliens.  She’s gone, isn’t she?  Of course, the election wasn’t stolen.  He’s not president is he?  All I can say is, when I was a kid I was amazed at 3D movies.  Somewhere along the line I lost the glasses.  Yet everything still looks so real!  Which, again, is not always the same as reality.  Which as a rule does not jump off the screen.  As a rule, reality just sits there. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW San Francisco Bay Area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2023.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Ben Trefny. The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Jamie Lee, Elizabeth Zhu,, Emily Huang, Merle Kessler, and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from the partners at our our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
And from the members of KALW local public radio San Francisco, where our program originates.

Ray Briggs
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

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