Episode 237: Glitches Ain't Shit

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:16] Yeah, cause you're searching for perfection, and perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate... Is that the bar here? Adequate. The Queen in Oz has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I'm a very good man. Good thoughts, and with no more brains than you have.

[00:01:07] Pay no attention to anybody who can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. I'm from the University of Houston. Dave, when you think about it, how do we know we're not in the matrix?

[00:01:24] Oh God, I thought of a really terrible answer, but that'll have to wait for the main segment, I guess. We never will! We never will. I mean... I don't know. Have you ever had deja vu? You know what that is? It's a glitch!

[00:01:42] It's a glitch on that matrix. I'm trying to think... So, the Matrix was the very first movie that I ever purchased on DVD, and I was so excited, and it was so cool, and it's just not that cool anymore, is it? People think it's still cool.

[00:02:00] I have never... Like this is a somewhat, I guess at this point almost embarrassing admission, I probably took it as a matter of pride before, but I've never watched the whole Matrix.

[00:02:10] Like I keep trying to start it, and I give up halfway through, two thirds of the way through. Actually, what we're going to talk about in the main segment, which is simulation theory, the strange attractions people have towards it, and then this documentary by Rodney Asher

[00:02:27] called A Glitch in the Matrix, and that made me appreciate the Matrix more than trying to watch it every single time. Because it got at the griminess of it. I don't know if fully you think I appreciated that aspect of the Matrix enough.

[00:02:43] I think we've talked about this before, but I think if you didn't watch it within the sort of like five-year span maybe, there are so many derivative works that it actually feels derivative even though it wasn't.

[00:03:03] Like even Kung Fu Panda is doing your little bit of dodging bullets. Yeah, like the Shining or something like that, it becomes too iconic almost. And it's almost Tamer. It's almost cringe. It's almost cringe. I don't know, I'm not sure that's the best...

[00:03:21] I'm not sure why you would choose that adjective of it. But anyway, yeah, that's what we're talking about in the second segment. In the first segment, totally off the topic. No effort in a segment at all.

[00:03:35] No bridge for me to cross, nothing like thrown out is we're going to do some very bad wizards conceptual analysis. That's right. Where we tried it. It is. I think if we'd done one or two other ones. We did corny... You know what we did?

[00:03:53] Kind of we did like a... Was our snitch episode a little bit like that? It was a little bit. I feel like we've done one more, but I'm forgetting. So this is very bad wizards does conceptual analysis.

[00:04:05] We try to nail down the necessary and sufficient conditions of concepts like corny, snitching. And today we are going to do something... I guess that's a little bit related to corny. Although also pretty distinct, cringe. Yeah. I feel like I come across cringe just a lot.

[00:04:28] I don't know, like more than usual recently. Just getting to a certain age, I think you're always in danger of it. You know, and also being a professor and teaching students like... I mean, you are on a field, like a minefield of potential. Oh yeah.

[00:04:47] I'll never forget when I was in grad school, I was TAing for a social psychology class and the professor was just super nice and sincere. So this was, I want to say like right around the year 2000, 1999 or something like that.

[00:05:01] And she had the same slides that she had been using clearly for like 10 years. And she also seemed to have her lectures written out. And I remember one time, you know, she was transitioning slides and then on one of the slides it's just a picture of Alf.

[00:05:21] And then she starts like very rotally talking about, you know... So think about the TV show Alf. And nobody at that point had heard of who Alf was or anything. And she was so sincerely, I think trying to relate to the kids. Right.

[00:05:38] That it was really, yeah, I didn't have a word cringe for it back then, but it really was. And yeah, I feel like my whole life as a lecturer is to avoid ever being like that. Being cringe. Yeah.

[00:05:49] And being too hard also you can be cringe by trying not to be cringe, I think. I have this part of my general sometimes like overconfidence that I'm not cringe that often. You know, like that's kind of like I have this because I'm sure that's not true

[00:06:07] if I really think about it like rationally, but you know... Like it's part of your self-concept is that you're not cringe. Yeah, exactly. That I can navigate those fields with the proper amount of like self-deprecation and you know, and actually good jokes, not cringe jokes.

[00:06:24] Have you ever said anything to Liza and had her respond with that? Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, no man is going to like not do something cringe for his daughter. Yeah. I remember like not too long ago, I don't remember what slang it was that I said

[00:06:48] and Bella just gave me this look and I was like, what? She's like, that's just so cringy that you're trying to use that word. And I was genuinely offended because in fact, it was slang from my era that Zoomers have just co-opted as their own.

[00:07:04] And I was like, fuck you, I've been using this word. That's the thing when your Gen X is it's all bullshit because you're the coolest and you know, most of the stuff that they think they invented, we were already there. That's right.

[00:07:19] All right, so we have come prepared with our conceptual analysis and you have a proposed definition. I have something like a set of conditions that is neither necessary nor sufficient. All right, this is like a just I'm just throwing it out there.

[00:07:35] I haven't really thought about this that much, but when there is a miss I take it back that we come prepared. I mean, I also haven't been there prepared for this whole thing. I thought we were just going to toss it around.

[00:07:48] But when there is a mismatch between how the person believes he or she is being perceived and how they are actually being perceived. That's, I think my best like if I had to do it in a sentence.

[00:08:01] And I guess, you know, but you'd have to add that they perceive something going over in a good way but it's actually going over. Right. Yeah. That just gets us started. Yep. I like that. I think it's good. It's never going to be necessary or sufficient.

[00:08:19] But it might be necessary in that. It might be necessary. Yeah. Let me just throw out one of the like most famous cringy movie scenes maybe ever is from Swingers when he's leaving those voicemails. Yeah. Is that a counter example?

[00:08:37] Because I think he knows that it's not going well. He just compulsively can't stop himself from just calling back and leaving the voicemails and thinking but maybe in the moment where he thinks it's a good idea to call back and leave another message,

[00:08:52] he actually there is this mismatch where we know that's the worst possible thing you can do that you have to cut bait entirely and then just apologize the next day. It makes me think is there a distinction between cringe being a property of the person

[00:09:08] who is being cringy and cringe as the emotion that I'm feeling in response to them? I guess it's just sort of the same but focused on two different things. Yeah. But so yeah, like I had also on my list a lack of self-awareness. I do think that's necessary.

[00:09:27] Yeah. So the feeling of cringe is like vicarious embarrassment, I think, right? It's this kind of vicarious embarrassment. I do think that the person who is being cringy has to be sincere and that's part of what makes it terrible

[00:09:48] is that they really seem to think that what they're saying or doing is fine or normal or like they're enforcing it. They're funny. They're not doing it ironically. They're taking themselves seriously. A lot of cringes like people taking themselves a bit too seriously when they're saying these things.

[00:10:07] Yeah. I think you can be cringe when you're telling a joke that's not funny or saying something that you think is funny and is not funny and you start laughing. There, they're not being serious in one way but they're being serious in the way that

[00:10:21] they think that what they're doing should meet with social approval of some kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. There is cringe humor. What this paper was about feels a little different to me too when like you bringing up the swingers

[00:10:38] case, the fact that they're making us laugh with this is like they are creating the character as being not self-aware in a way that is making it sort of like the office, the David Brent kind of character. Yeah.

[00:10:51] Like where it is David Brent or Michael Scott is terribly not self-aware. And so the writers of the show are trying to give us that feeling. And so it's meta funny. You mean it's meta funny when they're telling jokes that aren't? Well, it's sorry.

[00:11:07] I meant it's meta funny in the sense that if we were talking to David Brent when he said those things it wouldn't really be funny. Right. Yes, because I think one of the hallmarks of cringe in person which is different

[00:11:19] than cringe comedy in a movie or a TV show I think is that you have trouble like looking them in the eye. You have trouble like just you feel really uncomfortable in your own skin and you're definitely looking away and just one begging the person to stop.

[00:11:35] If they keep going it's just I think it's because we have to react not in the way that we feel about it which is you know like you're a fucking idiot right now and it's just making it worse and please stop. Right.

[00:11:51] It's an interesting kind of Icarus embarrassment too because it's like you know if you do something embarrassing in front of an audience, I'm in that audience and I see that you got embarrassed. It's one thing.

[00:12:04] Like I can be very embarrassed for you and you be embarrassed too but they're just like failing to see that they ought to be embarrassed and it's just like oh man it's a big oof like that's just like you should know they should know that they're completely saying

[00:12:18] or doing something that's just so bad. Yeah and for someone like me who really has trouble hiding how he feels like it's very hard because even though they should know that they're going to be embarrassed, they're not embarrassed

[00:12:31] and I'm not supposed to like signal to them that they should be embarrassed. I'm supposed to be the opposite like if I'm just trying to be a nice person and that's what's so hard about it.

[00:12:41] That's why I think I look away always because if they look me in the eye they will know exactly what I think. But I think sometimes they know anyway like I just have this kind of hopeless look on my face I think.

[00:12:53] You know just like ah we sunk to depths that I just don't know like if there's any escape from this. I was remembering that when we talked about corny, I think at least that I had this view

[00:13:07] that corny-ness also needed some sincerity and I think that might be true. I think that's just like you can tell a corny joke sort of knowing that you're trying to be funny and cringe is even less self-aware I think. Like how could you possibly think this?

[00:13:24] So I have an example of things that I constantly find cringe and that's Elon Musk tweeting like 69 jokes. Oh god. That's just so bad. It's just like what like oh my god.

[00:13:39] He also named his Tesla cars like the Model S, the Model X and the Model 3 because that spells out sex. Oh god. Like isn't that cringe? I've embarrassed for you. So here's a question that actually raises an interesting question because although we think that's cringe

[00:13:59] he'll get for all those fucking tweets, he'll just get like hundreds of thousands of likes and he has these people who worship him. At that point is it like cringe anymore or is it just kind of a sad fact about the world?

[00:14:15] I think it's cringe and I'm gonna make a normative claim it ought to be cringe and I think that the people who are on his nuts either mistakenly think that he's being ironic and I don't think that it's that. I don't think it's that.

[00:14:30] Or they also are cringey themselves. We have a duty to not reward cringe behavior and a lot of people don't do their duty when it comes to that either out of politeness or because they're just too stupid to see that it's cringe-worthy.

[00:14:49] Well so this is one of my big problems with say Twitter because I think normally if you were saying this shit in real life you might start to realize from people's, you know, like people like you with leaky faces

[00:15:03] who can't help but make up just a face that reveals that you're being cringey. You get feedback but what happens on Twitter is there's an asymmetry where if a thousand people like it and a million people think it's cringe there's all you get is a thousand likes.

[00:15:20] So that's different than like David Brent in the office where it's like everybody but him essentially is getting this just really skin-crawling feeling as he's doing what he's doing and he thinks it's going great. I don't know, like the British office has so many examples

[00:15:37] I had trouble narrowing it down but when he's being a motivational speaker you remember that one and he's and it just comes out of that thinking that it just went great. He's in that kind of high energy, you know, like after you've given a good lecture

[00:15:53] or something like that you feel like you feel like the shit but it's like everybody else is like, yeah, well I mean, you know, it's not exactly my style of thing but sure. I'll let you into a little secret now, right?

[00:16:08] Before I went out there I was worried whether I still had it. I'll let you be the judge of that. High five. Don't let me hang in the hole. Oh, God. Oh, jeez. Oh, here he is. Tina, are we too much for you? Possibly. Oh, it's your job.

[00:16:25] Hold me back because when I'm out there I am. Oh, and it's like so that's up to you on my face. Oh, jeez. Tell you what though, seemed to go for it, didn't they? God, that sure makes me so uncomfortable.

[00:16:38] So there's a lot of like a cringe that makes me cringe because like there is this sort of like sincere e-monus to him. So like there's this guy named, I don't remember his name but he's this Indian tick-tocker

[00:16:59] who would make these Joker faces and they're so, it's terrible because clearly he's taking himself seriously thinking that he looks cool doing something that he looks really dumb doing. But there would like be at the bottom like some sort of quote like, you know, I don't know,

[00:17:18] like I may not, like something just very emo like a, fuck, I can't even think of an example. I'm going to have to look it up dude and we're going to cut this. I like that you were saying that I wasn't preparing.

[00:17:35] I'm going to put a link to Indian Joker but it is one of the cringiest things. In fact, he got well known because the subreddit r slash cringe-topia would feature him all the time.

[00:17:47] It was always accompanied by like some emo message about really like being rejected by girls or wanting to kick some guy's ass because like, or like you don't know the pain I've been through that kind of thing.

[00:17:57] Like you don't know my pain is one of the cringiest things you could ever say. And it's like, of course I don't because I don't know who you are. So what about real life? Like where do you find what should I feel like we're not doing conceptual analysis?

[00:18:12] Yeah. So okay. So my my list of stuff was it's like a feeling of like it's by cringe. The cringe feeling is vicarious embarrassment and it's triggered by something that is sincere that takes itself very seriously and that lacks self-awareness.

[00:18:27] And I, it's that still doesn't complete sort of like the well what the content is. Yeah. Like that it's hard to pin down the content and all I can do is say like sometimes when it's

[00:18:40] when it's like revealing of emotions that you really shouldn't be feeling that's one kind or revealing. Yeah. Or just yeah, just revealing in general. Like virtue signaling is a lot is often cringy.

[00:18:54] So sometimes the content can be you say something very like Democrats trying to get all social just to see. Yeah. Well, I'm going to get myself in trouble because I know a lot of people like these things that think they're valuable but like I find like land acknowledgments.

[00:19:10] Oh my God. I don't think that's true that a lot of people find it is valuable. Canadians just all do it. I think like they have gotten an argument about this maybe not a lot but it is the cringiest thing. What are you doing?

[00:19:25] Like what are you going to give the land back? Are you going to like it seems like you're fucking like like trash talking at a certain point like I'm on this motherfuckers land right now. I know it's like just do something like you're going to do something. Yeah.

[00:19:42] So that's that stuff's cringy when like this is all mostly East Coast stuff but I have friends that work in the arts in New York and they all have to on Zoom calls describe their appearance

[00:19:53] because what if there was someone that was visually impaired and even if there's not anybody that's visually impaired they still do it to normalize it and then the worst part is they'll start putting in little jokes describing themselves like my hair is all messed up today.

[00:20:08] I just got up too late and you know talk about their clothes it's just like I've never experienced that my sister-in-law says like we'll get it'll be like an hour meeting and we won't be done with that shit. I've never even 40 minutes.

[00:20:22] I've never even heard of people doing that. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that sort of empty verge signaling is a good example. Also like the Republicans trying to be Trumpy or MAGA you know pretend their kind of populist is really cringy too. Yeah right. Yeah.

[00:20:43] There are a lot of people now who do cringy TikTok videos because like they know that it gets a lot of views and like people but but they are being very self aware in their cringiness but it requires to make a video that's cringy you have to like

[00:21:01] if someone sees it for the first time not knowing that you're one of those accounts they have to really find it cringy. Right. It's kind of brilliant that it's like you know that they're so self aware that they can make themselves.

[00:21:11] Right and you're willing to like leave yourself open for just misguided attacks. Right exactly. Yeah. And then you get a bunch of people in the comments being like oh my god can't you tell what satire. Yeah.

[00:21:23] In fact that used to happen on the cringe topia subreddit where a lot of people would be like somebody would post a cringy thing and people would mock them for not knowing that it was satirical.

[00:21:34] And it really was like a blurred line between what is cringy in that the person really didn't know versus satire and that they were mocking you for not knowing. Right. I will give this generation the zoomers or whatever credit for they will put

[00:21:49] out humor that is like I don't know if I can like meet their metanus. It's exactly right. It's like that's like beyond my intellectual powers to try to like kind of figure out like

[00:22:02] is this ironic is this sincere but pretending to be ironic or like you know another level up of that like it's like I'm really impressed with. Absolutely. I totally agree and I struggle sometimes to find it funny but sometimes I do.

[00:22:18] I think it's hilarious like they really do get it is some serious zoomer shit to be like you know like pop three levels of meta and do it deadpanny in a funny way. It's like six dimensions like I can't conceive of the world.

[00:22:37] I just can see the world in my like Gen X. Yeah. We're like we're still like unlike like like friends level sarcasm you know and they've they've they've come all the way around to really liking friends. Right. They've already lapped us in terms of like so congratulations.

[00:22:56] Do I have anything else? Oh I just have other examples. So here's one that's cringe but maybe more in the old fashioned like times where cringe wasn't an adjective on its own. Like you would say it was cringe inducing or it was cringy maybe even that I think

[00:23:13] it's fairly recent but so you know taxi driver when Robert De Niro Travis Bickel takes Sibyl Shepard to on a date and he he takes her out. He just sees her in the window takes her out and on a first date because he's this like

[00:23:28] war veteran that just drives taxis at night because he can't sleep. He takes her to like what he does which is like a porn theater and she's all dressed up but he's gone to these you see him go to these things and you see that like

[00:23:43] occasionally like couples will be in there. Yeah. So this is like a place I could take a woman and so he does that and it's and of course she's just like at first she was like what is this and then she's kind of

[00:23:55] horrified and she walks out and then there's a scene a little later on where she doesn't want to talk to him anymore. She's not like picking up the phone and he he calls and yeah she picks up the phone and he.

[00:24:09] I just listen I'm sorry about the the other night I didn't know that was the way you felt about it. Well I didn't know that was the way you felt I had I was taking you somewhere else. Okay okay.

[00:24:25] Did you get my flowers and you didn't get them. Nice send some flowers. Well okay okay can I call you again tomorrow or the next day. Okay no I'm gonna okay yeah sure okay.

[00:24:49] And then the camera just kind of moves away so he's talking on the phone and a pay phone and then just moves away to like an empty hallway as he's speaking and like just getting absolutely nowhere and Scorsese interviewed about that

[00:25:02] said because we couldn't bear to see at that moment. That's why I move it's this very like famous pan away from him into an empty hallway it's like because it's too you can't bear to see this kind of I don't know humiliation. Right.

[00:25:17] And so that's not I guess he is taking himself seriously but he's there's no sense of I'm being praiseworthy or superior or something like that it's more just kind of desperate so there can be a cringiness to desperation.

[00:25:30] Yeah I think that's right you know I've never I don't think I've ever seen Taxi Driver the whole way through. I could tell based on you know by my reaction yeah yeah it's you got to

[00:25:39] see it it's like I know I don't know why I avoid 20 movie of all time. I've talked about my problem with 70s cinema and just the look. I block that out. I'm younger. It's like I you know I have my problems with 90s hip hop.

[00:25:56] They just hadn't really figured out how to get that synth voice going. I found another example of cringe that that I think was it was real peak self-owned cringe. Somebody made fun of James Lindsay you've seen you've seen James Lindsay do

[00:26:21] that video like he had a video of himself. Yeah like some eyes or yeah somebody tweeted to him you're a middle aged man with a collection of mall swords that cries about breakfast cereal and then quote we have him and you know the mall mall swords is a

[00:26:38] pretty funny I think insult like that he went and got these these things that he values so much or just and but he replied and said I only have one sword that qualifies as a mall sword which is a

[00:26:51] stand-in until I'll belly up to the $3,000 price tag for the real one groomer and it's like whoa man he took it seriously. It was like it was a weird moment of two vulnerable. I think so like with him like sometimes you cross the line into

[00:27:11] like you're not cringe anymore you're just crazy you just lost it completely and so like I don't know for me that's less I don't find the James Lindsay stuff there's nothing he can do anymore than I'll think is funny or interesting because like it just

[00:27:27] seems like he's gone. Well he has gone off the deep end but usually he has superiority in his like tone when he like he's just incessantly mocking people and he is gone off the off the rails but this one was

[00:27:42] like you could tell it got to him like you could tell this one insult of calling him like he cares about swords so like yeah he needed to like this is bad. But I do like I think it's it doesn't matter what the content

[00:27:54] is if you're at that point where you're just completely lost your mind I think a lot of celebrities not I'm not saying he's a celebrity I'm saying like a lot of celebrities sometimes get to this point.

[00:28:07] You remind me of another cringe to not to bring up Joker again but I guess but Jared Lito's Joker very cringy right and then when you hear about some of his behavior on the set where he was trying to somehow be like a method actor about

[00:28:22] playing the Joker. Yeah those are just terribly cringey stories that you're like wow that's someone taking themselves so seriously for something that really does not deserve for that performance. Yeah I think there's something about credit this is good for the necessary insufficient conditions or at least a boundary

[00:28:38] condition like they have you have to be confident that if somehow it could be revealed to them like what people were thinking that that would affect them in a normal way like it would affect you or me.

[00:28:51] Okay so let me ask you about this one so your boy who is I just lost the name of the HBO series the succession the guy who plays Jeremy Strong. Yeah and that when that article came out about him yeah like

[00:29:05] those were some real cringe like it was insulting to him because I think it portrayed him in such a cringy light and so what you're saying now is if he realizes that that behavior is cringy like upon reading that then

[00:29:20] it's proper cringe but if he doesn't or maybe like I think he'll be like that's just who I am so like if people find it embarrassing you know whatever like at a certain point like I think my wife does this like if you embrace your

[00:29:33] cringiness sometimes you're kind of immune then and it actually makes other people not worry about it. Right right I get it well so that shows us self-awareness exactly that's why those like TikTok accounts where they're doing it on purpose but it's not that they're doing it on

[00:29:50] purpose so that's not what I'm saying it's just that they're they know it's cringe and they don't care. Yeah I still think that like the you know that actor Jeremy whatever. You think that's cringy? I think it's cringe if those stories are the stories

[00:30:04] that they are I think him not being aware just makes it more cringe. So all right well we've gone on a lot. You're going to have to edit this one. And probably been I'm cringing at how like much I'm going to edit this but congrats to the younger

[00:30:20] generations for making this like an adjective. Good job I think it's a good one. It's valuable and we're here to break it down for you and teach you what it really means. That was a good cringe right there. That was quality cringe content.

[00:30:36] Oh wait last example I posted I'll post this one there was a church there was a like a Christian church like so many you know on stage where they did a whole skit in full on Avengers uniforms but about yeah that one Christians

[00:31:00] have like you know non-denominational Christians have a good they have a good lock on the cringe market. When they want to rap or something. Jews rapping is a lot also like I mean it can work but you know no Jews rapping is a lot funnier than Christians rapping.

[00:31:22] No that's true yeah we still have the kind of entertainment and history to draw on where those people really don't have anything. All right we'll be right back to talk about simulation theory. This podcast is sponsored by better help online therapy you know life can be

[00:31:43] overwhelming and so many people are burned out sometimes without even knowing it do you feel a lack of motivation or maybe do you feel a little helpless or detached tired all the time that could be stress and the general burnout of life that we all experienced to

[00:31:58] some degree. And a lot of people associate burnout with work but sometimes it never seems to stop all the details of life the bullshit the online forums the maddening bureaucracy the news like politics social media living online everything better help online therapy wants

[00:32:15] to remind you to prioritize yourself and talking with someone a trained unbiased observer can help you figure out what's causing stress in your life and how to deal with it in the most effective way possible. You know when I was growing up there was

[00:32:30] a little stigma to therapy not a lot but definitely it was there thankfully that's not the case anymore I interact with a lot of students and more and more of them are telling me these days about the benefits that therapy has had on their

[00:32:43] life. Well better help is customized online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to it's much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a

[00:32:59] therapist in under 48 hours this podcast is sponsored by better help and very bad wizards listeners get 10% off their first month and betterhelp.com slash VBW that's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW thanks as always to better help for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to very bad wizards this is

[00:34:27] the time where we love to thank everybody who gets in touch with us emails us tweets at us joins the lively subreddit community how all the different ways that you interact with us and interact with the rest of the very bad wizards community it feels

[00:34:47] cringe to call it the very bad wizards community. You know what I propose our cringe conversation I told my daughter that we were talking about cringe yeah and in a very zoomer way she goes dad you using the word cringe is kind of cringe already to

[00:35:13] I was like you can't also use it in your condom nation of no but they're at a different level that sucks though our whole segment is just totally like destroyed with that one line well we do our best we try very sincerely anyway if you

[00:35:46] aren't a zoomer and that wants to make fun of us or even if you are fuck it you can email us at very bad wizards at gmail.com you can tweet at us at Pamela at peas at very bad wizards you

[00:36:03] can like us on Facebook follow us on Instagram join the subreddit very bad wizard subreddit you can give us a five-star review on Apple podcast so other people can find out about the pot about very bad wizards and join the very bad wizards community and if

[00:36:24] you want to support us in more tangible ways you can do any of a number of things that you can see if you go to our very bad wizards dot com support page you can give us a one-time donation on PayPal you can buy some swag mugs

[00:36:40] t-shirts or you can join our wonderful group of patrons on patreon.com if you do that you get some perks at $1 and up everybody gets ad free episodes and you get all the collections of my beats that I put together which I just

[00:36:56] beats without rhymes volume six yeah it's getting some good some good reviews love yeah a lot of love yeah so thank you to everybody who gives me love about that at $2 and up you get that and you get all of our bonus segments and again

[00:37:13] we need to figure out what we were just talking about something well I'm going to do one I think it's almost nailed down the time with Jesse and Natalia on lost highway and then starting a podcast with them I mean is there something that you're not telling

[00:37:29] is it starting the podcast a new podcast if it's still very bad wizards it's just asshole and eventually we'll do Atlanta we'll do Atlanta this oh god yeah you got to see it so good I still haven't watched it yeah so at

[00:37:44] $2 and up you get bonus segments of $5 and up you get that and you get to vote on an episode topic that we have couple times a year you get access to our brothers Karamazov series five part series you get access to my intro psych lectures few of Tamla's

[00:38:06] lectures on Plato symposium and finally $10 and up you get to ask us anything and get videos and the audio version of those videos then people get at $2 and up as well they float down yes after a month they trickle down they trickle down

[00:38:27] like good Reaganomics so yeah thank you to everybody for all your support we very much appreciate it in any way that you support us and we have an act ask us anything coming up to we got to yeah we got a lot of good questions yeah sound

[00:38:45] like maybe too many too many I know we've answered every question so far it will be a test it will be a test we're gonna have to be more economical in our in our and right yeah we have not been economical we're gonna have to just

[00:38:57] answer yes or no for some of them yeah from now on we'll just have to make them multiple choice so but thank you everybody we really appreciate alright let's talk about glitch in the matrix and simulation theory more broadly so the basis of this discussion is going

[00:39:18] to be a movie by Rodney Asher a documentary so this is by the same director who did room 237 and it has a lot of similarities and how it's structured and also I think maybe the kind of person that's being yeah and then there's also some really

[00:39:36] interesting footage of Philip K. Dick yeah and his announcement to a French audience for the first time that he believed that we were living in a simulation and that he had been contacted by an outside force he had like a transcendent rational being

[00:39:52] within him for a time or something I don't totally did you know about all about this no I did not at all yeah and I'm not even sure that what was it clear that what he believed in was simulation theory or just that we there were

[00:40:06] like multiplicities of worlds that could leak into each other I thought for maybe it's just because I was projecting because I knew what the movie was about double-checked dick Philip dick did say in that speech clearly we are living in a computer program

[00:40:20] reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs yes like Mandela effects which yeah so there's interesting footage there's really good animation that accompanies the interviews and the people themselves are computer

[00:40:38] generated like avatars of some kind they're like a they're like a filter yeah but like there but it's like a filter that has these I guess custom-made avatars of different weird-looking being yeah like a wolf a standing wolf with like a bow tie or there's one guy that

[00:40:55] looks like a Star Trek or Star Wars kind of alien yeah it's like an alien with a space suit on yeah yeah I thought the one the wolf one looked like a newbis the Egyptian god kind of oh yeah that's right yeah but I don't think

[00:41:07] their voices are disguised I mean they are not like the names and their so there's a lot of stuff in this movie that is very bad wizards has treated a bunch of these topics sometimes lightheartedly sometimes not but I was kind of amazed at how like this is

[00:41:24] a synchronicity I think and how many things it's like oh we've said that or we've talked about that or you know I guess not surprisingly but still and it also has Nick interview with Nick Bostrom and a guy named Eric Davis who worked on Philip K. Dix

[00:41:42] like final tome and I actually really liked his interviews and when it's someone like Bostrom or Eric Davis there's no avatar right and what's the woman then there's a woman actually that's right I don't remember her name but she she was really good too she

[00:41:58] talks about Plato's cave so she kind of gives philosophical context but is very good about relating that to what's going on in the movie absolutely all right so let's let's just start here before we go through all of this in more detail what did

[00:42:12] you think of the movie I I like the movie Tamer I didn't love it everything that they talked about I think was fascinating just as a film though I found it to be a little more scattered I was surprised at the amount of tangents he allowed the

[00:42:29] people to go on I think I know what he was doing he was making the viewer inhabit the world of tangents that these people go on and I get that so I don't I don't know that it's a flaw I just think that it was there wasn't

[00:42:45] as tight a thesis as I felt room 237 to be which is weird to say because the thesis has to come through editing right because you can't expect that these all of these disparate people are going to somehow provide you with like a

[00:42:58] theme for the movie but the thing that I did love is I think he took his editing up a notch he brings in so many films video games and and custom sort of animated sequences yeah that alone I think made made it enjoyable

[00:43:20] to get through I'd like to go the simulation tank where he has this transcendent experience one of the interviewees sensory deprivation sensory depth sensory deprivation yeah that animation was so cool in the music I think the music is great throughout this yeah it really was

[00:43:42] yeah yeah what do you think I loved it I fucking loved this movie I loved it in a way that I didn't I mean I really like room 237 but I responded to this movie like I just first of all because I don't know how

[00:43:56] acquainted with some of these ideas I was certainly not in any depth but just to see these people who you know really believe it and then to just get little clues as to what kind of people what ties them all together what kind

[00:44:09] of person is attracted to this view of the world let's so there was that element and that's also in room 237 I think but the just the a lot of the other stuff conveyed this mood or tone like it made me upset watching it

[00:44:24] right now like there was an air of like paranoia and and just unease like and I think I conveyed like he's really good at conveying this sense which I sometimes feel when I'm just out in the world myself that like the world is

[00:44:39] kind of cracking up a little bit like yes reality is getting less and less tethered and that's part of it but it's also like realities are just getting shittier there's a kind of desperate shittiness to everything and it really kind of and you know I think

[00:44:53] some of the characters even say something like that or maybe Eric Davis says Philip K. Dick was good about capturing the texture of life today you know he was prophetic about that aspect of it and then I think that's that's how I felt too about this movie

[00:45:10] is that it was as the the theory started to get crazier but then all of a sudden someone would say something that was pretty insightful I can't remember where it when it was but when I texted you like this movie is wild

[00:45:23] I was wondering I felt like I don't know like very disturbed by how these ideas are out there and and what it means that you know this views just gaining more and more popularity yeah there is something really interesting and we

[00:45:39] this is the one thing I do remember talking about on the podcast which is there's something that's causing the idea to be sticky now I suspect maybe there's a slight difference in the distress that we had my distress was I felt what you felt

[00:45:55] about like yeah this the world does reality does seem to be fucked up but I felt more both pangs of sadness for these people yes and also I was frustrated with them I found I there was something in the egocentrism and the rampant solipsism

[00:46:17] that they expressed that made me angry at them see I felt like I couldn't be angry at them like any of them for even a second because there's just so lonely it yeah angry is not the right word frustrated yeah frustrated at the

[00:46:32] you know me I don't like the looseness of those connections and the way that they were talking about other people just maybe non-existent I was like sounds a little entitle buddy like it sounds like a little yeah I think I think actually more the majority of

[00:46:47] critics had more your reaction like good you know some really cool stylistic touches but for whatever reason it reached me maybe it's just like because I've been feeling this when I go out like just to go to the store like everyone just seems a little more

[00:47:02] pissed off everybody feels just a little like and also there's like uncanniness to it to to it and I and I feel like clearly like this stuff has always been going on and people kind of start sensing this at different times but it feels like lately that

[00:47:18] this is getting more and more like this you know what now that you say that I the uncanniness you remember like right when shit hit with the pandemic like yeah it was totally uncanny right it was like we were in vanilla sky like nobody was on the

[00:47:34] planet and then there was the uncanniness when everybody was wearing masks it was this real just weird moments I wonder if like there is this theme throughout of at least I think at least a couple of the guys who are being interviewed talk about the notion of a

[00:47:51] non-player character that that was one of my favorite second yeah so I wonder if and this sounds like I like I'm an anti-masker which is you are not that I'm not which is that the maybe there really is something about our inability to see people's faces

[00:48:11] clearly makes it not just uncanny and that everywhere everyone's wearing masks but we lose a bit of the humanity in our interactions and are like walking by and seeing people's facial expressions and like they might seem more like a non-player character definitely like I remember

[00:48:26] like nobody's wearing masks here in our grocery store anymore but when they were and they were for you know like over a year at least year and a half it was like hard to hear people too yeah like you talk to

[00:48:37] people because I live in the south so often you talk to the person that's like Charlie Brown couldn't hear it yeah so it's like this muffled like adults from the Charlie Brown TV show exactly yeah yeah so I am of the opinion that this is all like a

[00:48:54] product of the weird psychology of these people but also the weird psychological things that are going on in the world and not that this is uncannyness of the universe but I get the feeling yeah I get that you know yeah and just like that it's fraying

[00:49:10] too like he's really good at conveying that like the reality or what you think is real is a kind of fucked up but also it's like ready to come apart you know it's like it's not in good shape it needs repair you

[00:49:23] know right like the guy who says people always talk about like technology is being this like great thing where everything's new I feel like my life is technology that's just broke breaking yeah I've had long spells of life where I feel like that's it like

[00:49:40] yeah what this now to you what the hell there is something deeply interesting to me about the number of thoughts that I think are otherwise unrelated like when you if you were to sit and take apart like each of the things that people are saying this world is

[00:49:58] frustrating also like I don't connect with other human beings also times are shitty also there's this simulation thing it might be true all of them are really could be just independent claims and some are even weirdly inconsistent with each other it's just that they're

[00:50:12] all feeling something and there is some appeal to this view that has in one in at least one case got seem to like at least get someone through some hard times in other case in other case ruin this life yeah definitely it highlights the similarities between simulation theory

[00:50:30] and religion right it is just a really and but it's like a religion for the lonely it's a religion for like that isolated you know when they do their origin stories of how they came to understand that we're living in a simulation it's like they all

[00:50:46] just like have this desperate loneliness one person like it got kicked out of the house by its parents and then played video games every day working at Chili's for two hours to yeah for two years two years just lost in like working at Chili's and playing

[00:51:01] video games and then another one was like he moved from Pontiac Illinois which had a lot of people to some other like shitty or Illinois town with few people never saw anybody and like he's like yeah I didn't have access to a lot of

[00:51:16] people then and he and then there is one guy who had Crohn's disease and then the guy who ends up shooting his adopted parents well he you know he was abused alone and the one who got into the matrix so it so it really does feel like

[00:51:33] it is a religion and satisfy it has a lot of the same things that religion has has gods it has kind of fate it has little glitches it has and like I and it provides a sort of metaphysics like not a good one but but provides metaphysics

[00:51:48] yeah but it's like the often the good thing about religion reason I sort of I'm disappointed that I'm not in sometimes I'm not really but that like I is that religion provides community like ritual and community which I think are generally good things but simulation theory definitely doesn't

[00:52:07] provide that's right if it does the opposite yeah it seems like it gives you more excuse and and like motivation to not see people yeah and one of the things that religion provides to is an organized view of how the world works that's shared by many people

[00:52:23] and simulation theory isn't there right like it these are all these are all people who believe in some version of simulation theory but oftentimes their versions are so strikingly different from each other's and because of as you say there's no community of

[00:52:38] people who there is no you know it's a pre theoretical religion right like what right the details are completely changed from person to person yeah like left to your own like everyone's left to their own devices to fill in the blanks okay now that simulation theory is

[00:52:55] something I believe what follows how many people are real and how many people are conscious well that's the thing that says a lot right some people found themselves going towards solipsism and some people weren't right because it's a very different thing to say this is

[00:53:10] a simulation and you Tamler are a person who's not aware of that just like I am versus I'm the only one we've talked about it and we can discuss this more if we want but if every single person is conscious and exactly

[00:53:25] the way we think they are you know just like we are in the world works according to the laws that we think it works by but it's a simulation that to me is almost an empty claim I remember you made that you made that

[00:53:40] you know I think yeah our history and I remember thinking that's interesting I mean I don't know like I kind of dismissed it but I didn't think of it as having no substance right you know yeah yeah and people would border on stuff

[00:53:52] like that like there is a way in which you can describe what the universe is like the person who goes in the sensory deprivation chamber the Anubis guy yeah and he has this he said he has this realization that we're all

[00:54:05] just code and he's like I knew that because of DNA well yeah like in one it is all just I mean it's all like information in some in some way it's just you know like some I was struggling sometimes to think of what

[00:54:19] what are they arguing against well so here's the difference though right like so what is different from like substantively but this is a different metaphysical claim or at least a different claim if like 40% of the people I interact with are I don't have consciousness yeah that's right

[00:54:38] no and so like which a lot of people believe that you know because of computing power that was like some funny shit I was like how are you coming up with this estimate we're like the constraints that they the things that they feel the details they feel like

[00:54:53] they could know versus what they don't seem totally arbitrary right it's the universe has really advanced playstation we know that it can't like everything it's a yeah so to be specific and also like yeah and then maybe like Brazil just is all you know like it's all

[00:55:09] non-conscious people until somebody goes there or something from the outside like so if that's true that is very different you know yeah that would change how I view the world if like a lot of times I didn't know if they were

[00:55:21] an NPC or a character right but but I don't think that's what with the guy was saying necessarily because he could you could believe that this is all simulation and and I guess the only difference is that you believe that this is as they say not not

[00:55:34] the base reality or the base not the base reality right but then it turns into just another version of believing in some sort of like Gnostic dualism where there's the there's the gods in the real metaphysical realm yeah and they created us out of meat yeah and forces

[00:55:49] into these bodies theirs is just the simulation there is just now a different kind of version of that it definitely felt like that like big hindu version of it which has like avatars of people and who are and you know constant worlds within worlds are being

[00:56:04] created and it just seemed like this is just a version of those but yeah there's something about the version that that really makes people less social rather than more social right or or your or you know where the order is flipped as a question like one of

[00:56:25] the guys seem to have this idea that like someone like Kanye West was actually being played you know like it's like a video game and so like he's playing him for a really good time then he checks out but and he's really good

[00:56:39] and gets him to be like you know a famous rapper or whatever but then just gets kind of bored of it and just leaves it and then he said that's how you explain like celebrities quick decline or quick you know right and the

[00:56:53] player logged off I don't get that do you get that like do you get what how that is supposed to work I think the idea is that when the player logs off what takes over is just some algorithm so like they become an MPC

[00:57:07] temporarily and they don't have the excellence that the player who's playing him has to log on so like but what are we then like where do we're like what am I in this world yeah that's I don't know that's a good question I assume that he meant that

[00:57:23] like we all have somebody saying that they're playing us and but are they're mediocre but that there then it just starts being like well like shitty podcasters I mean sadly it's just me in control of like my life like but so is the idea that we feel

[00:57:43] like we're in control but it's actually them in control I don't know what happens when they just stop playing us I don't feel like sometimes you know I act with more purpose or maybe maybe it's like the times I'm just like

[00:57:57] on Twitter just I can't get off right yeah goes to show some of some of these claims are the evidence that's used for the claims is a spattering of fairly ludicrous notions about like what it really is like religion you already

[00:58:14] believe it and so what you're doing is looking for some pieces of evidence so one of the guy he was raised was raised religiously and so he says when I was 11 or 12 like I was in church and everyone was singing and I thought to

[00:58:28] myself these are all just weird we're all just bags of meat and those are singing and meat flaps of the flaps of the throat yeah and then I realized like somehow this was what led him to believe that none of this is

[00:58:43] real yeah it was very weird especially the whole meat flap idea which is which is it was interesting because he was just like everybody's all dressed up he is like and it's at church and everyone's dressed up and they're singing and they're taking this so seriously

[00:58:59] and I think he's just marveling at the absurdity of it and then it's the absurdity that makes him think that it's not real yeah and I've definitely had those moments and I remember having them as a kid where you're just like

[00:59:11] this is kind of crazy like what this is absurd those moments of almost like clarity where you just where it's like peeled back and you realize that like this is just would like this ultimately powerful God want us all to wear a specific kind of clothes and sing

[00:59:25] chant in these very specific ways for his glory like I just odd we're all just in this building right and it is weird and everyone got all dressed up to do this come here and just start making noises from our throats about things that don't even make sense

[00:59:42] and he's like it was the 80s so people dressed up more and I was like wait did you so if you had been a kid in the 20s you wouldn't have been led to the relation there there's another guy that says like I thought of an orange

[00:59:54] fish and then like you know three blocks later there's a sign with an orange fish and then he says I love this one my favorite one is he's like a lot of people work like five days in a week I like to work in weeks of 12 days

[01:00:08] and then he said that like he started noticing like every three days within the within the 12 day week not the seven days but you know like little things would happen so it really is like almost more than 233 than 237 because there they are at least constrained by

[01:00:26] the movie exactly exactly they are not constrained by anything in these right there's their 237 room 237 is constrained by the text yeah there is no text for this right there is there's just life this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you once again by the

[01:00:46] I am bio podcast if you like podcasts and you like educating yourself via podcasts and you have an interest in biotechnology and it's intersection with politics patients and the fate of our planet then I recommend you check out the I am bio

[01:01:02] podcast I am bio brings you powerful stories of biotechnology breakthroughs the people they help and the global problems they solve this spring I am bio dives into today's important issues like what are the biggest threats to our planet's water supply what are the latest all's Heimer's research findings

[01:01:20] and how is biotech addressing the addiction crisis the podcast is hosted by Dr. Michelle McMurray Heath president and CEO of the biotechnology innovation organization and she leads you through all of these topics in fact if you're interested at all in the way in which

[01:01:36] drug prices are set and how that affects patient access check out their latest episode throughout all the episodes you're guided by Dr. McMurray Heath who herself is a medical doctor and a molecular immunologist by training and can be trusted she spent her entire career helping patients

[01:01:52] benefit from these cutting edge innovations so get answers on how biotechnology is changing our world subscribe to the I am bio podcast wherever you get your podcasts our thanks to the I am bio podcast for sponsoring this episode of very bad wizards

[01:02:06] yeah that that guy who opens it who switched to 12 hour work week and says at 12 day week I mean he I think it's the same guy who opens it up by telling this anecdote that I actually thought was was cool and when aqueducts were the

[01:02:20] where the ultimate technology people believed that it was humors that that controlled the you know everything about the body and the mind and then when telegraphs came it was like all nerve impulses and then computers came and everybody's like well you know we're all just computers and

[01:02:38] which I think is totally true like our primary metaphors for what humans are often comes from our ultimate technology and then he says something like so if you're in the future and you're watching this and the things that I'm saying like sound a little

[01:02:50] dumb it's just because our technology was constrained to like digital computers at this point I like that he thinks there are going to be many orders of magnitude smarter than he is but they might think like they might not get that he was constrained by this technology

[01:03:06] they just want to be mocked and then they're like oh okay no that's a good point he's right we shouldn't mock them but I think his point was more like but it seems like what follows from that is not that well we live in a simulation

[01:03:20] but that like we think we are we are translating whatever experiences we're having into this technology but that doesn't mean it's real anymore than that like you know everything was neurovimpulses or everything right now and it's hard not to see the deep deep influence of video games

[01:03:40] across all of these people and stories and it's like were it not for the fact that we have these games with these non-player characters and these ability to do whatever you want it doesn't seem like this would be something that you're naturally drawn to these people

[01:03:56] are deeply influenced by the matrix maybe but video games clearly for sure and a lot of their terminology and just the idea of an NPC and I just loved that idea and I love what he did with that where he I think it's Eric Davis being interviewed

[01:04:14] and he says you know imagine if you played video games all the time like the idea of an NPC would just that would constantly be on your mind and he's like I don't play video games and I still have like these things with NPCs

[01:04:28] and then they show a clip from Blue Velvet Kyle McLaughlin passing by like a great lynchian character but I love the idea that these kind of lynchian people that you see in real life that they're just aesthetically quirky touches by whoever is doing

[01:04:46] the simulation they just don't have consciousness they don't have it's just another way of explaining these weird uncanny things about life and that is the way he's doing that Yeah, totally. One of the things about this sort of like video game view

[01:05:02] of the world that one of them expresses the guy who was from Paniac, Illinois was a real belief that none of the rest of the world, you mentioned this earlier that none of the rest of the world exists while you're not there

[01:05:14] that like it's constantly just being updated right around you and so they have this little animation of you know he's describing his drive to whatever and they're just going through the highway through like nowhere and they have this little animation of a

[01:05:28] just a car on a treadmill with like the set changing around them and that's that's when it just like seems like hard for me to believe that people would actually believe that one that like the world just doesn't exist when you're not looking but I think that's like

[01:05:48] that comes back when they're talking about and even Nick Bostrom says something like we don't have to fill in every single detail of the universe we only have to fill them in when people are paying attention to it like in a video game

[01:06:00] by the way this is random I just want to say it I knew this but was reminded viscerally of how many Philip K. Dick things have been turned into movies and TV shows great movies too, really good yeah, Blade Runner The Rural Recall, A Scanner Darkly Minority Report

[01:06:22] yeah Man in the High Castle Yeah I've forgotten about that one I didn't remember that and they all have that feel of just like the world is not what it seems like I'm not what I seem or what I think I am

[01:06:40] and also everything is kind of fucked up and kind of against you there are powers in control that are a lot antagonistic towards you yeah there is this like not everything is what it seems like I'm slightly paranoid there are little tears in the fabric of reality

[01:06:58] that are allowing me to see through I really also just love that all of his works weren't explicitly driven by this idea by this like propositional idea just he only came to realize that this is what's been driving so many of his ideas

[01:07:20] and I love the thought that there could be themes to our lives that we're not aware of yeah this is like in a lot of the narrative view of the self stuff that there are people who think we should be looking at our lives like

[01:07:34] critics you know like and interpreting our lives and how we interpret it is actually like a way of kind of finding meaning and creating more meaning his forties really his thirties were great he just took a dive in his forties there was some event right around

[01:07:52] it looks like 2012 everything went downhill from there yeah do you want to talk about the simulation argument itself yeah yes definitely as the movie says and as most people know it's an idea that's not new necessarily at least certain aspects of the idea have been around forever

[01:08:10] but the modern version of it is that yes there we are computer simulation a computer simulation being run by some people who have advanced technology so yeah, Sebastram gives this yeah I really want to know what you thought of this where he says look

[01:08:26] the real state of affairs could be one of three things there could be that most civilizations never reach the technology what he calls technological maturity which is under specified kind of sinister yeah so that beings just become extinct for whatever reason civilizations don't make it past a critical

[01:08:52] point to develop their technology into the sort of technology they would be able to run simulations two civilizations do get to that point where they have sufficient technological advancement but they just lose interest in the whole idea and they never get around to making simulations and three

[01:09:10] they can do it, they're interested in doing it and they did do it and if you accept that third one then it's just a short step to say the number of simulations must vastly outweigh the number of realities just because of the nature of

[01:09:24] how easy it is to simulate so probabilistically we are currently in a simulation right if you get, if you ruled out the other two hypotheses as far as the argument goes I probably agree with that part

[01:09:38] what I don't get and I know there's a lot of fancy probability theory in this but I just don't get what the basis for assigning a probability is to the first one that human species go extinct until they reach technological maturity which means that they can create simulations

[01:09:58] and in the simulations at least some of the people are conscious in the way that I am conscious but that first one is saying it could be that nobody ever gets to the point of making simulations to begin with that's what I'm saying when they say make simulations

[01:10:14] it's not that they run simple models they run our world where at least one person is conscious but probably a lot more and I just don't know Elon Musk says if you just think of any rate of advancement we started out with Pong and then now look

[01:10:34] where we are computer wise you just have to assume that we will be able to do this I just don't know what the basis for that claim is it's a weird optimism but this is a guy who thought we'd be having full self-driving cars by now

[01:10:48] and I think that a lot of people who are working in AI machine learning really really don't think that we're going to make that kind of advancement anytime soon and also like but like how we don't given that we don't understand consciousness

[01:11:02] how would we know whether a computer could do it or not what basis do we have that's the problem with the whole argument for me and he just assumes that it is true right this is to Elon Musk we're idiots for thinking that it wouldn't be true

[01:11:20] yeah and it's funny I would love to just pose that question to someone who they would give you a boring answer they would say well are you saying that brains aren't computational maybe yeah and they would dismiss you as a quack

[01:11:36] like I'm telling you like this they have no interest in this it's crazy like I mean maybe I'm strawmaning here but I really don't think so I think that they would say like it's so obvious that with sufficient complexity like we would be able to actually create

[01:11:52] subjectively experiencing conscious beings but that I also had the same exact thought as you wait what like how that's just faith like you know that's just an expression of faith it is that's why I think it's stupid that these papers all have these like fancy probability you can't

[01:12:08] a probability to that at this point well you know I came across again there's no way that I could ever understand these some of these papers but I came across a paper that I might have mentioned last summer talked about this and it was a paper by real

[01:12:22] physicists who study quantum shit and they had an argument that it was just impossible that we could be living in a simulation because of the particular kinds of quantum at least a simulation by digital computer because of the quantum

[01:12:40] stuff that's going on that there is just no way to properly simulate the quantum shit and given that we know that quantum shit is at the basis of our reality that it's that it would be impossible for a digital

[01:12:50] computer to have anything we know of as a computer to do it and I don't know how good that is but I haven't like how good that argument is or how well received it is but that's the kind of argument that I would take seriously when it

[01:13:02] comes to probability not probability just like sort of is this not just is it conceptually possible is this something that makes any sense given what we know about computers and what we know about reality right yeah the hubris of even just this is at least an 85% chance

[01:13:18] that we'll just be able to create something that is conscious is just insane because we don't understand how that works with us now I know it's a it's frustrating it's it's very weird it's like there's a there's a missing step all these are very

[01:13:32] smart people obviously but it's like they have this one little gap that just allows them to like overlook the fundamental absurdity of making these kinds of calculations so what are things that I wanted to ask you to make sure I understood it is so so this three

[01:13:48] these sort of three possibilities that he's mapped out he thinks they're exhaustive yeah right so like it has to be one of these three I don't know if it matters but so one we go extinct before technological maturity to we lose interest everybody was interested I mean it

[01:14:06] it's also possible that like three civilizations achieve technological maturity and made simulations that are have conscious things in it and then the probability would still be kind of low that we were in a simulation given how many other worlds there probably are out there

[01:14:22] that are not simulations like it so you mean that there could be we could just be on a simulate a civilization that just hasn't achieved it yeah yeah and like that could be 99.9% of civilizations don't achieve it you know 0.1% do and they do

[01:14:36] it but that means there's only like say 80,000 simulations going on and there are actually 10 million worlds with conscious beings so like the odds there the odds are so like the odds calculation in number three is would be low even though simulations can exist it doesn't mean that they

[01:14:54] that there are that many of them right it could be that there are more non simulation based realities than there are I guess the idea is even if there are these other civilizations there's still one base universe and so maybe that's what covers that like so there's still

[01:15:12] like you're not talking about your civilization when you're doing this calculation but your universe has a whole universe yeah the one where like I or this isn't an objection exactly but why are we creating all these simulations and how does that work like do we

[01:15:30] like what's the point of running more than one simulation so it does assume that determinism is false or is it just that they're manipulating variables for some reason yeah I think what so here's one possibility suppose that there are all these scientists everywhere

[01:15:46] and you know how we run simulations with every conceivable variable tweaked so that we know say how whether a storm whether you know some high pressure front is going to turn into a terrible storm and so you're running like a thousand simulations now suppose that in order

[01:16:06] to predict what's going to happen next you know that you have to run like the most accurate simulation possible and so and then tweak only the slightest variable and so the scientists on those worlds are creating such rich simulations in order to predict what's going to happen

[01:16:24] that they by mistake have created these universes of real people or people like us at least yeah again this is sort of a metaphor porting over what we know about how we do things like you run scientists run thousands of simulations for one paper right

[01:16:44] I mean that sounds totally right but I'm just wondering still like if you dig into the details of that are they let's say they're trying to predict whether like a war will start do they just run like a thousand simulation yeah suppose you want to know whether

[01:17:00] the Celtics are going to win tonight and you know that there are things like how much the player slept or what a fan said to somebody right before the game there are all these things that might actually these all might be scientists who are

[01:17:14] not scientists these might be gambling industry simulations in this other world that are right and so who knows that's just one possibility other possibilities they're doing it for fun like the one guy who says I imagine that it's like a big marble in the middle of a room

[01:17:32] and everybody's looking at us just for their entertainment like Truman show yeah like that and then he and playing us to I think he's the same guy who says they're not just watching us but they're playing maybe yeah and he was like he's the one

[01:17:44] who said like I want to build something really big so that they see it like as they're walking down passing our marble they see like a huge structure in the on the screen wait what I like I think it was him to he was talking

[01:17:56] about what if Elon Musk is like this player character that comes down to like kind of fuck with us tell us like give us little hints and then goes back to talk to his extra dimensional friends you know like laughing about that's just like digital

[01:18:10] Hinduism you know like that's exactly also with like an extra dimensional like God like Elon Musk bitch about like Bernie Sanders and you know progressive I don't think so that's not this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you once again by Nord VPN VPN a virtual

[01:18:32] private network is one of those things that can provide privacy and security when you're traveling or when you're say on a public Wi-Fi or even when you're at home and you don't want your ISP knowing exactly where you travel a VPN basically provides a

[01:18:48] tunnel of encryption so that your data can flow through without any prying eyes available to see but you might not care about any of that and I bet you a lot of our listeners don't but with Nord VPN you get a

[01:19:04] whole other benefit and that is that you can access content from over 59 different countries by simply changing your virtual location with one click you download Nord VPN on your Android phone and your iPhone on your computer your laptop your iPad and with one click

[01:19:22] you can essentially make it look like you live anywhere and access content from any of those regions so for instance I have family that likes, loves watching Spanish speaking content from Latin America they can make it seem as if they are dialing in

[01:19:36] not really dialing but you know what I mean up from Chile or Argentina and get access to whatever they're watching there if you're say a big fan of UK TV and you want to watch Peaky Blinders but don't want to wait until it comes out

[01:19:48] on our streaming services you can watch it early on UK streaming services by simply doing one click and if you're traveling and you want to get all access to your streaming service from your home country you get that just by making sure you have Nord VPN installed

[01:20:06] so you never have to miss any of your favorite shows again really this is the way that the internet should work I'm a firm believer that physical geographical boundaries ought not matter and if you have access to it and if you pay for something

[01:20:20] then you certainly should have access to it no matter where you go so if you're interested in a solution like this go to NordVPN.com slash VBW you will get a special deal as a very bad wizards listener if it's not your thing, if you don't like it

[01:20:36] if you think that it didn't provide the benefits that you thought it would fine there's no risk there's a 30 day money back guarantee but if you do go to that URL and you sign up you can get a pretty sweet

[01:20:46] deal for instance if you sign up for a two year plan you'll be able to get uh NordVPN monthly for like three bucks a month so give it a shot NordVPN.com slash VBW give it a try our thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this

[01:21:04] episode of Very Bad Wizards there's a guy who tells a story it's a very long story about how the guy says I was raised in Mexico and I was with some Mexican friends friends of friends and they picked me up in their wagon here

[01:21:20] I could tell they were drinking and sure enough they offered me a beer and then they started driving on the wrong side of the road and then we went to drink more on this pyramid and then we got in this terrible accident and the police the banditos came

[01:21:32] and then the federales came and then somebody came and saved us and that's what I knew what are the chances like that would happen in something other than a simulation and I was like motherfucker you're in Mexico it's just Mexico it's not a simulation right no totally

[01:21:48] then I've also should have realized I'm in a simulation like every time I've been in Mexico the chances of that happening in a simulation would also be low I mean you know but again like this is what happens when you have the whole world

[01:22:02] to choose from to confirm your priors you know your theory like just literally anything can be that like the more interesting thing is like the man you know the Mandela effects I know you find that I knew you would love that

[01:22:16] that was awesome I also love that somebody says that there's been over 200,000 recorded and 10,000 documented and confirmed Mandela effects it's so frustrating because if I like I'm watching and I'm like I never thought Mandela died in prison and all they would say

[01:22:34] is yep so you're part of that universe then it's like oh fuck but how did they confirm it how is that possible to confirm it for that same reason that you can't falsify it you also can't confirm it so like I guess maybe they just mean

[01:22:50] people having different memory you know a significant number of people having different memories more than two people remember Kit Kat but this is what you know like what you were saying about you have the this idea of a reality and it's fraying and you're starting

[01:23:04] to be able what did you say like the curtain was tearing or something and there's a lot of Wizard of Oz clips too and then you're getting a glimpse at the real thing outside and you know it was really I thought interesting about how Plato's cave

[01:23:18] was used in this context because it just really is this other version of that this idea that what we're seeing right now isn't real and that outside then we're seeing the real things the forms that a lot of these things might be based on but they're

[01:23:34] not that they're not the real thing we're seeing images we're seeing reflections we're seeing like dreams and there but they're but we're getting a little bit of a glimpse and there might be some way for us to tap into the real world

[01:23:48] you know yeah one of the things that is so clear I mean is how much these ideas are helping people cope with the difficulty that is living just life right and one of them this really made me kind of sad one of the guys is

[01:24:06] expressing how he's certain that when he dies he'll just wake up because of how many times he's woken up from a dream he's like I've lived lifetimes in dreams and I wake up I've had so many experiences of being ripped from my reality into this realization

[01:24:22] that I was dreaming that I know when I die I'm 100% certain that I'm going to wake up somewhere else and I was like oh man that's tough I think people also use it as an explanation I think the matrix guy said that explicitly like he said

[01:24:36] you know that's the only explanation for why my life is so horrible why I'm getting abused and lonely and you know like that phone call was tough man I did not see that coming in fact the movie takes a this turn from being like not lighthearted because

[01:24:58] people are real human beings with these views and it's tough to come to terms with what they believe and why but then you get to that phone call and the way that he describes murdering his parents and the way that he says when he shot his mom

[01:25:16] in the face that he didn't look like it looked in the matrix yeah that man like I was having a tough time listening to that in a good way because I didn't know the story and so I figured there was something different because we weren't seeing him

[01:25:34] but the guy is being just painfully honest about what happened apparently the lawyer wanted to use the matrix defense which it was a type of defense that people would use for like the DC sniper but he in the end decided not to do it

[01:25:52] he thought it was his fault but he really did believe he had schizophrenia, he really believed there is a sense of that people with certain mental disorders are also attracted to this view you know I was thinking that room 237 that these people

[01:26:10] all sort of shared a particular kind of psychological tendency whether it got serious enough to be called schizophrenia or not like it was very much of the same ilk this one it was a little different it wasn't clear like some people were maybe on the spectrum

[01:26:28] other people might have been this guy having schizophrenia maybe he was just the odd man out maybe the other ones were more alike he seemed like his story was so different but I don't know you know I think what do you think

[01:26:46] the filmmaker might be trying to tell us that this might be the result if you take this view too seriously yeah again the causal chains it's not clear which direction it goes but I do think a certain type of person and as one

[01:27:02] of them says you know like he wanted he needed religion he's like the only real combination of religion in science is the simulation theory so it's somebody who I think is takes themselves to be extremely rational but then has these religious cravings that they can't make sense of

[01:27:20] and then it results in this I mean the guy in the sensory deprivation tank that was just he was just describing a Buddhist experience kind of working towards the dissolution of self but it was framed in this kind of computer language so it's all different

[01:27:38] ways of expressing a lot of the same things there's a lot of the same archetypes are in this theory as are in like all the major religions yeah it was it was like I said before it was unclear how some of these are related like the dissolution

[01:27:54] of self doesn't seem to be something that naturally lends itself to the view that we're in a simulation it's more just the particular kind of angst that's motivating these people that leads them to simulation and the variety of experiences they have doesn't change the fact that they're

[01:28:10] attracted to this particular view yeah because the view is flexible yeah it can really reflect whatever you know a kind of religious perspective you were attract appeals to you or you're drawn to but you don't have a way of putting it into words

[01:28:26] yeah and like the simulation theory is a way of articulating these feelings right one of the things that Nikki said that I think was right is that some of these people seem to just simply be grasping with the problem of determinism you know one of them

[01:28:40] was saying that they realized that we might just be in a simulation because they were thinking about how they make decisions like or the script that they go through to check out like he was a cashier and every time

[01:28:52] a customer came he had to ask them the same questions like a little decision tree or this guy realized that his dad simply repeated things that he read in newsweek it was obvious to him that he had read it that morning it's sort of like a

[01:29:06] chemical program yeah and so the notion that the realization that he was having was we're just programs like we are a program like a computer again it does not clear to me that that means we're in a simulation only that we are maybe that there is a deterministic

[01:29:22] path to like you know yeah I mean like does he think that the things that we say aren't in some way like causally influenced by what we've read or what we've just experienced no but I think again it's like I think the feeling there is why is everybody

[01:29:38] so dumb and boring and so it's not just trying to make sense of the fact that they're determined as much as why are they determined to be in this way that's like either abusive to me or like alienating from me and that just seems blatantly absurd

[01:29:56] why is he just repeating what he just read in the newsweek you know like that's so boring right that's just your dad yeah that's part of what I found to the one part that I found to be dislikable about some of these characters which is what they're having

[01:30:12] is a failure to appreciate the rich mental lives of others you know it's like I feel like we all go through this this you know am I the only one kind of thought but other people when you get you know it's very easy to treat other

[01:30:28] people as if they are not as deeply rich and complicated as you you know what they call you know the main character syndrome like we all we're all the main characters but other people just because your dad said the thing he read in the newsweek doesn't make

[01:30:44] the richness of his mental life any different from yours you know I totally agree but the reason they don't have fully appreciate the rich mental life of others is because they barely interact with others at all and I think you need to interact with people

[01:30:58] to get that appreciation at least you know at any kind of deep level so you I texted you when I was watching it today and said these people are bonkers and you said they would you say they get well because they say really sensible and insightful

[01:31:12] things some of yeah so so you had said you text me back they get more reasonable toward the end and I was waiting for the shoe to drop I was like oh no like did they convince Tamler like is that like I was worried

[01:31:26] and then I got to the point where I think it was clear what you meant and it was when the guy who's the lion avatar lion looking avatar said now that I'm in my mid 40s I realized that maybe maybe some of these beliefs were something

[01:31:42] that I just was using to cope with like the difficulty of my life and it's like okay like there you some level of self-knowledge there and they all have their little moments of like wait am I projecting or creating this or and then you know usually they're

[01:31:58] able to convince themselves but that guy came the closest it seemed to really just right now he holds all of this in question yeah no and the other thing another thing that I was referring to is the guy I think this is the wolf bow tie Egyptian God

[01:32:12] one is talking about telling this theory to other people and he says I told my uncle about it and he's like well if that's true what's stopping me from going out and door to door and shooting people in the head what's

[01:32:26] stopping me from shooting you in the head and so he's he's relaying this story and he says and I was like wait that's what you want to do like yeah that's the only thing that's the only thing that's we've made this point I think many

[01:32:40] times but it's he's absolutely right and he even says like I don't think it means it's that different if we're in a simulation or not so I think he you know but to make that point and then you know also recognize some people taking

[01:32:54] a more nihilist kind of approach to this and this can give them the excuse to you know there was a montage there when the guy I think right around when that guy is talking about this and really it is culminating into this is this the moral

[01:33:12] implication of simulation theory that we could just do this there's a really good montage of video game violence like like meaningless stuff like you know Grand Theft Auto when you just you know knocking each crashing into people like and it really viscerally got the point across

[01:33:32] that like this is how some people might view the world and I think that the film you know the film like his other films does not try to come down anywhere about now it's not judging the characters that but I do think that it was clear that

[01:33:52] at least from the way that he presented it that this ought not be the implication morally just from the insight that people had. Yeah I mean I think first of all you know like we've always said yeah it's not I don't want to go start shooting

[01:34:08] a head period it's not like and I do in video games that's fine right but that's different because it's video games video games aren't real like I tell the difference these people can tell the difference and I was listening to weird studies because they had a Rodney

[01:34:22] Asher on their show they were talking about this point in the movie and Rodney Asher said kind of what we always say which is yeah like that shouldn't be the first thing that crosses your mind when you find out that you know

[01:34:36] we're in a simulation first of all you know a lot of these people may be conscious just like you so then one of them says yeah but you know I've always thought about this and if they if we are in a simulation there's no good moral argument against

[01:34:50] killing people but so I get what he's saying and I think but it's like is the only reason that you're not killing people because you believe there's this great moral argument that tells you not to you know I would think because this is accurately reports my

[01:35:08] experience I just have no desire to kill people in the life of like what I take this to be you know and like that just doesn't appeal to me at all I wouldn't do it and I don't care whether someone would say because it's

[01:35:22] morally wrong I believe it is but still right if it wasn't I still don't want to do it right even if everyone was a non-player character I'd still not need feel the need to do that why would I but the mere possibility that they

[01:35:38] feel things like I feel things is like reason enough like that might not be an airtight philosophical argument but I'm like well it hurts me when you shoot me so I don't want to do that to someone else right if I shot myself that would hurt so

[01:35:52] there's no reason for me to assume that's not true exactly especially since yeah it's so unspecified what the simulation but I do think some people just aren't like that they first of all do want to go around shooting people and yeah and I don't know

[01:36:08] my question is is the thing that's holding them back that they think there's reality versus a simulation or is it just I don't want to go to prison because it's not like in a video game you play Grand Theft Auto you don't then spend like 30 years in prison

[01:36:24] by the way I just remember that there is a paper I think at some point I might have suggested or put in the slack or something there is a paper by philosopher that takes seriously the view that hurting people in video games is morally wrong because we're not 100%

[01:36:42] sure that when we've simulated them that we're not creating some kind of mild consciousness yeah it's interesting yeah and that's the same reasoning that would apply to us not killing people right in our world right you know we thought we were in a simulation

[01:36:58] hey there's one argument that I came across that I wanted to get your thoughts on about why about why we're not in a simulation or at least to doubt it and it was that suppose there is a base reality and we're in a simulation wouldn't that base reality

[01:37:14] have just as much reason to believe that they're in a simulation and then infinite regress what do you mean so the people who are simulating us yeah presumably smart technological society wouldn't they have all of the same reasons that we have to believe firmly that they're being simulated

[01:37:34] yeah and then like every it can't be that everything is a simulation no but it could be that like you have to believe that you're in a simulation but like one of them is wrong but one of them is just wrong yeah there has to be at least

[01:37:52] one that's wrong but with all of the same reasons that we have for thinking that we are in a simulation they would have to yeah so maybe that all that argument shows is that epistemologically epistemologically it's always rational to believe that you're in a simulation

[01:38:06] definitely yeah I think so I mean if you yeah I just can't get past the first part of it which is that we'll be able to create these giant simulations of like conscious people it is frustrating though because you know it's like a very common sense of Jackson

[01:38:22] and but it feels like it would never convince any of you like the Elon musks of the world I thought interesting like you know first of all when he was describing like how much attention it's gotten yeah he seemed to have slightly mixed

[01:38:36] feelings and I could just be the Swedish ness of him but like he seemed like he was almost pained talking about how popular it was you know totally and I it he was he's a philosopher and you could just tell that well I think

[01:38:54] you're right that it might be the Swedish what the sense that I got is he's a philosopher like any other and he mounted this as an argument that he has reason to believe but that in this very philosophy way doesn't shake him to the core like

[01:39:10] that all of these people took it this far is like well you know it's like it's like being sort of convinced that anti-natalism might be right but having no influence on my desire to have kids like I you know yeah but like I think he wanted

[01:39:24] it to be an argument and not something exactly people that actually like affected people's lives in dramatic ways yeah I think that's right and I also liked his attitude when they talk about it towards the end he asks Bostrom if it excites him the idea

[01:39:40] that we might be and he says you know it's part of how he views the world but then he says it makes it quite compelling he's trying to think of something like good to say about it it makes it quite compelling that there are more things in heaven

[01:39:52] and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy and he says like maybe we've gotten like six out of ten things right but the seventh eighth and ninth and tenth are so momentous that it's actually like kind of deceptive to be at six

[01:40:08] you know it's like you know more at one or two than at six because of how dramatic the other like leaps of knowledge are you thought the denominator was six right and it turns out there's four other real fucked up like truths

[01:40:22] that we'll never that we've never gotten across yeah and that would completely just change anything that we think about six because it's a whole new conceptual framework a whole new whatever so I think that like at that point he's just

[01:40:36] now I think it kind of ends up where I am which is like we have no idea like how it all really works fundamentally yeah I was going to say you don't need simulation theory to get there obviously I don't even think he thinks

[01:40:48] that you need simulation theory to get there it sounded more like the kind of thing that he's given so many talks about this that he's this is sort of like the moral of the story for him but I thought I'm glad that they included him for sure

[01:41:02] me too and that part of it yeah and that part I also loved by the way the William Blake artwork throughout it was really really cool like it's just yeah it's cut together really cool like you could tell it's a cool experience to watch I think yeah

[01:41:18] I if you can get through that phone call which I think is really hard hard to listen to and the story about Mexico which doesn't lead anywhere other than like isn't that crazy the conclusion is is that shit crazy it's probably simulation

[01:41:34] I like that one of them was saying maybe the simulation is flirting with you to like Rodney Ashter like you're making this movie like it's letting you make this movie it's kind of like you know it's alright well Tamler I hope that the simulation

[01:41:50] allows your team to win I know that's uh yeah and if not I'm going to tapped onto that membrane between the universe and let's be on try to try to find it. Rip the fabric of space time. I want no part of a universe where the Celtics just

[01:42:10] fucking blow it just choke just all-time choke job in game 5 and if they're gonna now lose it all in game 6 then you know because they wanted to bitch the refs instead of play defense see philosophy has implications totally implications alright join us next time on very bad wizards