Lex Fridman and George Hotz debate whether we live in a simulation and if it could ever be proven. They argue that formally verified code could make a simulation undetectable, and discuss whether hacking out of one would even be possible.
Do you think we're living in a simulation?
Yes, but it may be unfalsifiable.
What do you mean by unfalsifiable?
So if the simulation is designed in such a way that they did like a formal proof to show that no information can get in and out, and if their hardware is designed to for the anything in the simulation to always keep the hardware in spec, it may be impossible to prove whether we're in a simulation or not.
So they've designed it such that it's a closed system. You can't get outside the system.
Well, maybe it's one of three worlds. We're either in a simulation which can be exploited. We're in a simulation which not only can't be exploited, but like the same thing's true about VMs. A really well designed VM, you can't even detect if you're in a VM or not.
That's brilliant. So we're. It's the. Yeah. So the simulation is running on a virtual machine.
Yeah. But now in reality, all VMs have ways to detect.
That's the point. I mean, is it? You've done quite a bit of hacking yourself. So you should know that really any complicated system will have ways in and out.
So this isn't necessarily true going forward. I spent my time away from comma. I learned cocktail. It's a dependently typed like it's a language for writing math proofs. And if you write code that compiles in a language like that, it is correct by definition. The. The types check its correctness. So it's possible that the simulation is written in a language like this, in which case, you know.
Yeah, but that can't be sufficiently expressive a language like that.
Oh, it can.
It can be.
Oh yeah.
Okay, well, so all right.
So the simulation doesn't have to be turn complete if it has a scheduled end date. Looks like it does actually, with entropy.
I mean, I don't think that a simulation that results in something as complicated as the universe would have a formal proof of correctness. Right. It's possible.
Of course, we have no idea how good their tooling is and we have no idea how complicated the universe computer really is. It may be quite simple.
It's just very large. Right.
It's very. It's definitely very large.
But the fundamental rules might be super simple.
Yeah. Conway's gonna live kind of stuff. Right.
So if you could hack. So imagine simulation that is hackable. If you could hack it, what would you change about the universe? Like how would you approach hacking A simulation.
The reason I gave that talk, by.
The way, I'm not familiar with the talk you gave. I just read that you talked about escaping the simulation or something like that. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about the theme and the message there too.
It wasn't a very practical talk about how to actually escape a simulation. It was more about a way of restructuring an us versus them narrative.
If.
We continue on the path we're going with technology, I think we're in big trouble. Like as a species. And not just as a species, but even as me as an individual member of the species. So if we could change rhetoric to be more, like to think upwards, like to think about that we're in a simulation and how we could get out already, we'd be on the right path. What you actually do once you do that? Well, I assume I would have acquired way more intelligence in the process of doing that, so I'll just ask that.
So the. The thinking upwards, what kind of ideas, what kind of breakthrough ideas do you think thinking in that way could inspire? And why did you say upwards? Upwards, into space? Are you thinking sort of exploration in all forms?
The space narrative that held for the modernist generation doesn't hold as well for the postmodern generation.
What's the space narrative? Are we talking about the same space? The three dimensional space?
No, no, space like going up, literally. Like building. Like Elon Musk. Like we're going to build rockets, we're going to go to Mars, we're going to colonize the universe.
And the narrative you're referring. I was born the Soviet Union. You're referring to the race to space.
The race to space, yes.
Explore.
Okay, that was a great modernist narrative.
Yeah.
It doesn't seem to hold the same weight in today's culture. I'm hoping for good postmodern narratives that replace it.
So think. Let's think. So you work a lot with AI. So AI is one formulation of that narrative. There could be also. I don't know how much you do in VR and ar. Yeah, that's another. I know less about it, but every time I play with it in our research, it's fascinating, that virtual world. Are you interested in the virtual world?
I would like to move to virtual reality.
In terms of your work?
I would like to physically move there. The apartment I can rent in the cloud is way better than the apartment I can rent in the real world.
Well, it's all relative, isn't it? Because others will have very nice apartments too. So you'll be inferior in the virtual world.
That's not how I view the world. Right. I don't view the world. I mean, that's a very like, like, almost zero sumish way to view the world. Say, like, my great apartment isn't great because my neighbor has one too.
Right?
No, my great apartment is great because, like, look at this dishwasher, man.
Yeah.
You just touch the dish and it's washed.
Right.
And that is great in and of itself. If I had the only apartment or if everybody had the apartment, I don't care.
So you have fundamental gratitude.
