The Fermi Paradox & Virtual Worlds: Colonizing Inner Space

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Starting up our FIFTH Year for SFIA, thanks for joining us! As a headsup, next week's episode will also be coming out very early in the morning, we're not changing our normal release time to early, just some hectic scheduling and I'd rather release a few hours earlier than late. the policy has kind of switched from "Every Thursday *at* 11 AM Eastern Time" to "Every Thursday, *by* 11 AM". I know nobody ever seems to mind them early, but I don't want folks expecting it as the norm.

[@spaceman6463]

Dose anyone know what’s happening with metallic hydrogen is the team still working on it or a different team what’s happening

[@colonelgraff9198]

As long as it comes out on Arthursday....

[@spaceman6463]

Janusha More like a 150 to 200 years for the advanced stuff for okay stuff 50 years

[@yogsothoth7594]

It does seem that the concept of a virtual war reasonably replacing an actual conflict to be a little absurd. War isn't a contest its the act of enforcing your will on another or destroying them. If you're not at the point where you're looking to do that an arbitrated negotiation is going to be a more logical step then a virtual contest and if you are willing to actually go to war you're unlikely to accept the outcome of a contest. The only reason why you might have a virtual contest might be to demonstrate the fact that you could easily win an actual military engagement with the contest looking to accurately simulate the assets and capabilities of each side as part of a tool to allow you to negotiate from a position of strength.

[@rlbadger1698]

#583 Just checking in.

[@abiku2923]

This was actually a *fantastic* 1st video of the season. Holy crap Issac, you are becoming a legend!

[@LazlowRave]

phhhhhhhhft. Becoming? He is in my eyes already.

[@michaelwinter742]

He already has the soldier background - now he has folk hero, too?!

[@arhgentumm]

Nonsense. Isaac has been the legend for some time now.

[@ssathessa]

I'm surprised Issac isn't a reddit legend already

[@citizenlyfeva]

Im from the future and he is indeed

[@RiflemanTV]

My mind was fricking blown when you were talking about local populations becoming too tribal and splitting the virtual world into different servers, I could only imagine this being used as a way to study what parallel universes would be like.

[@ramonpizarro]

When you were discussing dream states and laughing off the idea we live in a simulation, my eyebrows rose and I believe I may have had a momentary existential crisis, thanks for that This is an amazing start to the fifth year of the channel, please keep up the great work and may the new year bring you Health, Wealth, and Happiness in abundance!

[@Matthew-li7we]

Your not the only one. I have had the thought that, "What if Everytime I go to sleep I am actually 'waking' up to go to work to support my virtual lifestyle." Man this 'Earth' DLC sucks!!!

[@alexiskiri9693]

Some American Indians believe that the dream world is real and this life is actually the dream.

[@gubzs]

Wild to see this, I've been actually _working on_ a highly procedural virtual world for the past year or so. Since powerful agentic AI is required for such a thing to even exist, I'm creating a portfolio for a sufficiently powerful AI to build it. For now I'm not assuming any hardware better than Ready Player One, but I've got detailed and specific instructions that, if followed, would _result_ in the creation and instantiation of an engaging, awesome, beautiful simulated world that could be meaningfully lived in for decades. It's turned into an entire design portfolio and the project has been utterly absorbing me like nothing else ever has. The balance between gamification and immersion, finding solutions for the computing problem of "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around" - which led to an LOD system for cause and effect, defining things like death for players and for NPCs, creating safeguards that prevent strong powers from actually destroying the world, etc. It's so much fun.

[@chrisr2368]

We are virtually assured another great episode

[@d00m0racl3]

@Chris R. I C++ what you did there.... 🤭

[@marianpusca2346]

You good sir have a fine sense of humor!

[@azdgariarada]

What are you doing up so early? Oh right, uploading amazing content. Carry on.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

:) In this case up late

[@azdgariarada]

Same here. Goodnight!

[@sivaschenko]

what's early for some people is the midday for the other :) At least in timezone terms.

[@azdgariarada]

True Stas, but I've been a fan of Isaac long enough to remember him saying that he had a job as a public official for a midwestern municipality, hence I had a good guess of his timezone and therefore how late/early he was up (as we both were it turns out).

[@jgbandbjb92709]

azdgariarada p

[@cannonfodder4376]

It is 5:27 A.M PST here in California and I should be asleep but I decided to watch this before bed anyway. *So Glad I did.* Lately I have been in a mental rut, your videos were for some reason not making me light up despite them being great. This one though... I was simply enraptured. *The implications are simply eye opening, how much thought you and your team has put into thinking Virtual Worlds has blown my mind.* For this was something I never put any thought into before. Add the new music choice and wonderful visuals. Oh my... I was smiling so widely. The stories that could be told and concepts explored. The implications for the future... my mind was racing. Thank You so much for rekindling that mental glow and expanding my mental horizons immensely again. What a great video to start 2019. Fantastic work Isaac and Team.

[@TehMinTzHD]

Cannonfodder43 I loves guns and Space as well, judging by you picture.. I love Space exploration

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

As a gamer this is the first time I have seen someone seriously describe and contemplate what I consider my ideal world! Thank you for that, Isaac!

[@juanfernandez1696]

If the real world is too much of a burden for you there are various ways of login out many are notebly quick and painless.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

@@juanfernandez1696 seriously?

[@juanfernandez1696]

@@SKy_the_Thunder your original comment triggered my anti-escapist reaction. Your ideal world is a nightmare to me and I have an intense dislike of those who seem to prefer a fantasy over the lives that they have been given. It is a Singh of weakness and cowardice.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

@@juanfernandez1696 So enjoying anything is automatically escapism and must be shunned? Wow, I'm glad I don't have to live in *your* world...

[@juanfernandez1696]

@@SKy_the_Thunder enjoying is not the problem don't get me wrong. It's when someone dedicates their life to the persuit of that alone that it becomes unhealthy. In other words an addiction and that is never good.

[@montebarger866]

Happy new year Isaac, time to grab a drink and a snack. Thanks for all the hard work, keep the awesome content coming.

[@BrianTurnerOfficial]

Keep making these!!

[@Dedjkeorrn42]

Why are you at the top of the comments with 3 likes. Like, what?

[@kayrosis5523]

Such a great opening to Season 5! Love the stellaris soundtrack, and can't wait for the VR 4X stellar empire command games of 5-10 years from now

[@charlies2666]

Maybe fueled by RPG games, oh man that would be awesome.

[@Matthew-li7we]

I think a true virtual reality would make ANY game kick ass. I would love to go from a Magic Swordsman in Skyrim to a Emperor commanding fleets in Stellaris... And I am not going to lie, also looking forward to the err, adult games....

[@kayrosis5523]

@@Matthew-li7we adult games? We're about to enter the age of directing porn by virtual agents that are photo realistic depictions of people that don't exist, Directing depictions of anyone to enact anything we want, porn is about to evolve into the next generation

[@JoelDowdell]

At about 27 minutes in, you managed to freak me out about simulation hypothesis more than most people can. Talking about simulations where you don't remember the "real" world and how people might start studying those worlds, wondering why the night sky is full of stars, why they aren't inhabited. Excellent video as always.

[@thatman8562]

Didn’t he mention that it’s a better question to ask whether or not it would really matter if you were in a simulation than to ask if you are in one.

[@nil981]

This is the most amazing video on your channel so far.

[@francoislacombe9071]

I like that you now have so many videos on this channel that you can reference them to expand on almost any side concept being evoked in the current video.

[@NonDelusional74611]

Francois Lacombe right. And how do they keep track of which videos contain which side concepts?

[@Warp_Logic]

20:00 I never thought of this. This is a great idea for like, an entire universe of short stories.

[@fuzzbombxx-1213]

Well done with the 5 year milestone Issac! And yet another great vid :)

[@ripwolfe]

Run out of topics? Bahahaha! As vast as the universe is, and as bizarre as quantum mechanics is, and as weirdly curious and exploratory as a lot of humans tend to be, I think not.

[@Alexander_Kale]

Well, to be honest, the bombastic stuff seems to be done. Hard to top a shellworld build with all the material of a galaxy, with a super black hole as a source of gravity.

[@starsilverinfinity]

Why even go to space if you can make your own custom virtual worlds. . . Oh that’s right to get the resources to build more virtual worlds!

[@АлексейТерентьев-д1к]

Collect resurces to make more virtual worlds

[@starsilverinfinity]

Алексей Терентьев good point

[@perrywinkle9172]

StarSilverInfinity Yeahhah!!

[@sa12111]

Don't forget the long term necessity of getting the hell away from Old Sol before she expands into a red giant, enveloping half the solar system. You WILL eventually need to emerge from your virtual world to escape this, or pay other life forms or humanoids to do it for you. Virtual or not, these worlds will not be able to ignore this

[@joaquinpaul7012]

That's an almost perfect summary of the ending of Friendship is Optimal.

[@MadfiredGaming]

Just had this channel recommended to me, looks like I am going to be bingeing for a while.

[@davidcraig9540]

Boromir: One does not simply walk into Mordor. Isaac: Hold my virtual coffee

[@theuncalledfor]

The fun part is that there'd probably be actual real-world people living in Mordor as the "orcs", with the whole place redone to be more friendly and livable while still retaining the "evil" aesthetics.

[@NonDelusional74611]

You take that back. Coffee must remain real.

[@Matthew-li7we]

@@NonDelusional74611 But... What if the we ARE in a simulation, or other virtual world??? Or can the coffee still be "real" as long as we are only one layer deep? Once you go to a virtual world while being in a virtual world, does the coffee cease to be "real"? What if in the "REAL" world coffee does not even exist???

[@calamusgladiofortior2814]

@@Matthew-li7we Hmmm... coffee does seem suspiciously like a power up from a video game. Take coffee to increase your alertness level.... (sips coffee, begins questioning EVERYTHING)

[@businessproyects2615]

Gandalf: One tasks selfreplicating probes to fend against darkness, for even the tiniest probe is capable of heroic feats

[@Ashathefree8]

Was it just me, or at around the 29 minute mark I’m hearing the stellaris soundtrack? Or is it I’ve been listening so much to both Sergei Cherminov and stellaris that they are both melding together in my head.

[@VorganBlackheart]

I love you Isaac. I wish I had more friends like you and your subs. Choice of topic is on point.

[@Empmortakaten]

This is the first time you've totally blown my mind a good long time. This felt like a much longer video than it actually was, with the depth of the content and the ideas they present. Cheers to an amazing start to S05!

[@troymcguffey8801]

Once again you nailed it! Good show my friend.

[@TheSaintBigFoot]

Much love. I'm happy to hear you have plans! I absolutely love your videos and as long as they're here I'll be watching

[@MADMANDAD3]

Best space documentaries at the present moment keep up the good work and thank you Isaac Arthur 👽🚀

[@sirbitesalot7162]

There was a science fiction book I read a while ago called Epic where a human colony use a game called Epic that lead to the class systems, where the in game currency was the entire colony's currency. This video had reminded me of the book.

[@Drew_McTygue]

If we inhabit a virtual world, i hope to discover the cheat codes

[@josephhoward4697]

Drew McTygue We’re still trying to figure out the rules of the game. Looking for cheat codes? That would be daunting.

[@gunlimitedammo3888]

Joseph Howard We could find them accidentally

[@TheSCPStudio]

So whenever you do GTA cheat codes, your character still responds to the button presses as he normally would (Pressing UP in the cheatcode makes him walk forward a step for example), What if we have to do a series of random actions for cheat codes to work?

[@SamTanXYZ]

Hey you might want to read this story: qntm.org/ra Fair warning though: This story _does_ contain virtual world cheat codes, and that is something of a spoiler.

[@DarthEarp]

@@TheSCPStudio 100 pushups 100 situps 100 squats and a 10Km run every day

[@din80s]

first of all, best wishes to you all and a happy and productive new year. and second of all, you are the only one Mr Isaac, that delves into a subject of science fiction so immersively and so comprehensively that you surface issues of its use and its usefulness, that i no longer view it as a matter of fantasy (or a really cool future in store for mankind). i imagine it as something already done at a distant world by an unknown species that we somehow found out just now and you recount its amazing story, analysing economic and cultural aspects. your work is absolutely fantastic!!!

[@Ph4tie]

Thanks for 5 years of awesome mind expanding content Isaac!!

[@TitansTracks]

Congratulations on the 5th year Issac!! Good luck in this year! 💎

[@exoplanets]

Awesome video as always !

[@danclaydon6588]

Yet another fantastic video, thanks for all the hard work Isaac and team!

[@littlegravitas9898]

Me and friend have been having this discussion on and off for about 6 months - he lands on the side of it being THE filter and I much less convinced that it would even be a filter. Have sent him this to chew on, lol.

[@SockPuppet80]

Isaac makes substantial leaps of logic in discussions both of the Fermi Paradox and of Virtual Reality, so it's no surprise that a combination of those two topics takes the cake. The first stretch that comes to mind is that bit around 10:30 on how simulating the personalities of everyone in a virtual world would take a lot of processing power, _so those'd probably have to be real people in there._ But you don't need 8 billion AI simulations to create a virtual paradise for a user; you need just a handful (or more realistically a single one) to simulate those people that he's interacting with, and most of them don't need to be anywhere close to perfect. Also, an AI facsimile certainly doesn't require orders of magnitude more processing power than a "real" user; for one, you wouldn't need to simulate the AI's interactions at the same time. The second leap of logic is around the half hour mark, where Isaac states that billions of humans plugged into VR would still require lots of resources, so automatized expansion and Dysoning of stars would still be very much on the table. (This one is more of a propositional fallacy, I suppose.) He's blithely ignoring the very basis of the VR solution to the FP - the fact that virtual consciousness would free us from the biological imperative of procreation, which is what really fuels the need for expansion. Going virtual doesn't mean we no longer need energy to sustain our environment (nobody ever said that it did), but going virtual does mean we can stop multiplying like locusts, trying desperately to extend our brief lives by making copies of ourselves who go on to make even more copies, hogging resources in the process and looking hungrily at the stars themselves, imagining their light trapped in impenetrable swarms of solar collectors. It's biology that motivates this supposedly universal need for exponential growth. It's not "the human spirit", nor is it "a thirst for knowledge", but a very basic animal instinct to go forth and multiply. I personally feel there are many ways for a civilization to curtail this before flying off in a mad rush to pillage the galaxy. But even if it were impossible to overcome socially or culturally, it would certainly become possible by going virtual. VR is quite a decent solution to the FP, and Isaac is giving it short shrift here.

[@glowingone1774]

Oh what a wonderful birthday this is.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Happy Birthday!

[@glowingone1774]

@@isaacarthurSFIA thanks!

[@emilianosimpao]

WOW!!! i have not been tuning in for that long but THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR TIME

[@ancapftw9113]

Prediction: 2037: the Minecraft collective joins the UN as the first virtual country to join.

[@paulwalsh2344]

Nah, Skyrim

[@ancapftw9113]

@@horrificpleasantry9474 yes, they have economies, but I'm not sure if they would have the player base to be accepted. Plus, you can't split those worlds very easily when people want to break off.

[@DAYBROK3]

Erik Walker I would go with WOW

[@kellybenschram4640]

Secondlife is lot like this

[@bottlekruiser]

@@ancapftw9113 Eve is more of a single coherent entity than Minecraft with it's mess of separate servers and average player base being not very far ahead of game in age

[@benjamincrom7276]

Fifth year = best year!! Love this channel. Support from Alberta Canada!

[@Lynnes4]

Yay Isaac! Happy New Year!! Here's to the future

[@ricksminecraft]

Happy New Year Isaac! Thanks for all the incredible knowledge and learning! Please keep up the great work.

[@LordZontar]

I could see a civilisation expanding in BOTH directions: first creating virtual worlds within servers inhabited by digital people and ultimately colonised by digitised people via mind uploading, and then physically expanding outward into space in the real world with robot ships that would plant robot manufacturing machinery on any celestial body with sufficient metals and silicates to covert to computronium as well as to build power stations and communications array to support the new server clusters, and thence open up more virtual space for worldbuilding and digital colonisation, with server clusters maintaining laser link information transfer between them. Whole virtual universes could exist within millions of server clusters distributed throughout a star system. Ultimately, interstellar robot ships with running onboard servers could be launched to other systems to repeat the process at their destinations and establish beam transference links between stars as they do so. Time would be meaningless to such a civilisation, which could set its clock rates to match its interstellar journeys and compensate for lightspeed lag across such distances, and it could continue for billions of years as long as there was still energy to harvest and worlds with materials to construct more server clusters and the support machinery for them.

[@Forbesbm124]

It's always amazing to see how well you cover such intense topics! Thanks for making such great content :)

[@BalancedEarth]

I just had a dream about this this morning!

[@singletona082]

Comparing your earliest videos with now your voice has greatly improved over the years.

[@TheMysticGauntlet]

Uploaded and 2 downvotes already? WTF. Who even downvotes great stuff like this?

[@peikkeinanen5064]

Never underestimate how idiotic humans can be.

[@rosevelvet4357]

Stupid aliens maybe

[@superfunbad]

Crazy aliens. Also it's a vote obfuscation system. Pretty common on many sites to mess with bots these days. I doubt the down votes are from humans, or even legitimate.

[@dominikernsthofer1188]

Well there are some people who just upvote content without watching it. I am sure the opposite is also possible. Well as the previous comments pointed out nothing is infinite except the stupidity of the human race.

[@1784st]

flat earthers!

[@lucaswilliams7280]

You've got so many great videos but this just might be my favorite. Good stuff

[@jeremyleyland1047]

Devs forgot to patch other advanced life forms in.

[@jarrod752]

Damn microtransactions!

[@mikicerise6250]

Plot twist: your virtual world was made by Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft and Activision. 😱

[@Pyxis10]

@@jarrod752 It's to enhance the civilizations expeirence.

[@keithharper32]

@@mikicerise6250 I think the world we're in now was designed by then

[@Mr1995Musicman]

Wrong. Devs furiously patching advanced lifeforms out

[@jaygrams2101]

Hey guys, been waiting for my birthday to fall I’m Thursday for this. Thanks, Isaac Arthur

[@welshy4638]

if we are living in a simulation. Than in my case I like to listen to these videos while I'm sitting in my sim rig driving a simulated race car against AI opponents while in VR. Simception confirmed lol. Happy new year Isaac and fellow futurist thinkers.

[@adankseasonads935]

Omg, I forgot it was Thursday!! Thanks as always Arthur!

[@timothymclean]

It seems likely that most virtual worlds would use some kind of procedural generation to save creative resources for projects which really need them. This makes it practical to build plenty of virtual worlds, but...well, we all know how No Man's Sky went. Hopefully our "real" virtual worlds will have a higher population density.

[@nejsonsvejson9861]

I would believe, depending on how vast, the world would be made by a near human super conciousness, meaning stuff can be made as fast as the computer can think and require minimal work on the humans side.

[@taotechnique]

Starting off the new year with my favorite channel!!

[@ferrusmanus4013]

Stellaris music = best music

[@ERRORhappens]

Deep Space Travels is my favourite piece

[@ferrusmanus4013]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKbWfqZ8ZcZgbqc

[@darylcrooks1500]

Thank you Isaac for your priceless gifts of knowledge, imagination and contemplation. Happy New Year!

[@plavonica]

Nothing really matters unless you have the power to change something about it.

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

Or adapt yourself to it.

[@fredricknietzsche7316]

the only test for significant (a better word for "matter") is if somone finds it significant. matter in both the common uses is really a varation of one definition.

[@alexanderwhyte5316]

Fermi paradox & alien episodes are the best ones

[@Perserra]

*Does* one simply walk into Mordor? I'm dying. You're a genius Isaac! 😁

[@brettrobinson9713]

another week, another amazing video

[@alltheclovers266]

"Is that Kermit the frog with a samurai sword, smoking a blunt"!? I'm surprised you didn't mention people taking on non-human forms in virtual setting, and the problems with that

[@geoffreywright95]

Brilliant work, marvelous preparation and delivery.

[@Breakfast_and_Bullets]

"Does one simply walk into Mordor?" -Isaac Arthur

[@rev.dr.dayspring7805]

SFIA is my favorite channel!! Keep the topics coming and don't quit doing what you love Isaac (and doing what we love too)! Thank you!!!

[@mididoctors]

Let me guess. The Fermi paradox is an artefact of being in a sim

[@jkj420]

Good luck to year five! If you ask me, the channel will take off this year. With this great content, how can it not? :-)

[@theatheistpaladin]

I think the solution to the Fermi Paradox is deceptively simple and would be something we wouldn't consider. We are simply the first.

[@sebastianpesenti1455]

The numbers disprove that - there's simply too many galaxies and too much time for us to have been the first.

[@theatheistpaladin]

@@sebastianpesenti1455 But someone always is the first. It just means that intelligent life is rarer than we suppose.

[@Roxor128]

Personally, I'm in the "rare intelligence" camp. We're the only one in this galaxy, possibly the local group, right now. Maybe in a few million years we'll see signs of someone in another galaxy building Dyson swarms.

[@Clem4444]

TheAtheistPaladin If your right, I guess we better not screw this up.

[@kyneticist]

The first that we can see relative to our time. It's more than 2.5 million light years just to Andromeda (ie we see it as it was a couple of million years ago). The rest of the universe similarly, we see it all as it was many millions to billions of years ago.

[@evelyntech]

Possibly my favourite episode yet! :)

[@CatTheRoundEarther]

Is that "Faster Than Light" from Stelaris I hear? It's a awesome track and I sometimes just listen to it by itself.

[@jeffbarnes2834]

I've been wanting this episode so much. Thank you!

[@trebacca9]

Wanted to say, exclusivity as a criterion for Fermi Paradox solutions is an overly limiting one. Remember, to explain the paradox, you don't actually need an exclusive solution, you only require that the set of ALL possible solutions, taken as a sum, has exclusivity as a whole. Not everyone will choose to stay at home, or will die out, or will choose simulation over reality. But perhaps everyone *will* eventually decide on one of those, or will end up following behaviors matching any of the various other solutions. Exclusivity shouldn't rule things out, it's a final criterion, not a first criterion.

[@desikblack]

Actually evolution of disparate civilizations could be more converging that Isaac likes to think. Every scenario plausible for ONE civilization might as well be inevitable for all of them, if the factors are purely psychological/social. So every scenario of non-colonization plausible for humans should be a possible solution to Fermi Paradox.

[@wilmagregg3131]

agreed i dont belive the universe is near empty i do belive the fermi rules will eventually apply to all however as in every civilization will die out or end up with one of the solutions the universe is a big upscale of the ecosystem of earth life rises and falls in seeming choas and one life never last long on the scale before slowly becoming something else

[@bedbear1908]

Watching this late at night feels very relaxing

[@thomaswatvedt5812]

The answer to a question is usually two or more new questions

[@KebbaPropulsion]

Amazing stuff. I love this channel. Mind blowing!

[@Ayeskint]

I think I speak for us all when I say I'm extremely glad you are never going to run out of topics (@0.45-ish). That means continuous new content for us! After all, wasn't it (the late, great) Isaac Asimov who said, "Education isn't something you can finish." and he knew what he was talking about. A Happy New Year to you from sunny Scotland.

[@unknowngamer9198]

Heard bits of stellaris soundtrack.

[@Untrustedlife]

Im still wondering how he gets permission to use that music.

[@Orangeman2345]

@@Untrustedlife Maybe he asked them, but it might actually be enough to simply credit the name of the piece and the author in the description of the video.

[@LucaDR8]

@@Orangeman2345 I asked them, and they kindly gave me permission

[@TheLoneClaw]

Really digging the Stellaris music! xD Amazing episode as always, Isaac! ^w^

[@stone1290]

*"One cannot just walk into Mordor!"* **Flies Tardis Into Mordor!**

[@mba321]

Starting 2019 off with a BANG… Awesome topic, Mr. Arthur!

[@cyber5659]

I just watched the Matrix so this is really fitting!

[@seanK311y]

Try the film (The Thirteenth Floor ) made in 1999:-)

[@cyberdelicxp9125]

Every SFIA is a straight up acid trip. mind expansion and rocket fuel for a hyperactive imagination the whole time..thank you Mr Arthur

[@noddwyd]

I have in fact read a couple of fictions where rather than maximizing paperclips, the Super AI maximizes people sucked into the virtual world until there is no one left at all. They do this through technically non violent means, but they are very, very, Very persuasive. This is still not a solution to the Fermi Paradox because the AI continues to increase its virtual capacity and suck in every resource it can get, thus darkening the galaxy and presumably the other close by galaxies. Other than the supposed large voids we see that aren't total voids, there's not much evidence of this to be seen. But perhaps the evidence just hasn't reached us yet. That's usually the answer I come to for any scenario. A lot of possibilities but the evidence will be seen later not now.

[@TheLoneClaw]

What are these stories called? I'd love to check them out. :3

[@ls200076]

@@TheLoneClaw Boku No Pico

[@harrisonandsophia4493]

Love you Isaac, another fantastic video!

[@spaceman6463]

Dose anyone know what’s happening with metallic hydrogen is the team still working on it or a different team what’s happening

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Not much new on that front thus far, any real testing for using it as a fuel will require being able to produce it in none-microscopic quantities, I'd figure it being at least a decade, at best, before we can see any real experimentation with it as a rocket fuel.

[@spaceman6463]

Isaac Arthur Thanks for answering

[@offsideandy]

Dude I don't know how you manage to make such amazing content, but please never stop.

[@NodDisciple1]

13:30 And yet Disney is still mystified at why so many are angry, saddened, or just generally upset at the decanonization of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. SMH.

[@DaDanDolya]

you are an amazing creator! i always look forward to your videos :)

[@kokofan50]

This showing up at 6:30 in the morning is a bit of a surprise but a welcome one.

[@palentier1]

This might be my favorite so far, thanks!

[@uumatter_0106]

What about just tweaking the sense of reality of people so that they think SuperMario environment is realistic

[@Pheonix1328]

You don't even necessarily need to do that. I know I'm not the only one who'd be perfectly happy living in a replica of a video game or anime with its style of graphics, some would even prefer that as a realistic style would either look strange or be too different from the source.

[@Pheonix1328]

@Jeremiah Liggins Exactly, If we are in a simulation it's most likely reduced in some capacity. Maybe slower speed of light, fewer physical dimensions, or having inhabitants sleep or something. *Puts on tinfoil hat*

[@stefanr8232]

@Jeremiah Liggins , My vision is steadily deteriorating.

[@nejsonsvejson9861]

I know i'm very late but if the essentially use the dream method, (atleast in mine) everything that happens somehow makes sense. Even though it doesn't in hindsight. So ARG's could easily just hijack something like that to make very weird stuff seem logical.

[@silverhawk7324]

13:28 I got really happy when you mentioned Battletech.

[@Recordatio]

Thanks for the great video, again! :-) I would like to know what you think of the _Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics_ ["consciousness causes collapse (of the wave function)]" and what is the chance that it or a similar interpretation of the accepted quantum mechanic theories might apply in reality. (possibly in conjunction with other hypotheses such as the simulation hypothesis, holographic principle, or experiments such as Princeton's Global Consciousness Project, etc.)

[@Aleph23]

​@@horrificpleasantry9474 Well it depends how you define "exist". Take a movie or a video game for example - you can only see the things around you while everything else in the game "exists" at the same time but only when you "observe" it you can actually interfere with it. Not observing it doesn't make it disappear as it exists in a "superposition state". I'm sorry that I can't explain it better as english is only my second language and I don't have all the information at hand to describe it in detail with all sources. I guess Schroedingers Cat is a bit too simplicistic for this topic, especially since the scientific knowledge about consciousness is just too small to say that it can't have any influence or higher meaning within reality. I would tend more to the opposite as it is the sole reason that humanity is able to "consciously" study the world and gain knowledge. Without it, the universe would not have anyone to observe it, as some physicists would say, to close the circle :-)

[@danielgrunthal3795]

Do not forget to distinguish between interpretation and hypothesis/theory. If one has a model theory that is supported by repeated experiments and observations, there may be various interpretations of it. This is not about questioning whether the accepted models of quantum mechanics work, but how to interpret them most realistically. I'll just throw in a quote here: "Actually, the question if the cat itself counts as an observer is basically the reason why the thought experiment was dreamed up in the first place; Schrodinger suggested the idea of putting a cat into a superposition state because it throws several features of quantum theory into a harsh spotlight. First of all, the experiment highlights unintuitive features of quantum states, such as superposition. It's not too hard to get used to photons having amplitudes for two different states like Here and There, but it's quite difficult to imagine a cat having amplitudes for two different states like Dead and Alive. In addition, the thought experiment raises the question of the "observer." It isn't completely clear at what point quantum states collapse to "classical" states. What is clear is that it does NOT depend on "who" measures: a cat, a human, a detector, or random interactions with air molecules. As is often the case in physics, you just have to define carefully what is the system and what is the environment. Any isolated system should obey the laws of quantum theory, for example Schrodinger's equation. If, however, you have some interaction with an environment (outside of the system you are looking at), then these rules won't be obeyed exactly; for example, probability won't look conserved. "Classical" states are usually thought to arise because of this environmental decoherence." So, if consciousness causes collapse of the wave function there would need to be something like a "universal consciousness" so that everything that exists can count as an more or less conscious observer. Is it somehow connectable to the Global Consciousness Project? I dont know.

[@sa12111]

@@Aleph23 I would have a better time wrapping my mind around it if it did not involve a cat. Why not Schroedinger's Rat? Cats should not be dead, not ever

[@Rage_Ironfist]

Loving the Stellaris music! ... and your content of course Isaac

[@fredricknietzsche7316]

Am I a man dreaming I'm butterfly? Or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man?

[@ctakitimu]

Do you like cabbage?

[@ronschlorff7089]

stay clear of spiderwebs!!!!

[@thatman8562]

Wrong, you’re both.

[@IABITVpresents]

Eternal recurrence!!

[@emmanuelsamuels2470]

The latter one

[@Ben23315]

Wieder ein top Video, gute Arbeit.

[@LordProteus]

"There are no atoms of justice, no molecules of freedom and art." "You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet... And yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some, some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged." ~Death, The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

[@Anthony-yn9dg]

Sooo excited about this one.

[@Anthony-yn9dg]

324,000 people enjoy your videos and sub!

[@Shaden0040]

Virtual reality was done best by Tad Williams' "Otherland" series by linking the mind directly instead ot doing like Star Trek's holodeck/holosuites.

[@UNSCPILOT]

I like the version shown in "We are legion, (We are Bob)" personally, though I haven't read "Otherland" so I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar they might be

[@Shaden0040]

@@UNSCPILOT I would highly recomment Otherland. On a par with William Gibson in depth and plots in the story, though on a much bigger scale than Gibson who only does novelettes, not series of books. Not much is predictable, though some things are, but done in a way that it only become apparent near the end. Well written with good character development along with some twists.

[@anarchyantz1564]

You state at the start "And I am your host, Isaac Arthur" but how do we know you are indeed who you say you are? You could be part of the virtual world trying to deter us from thinking that it is indeed a virtual world! We are on to you "Isaac Arthur"! :)

[@davidinmossy]

The only problem I have with this is the fact we are imposing our scientific knowledge and understanding on other beings . We have only been doing this science thing properly for a couple of hundred years and it's quantum leaped our society ! We have never been so prosperous !! Even the most poor among us have it better than a rich person in the 12th century. They have access to medical care and technology like the Internet practically for free as smart phones now are as cheap as chips and you can access the Internet from a lot of place for free nowadays . The problem with Dyson swarms is that we are assuming this is the best way to get energy and is also a massive operation that may just be not worth it . Since we don't see these structures and I believe life is common in the Universe(single celled) and multi cellular and intelligent life is rare. But still contains say 10,000 civilisations at various stages of development in an average sized Galaxy I tend to lean on the side of Dyson spheres not being the most effective way of creating energy . It could also be light lag at this stage of the Universes evolution we maybe one of the first civilisations in the Galaxy. Some have built these structures but the light or lack of light from them has yet to reach us.

[@chaoticmasterpiece]

What other way is there to have at least as much power as the sun? Fusion is exactly what the sun is doing, but it has way more energy already stored.

[@davidinmossy]

@@chaoticmasterpiece if I knew that I'd be a trillionaire!!! Stars convert matter into energy at something like half a percent. I'm quite sure we will come up with something much more efficant. Like maybe an anti matter reactor that should run at 100% efficiency. Plus I'm quite sure there is a whole forest of different branches of science we are not even aware of yet.