Why is the Simulation Interesting to Elon Musk? (Nick Bostrom) | AI Podcast Clips

Full episode with Nick Bostrom (Mar 2020): • Nick Bostrom: Simulati...
Clips channel (Lex Clips): / lexclips
Main channel (Lex Fridman): / lexfridman
(more links below)
Podcast full episodes playlist:
• Lex Fridman Podcast
Podcasts clips playlist:
• Lex Fridman Podcast Clips
Podcast website:
lexfridman.com/ai
Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes):
apple.co/2lwqZIr
Podcast on Spotify:
spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
Podcast RSS:
lexfridman.com/category/ai/feed/
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher at University of Oxford and the director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He has worked on fascinating and important ideas in existential risks, simulation hypothesis, human enhancement ethics, and the risks of superintelligent AI systems, including in his book Superintelligence. I can see talking to Nick multiple times on this podcast, many hours each time, but we have to start somewhere.
Subscribe to this KZbin channel or connect on:
- Twitter: / lexfridman
- LinkedIn: / lexfridman
- Facebook: / lexfridman
- Instagram: / lexfridman
- Medium: / lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: / lexfridman

[@ivansimkovic]

I am a farmer in Peru and I find my NPC simulation assignment offensive

[@PresidentialWinner]

It's funny, everyone sort of feel like Elon Musk thought. Even the farmer in Peru. They feel like they are the main character in this story. They are the person that the story revolves around.

[@Jdizzlefreeone]

I'm coming after Corona settles down. I hope to pick up a side quest at your farm

[@0sba]

@@PresidentialWinner Maybe that is because we all are that one entity living trillions of lives. Like in Greek mythology, maybe it drinks from the river Lethe and respawns, living a new life. If that's the case, and all sentient life is the same person, that would mean the simulation could be trillions upon trillions of lives old already. Or, if the entity wants its experience to have the understanding of death and such it's limit in time on this earth, perhaps thousands of trillions.

[@PresidentialWinner]

@@0sba No, i think it's just human nature to be solipsistic, self-centered. It makes sense for evolution to hard-wire this to us. If this is a simulation, you could just be a NPC or simulated entity that think it's a real thing or a player. I'm sure understanding death or non-existence is something everyone can understand with just basic common sense. No need to research it that much.

[@0sba]

@@PresidentialWinner It would take a lot less processing power to use real npc that are only interactable than actually giving them conciousness like I seem to have. Would be quite the waste. Nah, I think an eternal entity living in, say, a 5d world, would be just as interested in living the life of a billionaire as he would be living the life of a tramp.

[@bojan0bad]

Nick Bostrom as a guest! THANK YOU BOTH!

[@elonmusk8364]

just got a job at spacex brownsville

[@sebastiankarmsjo4795]

Damn dude... pass the blunt!

[@theonetruemorty4078]

It's likely that there's some thing we don't yet know we don't know that would change everything that we do know if we knew it.

[@ezduzit8384]

I know that

[@singularitysquaredllc.895]

99.9999% true

[@erockwhogaming]

It’s likely that there’s many ideas of this nature O.o

[@thenomad9963]

For the 20th century it was the theory of relativity

[@gattuccina]

Спасибо Lex

[@ducreat]

A dog can't understand humans, but humans don't understand dog as well.

[@muhammadharris4470]

that is because human beings did not create a dog. a more appropriate analogy could be be a robot and a human.

[@PresidentialWinner]

@@muhammadharris4470 And when you consider that we are already creating machine learning algorithms that work in ways we can't really comprehend... You know with generative adversarial networks.

[@josephbertrand5558]

Elon want's to break the Simulation..

[@B__SYAHRULMUBAROK]

It would be his final mission

[@Alistair]

some men just want to see the simulation burn

[@CaptJackAubreyOfTheRoyalNavy]

Elon's wants' wants are to break the layered simulation.

[@retromachine3743]

Cyper to agent Smith " MAKE ME SOMEONE IMPORTANT" there for simulation...

[@PresidentialWinner]

Good point. If you could choose, you would want to be someone important. Imagine they made him a farmer in Peru. He would never betray his comrades then, would he?

[@eDreamsinc]

Who is Agent Smith

[@francescos7361]

Thanks .

[@bluechip17]

If we are in a simulation it is not based on transistors or 1's and 0's.

[@user-zl5gi8sv7u]

We are living in a Baudrillardian simulation. A computer simulation is just silly

[@bobbybands1957]

A million plus subscribers and only 33k views in over a year? The simulation must be glitching dude.

[@arlieferguson3990]

I'm sure this comment will ruffle a few feathers, but really have to wonder if doing philosophy should be a full-time occupation that anyone should pursue. Consider the periods in which philosophy as a wholistic discipline really bloomed, let's say as represented by the ancient medieval and early modern period. People like Plato and Aristotle were early enough so that they could theorize about the nature of the universe without having to become specialists in multiple fields; people like Thomas Aquinas had a vocational duty to begin to try to put together a holistic view of reality; finally, somebody like Immanuel Kant could use a fully formulated Newtonian physics as a model. But we now live in an age in which holistic thinking seems better realized as The outcome of speculation done by people within the individual disciplines. That conflicts with the way that philosophy has evolved as a discipline in it's own right - as one that requires a great deal of specialization, without requiring any actual real knowledge of fields outside it's on discipline. That leaves the philosopher without much to talk about except developments in various arguments that are carried on by philosophers, but that lack a feeling of relevance simply because it has become more and more of an isolated discipline in line with the specialization in academic disciplines surrounding it. There's some thing that doesn't feel quite comfortable about working Day after day within a field that isn't rooted in anything by the development of its own speculative arguments. But If physicists for example could take over to a greater extent the tools and arguments of philosophers that apply to their field, then they would be the ones to be in the best position to draw those conclusions. They do of course already do that to some extent, but a professional philosopher can always find places where they overlooked something. For the individual philosopher it must feel somewhat alienating, isolating, and maybe even a little bit fraudulent in some sense to spend all their time in a field whose subject matter forces them to look to places other disciplines can't quite claim and make a daily preoccupation out of them. To me, the guest's demeanor seems like A reflection of that basic problem inherent in the discipline of philosophy. The question of whether this is important and why has to be raised at all points. Such preoccupations seem sitting for someone such as a novelist or for a physicist or a computer scientist who is thinking about these things as a sideline to their main work, but there's something odd about someone having to exert themselves consistently to become an expert on such issues. Yet the evolution of the discipline demands it.

[@dinonichas]

The 25 dislikes are from farmers in Peru

[@chrslb]

Very cool ideas. But isn't it easier to understand an explanation compared to coming up with it? Sort of like encryption. Also, the fact that humans have language to understand such explanations might be very relevant.

[@stridedeck]

A simulation requires to be one energy source that moves everything: every object, particle in the universe, and every thought and neural activity of you and me. Means we are in a deterministic, or a free will existence?

[@GroundZero_US]

Couldn't the ”Simulator” simply construct certain parameters or Laws that govern its simulation and then just let things play its self out? Thus leaving room for free will.

[@aion2177]

i don't see why that follows. We might be in base reality and we might indeed not have free will. I could not find a valid argument for free will yet - in the sense people mean it. But what is relevant here is, even if some processes are fully deterministic, is not possible to predict them upfront / by making shortcuts / reasoning maps. The only way to predict them with 100% accuracy is to simulate them in full. That would require simulating them, simulating their environment, simulating the simulator itself, simulator the simulator which simulates the simulator inside a higher order simulator and so on.. in infinite recursion. That has been proven to not exist for certain structures, and as such free will or no free will is irrelevant for any practical purposes. Since if you are one such irreducibly complex system, nobody can predict you. As such you are "free". Even form yourself. Even if you are not technically free by definition since you are fully deterministic. We currently have a definition for "free" which makes no sense. Its a misunderstanding of how things actually work, much like people misunderstanding a rainbow for a sign from God. A rainbow is just light dispersion phenomena, when a ray enters the water droplets at 42 degree angle - or what it is. Nothing magical about it. But is pretty easy to understand form a higher level of understanding why that phenomena would be considered "magical" even if technically is not. As such you end-up reconsidering what "a sign from heaven is" or what "magical" means. Similarly here "free" needs to be reconsidered what it means, it needs to be understood in a different way or else you are no different then in the situation with the magical rainbow. So simplified, maybe "free" should be defined as deterministic and irreducible. Now we might develop computational systems in the future which are genuinely non-deterministic and also irreducible - based on quantum phenomena. We all jump to the idea that quantum stuff (non determinism) plays a role in our mental processes but we have not found such evidence yet. Still even if quantum biology is playing a role, that will not necessarily makes us more "free" in this common sense (and wrong) definition.

[@KeldonA]

If you reverse the question you get, could an AGI we've created in a simulation understand this world? There are practical reasons to create a simulation with intelligent agents spanning larger timespans (therefore not even requiring as much raw computing power). Right now the lifetime of a scientist is short in relation to the timespan of the universe. In the future we may find space exploration being carried out by somewhat intelligent agents (even if it's just narrow AI), constructing larger particle accelerators and telescopes to give Earth a better view of the universe. There's no reason for the hypothetical outside reality to be any different to ours. For all we know it could be less complex with us merely riding on top of an emergent complexity (maybe that's why the universe is so uniform ;) ). For Elon Musk, ... he founded Neuralink. In the space of 2 years he's become a pioneer in the technology that could enable a brain in a vat. Now, if we are in a simulation, maybe that may place an upper limit on the potential capabilities of Neuralink or OpenAI, so it may be in his best interests to think about this.

[@gidmanone]

the reverse is fundamentally different from the discussion that they had. in your case, both the AGI and its creator are trapped in the same simulation. the closest analogy, in my opinion, would be The characters in an advanced video game and Us.

[@RobertEskuri]

The Tron: Legacy movie explores some of those questions. For example Olivia Wilde's character asks "What's the sun like?" The simulation has no sun but she understands what a world with one would look like.

[@samik83]

Maybe the aspect that we don't understand is consciousness.

[@airdogg1979]

If we are in a simulation, then why would the building blocks be so complex? Why is there such a vast and complex world of particles and sub particles to simulate mostly empty space with swirling masses of matter peppered about?

[@aion2177]

:)) this comment of yours is made of 0's and 1's .. software speaking - but above that there are layers and layers of abstraction - like the c programming language, the c compiler, the java-script programming language, js libraries, the style of the team, of the programmer, the named functions, your device and your os peculiarities, the browser session, the everything - every layer. Its mostly "empty stuff". You can argue that the same way this comment of yours is staying on layers and layers of structure, the universe on the same principle stays on layers and layers of structure. And note i mean structure as in mathematical entity. Its ultimate "content" is irrelevant. If it turns out to be matter or antimatter or anything else that's just implementation detail. So if anything the question is - how could it even be in any other way? I'm rely curious if there is even possible for "another way". Can you see a even simpler way to do it? I think in actuality is already extremely simple just that we are trying to look at 0's and 1's and figure out backward form there. Like reverse engineering, reverse engineering executables is pretty tough job. But i guess analogy breaks there since we still can't reverse engineer anything at this level in physical reality. A question like - what's outside of the simulation - is an attempt to break free form all this implementation detail and see the forest from the trees. If you were God and had the magical capacity to make it all - how would you do it differently? Do you think you can make it even simpler - and still include everything we have in "reality"?

[@edwardclements6792]

Maybe it’s only complex when looked at ? It’s only rendered for a few players ? Like a level to explore, always available but not necessary..idk

[@kasbuvo3507]

yes

[@brianbielawne9801]

Does an ant understand what it is to be an ant? I think its likely if we are created by something else we weren’t created with the ability to understand our creator but only to serve some purpose.

[@sameasyourself8678]

I live in the forest, its lovely here, thank you devs!

[@StormyDog]

I would estimate that many dogs understand humans better than most humans but perhaps not all humans.

[@gregsmith6726]

Dogs understand humans better than most humans? lol yeah I don’t think so

[@PolinomPolynets]

Lex looks super tired and sleepy on latest interviews. What's going on?

[@WEYEZER]

Igor Polynets I hope he’s doing alright at least.

[@amoghprakash6916]

Maybe working with Coronavirus data?

[@neelakantannaresh]

Lex, please hold on for more time. This too shall pass in the simulation

[@GabrielCarvv]

@@neelakantannaresh you talk is if he's killing himself

[@DamianReloaded]

Either the simulation is perfectly made so there is no way for us to figure out it is a simulation... or it isn't. Maybe if it had bugs we could memory overrun it and "read" other blocks of code or rewrite them to change our reality in the simulation. We could slowly learn to re-program the mainframe and ultimately take control of it, and their networks. Learn to -download- upload our consciousness into their reality. Their reality could be a dead universe/solar system or a generation spaceship or machine dystopia...

[@TheBodybuildingG]

Westworld scenario

[@lkrnpk]

Westworld included the help from creators of the simulation though. I think it is the same with us, I doubt the simulation is made in such a way that we could escape ir, but if our creators are flawed beings, they could give some of us a key of how to do it. Maybe if we are Made similar some of the programmers falls in love with one of us and "downloads" us to their world and gives access to "internet" there, or maybe some freak accidents where they upolload their minds in our avatar would result in our mind actually being uploaded to their world etc.

[@djripsmusic]

Simulation theory is a waste of time even from a philosophical perspective.

[@Rakkoonn]

It uses the same ideas as all old religions, but because it uses some scifi terms suddenly atheists get excited.

[@iakona23]

Ceramic So true. They are talking about the question of materialism vs non-materialsm, as if using some sci-fi ideas from the movie “The Matrix” really changes anything! This is so dumb.

[@gregsmith6726]

Why is that?

[@gregsmith6726]

And what philosophical perspective wouldn’t be a waste of time to you?

[@ZholGoliath]

Just take a minute and consider the fact that English isn't the mother tongue of neither of these gentlemen, language is an amazing human feat.

[@petiewheat82]

The question is: Are we hooked up to a simulation machine like in "The Matrix"? or are we ourselves actually A.I. imbued with a sense of self by our creators? The traditional paradigm is essentially the latter of the two anyhow.

[@marshacd]

And the computer hosting us, C1, is a simulation running on C2, is a .... Turtles all the way down, etc., blah, blah, blah.

[@OspreyFlyer]

Infinite regress?

[@LKRaider]

Right? This simulation discussion is a waste of time for useless philosophers as this guy, it produces nothing of value either way.

[@mikebasketball11]

@@LKRaider 'useless philosophers' 'produces nothing of value' Cmon! It's fascinating and stimulating. If you're such a hard-ass pragmatist concerned purely with the production of value, get off youtube and stop commenting - it's producing nothing of value ;)

[@southeasegirl2329]

Funny fact that Elon Musk older than Nick Bostrom.

[@mikeharrington5593]

An intellectual theoretical concept that is more of a hybrid of Schrödinger's cat with Alice in Wonderland than a picture of practical physical reality.

[@gxy4833]

So the corona virus it's a glitch then hahaha

[@RobertEskuri]

Doesn't seem fair that self awareness and details are limited by intelligence and influence on the simulation, but it makes sense.

[@syedowaischishti8013]

👍

[@GodsNode]

Yes, why!?? Good question. Exploring "if" is very boring philosophical meandering.

[@jeffsmith7369]

A simulation of what!

[@DBFIU]

I hope you guys are at least 6 feet apart!

[@ekbastu]

pre-corona recording, so no worries

[@PresidentialWinner]

Oh come on.

[@Alistair]

I hope your 2 brain cells are at least 6 feet apart

[@DBFIU]

@@ekbastu thanks, i saw the video posted 2 weeks ago, hence my concern :)

[@UChallengeTV]

So billionaires are narcissistic got it. Wow these simulations are getting really complex now 👍

[@andrewskratt9552]

r my diarrhea farts a simulation

[@KADAMASOUL]

My life is proof we are in a simulation, open for skype.

[@jeneanreese9069]

👋🏻

[@dragoraan7247]

We are outside the simulation, in it. You get it? :D

[@CesarAndreu]

First! Hey Lex.

[@runewinsevik8471]

Maybe Musk isn't an NPC, but a player?

[@edwardclements6792]

Rune Winsevik 🤔

[@clorofilaazul]

Thinking about the possibility of our reality being simulated is funny, but kind of stupid. It's like a dog chasing it's own tail.

[@nielsp1380]

Why? I agree by the way

[@clorofilaazul]

@@nielsp1380 it’s useless. It serves no purpose whatsoever.

[@nielsp1380]

@@clorofilaazul do you believe in it? Because I’ve been anxious about this the past days but I don’t really know why

[@clorofilaazul]

@@nielsp1380 no, I don't. And It doesn't occupy a lot of my brain. I've got better things to think about :D

[@nielsp1380]

@@clorofilaazul True

[@leliel12th43]

I'm afraid Lex would run out of guests given the covid19 crises. :\

[@Alistair]

yeah because there aren't a lot of bored geniuses out there who'd jump at the chance to have a deep conversation via video call

[@leliel12th43]

@@Alistair Episodes via video call doesn't have the same quality of audio or video. The experience is way inferior and the flow isn't the same. I would bet that the number of views is lower too.

[@joecleveland6525]

Simulation theory is just rebranded creationism. I enjoy philosophizing about a nested reality as much as the next guy, but changing the language from 'gods' to 'Alien Computers' doesn't really help us get to the meat of the problem any better.

[@JcFiscus42]

What do you propose is the meat of the problem? And what do you propose is the problem?

[@felixthefoxMEXICO]

Lex is too monotone

[@paultoensing2370]

Imagine that one day you wake up in your simulation to discover that all news articles, no matter how simplistic or even if it’s a puff piece, was now 50,000 pages long, telling you Way more than you ever wanted to know, by many orders of magnitude. And it was true for every article so that as a title was even slightly more involved the content became stunningly excessive.

[@bozo5632]

If this is a sim, then it must be an ancestor sim for the mathematical argument to make sense; and an ancestor sim must be faithful in detail to the Real World to be of any value. So this world is probably as close to the Real 21st century human experience as our genius descendants could manage. So, anything they could have done or thought in 2020, presumably so can we. They might change up the conditions to test their models, and maybe just for fun/what if? But the majority of sims would be faithful as possible, and so statistically we should expect to find ourselves in one of those. It's a fun idea, and the logic of it is hard to shake, but I can't get over my visceral rejection of it. (Programmed that way, I'm sure.)

[@jessewallace12able]

Oddly enough, this is an ancient philosophical question, it’s not new- and these guys (including this Elon guy) are way out of their league . The first thing you need to do is define what you mean by simulation, and the second thing you need to do is look to India.

[@Caaaaspeeer]

Right?? I like this convo but they're acting like simulation theory is a new movement, as if Plato's allegory of the cave (a direct influence on The Matrix) isn't thousands of years old

[@gregsmith6726]

But only recently did we develop computers. So his argument is going off of technological advancement (maturity) and which we know is possible in terms of physics. This has never been proposed

[@yannick3184]

Appreciate your podcast, but why aren’t you enunciating properly? Sounds like you had a couple of beers...

[@jimduggan8382]

Even geniuses have flaws bro, get over it !

[@JaapVersteegh]

What would you know about a dog's understanding of what it means to be human? I personally think that a dog's understanding might actually be more sensible than the average human's understanding of what it means to be human :p

[@LKRaider]

The simulation argument is as old as written civilization, it is weak to the same argument religions present, as the god that created everything, then what created god, etc etc. nothing of value is gained by this discussion either way.

[@poppopN]

It doesnt matter..not knowing the original cause doesnt weaken the argument

[@LKRaider]

I can't take this guy serious, he really proposes the simulation as an entertainment machine that is being observed externally, and proposes a value system for these external hypothetical entities. Nick Bostrom has crafted a joke of himself, and of philosophy in general. His argument has become ultimate useless endeavor, and I don't need to conjure up an external value system to infer that.

[@gregsmith6726]

Hey the great thing about being human is you don’t have to agree. You can have your own beliefs. There’s very smart people who take his side and very smart people who don’t. It’s him expressing ideas. That’s all

[@sovereignbrehon]

I'm glad you wrote this post because my phenomenalogical observations lead me to the same conclusion, unfortunately. I don't like it, but when the thesis is rigorously queried, it remains valid. Sounds crazy does not = crazy, but might = plausibility.n

[@UniverseSpaceSpirit1984]

abit quit sad calling someone animal.

[@nunobartolo2908]

Seriously next time someone has the chance to ask Elon a question ask him something any real engineer would know like write the transfer function for an integrator (it’s 1/s) he takes way too much credit

[@TheMeaningCode]

This is why it is so vital to make our requests known to God, seek His guidance for our actions, and trust Him with the outcome. We simply don’t understand and cannot know all of the variables involved.

[@richardraget7946]

Lex speaks Like he*s got a mouthful of marbles...no Emphatics to his voice/ no impact. He*s a sleeping pill in front of a microphone.

[@chrislecky710]

Quantum mechanics will soon prove it to be true.

[@burkebaby]

I am a farmer in Peru and I find my NPC simulation assignment offensive