OpenAI's Scott Aaronson On The Simulation Hypothesis

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      "text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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      "text": " Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount."
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      "text": " What is the halting problem if you're God? In some sense, this is all a big touring machine. Why shouldn't our universe be simulated by a bigger universe that also has uncomputable physics, the same as ours does?"
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      "text": " Scott Aronson is a professor of computer science and quantum computing at the University of Texas. Here Scott gives a talk providing insights on the computational aspects of reality, including the potential for quantum simulations. Scott critically analyzes the simulation hypothesis, weighing its scientific credibility against the backdrop of quantum mechanics and computational complexity theory."
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      "text": " This talk was given at MindFest, put on by the Center for the Future Mind, which is spearheaded by Professor of Philosophy, Susan Schneider. It's a conference that's annually held, where they merge artificial intelligence and consciousness studies, and held at Florida Atlantic University. The links to all of these will be in the description. There's also a playlist here for MindFest. Again, that's that conference, Merging AI and Consciousness. There are previous talks from people like Scott Aaronson, David Chalmers,"
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      "text": " Stuart Hameroff, Sarah Walker, Stephen Wolfram and Ben Gortzel. My name is Kurt Jaimungal and today we have a special treat because usually Theories of Everything is a podcast. What's ordinarily done on this channel is I use my background in mathematical physics and I analyze various theories of everything"
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      "text": " From that perspective, an analytical one, but as well as a philosophical one, discerning, well, what's consciousness's relationship to fundamental reality? What is reality? Are the laws as they exist even the laws and should they be mathematical? But instead, I was invited down to film these talks and bring them to you courtesy of the Center for the Future Mind. Enjoy this talk from MindFest."
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      "text": " Okay, so now I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speakers. So I'm really excited about this session. And well, these speakers, in a way, need no introduction. But I'll give you a quick one. David Chalmers, extremely well-known philosopher, and really brought consciousness to the fore. He's a professor at NYU. This is David. And Scott Erickson."
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      "text": " who has this amazing blog that pretty much everybody in my AI lab reads and Scott is well known for being able to pretty much take down any theory. And Scott is, so he's at OpenAI, he's been working on watermarking over there and he's also at the University of Texas Austin, expert in quantum computing"
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      "text": " And then, I mean, just to add to the amazing minds at this session, Mark Bailey, who runs a cybersecurity center at NIU, National Intelligence University, and who's a dear member of the Center for the Future Mind and a co-author, is going to be our moderator. OK, so let's go ahead and get started. Thank you so much, Susan. Is this work? OK, awesome."
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      "text": " So first, I just have to say it's such a privilege to be here with you guys, such very well accomplished and fascinating minds. So thank you for being here. So we're here to talk about the simulation argument, which is this whole idea that the universe itself could very well be simulated. And we want to sort of think about what that might mean, what the implications could be for theories of mind, metaphysics generally, and physics, I think, more broadly."
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      "text": " So I guess we'll, I want both of you to be able to talk from your respective backgrounds. So, you know, Scott's a physicist and, oh, sorry, computer scientist and, and, you know, and Dave's a philosopher. So if you could just sort of elaborate from your perspectives on, on how you define the simulation argument and what that means to you. So I guess we'll start with the simulation hypothesis. I think simulation argument is what we were talking about."
    },
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      "text": " Well, then we'll start with the simulation hypothesis."
    },
    {
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      "text": " The simulation hypothesis is just that our apparent reality is a simulation running in a computer."
    },
    {
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      "text": " Is this the kind of simulation where I can hope to learn anything about it one way or the other?"
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      "text": " I've got a lot of things to worry about in life. Maybe this discussion has reached the end of what we can make progress on."
    },
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      "text": " If they say, ìMaybe you should live your life differently just from knowing that you might be in a simulation.î Then I say, ìI canít put my finger on it, but I get the vague feeling that this discussion predates the 80 years of digital computers. Why not just join the theologians in the earlier version of this discussion and not pretend that this is anything distinctive about computers?î"
    },
    {
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      "text": " Is it really different here if you are dreamt in the mind of God or if you're executed in Python? Maybe you would prefer it if the world was created by some sort of loving father or mother figure rather than some nerdy 13-year-old who's trying to impress the other kids in their programming club."
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      "text": " right but okay if that's the type of worry you know like why talk to a computer scientist about it like go talk to david hume or something right so okay but then then we have the people who would say you know the answer is yes you know we can learn something about are we you know"
    },
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      "text": " It from the empirical world about this and then you know i say okay without with it like what is the empirical evidence that we should look at right i mean short of that okay you can look at existing physical theories like jr or the standard model and how hard are they to simulate on a computer."
    },
    {
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      "text": " You can actually make progress on those questions. My most recent post on my blog is about one such question, what are called chiral field theories, including the standard model of elementary particles where there's a known difficulty with simulating them on a computer when you have to discretize things, put them on a lattice, then you get an additional symmetry that you don't want."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 599.957,
      "index": 25,
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      "text": " right between left-handed and right-handed particles okay but you know people are actually making progress on how do we simulate it on a computer anyway okay but maybe even then that only tells us about today's physics right and ultimately we'd like to know well can the final theory of quantum gravity or whatever cannot be simulated on a computer you know to any desired accuracy or knowing the initial state yada yada right"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 616.391,
      "index": 26,
      "start_time": 599.957,
      "text": " You know, in other words, is the physical version of the church touring thesis true or false?"
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    {
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      "text": " and the Bekenstein bound from black hole thermodynamics and ADSCFT that they all kind of militate toward the view that the answer is yes, that in some sense this is all a big Turing machine. Now Penrose and Hameroff of course believe that that's wrong and that the uncomputability can somehow affect the microtubules in our neurons. I don't believe that or I get off that train at a much earlier stop."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 674.121,
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      "text": " But as far as the simulation hypothesis is concerned, that's not even the point. The main point is suppose for the sake of argument that Penrose and Hameroff were right and physics was uncomputable. Well then why shouldn't our universe be simulated by a bigger universe that also has uncomputable physics, the same as ours does? What is the halting problem if you're God? That really only pushes the question back, that doesn't answer it either."
    },
    {
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      "text": " And then lastly, because you asked about the simulation argument. So this is the argument that says, well, look, our descendants are likely to have so much computing power that, you know, simulating 10 to the 20th humans of the year 2024 is chicken feed to them. Right. So almost all people with the experiences that we have are one of those Sims."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 713.234,
      "index": 30,
      "start_time": 694.241,
      "text": " So you should expect that you're probably one of them. That argument never impressed me much because it always seemed to have a strong aspect of sawing off the branch that it's sitting on. Our descendants will be able to simulate something but presumably only smaller universes than this one because they'll have to run on computers that fit in this universe."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 728.968,
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      "text": " Right. Similarly, if we were being simulated, presumably it would be by a universe bigger than the one we see. But in that case, it's not our own descendants who are simulating us. Now granted, there are many possible escapes from that logic. You know, maybe we're low res simulation and"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 758.131,
      "index": 32,
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      "text": " the far away galaxies are just some sloppy approximations, right? But you know, those escapes are all confusing. And I think the simplicity of the original intuition for why, you know, most people who ever exist will be Sims has been undermined. So anyway, that's why I don't spend too much of my own time fretting about this, but just occasionally agree to speak in panel discussions about it. But I look forward to, you know, probably a much more rigorous and careful set of remarks from David."
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