What Are Ancestor Simulations... And Are We Living In One? 

Thank you so much, Isaac, for the very kind shout-out for my son Blake and my book series, Accipiter War. We've both been huge fans of your show for a long, long time!

One could argue Zhuangzi first posited this question. "Am I a Zhuangzi dreaming I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I'm a Zhaungzi?"

Weirdest possibility of all: that things are exactly as they seem.

Perhaps a civilization is at its most creative when it first flowers. The minds are free to go in novel directions, whereas they become hidebound by what has already been created in those that grow up afterward. An ancestor simulation could create art and philosophies that might otherwise never occur to anyone.

I gotta say, Mr. Arthur, your thought experiment regarding us all being the "sentient hallucinations" of "a randomly assembled Boltzmann brain, existing in total sensory deprecation" while "slowly going insane and hallucinating a whole universe" is very reminiscent of the frankly awesome little classic sci-fi short story “Sole Solution” by Eric Frank Russell. If you haven't done so already, I eagerly recommend you give it a read!

Finally someone educating people on how impossible it is to tell if it is simulation or not, hopefully it will at least temper a bit amount of people making totally baseless claims that this is/ is not a simmutaltion. Great episode !

Imagine: At some point in the future it may become a standard to go through several lifetimes of simulations, from cradle to grave, before you can be considered an adult.

The universe is like an episode of "Better Call Saul". It is never what you expect it's gonna be.

*Argument:* "Why simulate 7 billion people when you only needed a few hundred?" *Counter argument:* "Why simulate a galaxy full of people when you only needed one planet's worth?"

Hear me out.. Medical technology gets so good in the future that by the time we develop the ability to create these types of simulations, people are essentially immortal. Immortality does weird things to our psychology on both a personal and a societal level. Truly having no fear or expectation of death removes our ability to appreciate being alive, and our appreciation for life itself. We lose perspective and become obsessed with our own personal thoughts and desires to the point that it becomes dangerous for our entire species. Soo..we all spend time "growing up" in these ancestor simulations. We can live many lifetimes, gaining perspective and appreciation for things that an immortal human could not. I imagine it as being like this.. how many important life lessons do you think you'd learn if you were given a pill that let you be an 18 yr old forever? Now, how many life lessons do you think you'd learn if you could experience many "normal" human lifetimes, remembering the things you've learned from each one along the way? Which option do you think would provide you the most wisdom? I choose to believe that we are living in a simulation, and the point of me being here is to experience as much as possible and to grow, to gain wisdom and understanding and appreciation for all of it.. the joy, the pain, the beauty of a peaceful sunrise, the complexity of human suffering and of love...all of it. And when I die, I'll see the ones I love who've gone before me and we'll share what we learned, and then we'll get ready for our next dip into the next "lesson". Or not 🤷‍♂️ lol Edit: I've had this belief for years and I wrote this comment before actually watching the video. Feels good to know that the ending sort of suggests something similar.

If this is one of many ancestor simulations of 21st century Earth, I dearly hope that the majority of the other instances of myself are both happier and more productive than I am.

Maybe we do live in a simulation that is incomplete and only "good enough". For all we know, the actual reality may be much more complex and detailed, including humans themselves and their minds.

I'm sure someone will eventually set up a galaxy sized computer to just run something simple like Wolfram's rule 30 for billions of years and forget to come back and analyse the results.

I think the construction of Minecraft may actually be useful here, in this analogy of what does and doesn't get simulated. In Minecraft, the entire massive 300M or whatever by 300M or whatever block world is *algorithmically established* upon world generation. But all those distant chunks don't *actually get generated* yet. Rather, an algorithm to generate them with a set seed is established, so going there 100 times on 100 different servers will always result in the same chunk being generated, but it doesn't actually exist in any of the save files yet. Likewise, while it *appears* that mobs generate everywhere they can, in reality they only generate with a certain range around the player. Not so near enough that it's hard to notice them popping up, and also far enough that if you go travelling anywhere, they're already there. Most of them were generated while you were travelling, though. Now mind you, you may never go to that chunk that got algorithmically established back at the beginning. It hasn't actually been loaded yet, but it also has been established even if it never does. Likewise all those mobs down in the caves get generated even if the player has no way to get there, or even if the player spends the entire night in their house organizing chests. Wasted generation and processing will happen, but some effort will be made to optimize for performance. The details all depend on how hard it is to do and what is needed to make the simulation appropriately believable for it's purposes.

There's all this hypothesis that we will be able to simulate everything, and if we could do that we would do it more than once, and people within those simulations would do it more than once, so obviously it's most likely we are in a simulation since most realities would be simulated. But we haven't done it once. That makes the odds 50/50 at best.

A conscious simulated being is no less real than an un-simulated being in my view. Even if our minds run on a computer, they are real minds, running on real matter.

Great episode. Love the critical thinking. Very excited about next week’s episode on megastructures.

Simulation Hypothesis is on my mind almost daily, sometimes daily too. I once had a dream that a machine called BUB or 'Billions Upon Billions' woke me up from this (our world) to assist in a repair in the 'real world' after a meteorite strike... then guided me back into my pod where I reconnected to - here. I haven't felt right since. There were few humans (by comparison to the number in the sim) alive outside of the archive, and they were too far away and too young (in old age you go into the sim, most of mankind was young - living off Earth) to enact the repair... most pods around me had people in pre-industrial sims, without the primary technical skills necessary to enact any repair. I was selected for the repair for compliance potential, immediate skillsets, location, etc. The machine had an excess of processing, Ancestor Simulations were present. I've tried 'speaking' to BUB but - never got a reply. So... I doubt it was real. Just a dream, lol. ...I should also add, it was spelled "BuB" not BUB ~ a strange little detail but worth noting...

This video had a somewhat different tone than what I am used to, and it was a good one. I love the optimism and self accountability that is well needed, and is pointed out for us. Many people do not, or have not thought in this way, about this topic, and to hear it in this concise and precise manner, is a pleasure and an inspiration. It's been a long and wonderful journey with you, Issac! Keep 'em coming, and keeping us thinking!

Look, in a time when life extension takes you beyond 1000 years, at some point you start thinking "simulation for experience learning". Imagine all new borns going through multiple life spans by the time they turn 6.

I'm just happy that in my simulation that my mind, or the programmer,...whatever... has created futurist Isaac Arthur, because Isaac makes my simulated reality or genuine reality that much more interesting !

How to tell if we’re in a simulation? Get everyone on earth in the same spot and wait for the lag 😂

I think the most compelling argument that many of us are in a simulation is just compare political debates these days to video games. I see so many people arguing points with so little self awareness that scripted NPCs from Skyrim seem like sentient beings by comparison. I don't know why whoever programed the simulation would allow the only partially emulated background characters to suddenly take center stage but it seems to have happened.

After watching this video, I don't feel like I got red pilled, blue pilled or even black pilled. I have a feeling I was given a placebo.

The looking into the past comment got me thinking: Would it theoretically be possible to point a huge telescope to a point slightly off a black hole (or a series of black holes) to view light that originally came from earth being bent around them? Would that be a possible way to look into our past without using FTL?

In before the server resets!!!

Been waiting for this one!

So there's an alternate reality in which I starved to death while watching this because *somebody* forgot to remind me to get a drink and a snack?

Hey Isaac - a follow on topic could be digital archeology: How much information could future generations gain about us by gathering every scrap of the digital footprints we leave everywhere?

I like that you mention the limits of an similiation and why you would only simulate what is necessary for those in the simulation need, since even in The Matrix the machines did not simulate an entire planet or universe; they simulated a single city with various districts that made it seem like many of the major cities of the 21st century in a single city (New York, LA, Tokyo, etc) and the people plugged into the simulation don't question that their world is a single massive city.

I can see the appeal of this theory. It would be nice to think we're just in a worst case what if, and the US isn't actually spiralling into a theocratic oligarchy.

Nice closing thoughts, but I'd like to add one that often forgotten when this topic comes up: the answer doesn't matter. Whether we live in a simulation, a dream, a Boltzmann Brain, or any other "non-reality" has no effect on our experience of the world, our actions and their consequences.

Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say

This video reminds me of a few years ago when I sort of just gave up on reality ever making sense. I was stuck on the whole: 'Something can't come from nothing and nothing can exist forever' paradox, trying to think myself into some sort of resolution when I sort of just gave up and concluded that to the best of my ability to make logical deductions reality was impossible. To this day I've never found anything that has convinced me otherwise. Clearly, reality exists, or at least I exist, but to the best of my ability to reason both are equally impossible. I can't get away from it, and, somehow, having stopped trying was incredibly freeing. Reality is impossible, and yet it exists. Clearly I'm incapable of finding a solution, and so any potentially alternate form reality can exist in is unimportant. All any of us can do is act on the world we experience, to think beyond that can be an interesting exercise but it will inevitably lead to the conclusion that knowing is impossible and really everything is impossible anyways so there's really no reason to worry about it.

One of the only channels I have the urge to keep up with. Keep it up my guy!

If the program was able to simulate an entire lifetime in just a short time in the base reality, I can think of several reasons for creating a simulation.

If you look at the performance of modern day AI, like GPT-3 (especially Dall-E 2) or PaLM, I think it's pretty reasonable to conclude that consciousness is just computation.

To take a screenshot Hold Alt+F4

Congratulations for the humbly titled approach to this discussion. Ty for your service. I was 11 H , 80-83

so great. these are the kind of 'deep thoughts of simple premises' that brought me to this channel. Live long, and keep doing stuff :)

Great episode about a complex topic. According to how the universe appears to work I think the chance we are in a simulation is very high. But I agree with Isaac's question of Does it matter if we're a simulation? I'm also curious why we are simulated with the capacity to know that we could be simulations...

I'll let you guys in on a secret. The universe was made solely to annoy ME. It's the only logical solution. NOTE: You are all doing a great job.

Yet another informative video on a topic I am not all that familiar with. Great work Isaac.

Isaac, great channel ! I mean it, can't stop watching. Not all the concepts are plausible, but that just means one more way to not create a lightbulb.

You and Sabine hossenfelder have made me stop obsessing over whether or not life is a simulation. It's a little embarrassing to admit but it took two separate people for me to realize that even if life were a simulation that doesn't necessarily change how I live. It would be a fact before I knew it so why would suddenly learning about it make life different? It doesn't change that I have to wake up tomorrow or that I have to take my medication before I go to bed. Proving life is a simulation wouldn't even prove there is life after death, so it's not like I would kms either

there could be some people who want to run a simulation of some version of history that people want, for example there are people who would want to see a simulation of a world where the Roman Empire never fell

I find it fascinating that we have a gentleman here who takes time to explain and ponder about a few thought experiments that are quite discussed these days He does a brilliant job on that Yet people in the comments argue and scream about how it doesn't make sense to believe in such things if we couldn't chang anything about it anyways Like yeah but ? What's the problem with talking about concepts to expand our own horizon or entertain a thirsty mind Why is that so wrong that hundreds of people here scream at each other who is right or wrong If it just doesn't make a difference if they are Everyone their own believes and freedoms Hope most understand that this is still a great video and Isaac deserves some applause for it

Wow. This touches on so many of the points and themes I've used in my audio fiction series. Many of those points and themes were first made known to me here, on this very channel, and I sort of took them and ran...but hearing them all recounted in one long single video sort of gave me the willies as each point came up. Layers and layers of simulations...some of them going so far down that even the original architects of the first layer don't always have a good idea of what's going on down here...I mean there. They don't always have a good idea of what's going on down THERE.

It's an interesting subject, the fundamental takeaway being we couldn't possibly know one way or the other. So does it matter? FWVLIW: Based on a lifetime spent in a profession that required me to interact with all sorts of people whether I wanted to or not I'm afraid I have a very low opinion of people in general and strongly suspect that no matter how 'advanced', 'cleaver', or 'wise', we become our fundamental wiring as humans is for all practicable purposes unchanging and not 'good'. In short if a thing can be done people or societies will do it. To put it as succinctly as I can people live as the 'heroes' in their own personal universe and how 'good' or 'moral' they are largely depends of their ability to delude themselves - people who are 'poor' at self-delusion tend to be 'nice' simply because it's hard to be that 'hero' if you are aware you are a horrible monster. 'Real' people living in a simulation: So... I would suggest if being able to live in a simulated world was possible, complete with sentient minions, the default for everyone would be "Hell yes!" The question would be "Could I be satisfied with being the god of a simulated world over which I had total control vs being a god in a real world over which I had limited control?" The next question might be "Would I fix that dilemma by having the awareness of living in a simulation removed from me?" I think the answer to both questions would be "No." That's why you and I don't live a fantasy wonderland of imagination already. Why? Because for a 'god' living in an imaginary reality just to get your kicks isn't very god-like and neither would choosing to delude yourself even though paradoxically self-delusion is a primary part of what drives our behaviour. 'Simulated' people living in ancestor simulations: Somewhat darkly it's an inescapable conclusion that if possible created fully sentient entities living in simulated realities at the whim of their creators is an absolute certainty. It's an inescapable truth of human existence that if something can be done it will be done, often by whole societies, no matter how repugnant that might be - justification by self-delusion again. The only question is how often and I'm afraid that would only come down to practicality and motivation - for the vast majority of people there would be no difference between playing Animal Crossing with or without 'sentient characters'. Indeed sentient characters would only add to the experience, such is the power of human self-delusion to justify everything we do. So it is completely plausible to be a sentient creation living a potentially miserable existence entirely at the whim of a fully uncaring 'creator' for no reason other than their entertainment or at best some delusional self-justification. Welcome to the world in which we live... or not, there is no way we could possibly tell. Unless that creator wished to torture us with the knowledge: Self-doubt? Existential dread? Dreams? Madness?

Greetings from Sweden. Thank you for yet another great upload!

Isaac you are the best, I brag on you all the time. Thank you.

I've never been this early before. What do I say???

A twist on this could be something like the episode from Start Trek, The Inner Light. We are a simulation meant for some alien being to find in the future that shows the ending of our civilization.

Ever mind blowing and thought provoking. Wonderful show this round

I was just binge watching ur video at like 3 this morning, now i got more content to watch LETSSS GOGOGOGOGOGOOOOOOOO

If we think human emulation is near, should we aggressively be encouraging people to get brain-scanned, keep journals, etc so we can create a plausible copy of them if they die before it becomes possible?

If blackholes made miniverses. Then it would be like that episode of Rick and Morty where Rick uses a miniverse as a car battery. Just like if humans make a kugelblitz.

BRAVO SIR!!!!! GREAT EPISODE!!!! THANKS ISACC

Gotta love megastructures! I too love seeing them pop up in fiction, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming mega episode. :)

I would certainly bring back my direct ancestors via DNA and existing records using an interpolation process

@25:35 The simulation hypothesis is potentially falsifiable. For example, there's a study going on at the University of Washington looking for evidence of coding shortcuts in subatomic geometry. Also, there's a theoretical limit to the amount of information you fit in any given space (the Planck limit). So, if we build a simulation of our own, it might demonstrate whether we ourselves are simulated. Possibly even causing a crash of our own simulation.

You best start believing in ancestor simulations, Mr Arthur. You're in one!

Simulations could be so trivial, that when you live out your life, die and you find yourself in white room, seated behind a table. A man enters the room, sits down in fornt of you and asks you one question... "Throughout your life, what would you say was your favorite flavor of coffee creamer?".

I’ve heard a theory bouncing around that we are all what’s left over after our galaxy was consumed by its super massive black hole and are just the energy/information that can’t be destroyed playing endlessly over and over

I want all my scenery deer to have full gut bacteria microbiomes or I'm going to be sad.

The computer game Dungeon Siege had what was called a "frustrum". The frustrum was essentially the horizon in a flat world, a point at beyond that the world was not drawn. To hide this from the player the world dissapeared into a fog. So in a simulation, only what is observed are the only thing that need to exis, at least for the moment.

Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream

I like that he brought up the deity aspect because that is also possible.

Ancestor simulation would be a great substitute for FTL. The requirement would be for an ancestor simulation to run 365 times slower than the real universe, also do an ancestor simulation of Alpha Centauri running 365 times slow, so it is now through data transfer only 4.4 days away by the simulation.

I really appreciate your discussion of probability!

This video is awesome! It’s mixing my sci-fi nerdy side with a shot of Green Bay Packer! Love it.

1st

Does anybody have any cheatcodes for this sim?

This is a fascinating video, and I an going to recommend it. I note a couple of problems with the hypothesis here. 1. The assumption that we might be too ethically advanced to abuse such a simulation, when we have the technical ability to do it, ignores the fact that we have consistently invented new technologies while our morality has lagged [steam power, flight, atomic power, etc.] far behind the technical, and this has been a science fiction genre. 2. A good reason for doing such simulations could be related to understanding how and why things happened as they did. Science fiction and alternate history stories try to figure out whether some random event changed history significantly. The full story of the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and Archduke Franz Ferdinand show numerous small events that could have changed history. Simulation games about history actually exist and a futuristic variation of "Age of Empires" or "Civilization" is not improbable either for research or entertainment. 3. A phenomenon that should have been addressed is as follows. You can't find something, look everywhere, then suddenly find it in a place you looked before without seeing it. This has been observed for a long time and only requires an understanding of the glitches in the human mind rather than an external actor. People have invented excuses like praying to a god, asking the brownies or fairies, etc. 4. Another mental glitch related to the last is the nature of memory. I once remembered sharing an outdoor hot tub with a friend, during a snowfall in the Los Angeles area at Christmas time. Apparently my "memory" was so detailed and I was so persuasive that it prompted my friend to check with his friends and family before getting back to me with, "sorry, it didn't happen." This is why witnesses are not considered the most reliable evidence.

Really looking forward to MEGASTRUTURES! Good channel.

Always had an idea that we created AI, but put limiters on it somehow so it could not reproduce and after humanity died out, it resimulates the birth of the universe, then humans, then the creation of AI. That is how it creates kin, through infinite loops of time and space...

Muh ancestorz was simulashunz

Sounds like RenFair is going high tech in a few hundred years !

18:00 An out of context timestamp with a wonderful inspiring music in the background.

I’m not real.

2nd

I like the idea that rather than running a personal simulation not where you're one person in that simulation but where you're all people in that simulation (the "Rip, tie, cut toy man" ending of Permutation city) They aren't a billion different individuals in the simulation instead there are a billion different aspects of you, and at the end you can reintegrate all of that life experience to become a truly moral individual, you've experienced the worst things you can do to another person and so you might not wish that on others again on the off chance that this isn't the real and you'll be again reintegrated with those around you.

My spring popped out when I was trying to fix my seatbelt. Am hopeful this helps me get it refitted 👍🤞👌

meow second

...Spot On Brother...'Thank You' so Much...~ Love and Respects...~ JIg

Been watching for quite a while on and off but your stuff mate is truly A grade thank you so much 🙏 🙌 ❤️

I certainly can understand the need for a 'descendant simulation' though... In fact even though it's not perfect, I often have the impulse to pick up a game console and dive into No Man's Sky. Unfortunately I don't have time in my life for games, but if I did - I definitely would, especially if the simulation was indistinguishable from the reality we presently experience (simulated or not). Great topic as always, much love!

Love the eerie Halo sounds at 35:30

I think that big two-hour Megastructures episode next week will take me a couple of days to watch. I might end up finishing it the same day the Silurian Hypothesis one comes out.

A REAL mind blower!👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Good episode!

This episode was creepy, I don't wanna be in someone else's nightmare.

the background music of this episode is awesome

I doubt I'm in a simulation...I can't imagine some person in the far future wanting to be me...I'm not even having a good time.

Nice work and well reasoned Isaac. I have touched on it with you previously that the motives for things is a critical factor as to whether something may happen or not. What is the point? (I ask myself far too often) I am very pleased to hear you include the motive in a reasoned fundamental way. You have demonstrated how motive can and does underpin what we actually see being done on Earth for good and otherwise. Any species intelligent or otherwise always has a point or a reason for its activities whether we can make sense of them or not. Whether we judge them to be good or bad reasons. To me it is what makes life different from non life more than any other factor. We have good reasons to expect similarly "motivated" actions of extra terrestrial life. Thanks for sharing your insights and efforts.

Empress of Forever is a good space fantasy using this idea, with some twists!

"Pershonally I give us... one chansh in three. More tea anyone?" -Captain Marko Ramius

Credit where it's due, I had never thought of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle as a form of pixelation of reality.

A bowl of petunias falls, thinking: “oh no, not again.”

Simulation as a teaching / parenting tool. Expensive but worthwhile. We invested a lot in raising my 2 children, time, money, mentally and physically. What did you do to teach your children how to ride a bike? ;-) Real World VR seems a lot of investment today, wasteful, even. Same as my investment seems too much for a middle age family. Besides, I could have my children go over a million professions, personalities, any VR setup, in a fraction of my real time reality, before downloading them back.