#188 - Rizwan Virk - Simulation Theory, Quantum Physics & The Impact Of AI

**Rizwan Virk** (0:00)
Elon Musk came in 2016, and he had this famous clip online where he said the chances that we're in base reality is one in billions. This physics engine was so good that it fooled my body for a moment into thinking I was playing a real game of table tennis. The controller fell to the floor. I almost fell over. And that's when I had to step back and say, well, where is this going?
How long would it take us to build a virtual reality that was so convincing that it became indistinguishable from physical reality?

**Peter McCormack** (0:29)
Unless we are the first creation, we definitely get there.

**Rizwan Virk** (0:34)
We definitely get there.

**Peter McCormack** (0:34)
So if we definitely get there, then it becomes that question, did somebody already get there?

**Rizwan Virk** (0:39)
AI was making everything run faster and faster. And so it seemed like we were going to get there a lot more quickly. And I asked the computer scientist, what are the chances we're in a simulation? He goes, oh, 100 percent.
And he asked the physicist and he said, oh, percent.

**Peter McCormack** (0:53)
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How have you become so convinced that we are living in a simulation?

**Rizwan Virk** (1:36)
Well, it happened over a period of a few years. And part of it is before I started writing about simulation theory, I was an entrepreneur in the video game industry. And then I also became a venture capital investor for a little while, ran a startup program at MIT about virtual reality and augmented reality. And during that time, I was kind of living a double life, where during the day I was dealing with the things that an entrepreneur and a tech industry person has to deal with, employees, customers, investors, headaches, fighting fires all the time. But then on evenings and weekends, I would try to explore different aspects of consciousness, which included different types of Buddhist meditation, shamanic dream work, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, all of these different subjects that a lot of my classmates at MIT weren't into at all. So I kind of was living this double life between the tech industry and sort of consciousness exploration, I guess I would call it. And then after I had sold my last game company, I visited a startup in Marin County that was a game company, and they had taken on some of the games from my last startup. And we were doing games around TV shows like Penny Dreadful and Grim and a few other shows. And anyway, they said, okay, hey, you have to try on this virtual reality helmet. This was back in 2016 So this was literally 10 years ago now, actually. I think it was like August of 2016 or something.
And so I tried it on. And back then, the headsets were pretty big, they were pretty bulky, and they had wires coming from the ceiling. So we used to joke that they were so uncomfortable, we called them having a toaster on your face, because that's how big they were. And I started to play this virtual reality ping-pong game. And so I'm playing this game, and the graphics weren't very good. I remember this was 10 years ago. But the responsiveness was amazing. The physics engine was really well done. So within a video game piece of software, you have different engines that do different things, they handle different aspects of the game. And this physics engine was so good that it fooled my body for a moment thinking I was playing a real game of table tennis. So much so that I tried to put the paddle down on the table and I tried to lean against the table. But of course, there was no table. The controller fell to the floor. I almost fell over. And that's when I had to step back and say, well, where is this going?
How long would it take us to build a virtual reality that was so convincing that it became indistinguishable from physical reality?