E209 – Rizwan Virk: Are We Living in a Simulation? (It's Deeper Than You Think)

**Rizwan Virk** (0:00)
Everything that feels like it's real, like this teacup, actually consists of bits of information rendered to appear as if it's real, even though it's not. I looked at that as a computer scientist and said, that's exactly how we build video games. And today's games look nothing like they did 20 years ago. So if that keeps going, we could create something that's so immersive, we would be unable to distinguish it from physical reality. How do we know we aren't already inside one of those virtual worlds?

**André Duqum** (0:24)
Awakening could be like you become lucid in a dream state.

**Rizwan Virk** (0:28)
And this is what the spiritual traditions have been telling us all along, that the world is a kind of carefully crafted illusion. In the Tibetan tradition, they used lucid dreaming to wake up inside the dream and realize that the physical world is also a kind of dream. You know you're in it, but you also remember not being in it. And that gives you a whole different perspective.

**André Duqum** (0:46)
What do you make of challenges that redirect our path?

**Rizwan Virk** (0:49)
I ended up getting heart surgery right at the height of my entrepreneurial career. Every time I thought I'm going to jump in and start another video game company, I would end up back in the hospital. I was getting it more subtly through clues, but I didn't pay attention. Don't be stubborn. It all comes from learning to pay attention to Know Thyself.
Challenges are integral to the nature of the game. We're here to learn that. What happens in a video game if you don't complete a quest? You do it again. I'm back. You do it again. What are you drawn to again and again?

**André Duqum** (1:21)
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast. Our guest today is a computer scientist and video game pioneer, a best-selling author of the simulation hypothesis and multiverse, and many great books such as The Wisdom of a Yogi. He studied at MIT and Stanford. Today, we're going to be diving into all things simulation. Rizwan Virk, thank you for being here.

**Rizwan Virk** (1:44)
Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. Great to be here.

**André Duqum** (1:46)
The pleasure is mine. When most people say we're in a simulation, it's sort of like a nihilistic shrug. You know, it's kind of like a way to absolve yourself of personal responsibility.
It kind of bypassed the human experience. Most people refer to the simulation as like an alien that someday in the future is running us off their laptop in a basement. That's not necessarily what you mean. And so to set the framework for what you do mean, could you please do that?

**Rizwan Virk** (2:14)
Sure. So as you said, I think when many people talk about being in a simulation, they're actually talking about one flavor of simulation theory.
And that flavor I call the NPC version. And NPC stands for non-player characters. Anyone who's played a video game will realize that they have their character inside the game, which is called an avatar, which is taken from ancient Sanskrit, which originally meant that divinity comes down into human form, like an incarnation of, say, Krishna or one of the gods.
But when the guys at Lucasfilm, which is George Lucas' company after Star Wars, were building games, they were looking for a name for the little character on the screen. And this was back in the days of the Commodore 64 and dial-up modems. And so they built this multiplayer game and they were looking for a term to call their little guy on the screen. And they felt like they were squeezing themselves into the phone line.
Taking their whole personality, squeezing it down into that little character on the screen. So they decided to borrow the term from Sanskrit. And that's why we call our character inside a game an avatar nowadays. So within a video game, you have your character, avatar, you have the other people who are playing, you have their characters as well. But then you have all these other characters that are not being controlled by a human being outside of the game. And those are referred to as NPCs or non-player or non-playable characters. And so when Elon Musk said back in 2016 that the chances that we are not in a simulation is one in billions, meaning the chances that we are in a simulation is billions to one, he was primarily referring to the NPC version where the simulation is running on a big server and everybody that exists is just code on that machine. Now, spiritual people tend to take exception to that sometimes, as you were saying, because it sort of implies that everyone is soulless AI. But there's another version of simulation theory, which I call the RPG version, which stands for Role-Playing Game Version. And in that version, each of us is an avatar inside the game. So you're the Andre avatar, I'm the Riz avatar. But we each have a player outside of the game. And the analogy that I like to draw is that the player is like the soul outside of the simulation, and then the body is the character that you have chosen within the simulation. Now, that's closer to what was depicted in the film, The Matrix, right? Because Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, they all existed outside of The Matrix. And then they had an equivalent character inside. Now, when you play a video game, you don't actually have to look like your character doesn't have to look like you. But of course, if you're going to pay Keanu Reeves to be in your film, you want him to look the same inside The Matrix as he does outside The Matrix. And so, in the RPG version or flavor of simulation theory, we get much more of an overlap with the spiritual traditions of the world. And so, that's why I find that version even more interesting. And the subtitle of my book, The Simulation Hypothesis, is an MIT computer scientist shows why AI, quantum physics, and Eastern mystics all agree we're in a video game. And so, I like to use the term video game even more than the simulation, because then people can get the idea that they're, in fact, are controlling their character. Now, a lot of academics also when they talk about simulation theory, they're talking about the NPC version, and that tends to be more of a materialist view. I mean, for example, there's a famous physicist named Brian Greene. He was on a podcast recently saying he thought perhaps we're in a simulation because of the mathematical rules of the universe, but he also said that he doesn't believe in free will.