Episode 1034: Martin Shkreli Says We Are In A Simulation & Religion Is Made Up

Martin Shkreli (0:00)

The pattern is Jews. Somebody ban this guy. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? What about Bill Gates? Is he Jewish? Is he secretly Jewish? Is he fucking retard?

Bill Clinton? Jewish? Donald Trump? Ooh, yeah. That's the pattern. It's the pattern because that's all you see. That's all you think about for whatever fucking weirdo reason. Because you're mad at you that you're not successful, so you got to blame somebody else. Is that it?

There's a student discount in Godel, but it's basically impossible to get. It's meant for professionals.

Yeah, this is psych ward shit. This is for people who have lost their fucking marbles. Like I said, there's a psychological phenomenon that explains it all. It's this need to have explanatory power over the natural universe. Everybody wants to be able to explain things that they can't explain. That's why we invented, I hate to say this, and people are really, really be mad at me. It's kind of why we invented religion. We want explanatory power. We want to understand why do we die? Where do we go? What happens? These are all questions we have no answer to. Why are we here? Who put us here? Well, it's better to make it up than...

SPEAKER_2 (1:43)

You're an atheist?

Martin Shkreli (1:44)

Somewhat. I mean, I'll explain that in a little bit, but like it is literally better to make it up, which clearly at least a large amount of people have done. Right. You know, it is they I mean, they're literally made up details, right? Like the sun god of the Egyptians. Some guy just sat there and he was like, yeah, bro, fucking sun god did it. And everyone was like, really? Because it made them feel better. That's what Apophenia is. It's this idea that you can explain the world and you feel superior. Other people may believe you because it makes them feel comfortable. You're giving off these emotional benefits and it makes the world a better place. You know, psychopaths like it because they feel superior to everybody else. Everybody else who's scared, uncertain, they like it because there's some certainty. It's much better. My poor mother, for example, says, Oh, your father's in heaven. You know, I'll be in heaven too.

It's a lot more comforting to believe that than to say, No, I'm going to a box in the dirt.

You know, that's depressing. That makes me cry. That sucks. But that's the reality.

So, again, maybe even wrong, but...

SPEAKER_2 (3:06)

I feel like religion makes more sense, because it's like everything has to have some sort of period.

Martin Shkreli (3:12)

Well, there's some, there's, there's, you know, getting to the bottom of logic, we can, we can do that, of existence and stuff like that. But, you know, the idea that some guy knows and was told, you know, it's kind of like, you know, a little absurd. And there's no evidence of it, and, you know. You know, there are great theories for creation. You know, the best one that I know of is the simulation hypothesis, that this is a, we're in a World of Warcraft, somebody's World of Warcraft, and they're watching and playing, and they're very interested in you specifically. But the rest of you guys are NPCs, including me. And they're like, oh, what's Elon gonna do? And they're watching, and they're playing, and they're like, let's add money to Elon's health bar. Do-do-do-do-do. And they're like, oh, this Trump guy. Hmm, let's boost him three levels. And, you know, we're all just sort of agents in this AI world. Now, what's funny is people are talking about agent civilizations and agents all the time now, and agentic behavior out of AI. Where do you think that stuff all comes from? I mean, it makes a lot of sense that, you know, this is a simulated world. And that, in fact, if you read Bostrom's work, it's almost guaranteed that all civilizations will eventually be simulated. This idea of the anthropic principle. That's partially why anthropics is called anthropic.

Who created that world? Good question. But the anthropic principle is... What's useful about the anthropic principle is that it mathematically would convince you that, you know, basically of all the worlds that could exist, most of them should be simulated, and you're very unlikely to be in the basement reality, which means the bottom level place that spawned all the simulations. What created that? It's not important. You know, we're simple automatons in the simulation. It's not really a question. It's not really a question for you.

It's no different from my cat trying to figure out why it gets food every day. It's no fucking idea. It's still gonna eat that shit. You think your dog is sitting there pondering the existence of the universe? Us doing that is no different from whatever created basement reality. Now, why would they be interested in the machinations of an Elon Musk or Donald Trump who gives a shit? Why would a superior being care for that? Well, I play World of Warcraft, or I did. So the only question is what happens when they press delete? And do they care when our characters die and our variables are expunged from the database?