Most Replayed Moment: Neil deGrasse Tyson On The Future Of Humanity! Will We Ever Go To Mars?

Steven Bartlett (0:04)

I spend so long these days thinking and talking to people about what all of this means. And I've got more and more, I saw you talking about the simulation theory once or twice, and I started to fall into that whole of thinking.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:17)

Oh, yes, it's, no, you gotta, you know, step outside every now and then, and, you know, smell the roses.

Steven Bartlett (0:26)

But you said you wouldn't be surprised if people found out the universe is simulated by some sort of advanced life form.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:32)

Yeah, given what we can now compute, throw in quantum computing on top of that, we don't have this power yet, but to make a world in our computer where the characters in that world believe they have free will, and then they conduct themselves, and then they invent computers, and then they make a world inside of their computer, and where their characters think they have free will.

Then it's simulated universes all the way down.

Close your eyes and throw a dart. Which of these? Are you going to get the first universe that invented the simulated universe or the zillion ones that followed? The dart's likely to hit one of the others. But my escape hatch from that is since we do not yet know or have the power to make a perfectly simulated world, it means we are either the first universe that's real that hasn't created one yet, or we're the last universe that hasn't evolved yet to have created one of its own. Because all the middles have the power to create one. So, that takes it, you know, a zillion to one against us to maybe 50-50.

Steven Bartlett (1:48)

Oh, interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:49)

Yeah. So, I'm a little more comfortable that way.

Steven Bartlett (1:54)

Comfortable.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:55)

Yeah. I sleep a little better at night.

Steven Bartlett (1:57)

But I guess it wouldn't matter anyway if we do it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:59)

Actually, it wouldn't matter if we're completely simulated. What do you care? You're living your life. We don't want to believe that there are puppet strings on us.

Part of me thinks that, though.

You know, just when earth is kind of, everything on earth is kind of stable. Oh, COVID shows up. Oh, so this is the programmer saying, you know, the earth is too boring now. We got to spice it up a bit. They throw in a pandemic. Okay. A once in a century pandemic.

Now we're entertaining for them. What do we do? Who gets vaccinated? Who doesn't? Who's going to fight? Who dies? Who lives? Okay. So then we kind of get through that. We get the vaccine. Okay. Just calming down off of that. And they said, oh, let's make a billionaire real estate developer from New York City, the most powerful person in the world. Let's stir the pot again. And so now the whole other set of pot stirring that's going on. So that's kind of consistent with a snot-nosed alien killer. In the parents' basement, programming our existence.

That's what I would do. I would throw in interest. There's a game, SimCity.

Steven Bartlett (3:16)

Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:17)

I played that. That's how old I am. SimCity. So you're mayor of this city. And people can vote you out of office. So you have to do things that make them happy. And there's an opinion poll that's there. And if you spend too much money here, you're not spending money on the schools. That's bad. But then there's crime goes up. And you're realizing, oh my gosh, and even this simple simulation, so many interdependent phenomenon are taking place.

Then, then things that happen, then Godzilla steps through and plows through the city. Okay, now Godzilla is not real, but it kind of is, because that would be a disaster that is it a flood, is it fires, it's a thing that nobody saw coming, okay? We are recording this interview on September 11th. I lived four blocks from ground zero.

That's Godzilla walking through the city. Well, how do you respond to that? What's, you know, you didn't know that was gonna happen the day before.

So, realizing that in this game, it's only interesting to play when disastrous things happen, not too many in a row because you have to be able to recover. So, when I look at our world, I'm thinking the best argument I have for being in a simulation is how often some big disaster takes place.

When it was the first World War and then after that, the peace, oh, pandemic, okay? The 1918 flu pandemic. And then we get out of that, oh, no, second World War. Okay, we get out of that, the Cold War, nuclear holocaust, okay? So, that's my, that's me looking over the shoulder of the programmer.