Joe Rogan Experience #2151 - Rizwan Virk

Rizwan Virk 0:00 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Rizwan Virk 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) By the way, Diana Pysoka says hi.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Oh, cool. You know her?

Rizwan Virk 0:15 Yeah, I know her pretty well, actually.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Boy, her theories are very, very, very interesting.

Rizwan Virk 0:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:22 She's a strange person to talk to, 'cause you start like, you start really considering some of the things she's saying. It's just the, all the UFO stuff. I go back and forth on the UFO stuff from it being complete bullshit to like maybe there's something there.

Rizwan Virk 0:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:35 I fluctuate throughout the day. (laughs)

Rizwan Virk 0:37 Yeah. Well, we can talk about that. You know, I'm, I'm peripherally involved with-

Joe Rogan 0:41 Jim, you're making noise over there.

Rizwan Virk 0:43 Huh? Uh...

Joe Rogan 0:43 Shut your mic off.

Rizwan Virk 0:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:45 Um, you're peripherally involved with-

Rizwan Virk 0:47 With, uh, the Galileo Project at Harvard and the SOLO Foundation at Stanford, which are like the two academic UFO research groups that, uh, are out there. You know, Avi Loeb is running the one at Harvard.

Joe Rogan 0:57 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 0:57 And Gary Nolan is running... You, you had Gary on your show, right?

Joe Rogan 0:59 I have not, but I-

Rizwan Virk 1:00 You haven't. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:01 ... I'm in communication with him.

Rizwan Virk 1:02 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:02 I talk to him quite a bit.

Rizwan Virk 1:03 Yeah. So I'm ma-

Joe Rogan 1:04 I'm very fascinated by his work.

Rizwan Virk 1:05 I'm happy to talk about UFO stuff where it overlaps with simulation theory, and where it doesn't...

Joe Rogan 1:09 So how did you get involved in this whole theory in the first place? Simula-... Explain to people your position, if you m- if you don't mind, on, on simulation theory. What do you think is going on?

Rizwan Virk 1:21 Yeah, well, so first question, how did I get involved in this, right?

Joe Rogan 1:24 Okay.

Rizwan Virk 1:24 So, uh, you know, I was a video game developer, uh, in Silicon Valley, and then I became an investor in the video game industry. My background is in computer science. And, uh, what happened was after I sold my last video game company, uh, back in 2016, so we're talking like, you know, seven years ago now, uh, eight years ago now, and I put on a virtual reality headset and started playing a VR ping pong game. All right, now these headsets were even bigger than they are now, and they were wired, so there's no mistaking you're in virtual reality. But what happened was that the, the, the ping pong game was so realistic that for a moment my brain forgot that this wasn't 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 (laughs) so the controller fell to the floor and I almost fell over. I had to do one of these double takes, like, "Oh wait, I'm just in VR," right? So I started to think about how long would it take us to build something like the Matrix, something that's, uh, so immersive that you would forget, right, that you were inside a video game. And so that led me to this idea of the simulation point, which is a kind of technological singularity. But then I started to research things like quantum physics and some of the mysteries around, you know, the observer effect and quantum mechanics, and, and then I started to look at all the world's religions and I realized that they're all kind of saying the same thing, which is that there is no physical universe. Uh, and so, you know, that led me to the conclusion that we are most likely inside some kind of a computer simulation or a massively multiplayer video game, depending on how you look at it.

Joe Rogan 3:01 But what, where did that computer game, where did that simulation come from, if we are inside of it?

Rizwan Virk 3:10 Well, that, that's the big question, right? Uh, and there's two versions of simulation theory. And, you know, I teach a class on this at Arizona State University. It's probably the first college level class about simulation theory and it kind of pulls in science fiction, religion, philosophy, and technology. But one of the key distinctions I, I tell my students to make, because it's not talked about a lot with simulation theory, is what I call the NPC versus the RPG versions of simulation theory.

Joe Rogan 3:37 Okay.

Rizwan Virk 3:37 Right? So NPC, as you probably know, means, you know, uh, non-player characters within video games. So those are the AIs in the video game, uh, you know, the bartenders, the people you're beating up, the opponents, all of that stuff. But basically they're just code and they're AI. Then there's the RPG version, which is that we are actually doing a role-playing game, right? So you exist outside the game and then you have a character or avatar inside the game. So it's just like what we would consider an MMORPG today, right? Except with more sophisticated technology. And so in that case, uh, you know, you get a little bit of a different answer than if you talk about an NPC only type of simulation, right? Because that's just running on a computer and we're all AI in that case. Now the two aren't mutually exclusive, right? In a, in a video game like Fortnite or whatever, World of Warcraft, you have NPCs and you have PCs or player characters, right? So you've got both of those things going on. And so depending on how you look at it, you might come to different, uh, you know, different answers about who's outside the simulation, uh, which would answer the question of who made the simulation, right?

Joe Rogan 4:46 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 4:47 So in the first case, uh, you basically s- say, uh, that if we can get to the point where we can build these simulations, uh, what I call the simulation point, so I call that a kind of technological singularity. Now, we've heard the term singularity mostly because of like, uh, AI and super intelligent AI, right? Uh, and, you know, AI is gonna take over the world. But the guy who defined the term was actually a computer scientist who became a science fiction writer named Vernor Vinge. In fact, he just passed away like a month ago or something. He was a real pioneer in like science fiction and the cyberpunk, uh, kind of sub-genre or so. And so he said the singularity happens when technology increases exponentially to the point where everything will be different for humans after that point. Now, he gave like four different ways we could reach the singularity. Most of us talk about only one, which is AI starts to become super intelligent and, uh, it grows exponentially and, and everything will be different. But, but I think this, this idea of the simulation point where we can create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, and I lay out like 10 stages in my book of all the technology we would need, including brain computer interfaces, like, uh, in the Matrix, right? So this-

Joe Rogan 6:00 Or Neuralink.

Rizwan Virk 6:01 Or Neuralink, right. We're getting there, right? We're-

Joe Rogan 6:02 Yeah, we're very close.

Rizwan Virk 6:03 We're, we're at the beginning of that hole.

Joe Rogan 6:05 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 6:05 And so that's stage eight, stage seven and stage eight on the way to the simulation point.Um, and you know, being able to read but also then being able to write memories as well, and then have... So, the definition of the simulation point is being able to create a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from physical reality with AI characters that are indistinguishable from biological characters. So, you know, you wouldn't be able to tell you're talking to an NPC, basically.

Joe Rogan 6:31 Right.

Rizwan Virk 6:31 We're getting closer to that already, right?

Joe Rogan 6:33 Yes.

Rizwan Virk 6:34 Yeah. I mean, there's like companies out there doing smart NPCs now inside, uh, video games. Uh.

Joe Rogan 6:39 Right. But what would be the difference between looking at what is possible in the future and making either a hypothesis or suggesting that that has already taken place?

Rizwan Virk 6:55 Right. So that's kind of the leap, right, that you need to make.

Joe Rogan 6:57 Right.

Rizwan Virk 6:57 Which is to say that if we can do it... Now, let's imagine a civilization that was a million years ahead of us, a thousand years ahead of us.

Joe Rogan 7:05 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 7:05 Uh, even 200 years ahead of us.

Joe Rogan 7:07 Right.

Rizwan Virk 7:07 Right? But certainly a thousand years ahead of us. So, where will computers be in a thousand years? They would already have created these types of simulations.

Joe Rogan 7:14 Right.

Rizwan Virk 7:14 Right? Because if we can do it... Now, 50 years ago, we didn't know if we could do it. We didn't know if computers could get to that point.

Joe Rogan 7:20 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 7:20 Right? Today, we're pretty sure we can get there. In fact, I'd say that I'm 70% sure that we will get to the simulation point, which means I think there's a 70% chance we're living inside a simulation. Um, and so, the point is, if they already got there, they created a whole bunch of simulations. Okay? And you can't tell the difference whether you're in the real world or a simulated world. Right? So there's 99 of these, there's one of these, but you can't tell the difference. So, which one are you more likely in? Just statistically speaking now, we're not even, you know, projecting the technology forward. We're just saying it's more likely you're in one of the 99 than the one because there's so many more of these. Right?

Joe Rogan 8:04 Uh, sort of.

Rizwan Virk 8:05 If you can't tell the difference, right?

Joe Rogan 8:06 If you can't tell the difference. But ... There's so many things you have to think about, right? There's so many things you have to take into consideration. One of them is we don't have a straight linear line from the moment that we're born to the moment that we exist in currently. The reason being is that we go to sleep every night.

Rizwan Virk 8:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:29 It's a weird thing. We shut off every night.

Rizwan Virk 8:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:33 And we wake up intermittently, and you go back to bed. Maybe you have to pee. Maybe you're thirsty. You go back to bed, and then you wake up again. But when you wake up, you are just waking up. Like, when I woke up this morning, I don't know if this is the life I've always lived.

Rizwan Virk 8:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:51 I'm assuming it is because I have all these detailed memories of the past. I see my dog. He exact- he reacts the exact same way he always does. You know, I see my wife, I see my kids, I see my house. It's the same house eh, that I remember, but I'm not sure. I just woke up.

Rizwan Virk 9:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:11 I'm a little foggy already. Right?

Rizwan Virk 9:13 It just exists in your memory at that point.

Joe Rogan 9:14 It just exists in your memory.

Rizwan Virk 9:16 Right. And so-

Joe Rogan 9:16 This might be the first day of my life.

Rizwan Virk 9:19 Right. If suppose that you can implant false memories, right?

Joe Rogan 9:22 Right.

Rizwan Virk 9:23 So, this was a popular topic for Philip K. Dick, right?

Joe Rogan 9:26 Yes.

Rizwan Virk 9:26 Movies like Total Recall-

Joe Rogan 9:27 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 9:28 ... and even in Blade Runner.

Joe Rogan 9:29 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 9:29 You know, I interviewed his wife while I was researching, you know, my book. And-

Joe Rogan 9:33 He was a wild boy.

Rizwan Virk 9:35 He was an interesting guy, right?

Joe Rogan 9:36 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 9:37 And, and he said some interesting things. In fact, all the way back in 1977 in Metz, France at a sci-fi convention, he said, it was a pretty famous quote. He said, uh, "We are living in a computer programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is if some variable is changed, some alteration occurs in our reality." Right? And that's become kind of a famous quote in the simulation world.

Joe Rogan 10:01 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 10:01 But if you listen to the rest of the quote, he says, "Well, we would basically rerun the same events and we would change some variables," right? And we would have a sense of deja vu, like, "Maybe we've already done this," right? "Maybe I've, you know, talked to you before-"

Joe Rogan 10:15 Right.

Rizwan Virk 10:15 "... in a different run of the simulation."

Joe Rogan 10:18 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 10:18 Right? And, and this idea, like, after I wrote my first book on this topic, The Simulation Hypothesis, uh, this i- this idea wouldn't leave me that, well, if you can run one simulation, you can certainly run it multiple times.

Joe Rogan 10:31 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 10:31 In fact, that's what we would do, right? If we were running a simulation of weather, we wouldn't just run it once. We would run it multiple times. And if we were running a simulation of whatever, right, pandemic, anything, name it, we would change the variables and we would go forward. And so, you know, when I interviewed Tessa, you know, uh, Phil K. Dick's last wife, she said, um, that he came to believe this was really happening, right? That someone was altering with our reality and they would change a few variables and rerun the simulation forward. Uh, so now we're getting pretty deep in the rabbit hole. So, this is the topic of my second book, which is called The Simulated Multiverse. This idea that each of these timelines, uh, could be like a different run of the simulation itself.

Joe Rogan 11:15 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 11:16 So, so that gets a little weird at that point, right? Because now we're saying that time isn't the same thing, right, that we think it is. So, with the simulation hypothesis, hypothesis, we're saying that space doesn't really exist. Uh, it basically gets rendered for us like a video game. And then with this second idea, we're saying that time doesn't really exist because what you remember could have been either implanted memories or it could be a specific run of the simulation, right? So if you run it again, maybe things are slightly different the second time you run it.

Joe Rogan 11:53 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 11:53 Um, like, so Philip K. Dick came to believe that his novel, The Man in the High Castle, which was turned in a pretty cool series. I don't know if you've, uh-

Joe Rogan 12:02 No.

Rizwan Virk 12:02 ... if you've seen it. It was on Amazon a few years ago. But in that, uh, in the novel and in the series, Germany and Japan won World War II. Uh, and so you see an America that's been divided, like the East Coast is, uh-... run by the Germans, the West Coast is run by the Japanese, and you see this kind of fascist-type, type world. And so, you know, he later came to believe that this actually happened and somehow the simulators re-ran it again. And the current timeline is one that was allowed to go forward, like, you know, further forward than where that one might have ended. And so he says that at some point all these memories came flooding back to him of this other timeline. Um, he called it, uh, he used this Greek word, it's called an anamnesis, which means a loss of forgetfulness, right? So he said we might be able to remember these other runs of the simulation. Um, so anyway, that gets us into, you know, this whole idea of is the past what we think it is, right? That's I think what the question you were asking, right?

Joe Rogan 13:09 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 13:09 Because you're like, "If I just remember, uh, X, Y, Z, is that what actually happened or is it just, uh, a representation of the past in the present?"

Joe Rogan 13:21 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 13:22 And so when I started looking into the quantum physics side of it, I found something really weird. Uh, and we'll talk... We can talk about the observer effect, but this was, like, even weirder than that. And it was something proposed by John Wheeler, who, uh, was, uh, at Princeton with Einstein and, you know, he was a bit younger than, you know, Niels Bohr and Einstein and all these kind of, uh, forefathers of quantum mechanics. And he came up with, uh, several things that I want to talk about, but one of them is the delayed choice experiment or, or the cosmic delayed choice experiment, which puts into doubt this idea of the past. And since we're talking about the past, let's, let's go into this now, uh, if you don't mind.

Joe Rogan 14:00 Okay.

Rizwan Virk 14:00 So imagine there's a, a, a, something like a quasar and that's a billion light years away from us, right? And the light is coming from that quasar to here, so it's gonna take a billion years to get here because it's a billion light years away. Uh, and then suppose there's something in the middle, like a black hole, uh, that's in the middle or, or a galaxy, something that's very gravitationally big. And so suppose the light has to go to the left or to the right of that object and suppose that object is like a million light years away from us. So it's a lot closer, but it's still a million light years away. So the decision about when the light goes to the left or to the right would have to be made when? Right? It would have to be made in the past about a million years ago because it takes light from that... Let's say it's a black hole. It's a million light years away, so it takes a million years for the light to reach Earth and we can measure whether it went to the left or to the right. Uh, well, it turns out that decision is in the past as we think of it, but what the delayed choice experiment tells us is that that decision is made now when we measure that light, when the little telescope... Suppose we have two telescopes, one picks up on the left, one picks up on the right. And it's when we do the measurement, and until we do that measurement, both of those possibilities still exist. So we have these two possible pasts. A million years ago, right, the light went to the left or to the right. But which one happened isn't decided until the measurement is done today. So this is like Schrödinger's cat on steroids, right?

Joe Rogan 15:40 I'm not sure I totally understand this.

Rizwan Virk 15:42 Okay.

Joe Rogan 15:42 Why, why is the decision made when you measure it?

Rizwan Virk 15:46 Well, that's what the experiment, you know, kind of showed with quantum mechanics. Just like, okay, let's start with Schrödinger's cat-

Joe Rogan 15:52 Okay.

Rizwan Virk 15:52 ... because it's a simpler, simpler version. So Schrödinger's cat is this experiment where there's a, there's a cat in a box, theoretical experiment, nobody's killing any cats. And there's, uh, some poison in there and there's some radioactive material that has a 50% chance of setting off the poison and a 50% chance that it won't, let's say after an hour or so. And so, uh, after an hour, the chances that the cat is dead or alive is 50%, right? Because there's a 50% chance. But what the observer effect and what quantum mechanics is telling us is that both of those possibilities exist. The cat is both alive and dead until somebody looks at that box, right? The observer, in this case. Uh, and so until then, the cat is in the state of superposition, okay? And this is what makes quantum mechanics so weird, right? This is why, you know, Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner said, "Nobody understands-"

Joe Rogan 16:50 Right.

Rizwan Virk 16:50 "... quantum mechanics." And Niels Bohr said, "If you're not shocked by this, then you haven't understood it." Okay, because to us, the cat has to be alive or it has to be dead.

Joe Rogan 16:58 And we don't know until we see.

Rizwan Virk 17:00 We don't know until we see, but it's only one... And common sense tells us-

Joe Rogan 17:03 Right.

Rizwan Virk 17:03 ... it's one of those, right?

Joe Rogan 17:04 Right.

Rizwan Virk 17:05 But quantum mechanics a- uh, through the double-slit experiment and the observer effect says both of those possibilities exist in the present until the time when someone looks and, and someone measures that result. So then we say the superposition, which is two states, comes down to one state. So the cat is both alive and dead, and then when somebody measures it, it's either alive or dead and we're in one of those states, right? Okay.

Joe Rogan 17:33 Right.

Rizwan Virk 17:34 So-

Joe Rogan 17:34 I, I kind of understand what you're saying, but isn't it really just that we don't know until we open the box and it's not that the cat is both alive and dead, the cat is either alive or dead? We just haven't figured it out yet until we open the box.

Rizwan Virk 17:48 That's what it would seem like, right?

Joe Rogan 17:49 Right.

Rizwan Virk 17:49 That would be like common sense-

Joe Rogan 17:51 Logical.

Rizwan Virk 17:51 ... point of view, right?

Joe Rogan 17:52 Right.

Rizwan Virk 17:52 But what all the physicists have been telling us now for, uh, almost 100 years, right? Going back to the 1920s when quantum mechanics first started to get formalized, is that that's not actually the case. That what happens is you have this probability wave and that there are different probabilities of the cat being alive or dead. Now, of course, they weren't talking about cats. That was-

Joe Rogan 18:15 Right. The cat is maybe too simplistic.

Rizwan Virk 18:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:17 It's like a pl- placeholder.

Rizwan Virk 18:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:20 Y- you know what I'm saying? Like, it's-

Rizwan Virk 18:21 Yeah. It's a- it's a way for somebody to think about this at a high level.

Joe Rogan 18:25 Right.

Rizwan Virk 18:25 So, Schrödinger, who is one of the- the founders of quantum mechanics, uh, through his wave equation, he- he basically came up with this because he thought the whole idea was ridiculous. He's like, "Look, you can't have a cat that's both alive and dead." Right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:38 Right.

Rizwan Virk 18:38 So- so this is a ridiculous experiment, except it's become the c- the way in which we explain this weird effect about quantum mechanics, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:46 And the weird effect of quantum mechanics is things can be both moving and still at the same time, which is superposition, right?

Rizwan Virk 18:53 Right. Or they can be in two different states.

Joe Rogan 18:55 Right.

Rizwan Virk 18:55 Which could be moving and still, could be alive or dead, or they're- they're really talking about particles.

Joe Rogan 19:00 Right.

Rizwan Virk 19:00 So then it could be like left rotated or right located, or right rotated. So you've got all these properties, but they can be in different posi- they can be in different states. Uh, and this is the basis for quantum computing, by the way. I mean, you probably heard about-

Joe Rogan 19:14 Yes.

Rizwan Virk 19:14 ... new quantum computers that are coming out.

Joe Rogan 19:15 I- I have, but I totally don't understand it.

Rizwan Virk 19:18 Well, so it's the same thing as Schrödinger's cat, whereas we have a bit of information, right? So what are the values that a bit can have? It's like zero or one. That's it. That's like the basic unit of information. And the bit can only have one of those values. Like on my iPhone or my, uh, you know, laptop, if you look down, all the way down into hardware, you can look at the registers. Like, when I was at- when I was at MIT, we actually built a computer, uh, in class from scratch. You'll see there's some voltage that says this is a one or this is a zero. Right? That's it. All the computing, everything we're doing with video streaming, like all that stuff, comes down to having a bit that can be either a zero or a one, and it has to be one or the other. It can't be both.

Joe Rogan 19:58 Right.

Rizwan Virk 19:59 So quantum computing has these things called qubits. Okay, Q-U-B-I-T-S, qubits. Which, a qubit is like Schrödinger's cat. It doesn't just have a value of a one or a zero. It is in superposition. Superposition means a- a superset of all the positions that are possible. So how many possibilities are there in- in a bit? Two, right? Zero and one.

Joe Rogan 20:23 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 20:23 So a qubit is a superposition of a bit, which means it has both values, zero and one, until someone measures that bit. And so theoretically, that's what allows quantum computers to solve problems that are- that grow exponentially, that are really big. And we're still in the early stages, but i- if you think of an exponential growth problem, like- like cracking encryption, uh, it can be done by a regular computer. You could set up your laptop to- to crack. It'll take like 1,000 years or something, right?

Joe Rogan 20:56 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 20:56 Uh, because you have to go through every single possible value. So if you have 64 bits, that's like two to the 64th values, which is- which is huge. Uh, in fact there's an old story about the- the Indian king and the- the wise man who play chess that illustrates this story of how big that number gets when you have exponential growth. So there was a king who liked to play chess and no one wanted to play chess with him anymore 'cause he, you know, he kept winning. And finally, there's this wise man, he's like, "Please play chess with me." And the wise man says, "Okay, I'll play chess with you if y- y- if I win, for the first square on the chess board you give me one grain of rice, and then the second square on the chess board you give me- you double that, two grains of rice. And you double that to four grains of rice, and six grains of rice." So we're doubling on each square, right?

Joe Rogan 21:40 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 21:40 King's like, "Okay, sure." You know, no big deal, it's just a bunch of rice, right? And so it turns out when the wise man won, by the time you get to two to the 64th, 'cause there's 64 squares on the chess board, that basically it was more rice than would fit in all of India.

Joe Rogan 21:56 Right. (laughs)

Rizwan Virk 21:57 It, that's an exponential problem.

Joe Rogan 21:59 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 22:00 It just grows so fast. And the reason it grows is there are too many possibilities. Right? But now, this new thing called a qubit's coming along, and the qubit has both possibilities at the same time. So if you have 64 bits, and you take all the possible values of those 64 bits, you've got the same number of possibilities as the grains of rice we talked about. It's two to the 64th. It's a very big number. It's- it's 18 quintillion, right, is the number. There's a game called No Man's Sky, I don't know if you ever played it.

Joe Rogan 22:32 No.

Rizwan Virk 22:33 So i- it was- it became famous because there were ... it was one of the first games to have an almost infinite number of planets that you could play as well.

Joe Rogan 22:39 Oh, is this the game where it just creates a universe?

Rizwan Virk 22:42 Yeah, just-

Joe Rogan 22:43 Yeah, we have-

Rizwan Virk 22:43 It just-

Joe Rogan 22:43 It's kind of boring, I heard.

Rizwan Virk 22:44 Yeah, it was kind of boring at first. I mean, I haven't played it in a while. I just kind of looked at it. But it procedurally generates everything for you. 'Cause there's no way a- a team of- Like, I was in the video game industry, right? There's no way a team could create 18 quintillion worlds, and it turns out that's exactly the number of worlds they have in that game, because that is, what, 64 bits. That's the biggest number you can get, uh, if you use 64 bits.

Joe Rogan 23:09 All right.

Rizwan Virk 23:10 Okay, so come back to exponen- that's exponential growth.

Joe Rogan 23:13 Okay.

Rizwan Virk 23:13 It's just too big. And so with a- with a quantum computer, theoretically, and these are pretty new right now, right? Amazon has one, Microsoft has one, IBM has one that you can actually program online. Google has their own. Everyone's trying to figure out how to make these qubits stable and work. But the basic idea, and I- I- I don't know what number we're up to. For a while, it was like you could only have four bits, qubits. Kind of like going back to the old, you know, when we were young, the, you know, the- the Apple II or whatever came out, and, uh, before that there were these, you know, small eight-bit processor based, uh, kits that people would assemble. And they just couldn't have a lot of data 'cause they just didn't- couldn't keep track of that many bits. And that's where quantum computers are today. But the idea is if you can have 64 qubits, you can instantaneously solve a problem that is exponential because you can explore all of those at the same time, and then when you measure the result, uh, i- it's all ... Now, nobody knows exactly how this works, but the two explanations ... Okay, coming back, sorry, I know I'm kind of-

Joe Rogan 24:20 That's okay.

Rizwan Virk 24:20 ... wandering a bit. Coming back to Schrödinger's cat, we say there's two possibilities, right? So with 64 qubits, there's two to the 64th possibilities if they're all in superposition. They have all the possible values of it. Um, and- and so basically when you measure that-... it brings it back. And so physicists call this the collapse of the probability wave. So there's a probability of all these possibilities and then it comes down to one. And that's sort of the best... uh, o- one of the accepted ways that people think this whole thing works. Uh, but nobody totally knows. So another guy who was John Wheeler's grad student in, in, at Princeton came up with another idea. And we've heard about this idea from the superhero movies, right? (laughs) And this is the multiverse idea, right?

Joe Rogan 25:09 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 25:10 And so basically he said that if you've got Schrodinger's cat, what happens is you're splitting the universe into two different universes. In one of them, the cat is alive, and in another one, the cat is dead, right? So that's the multiverse idea is that when we measure it, we only see one of those two because we're in this universe. But if we happen to be in this other universe, the cat would've been dead, right? The cat is alive here. And so that creates a whole series of possibilities when you th- uh, and which are being used now in, in superhero stories all the time.

Joe Rogan 25:44 Right.

Rizwan Virk 25:44 Right? You've got your different versions of Batman, your different-

Joe Rogan 25:46 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 25:46 ... versions of Superman.

Joe Rogan 25:48 Spider-Man. Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 25:49 Spi- yeah. The famous Spider-Man meme where you have-

Joe Rogan 25:52 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 25:52 ... like the, the Spider-Men all kind of pointing at each other.

Joe Rogan 25:55 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 25:55 Right? And they have the different actors. Uh, so that idea has started to catch on now. Uh, it, it's what I like to call it's past the 10-year-old test, right? And, and the 10-year-old test is when a scientific idea gets out there so much that even 10-year-olds can kind of understand it because of superhero movies or because-

Joe Rogan 26:14 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 26:14 ... like, like in the 1930s, uh, when people, they were trying to explain, uh, Superman, like how does Superman get his powers? You say, "Oh, he came from another planet," right? "He came from a planet called Krypton." Right?

Joe Rogan 26:25 Right.

Rizwan Virk 26:25 So even a 10-year-old in the 1930s could have understood that. But in the 1730s, like you couldn't say that. No one would know what the heck you're talking about. Right?

Joe Rogan 26:34 Right.

Rizwan Virk 26:34 Right? And so that idea kind of diffused through society. And so that's happening now with the multiverse idea too. It's kind of diffusing, you know, through society in, in this way, through popular culture, you know, and, and, and media narratives and stuff. Uh, so that's the other explanation for how all this weirdness, quantum weirdness works, which is it's the multiverse. Uh, and so people said, "How can a quantum computer theoretically solve a problem that would take thousands of years for a regular computer to solve?" And one explanation, a guy named David Deutsch out at Oxford says, "Well, because it's looking at all the possible values of the bits, there's that many different universes, right?" And it's computing in all of those universes instantaneously, and then it's bringing back the value that you want at the end. And, and that becomes your answer. Um, so I, I think we've gotten a little bit, uh, away from your, the original question. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:32 (laughs) Uh, uh, it seems like that's inevitable-

Rizwan Virk 27:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:34 ... with this subject.

Rizwan Virk 27:35 (laughs) Yeah. This subject does tend to take you down, you know, many, many different rabbit holes.

Joe Rogan 27:41 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 27:41 Um, and I think your original question was about memory, right? And how do we know (laughs) that the-

Joe Rogan 27:48 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 27:48 ... memory is... So the reason I went down this, this rabbit hole on the, the quantum physics stuff and the multiverse, which by the way, that's the subject of the... I wrote a whole second book on simulation theory just for that, which is the simulated multiverse. Because, uh, the reason scientists like this multiverse idea is that mathematically you can figure out how the equations work in all these different worlds, you know? Uh, whereas with the, the, the first idea, which is the Copenhagen interpretation, you have, uh, you have all these possibilities, you have a probability wave, and then suddenly you're down to one. And nobody can explain that mathematically. Nobody can say, "How does the collapse occur?" Like there's no little equation you can pop into there. And so that's why it's called the observer effect and it's considered a big mystery. Like is it the act of observation? Is it the act of measurement, right? So all these physicists are debating with each other, right?

Joe Rogan 28:41 Right.

Rizwan Virk 28:41 And s- so they don't like the Copenhagen interpretation because it seems to rely on consciousness or some kind of an observer and scientists kind of hate that, right?

Joe Rogan 28:49 Right.

Rizwan Virk 28:49 They hate to talk about consciousness being real. And we'll get into the whole religious aspects of the simulation hypothesis, uh, in, in a little bit. Uh, so they're like, "Well, this one's nice because it's... the mathematics all work." The multiverse idea.

Joe Rogan 29:00 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 29:01 But the problem with the multiverse idea is that it's not what scientists like to call parsimonious, which means that what's happening is there's a new universe splitting off like all the time, right? Every time there's a quantum, and we're talking about quantum decisions, right? We're n- we're not really talking about big things like cats. We're talking about little decisions that occur within a nanosecond, right?

Joe Rogan 29:22 Right.

Rizwan Virk 29:23 And so every time there's a decision, you're splitting off to new... a new physical universe. So think about now we're talking exponential growth but on steroids, right?

Joe Rogan 29:33 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 29:33 Because it's just infinite. It just keeps going, right? And that's a... that's kind of a weird concept that there would be so many physical universes being created. And so, you know, where I came out on this subject is, well, guess what? The simulation hypothesis gives you a way to look at both of these, a framework that makes it make sense, right? (laughs) I mean, this is what people say when they look at quantum mechanics. They say, "Make it make sense." Right?

Joe Rogan 30:01 Right.

Rizwan Virk 30:01 Because the cat should be alive or dead. How can it be both, right? And so when you think of information, uh, and you think of the simulation idea, the core of it is that the world is not physical. Okay? This table seems pretty physical, right?

Joe Rogan 30:17 Right.

Rizwan Virk 30:18 But if you go and you look inside, it's mostly empty space, uh, something like 90 some percent, maybe 99%. And then you go to the atoms and you look inside those and it's mostly empty space, right? I mean, there's these electron clouds and stuff, but-

Joe Rogan 30:33 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 30:33 ... except for the, the, the nucleus, it's mostly empty space. And the problem is like these Russian dolls, if you keep looking inside, they keep looking for this thing called physical matter.... and they can't find it. Like, it's not really there. It's like, you go to the, the very smallest of the Russian dolls and the only thing they can find is information, right? And so, John Wheeler, who I talked about earlier, you know, he plays a, an outsized role in, in, in at least my explorations of simulation theory, he came up with a phrase. And his phrase was, "It from bit." So if there's something that's an it, physical object like this cup or this table, that if you just keep, keep looking down, you have a microscope that just keeps going down, he goes, "In the end, the only thing you find are particles." But what the heck are particles? He said, "Well, the only thing that particles really are is a series of answers to yes-no questions." So it's like, does the particle spin up, does it spin down? Uh, it's got, like, you know, various different polarities and, and things. But so he said, "In the end, the only thing you have are bits of information," because that's a bit, right? Every single decision is a bit, yes or no, one or zero. Uh, that's like the fundamental unit of computation, and that's how we, you know, like I said, stream video, everything else. Uh, and so he, he said, "Everything that's an it is actually from bits of information." Um, and there's a whole new, uh, there's a whole new kind of, uh, field within physics which is called digital physics, right? So in the past, you know, physics was about physical objects moving around. And so digital physics is about information, like what happens to information in the universe. Does it get destroyed in a black hole? Does it get created? So you have... Instead of conservation of momentum and, you know, conservation of energy, you have conversation of information. So it's like a different way of looking at the physical world. Uh, you look at it as a computation rather than looking at it as physical objects moving around like in classical physics.

Joe Rogan 32:44 Right.

Rizwan Virk 32:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:45 The problem is, like, we do live in a physical world as far as we can tell. But then if you measure the actual things in the physical world, then you get to this weirdness.

Rizwan Virk 33:02 Right, exactly. You get to this weirdness down at the bottom level.

Joe Rogan 33:04 The very core of it all, like what is, what is going on as far as we can measure? So...

Rizwan Virk 33:10 Right. And there's a limit. Like, we can only measure up to the smallest unit-

Joe Rogan 33:15 Right.

Rizwan Virk 33:15 ... which is called, like, the planck.

Joe Rogan 33:17 But as we go deeper, we get less answers and it gets more weird.

Rizwan Virk 33:21 It gets more weird and it starts to look less like the physical world exists and more like it's a bunch of information that gets rendered as we observe the world or as groups of people observe the world.

Joe Rogan 33:36 Have you ever taken this back as far as you can and, like, tried to figure out, like, what created this?

Rizwan Virk 33:42 Well-

Joe Rogan 33:42 Or what possibilities could have created this, or was there ever a physical world?

Rizwan Virk 33:47 W- Well, that's a good question. So where I ended up with this was looking at how the world gets rendered as you observe it. Like for me, my background is, as I said, a computer scientist and a video game designer and developer. Um, is that that's pretty much how we render video games, right?

Joe Rogan 34:04 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 34:04 So if you and I are in the s- our avatars are in the same field, uh, or the same room about to shoot each other in a video game, we're not really in the same room, are we?

Joe Rogan 34:14 Right.

Rizwan Virk 34:15 You're rendering it on your screen and I'm rendering it on my screen.

Joe Rogan 34:21 Right.

Rizwan Virk 34:21 Right? And so there's information that's coming from the server and then what happens is we render only the part that we can see, right? Only that, that view around your avatar. You could be first person point of view or you could be kind of-

Joe Rogan 34:37 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 34:37 ... hovering over your character, or like many video games do that these days, uh, like a kind of third person or second-

Joe Rogan 34:43 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 34:43 ... person point of view. But the only pixels you need to render on my computer are the ones that my avatar can see and the only ones you need to render on your computer are the ones your avatar can see, and those get cached on the server, and so they get sent out. And so it's, it's an optimization technique, right? There's no way... In the 1980s, like when I was growing up, we had, you know, the Apple II computers or whatever. Uh, there's no way you could render like a, a full 3D, you know, world or a full 3D game like, like we play today. And so what happened was we learned... Not only did the computers get faster but we learned optimization techniques. So everything in computer science comes down to optimization usually. Like, physicists are happy just saying, "Yeah, it's infinite," but without really wondering what the heck that means. But with computer science, you only have limited resources typically and so you need to figure out how to compute something, uh, with those limited resources. And so video game rendering, to me, is a case of optimizing so that it looks like there's a shared physical world but there really isn't, right? Because it's being rendered on each of our, our own computer.

Joe Rogan 35:51 Right.

Rizwan Virk 35:51 And so... But the rule is only render that which you can see. Now, when I started to look at this weirdness in quantum mechanics, which is saying render only that which is observed or measured depending on how you look at it, but even if you measure it, somebody's gotta look at that measurement before you know it was actually measured, right? So it's the same kind of thing going on. In my opinion, quantum mechanics, uh, it ends up being a optimization technique for rendering of the physical world, uh, from the information that lives below. So that's kind of the one big implication of simulation theory that, that I think is very important. And actually, the idea that the universe is information is not that controversial. So just... I was in London this summer over at, uh, the Cambridge University, spending a little bit of time doing some AI research, and I ran into this Nobel, uh, Prize winner, physicist from like the '70s and so, uh, we were talking simulation theory of course. And, uh, you know, I said, "Well, one of the key assumptions here is that the world is information." And he said, "Yeah, that's not controversial in physics at all anymore." Like it might have been once upon a time, uh, but then the second part, the second assumption that comes up in simulation theory is that...... the world is rendered like a video game and that the world is a hoax. It's some kind of a hoax. Like it's not really real. All right, that's the other assumption that physicists don't necessarily agree with, but that's the other part of simulation theory.

Joe Rogan 37:20 What's the argument against it?

Rizwan Virk 37:22 Uh, against simulation theory?

Joe Rogan 37:23 Against the ph- like that it doesn't physically exist-

Rizwan Virk 37:28 Uh-

Joe Rogan 37:28 ... if they disagree?

Rizwan Virk 37:29 Well, they don't disagree necessarily that it doesn't physically exist. They just disagree that on how does it that it- this thing that does- that is information gets rendered for us, right?

Joe Rogan 37:39 Right.

Rizwan Virk 37:39 It's like we're talking different languages for them, right?

Joe Rogan 37:42 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 37:42 Even though quantum mechanics is telling us all this weird stuff, they're still, I think, often taking a classical view, classical mechanical view of the world of physical objects moving around and that's all it is, right? Um, so, you know, there's arguments that people make against the idea that we live in a simulation, and the first is, you know, the same argument that, you know... There was a famous guy, uh, named Bishop Berkeley. The City of Berkeley is named after him, right? Uh, Geor- I think it was George Berkeley or s- he was, he was a bishop in, uh, the UK, and he came up with this idea of idealism, you know, this philosophical idea that the world doesn't really exist. It's only in the mind. And, uh, there was this other guy, I think it was Johnson, uh, you know, who said, "How do you refute that?" And he kicks a rock and he goes, "That's how I refute it. See, it's physical." (laughs) "It's there," right?

Joe Rogan 38:31 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 38:31 And so that's, you know, the first common sense way people try to refute the idea. But of course, that's not what the physicists are saying. The physicists are the one telling us that the world doesn't really exist, that it consists of information and spacetime gets constructed out of that information, right? So that's, that's like one of the biggest, I, I think issues that, uh... Another way that people try to, try to push back on the idea of simulation theory is they say, "Well, it's not really falsifiable," right? So I can't design an experiment that proves we are not in a simulation. Um, so this touches on the boundary issues of science, like where does science end, right? And where does philosophy begin? Where does metaphysics begin? Where does religion begin? And those lines are actually fuzzier than you might think, right? Because there's been a debate over that for a long time now, for hundreds of years, about wha- what is scientific and what isn't, right? And things like, you know, UFOs and paranormal phenomena and all this stuff, you know, gets kind of pushed out beyond that boundary. Um, but so one definition that, uh, a guy named Popper came up with was, uh, if it's not falsifiable, it's not scientific, right? Meaning if you can't prove that it's false. The problem with that is there are lots of things that we can't prove that they're false, but we can find some evidence that these things actually, you know, happen or that these things exist. Like a couple hundred years ago, there were stories of rocks falling from the sky and all the scientists like in Paris said, "Oh, those, that's just bullshit," right? "That's just a bunch of peasants out in the countryside." (laughs) Uh, "We know there's no rocks falling from the sky." Why? 'Cause we know there's no rocks in the sky. Our, our science tells us.

Joe Rogan 40:22 Right.

Rizwan Virk 40:22 There's no rocks up there, so how the hell could they be falling from the sky? So that's kind of an, a not really a falsifiable thing. How can you prove there's no rocks in the sky, right? You really can't. But you can prove, and eventually they did because they got a whole... There was some huge meteor storm in, uh, you know, outside of Paris, and some guys went out to investigate and there were thousands of witnesses that saw this thing. And then eventually, you know, they looked at some of the artifacts, some of the physical evidence, and then eventually they changed their model, their cosmological model about the universe. And so I think it's the same thing with simulation theory. Even j- even though you can't prove we're not in a simulation because the simulation could be so good, li- you know, like the Matrix was pretty convincing at first, right? Um, but the simulation could be so good that you can't necessarily tell, but at the same time you can design experiments which might indicate to you that there's something going on like this video game rendering idea. Uh, and there are folks out there, you know, trying to, trying to run experiments to try to, uh, to try to show, uh, that this is really what's happening with quantum mechanics is that like a video game, this whole world is being rendered for us. Um, you know, information being rendered just like a video game.

Joe Rogan 41:41 And the effect that consciousness has on this world, so consciousness is the, the thing that we're using to measure or the thing that we're using to interact with whatever possibilities exist.

Rizwan Virk 42:00 Right. And so that in the RPG version, right? This is why I like to make the distinction-

Joe Rogan 42:06 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 42:06 ... between the RPG version and the NPC version, so in the RPG version, we are plugged in, right? Like Neo in the back of the head or with a virtual reality headset or some technology yet to be developed, right? Uh, and so when you play a video game, right, it's not enough that the pixels are there. I mean, you, you basically are watching that game, right?

Joe Rogan 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 42:30 As the player. And when you're not watching, what happens? You just turn it off, right? You turn off your computer. What happens? Well, there's still the information going on on the server. Maybe other people are playing, right? But it doesn't need to render it at that point. It's just a server can keep track of where everything is. It's what we did when we created video games. We would, you know, send down information. Um, and in fact, you can then turn around and do something very interesting. Like if you're a level 30 player, right? Uh, and I'm a level two player, our avatars could be standing right next to each other and one could see the dragon and one might not be able to see the dragon because maybe we don't have that ability in the game. We're not at a high enough level. But the server logic is deciding that.

Joe Rogan 43:13 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 43:13 So consciousness then becomes the player in that model of simulation theory, uh, and it renders the world for us. And it turns out-... that is very similar to what the world's religions have been telling us, right? Not just one or two of the world's religions. Like, when I wrote my book, The Simulation Hypothesis, I- I- I gave it a subtitle of Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics Agree We're in a Video Game. And I was thinking primarily of the Eastern mystics, like, you know, in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and the yogis. And they talk about the term Maya, and most, most people have probably heard that term, and Karma, and all these different terms. But Maya means illusion, right? That's how it gets translated. It's like an ancient Sanskrit word. And so, uh, uh, these mystics are telling us that the world isn't really real, it's a kind of illusion. Uh, but if you really look at the definition of that word, "Maya," it means something more like a carefully crafted illusion, right? It's almost like if you go to a magic show, and you, you know the guy's not really sawing that woman in half, okay? (laughs) But you kind of agree to suspend your disbelief, because that's what makes the whole thing fun, right? Watching a magic show or watching special effects, you know, you know Blade Runner 2049, the car is not really flying. Those are just CGI, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:42 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 44:42 But we agree to that, to a certain extent, as we go into that world and we become immersed in that world. And so what, you know, the mystics in the Eastern traditions have been telling us is, that we agree to basically go into this illusory world in order to have these experiences, right? Sometimes people say, "Well, what's the purpose of the simulation?" And I say, "Well, why do you play video games?" Right? Now, why do you play video games?

Joe Rogan 45:10 Fun.

Rizwan Virk 45:11 Fun is one. Two is to try to have experiences that you probably can't have-

Joe Rogan 45:16 Right.

Rizwan Virk 45:16 ... outside of the game. Like, even Grand Theft Auto, right?

Joe Rogan 45:18 Sure.

Rizwan Virk 45:18 You're not gonna go out there and do all that crazy stuff in the real world. Well, some people might, but, right? Most people wouldn't. And you're not gonna, I can't fly on a dragon and kill orcs. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:26 Right.

Rizwan Virk 45:27 As much as I might want to.

Joe Rogan 45:27 Especially with no real world consequences.

Rizwan Virk 45:30 Right, right. With no real world, exactly. So, that's one of the reasons why, but there are consequences within the game, right?

Joe Rogan 45:36 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 45:37 Uh, and for the characters in the game, right? For the NPCs that you're killing, right? Those are all real consequences within the game, but f- when you look at it from outside the game. And so, like, the Eastern mystics have been telling us this, and turns out in the Judeo-Christian Islamic traditions, right? The Abrahamic religions, they've also been telling us this. Uh, that the world is Maya, and they use metaphors back then, right? So, you know, all these religions came about a couple of thousand years ago, and so they had to use metaphors that were understood by the people back then, right? And so they, they used whatever met- the metaphor of the dream was, was a key metaphor. That the world is like a dream or that the soul puts on the body like a set of clothes, and that when you die, you take off these clothes, and then you're back to the soul, whatever that happens to be. They don't really define- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:34 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 46:34 ... what that is. In fact, they used the exact same metaphor, like in the Bhagavad Gita, they used this clothing metaphor. And then Rumi, who's become popular in the West, and was a, a, was an Islamic Sufi, um, y- you know, a poet, but also a mystic. He used the exact same phrase, right? He said, "You put on the body, you put like a, like a series of clothes." And so they used that metaphor to try to describe something which is the second part of the idea of the simulation hypothesis. The first idea was the world is information that gets rendered, and the second part is the world is some kind of a hoax that we are a part of, uh, for whatever reason. And so, uh, in, in the, in the traditions, over time, they've tried to update these metaphors. Um, and they've tried to use new technology to describe the metaphors, because that's how we can, as modern people, we can understand it. So, about 100 years ago, there was a guy named Swami Yogananda. He came over from India. He was, like, one of the first Indian yogi swamis to really live in the US, and he wrote a book called Autobiography of a Yogi. I don't know if you ever read it, but you-

Joe Rogan 47:39 Yes, I read it. Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 47:39 Oh, you read it. Oh, great.

Joe Rogan 47:40 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 47:41 Yeah. In the '60s, it was, like, the book, one of those books that everybody passed around.

Joe Rogan 47:44 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 47:45 Uh, and Steve Jobs, you know, it was his favorite book. At his funeral, he gave everybody... Or his memorial service, he gave everybody a little brown box. They went home and opened the box, and they found a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi in there. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:57 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 47:57 Um, but so, Yogananda came over about 100 years ago, and he tried to update this old metaphor. And what was new technology back in the 1920s? It was movies, movie projectors, where... He said, "The world is like a movie projector." Right? You're playing these parts, the actors are playing the parts on the screen, and things are happening to them. But really, the actors aren't necessarily dying, it's the characters that are suffering, you know, within the game, within the movie itself. And so he used that metaphor as a way to try to explain this, this ancient religious idea that's at the core of every single religion, which is that the world, as we see it, is not really real, and there's a real or "real world" beyond this world.

Joe Rogan 48:44 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 48:45 And so he updated the metaphor to use movie projectors. Uh, a- and, you know, if you've ever been... And we've all been in movie theaters, if you look away from the, the screen, you know, you can kind of see the flickering of the light, (laughs) right? Uh, and you can kind of see everybody so engrossed in it that they're not looking around, they don't know what's going on other than-

Joe Rogan 49:02 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 49:02 ... you know, maybe, uh, having some popcorn or something.And so, today, I think we need to update those metaphors, right? Particularly for a younger generation who spent, like, as much of their time in, you know, things like Fortnite or Roblox when they were younger a- as avatars. If we use the, the metaphor of a massively multiplayer online game, and I think Yogananda, if he were alive today... In fact, my, my latest book, which I wrote after the simulation books, uh, because it was the 75th anniversary of, uh, Autobiography of a Yogi a couple years ago, and, uh, Harper Collins India asked me to write this book about, you know, what can you learn from Autobiography of a Yogi, and there's all these weird stories in there of, like, you know, some guy materializing a palace in the Himalayas out of nowhere, right? You've got levitating saints. You've got guys bilocating, disappearing, all kinds of crazy shit going on.

Joe Rogan 49:51 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 49:51 Right? A- and I said, "Well, you sure you want me to write this book? You know, I'm an entrepreneur and (laughs) and a computer scientist." They said, "Yeah, because we want you to use your technology metaphors like the simulation hypothesis to explain this stuff." And so, if Yogananda were alive today, and I wrote this in my, my new book called Wisdom of a Yogi, I would... What he would say is, "It's like a movie, but we're the actors and we're also the audience. And we have a script, and we're kind of playing the script, but we can change the script if we want." Uh, what does that sound like? It sounds like a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, you know?

Joe Rogan 50:27 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 50:28 So, I think that, that metaphor is a great way to try to explain this idea of the soul and the body, you know, within the religious traditions. That's the RPG version of the simulation hypothesis.

Joe Rogan 50:41 And how do you go through life with this information? Does this, does this information affect the way you feel about things on a day-to-day basis? Like, if you have these theories and you have this concept in your mind of the, the true nature of the universe, of reality itself-

Rizwan Virk 51:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:03 ... how, how does that work with the p- the physical carbon tissue, you know? How do you, how do you, how do you deal with that?

Rizwan Virk 51:15 Well, so the way that I like to think of it, um, and, you know, originally, I was just kind of putting these concepts together-

Joe Rogan 51:21 You seem very happy. Like this, this seems like something that would freak people out to the point where they would kind of get, like, so much existential angst and it's so bizarre-

Rizwan Virk 51:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:31 ... that it would be hard to just, like, be present, but you seem very present.

Rizwan Virk 51:38 O- Right, because it gets back to how you think about if it's an NPC game, it would freak people out, right?

Joe Rogan 51:45 Right.

Rizwan Virk 51:45 We're just N- this is, like, the materialist kind of view of the world-

Joe Rogan 51:48 Right, right.

Rizwan Virk 51:48 ... which is while the computer's on, you're here. Computer gets shut off, excuse me, everybody's gone. But in the RPG version, it's a little bit different, right? So, when you, when you play a game, uh, you know, when I was a kid, we used to play Dungeons and Dragons when I was a teenager-

Joe Rogan 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 52:05 ... and, and you have a character sheet. And you'd like roll your dice, and you'd say that I'm gonna be an elf or I'm gonna be a human, and my occupation is a wizard or a barbarian, right? And then you roll the dice and you get all these, like, different attributes, like charisma, intelligence, whatever, right? Whatever they were. I don't even remember all, all of them now, right? Dexterity-

Joe Rogan 52:25 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 52:25 All of these things that help you in some way. And it's like you're choosing to play this game in this illusory world, and I believe that this is similar to what happens to us when we come into this world if in the RPG version, right? That we end up choosing a character with a set of parents, right? And a set of strengths and weaknesses, and more than that, like, a storyline, things that we might want to do, and we're free when we play the game, we're fully free to make different choices if we want within the game. But you've got kind of these challenges or quests, right? What makes a video game interesting or fun? So, there's a guy who was the founder of Atari, I don't know if you ever met him, Nolan Bushnell. Uh, but he was pretty much the, the, the grandfather of the video game industry. You know, he created Pong, you know, back in the day, and then created Atari. And, and he, he said there was a rule for how to make a game interesting. He said, "Make it easy to play, but difficult to master," right?

Joe Rogan 53:27 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 53:27 Because i- if it's not easy to play, people are gonna just throw it away. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:31 Right.

Rizwan Virk 53:31 They're gonna play... But if it's easy to master, they're gonna play for a little while and then they're gonna go.

Joe Rogan 53:35 Right.

Rizwan Virk 53:35 Right? But if you make it easy to play, but difficult to master, that keeps people playing the game. And so I think if you take this view, you can view the whole y- the whole world, particularly your life and your story, as a series of quests and challenges. Things that come up for you that you may or may not be able to, uh, you know, achieve the first time around. Because we have difficulty levels, don't we, in games?

Joe Rogan 54:03 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 54:04 Right? Some people have an easier (laughs) ... You know, they want to play the game where life's easy. Other people want to play the game where life is really tough. Uh, like actors, when do they win Academy Awards, right?

Joe Rogan 54:15 Tough roles.

Rizwan Virk 54:16 Yeah, exactly. Tough roles-

Joe Rogan 54:17 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 54:17 ... right? The, the ones that really suffer typically too.

Joe Rogan 54:19 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 54:20 Right? And, uh, you know, um, Swami Yogananda and a lot of the Eastern mystics will, you know, say that suffering is the nature of this world, right? (laughs) That's why we're here is to experience this. Uh, but even in the, in the Western traditions, there's a similar idea. So, I started to look up, you know, different traditions in, in, in Isla- in Islam. In the Quran, there's like a whole series of verses and they say, "We have set up this world as a pastime, as a game for you, as a sport." You know? This world is really, uh, they use this Arabic word, uh, el garouri, which means an, a delusion, but it means like an enjoyable delusion sort of. Uh, enjoyable in quotes because it depends on what you enjoy, right? Like, getting in and, and playing a real t- tough role may be what you enjoy, but that's not fun for the character to go through all that crap that they have to go through, right? And so I think we can view the world as a series of, of quests and challenges. Now-... the

Rizwan Virk 55:20 next question is, "Well, what's the nature of the game?" Right? I don't believe the game is Grand Theft Auto. That's not the type of game we're playing. So, I think we can turn to, you know, people that have died, near-death experiencers. I don't know if you had any on your show, you may have o- over the years. Um, but there was a guy named Dannion Brinkley, uh, who wrote a book called Saved by the Light, uh, back in the '90s. Uh, he got struck by lightning, and this was how I first heard about this thing which is called the "life review." And they... You know, a lot of near-death experiencers, they have... They report, you know, these series of stages of things that happen to them, like they're floating above their body, they go through a tunnel of light, we- we've heard all of this. But, uh, the most important part for me in- in these stories... And you have them of thousands of people, right? You can just go out on YouTube and listen to (laughs) , listen to any of these near-death experiencers. But what- what Dannion called this- this thing, he called the "life review," uh, was he called it a holographic panoramic review of your life. And- and what that means... And other near-death experiencers reported this, maybe about 20% of them. That you go through every single moment that you ever lived in, like, this virtual reality, you know, three-dimensional panorama. But you see it from the point of view of everybody else, right? So if you were mean to someone, if you stabbed someone... Or in Dannion's case, he was in Special Forces in Vietnam, and he actually killed people. Uh, he said he had to experience what it was like to, you know, get the bullet, and then more than that, experience what happened after that guy died, his wife... You know, the guy who died, his wife and children, what kind of suffering they experienced. So it's like you're- you're reviewing, like after a football game, right? Or after a match.

Joe Rogan 57:07 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 57:08 You might sit there and review on the screen what happened.

Joe Rogan 57:10 Right.

Rizwan Virk 57:11 Except this screen is like, you know, fully immersive, the best VR you could ever have. It's like you're reliving the moment.

Joe Rogan 57:19 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 57:19 Um, so a couple years ago, I was involved with a startup in- in Silicon Valley and we took a game like League of Legends. You've probably heard of League of Legends.

Joe Rogan 57:28 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 57:28 It's like the most popular, at least it was, eSports game, right? And you've got all these guys on a field, but pretty much you play on a 2D screen, right? So, we made it so you could replay the game, but you would put on a virtual reality headset and it would seem like you were on, you know, on the field in League of Legends. And you could replay, uh, from any point of view. Same with Cro- Counter-Strike Global Offensive, is the one that, you know, I- I was thinking of. Because e- in that game, you're... It's a first-person shooter, so you're like shooting people.

Joe Rogan 57:59 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 58:00 And so literally, you could go back and replay that game from the point of view of the person you shot, right? And so w- when I was experiencing this it- it was reminding me of, you know, all these- these things these near-death experiencers have been telling us about this life review. And as- as an engineer and computer scientist my question is always, "Well, how does that work?" I mean, if you could replay every single moment in your life, even the moments when you weren't there-

Joe Rogan 58:28 Right.

Rizwan Virk 58:29 ... including like what happened to this guy's wife and what happened to their children, somebody has to record all that stuff, right? 'Cause how are you gonna replay it-

Joe Rogan 58:37 Right.

Rizwan Virk 58:38 ... if it's not being recorded? So, you know, perhaps, you know, this whole game is being recorded just like we do, um, in fact on YouTube. You know, the most popular content, other than the Joe Rogan Experiences (laughs) , is video games content.

Joe Rogan 58:51 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 58:51 It's like they're replay... I remember my nephew, uh, when he was like three years old, like before he was even going to school, he would say to his father and my brother, "I wanna watch Star Wars." And my brother was like, "You wanna watch the movie?" "No, I wanna watch that man and that woman play the Star Wars game on YouTube," (laughs) . Right? It was like he was just watching them replay-

Joe Rogan 59:10 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 59:10 ... a recording of the video game on YouTube. And so this life review thing, which is at- at the crux of near-death experiences, I think gives us a clue, and an interesting clue, which ties back to your question to me, which is how do you go... You know, how do you live with this stuff? And I say, "Well, what if all of this is being recorded and you're making choices, and you're gonna have to review it afterwards?" Right?

Joe Rogan 59:36 Like the concept of when you die.

Rizwan Virk 59:39 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 59:40 That Saint Peter reviews your life.

Rizwan Virk 59:43 That's right. So in the Christian traditions you have Saint Peter, you have the Book of Life, right?

Joe Rogan 59:47 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 59:47 Which, you know, theoretically, depending on who you ask, the recording angel has written down, you know, whether you get into heaven or not-

Joe Rogan 59:54 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 59:54 ... by reviewing your life. Well, it turns out in the Islamic traditions, they get much more explicit about what that is. They call it The Scroll of Deeds. Okay, now of course remember, 2,000 years ago they had to call it something people would understand.

Joe Rogan 1:00:07 Uh-huh.

Rizwan Virk 1:00:08 The Scroll of Deeds, there's two angels. And you've probably seen like, you know, in the movies, in the animated movies they'll have like a, the angel and the devil.

Joe Rogan 1:00:15 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:00:15 That comes out of the Islamic traditions (laughs) , right? And so there's these two angels, uh, uh, they're called the Kiraman Kitabin and they're sitting down and writing down... One's writing down all your good deeds, and one's writing down all your bad deeds. And what- what it says in the tradition... And- and, you know, when I delve into these different traditions it's not so much to say, "Okay, this- this religion is right and that one isn't," but to say, "What's in common across all these religions?" Because that- that part is probably right (laughs) , if these guys are coming to that independently. All the other stuff, maybe. You know, I- I won't st- you know, I- I won't criticize for you believing the other stuff, that's up to you. But that stuff is probably at the core of this thing called life and what happens after life. And so what- what it says in the Islamic traditions is your book will be laid open for you after you die, and you will be the reckoner, right? So we think of Judgment Day and we think of all this stuff-

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:01:08 ... but what it's actually saying... Now they're- that's a metaphor, it doesn't mean there's like angels with a feather pen writing down (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 1:01:15 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:01:15 ... in Chinese, you know, "This is what happened this day," or in Arabic.The only thing that makes sense is you would basically just record the entire 3D scene and you would play it back for yourself, which is exactly what near-death experiencers describe when they talk about the life review. It's like this, they're sitting there, there's a screen, and then suddenly they get pulled into the screen and they replay all of this stuff. And there's usually an angel or they might call him God, or they might say it's Jesus, or they might say it's a being of light. You know, different experiencers say different things, but they say, "That guy doesn't judge you." You're looking at it saying, "Oh, crap," you know, "I, I was gonna try to be better person to my wife this time around and I wasn't," you know, and I did this or I did that, or my kids, or, you know. Uh, and they tell us that the moments that matter are the small moments in how you treat other people. Like, that's the thing you're most proud of or, or you're like, "Damn, I, I-"

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 1:02:10 "... treated that person in, in grade school, you know, we all made fun of her and I should've-"

Joe Rogan 1:02:13 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:02:14 "... like, been her friend." Like, those are the things that really matter.

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 Yes.

Rizwan Virk 1:02:18 So if that's the game, right, uh, you always think, what's the objective of the game, right?

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:02:23 Uh, and then I think it gives us a very different perspective, uh, and a way to think about life. So, so that's one, you know, kind of big answer for me. The other is, we go through lots of difficulties in life, right? We go through financial difficulties, go through health difficulties, right? Uh, and these can seem, uh, you know, pretty tough, but if we just think of them as a quest with a difficulty level, right, that's higher that we might have to get through, there might be some purpose to that. And that ties to the idea of karma, particularly within the Eastern traditions, right? Where if you think of karma as a s- most people think of karma as, "Hey, you shot me. I'm gonna shoot you in this life," right? That's a very simplistic view of karma. What karma is actually about is about your thoughts, your desires, and your actions which then create situations in the future, um, whether in this life or a future life. So of course, in the Eastern traditions you have the reincarnation idea, which you don't necessarily have in the, uh, in the Western traditions. Um, but that karma is about basically a list of information that follows you around from life to life, right? So you might have a different body in the next life, but that information is still there. Where does it live? You know, I'm from Silicon Valley, I like to say, "It's in the cloud," right?

Joe Rogan 1:03:48 (laughs)

Rizwan Virk 1:03:48 That, that's where we store all our information.

Joe Rogan 1:03:50 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 1:03:51 It's in a database in the cloud.

Joe Rogan 1:03:52 Which is also a bizarre thought-

Rizwan Virk 1:03:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 ... because it's not a cloud.

Rizwan Virk 1:03:56 Yeah, it's not really a cloud.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 Why are we even saying that?

Rizwan Virk 1:03:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 Why is that so ubiquitous, that term?

Rizwan Virk 1:04:00 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 It's such a stupid term.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:02 (laughs) This guy, the first time I heard it-

Joe Rogan 1:04:03 It's ta- the cloud?

Rizwan Virk 1:04:04 ... I was scratching my head.

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 Like what are you... What, what does that even mean?

Rizwan Virk 1:04:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 It's such a stupid way to describe something that's really complex and you could actually trace where it is.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:14 Right, exactly. And, and so I like to think of it as the reason we call it the cloud is because you don't know exactly where the server is, right? It could be one of a million servers-

Joe Rogan 1:04:24 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:24 ... somewhere out there.

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 Uh-huh.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:26 And, and Amazon has a huge warehouse, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:27 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:28 Which is AWS and all the servers are running there. Uh, so you don't... Uh, in the past, like, uh, I used to do software before the cloud, you would set up your own servers or you'd have your own data center and everything. You would say, "This is how many 386s we have." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:41 "This is how many..." Now it's like it's just out there somewhere, right? I don't know where the heck it is.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:46 It's, it's out there. And so I like to think of the cloud as, uh, i- in a video game we have the rendered world, right? So you're watching the video game, you can see the, the, the greenery and everything, but you also got all that other information there, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:04:58 Like you got the HUD, the heads-up display.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Uh-huh.

Rizwan Virk 1:05:01 You got your inventory, you got your level, you know, you got all this stuff. You got your list of quests. And so where is that information? It's not in the physical world.

Joe Rogan 1:05:09 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:05:10 But it's there somewhere, it's on a server somewhere. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:05:13 Uh, and so I like to think of karma as a kind of database of quests or achievements or experiences, you know, that we still need to have. Uh, and what happens is y- you know, this database just keeps getting bigger and bigger, uh, as we create more desires and, and situations and actions and things that we do with people. And then sometimes you have karma to resolve with somebody, right? There's the, there's the old, the old idea of you meet somebody, you, you feel like you've known them for a while, right? You're irresistibly drawn to someone and you don't know why-

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:05:46 ... to have some particular experience, whatever that experience is. Uh, and so, you know, within certain traditions they view that as perhaps when you were planning it, it's like a... I like to think of it as like a raid or a guild- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:05:59 ... in a video game, right? You say, "Okay, here's some other people, we're gonna do this together, you know, later on in some point while we're playing the game. We're gonna have this particular experience of being business partners or lovers or enemies or whatever the case, you know, whatever the situation is." Uh, but this idea that these experiences, you know, could be there for a reason, you know, when we have tough experiences, is I think something that can be comforting. Uh, I know it was for me, like when I went through certain health crises, for example, uh, that, you know, we are here to experience some of these things. And, and so if you look at karma more deeply, uh, there's a story from Autobiography of a Yogi that sounds unbelievable to, to people that I think is worth- (laughs) maybe just, you know, telling the story because people read that book and they say, "Did, did this guy just make this shit up?" Right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 (laughs)

Rizwan Virk 1:06:52 "Did this stuff really happen?" Right? Or "Is this from the Arabian Nights?" So there's a story of this guy named Babaji who supposedly lived for hundreds of years, uh, in the Himalayas, and supposedly he's still there. Okay, so that's pretty weird to begin with. But there's a story of, of Yogananda's guru's guru, a guy named Lahiri who went up into the mountains and, and meets this, this, this Babaji, right? And Babaji says, "Lahiri, you have found me finally. I've summoned you to me. I've been watching you your whole life and now I'm gonna re-initiate you. Don't you remember? You used to sit in this cave and you used to meditate with me and there's your blanket." And Lahiri is like, "I don't remember any of this stuff," right? (laughs) ... uh, he was like 30 years old. He's like, uh, "You know, I just called out- got called out here for some government, you know, position." And he says, "Well, we need to initiate you in this yoga technique and maybe you'll remember then." And so, he initiates him and he starts to remember all this stuff. And then he says, "Okay, we're gonna initiate you over there." And, and Lahiri looks and there's this golden palace that came out of nowhere, you know, right in the middle of the Himalayas. And he says, "We're gonna initiate you in this palace." And it just came from nowhere, right? And so, uh, you know, so Yogananda is talking about how... the dream nature of the world and how yogis can manipulate it. But then Lahiri says, "Well, one, how did you create this out of nothing? But two, why in this golden palace?" And so this kind of immortal figure in the story says, um, "Well, in a previous life, you expressed an interest, a real strong desire to live in a palace in a future life." Okay? "And so I've created this dream palace for you. It's not really real, but you're seeing it. Uh, in order to resolve that karma so that you don't have to go live a whole life in a palace. Like, that karma is done now. Take that off the database." So, I- I use that to kind of show that sometimes, uh, we put things into the database of karma based upon our strong desires, and that becomes part of our script in life, you know. Like, how did I know I wanted to be a computer programmer? I don't know. Right? Wh- why do some people want to become podcasters, right? Or fighters or comedians, right? It's like we have these things inside of us that sometimes feel they're, like, something we're just drawn to. Right?

Joe Rogan 1:09:06 Yeah.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:06 It's just something we're meant to do now. Uh, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that book, I think it's called Outliers-

Joe Rogan 1:09:10 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:10 ... where he says if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you become an expert. My question is more, what drives somebody to spend 10,000 hours doing this versus that? Right?

Joe Rogan 1:09:23 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:23 I mean, I have friends who are rock climbers. They've probably spent 10,000 hours climbing rocks. I'm like, "I- I don't have any desire to spend-"

Joe Rogan 1:09:30 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:30 "... 10,000 hours."

Joe Rogan 1:09:31 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:31 But I probably spent 10,000 hours programming when I was younger.

Joe Rogan 1:09:34 Sure.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:35 It was just something I was naturally drawn to, I was good at, right? And I feel like these are part of the quests or achievements, uh, that we have in life.

Joe Rogan 1:09:44 And I think the most interesting people that I've ever met have gone through quests. Rarely do I find interesting people that haven't experienced something difficult.

Rizwan Virk 1:09:54 Yeah. I mean, in fact, it was partly for me going through some difficulty that got me to write this book finally, because I've been thinking about it for years. So I ended up... You know, I was kind of at the height of my entrepreneurial career, had sold my video game company, the Japanese, to a Japanese company. I was at MIT running a startup program, uh, called Playlabs for video game companies. And then I ended up having, uh, heart issues and I ended up having to get heart surgery. Uh, which, I mean, if anybody's seen that, you can see it's, you know, pretty much the biggest cut (laughs) , one of the biggest cuts you can make. And, and they kept saying, "Oh yeah, a few months, you'll be fine," right? And what happened was after the heart surgery, I couldn't do anything for a while. I- I had this long recovery. It was probably the most difficult period in my life. And during that time, I would start to get better and I would try to jump back in the business world, right? Back into Silicon Valley, I was gonna raise this big VC fund and do all this stuff. And I would... my health would, like, deteriorate again. And-

Joe Rogan 1:10:54 From the pressure, the stress?

Rizwan Virk 1:10:56 You know, i- it's a good question, right?

Joe Rogan 1:10:58 Just the amount of energy that you need to do these things?

Rizwan Virk 1:11:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:00 And your body didn't use that energy to recover?

Rizwan Virk 1:11:03 I- it could be that, right? But what, what I found was that I did have enough energy, because every time I tried to do that, I'd end up back in the hospital for another procedure, right? It's no fun having heart procedures, let me tell you. Uh, but when I... I did have enough energy to do this other thing that I'd been wanting to do my whole life, which was to write more books. Uh, and so I had just enough energy to go to Starbucks and write, you know, work for an hour or two, uh, on the simulation hypothesis, which for me was a way to bring together all the threads of my life. Like, I'd been a computer scientist, I'd been a video game designer.

Joe Rogan 1:11:38 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:11:38 I spent a lot of time investigating different mystical traditions, shamanic stuff, um, you know, the without drugs, you know, more of the shamanic journey. So, and I spent time with people who have been inex- investigating UFOs and religious people and academics who are complete materialists and don't believe in any of this stuff. Uh, and it was a way to bring this all together. And suddenly, I found I had more energy-

Joe Rogan 1:12:00 Hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:12:00 ... when I did that. Right? Every time I tried to do something else, my health would, would start to deteriorate again. And so eventually, I got the message. So for the next couple of years, I just focused on writing, right? And that led to this book, The Simulation Hypothesis. And I feel like it was part of my life plan. If you had asked me in, in high school, "What are you going to do, eh, for your life?" I would have said, "I'm going to be a computer programmer or an entrepreneur or sell my company and become a writer." Right? But I always thought I was gonna do that, become a writer, when... in my 20s. When this happened, I was already 48. So I had already, like... I- I was still in Silicon Valley, right? Still playing the game.

Joe Rogan 1:12:38 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:12:39 Trying to build the next billion-dollar company, which is what everybody, you know, tries to do. The next unicorn, they call it, uh, in Silicon Valley. And it was like I got this message that there was another part of the story that I was neglecting. Like, I had written some books, but it was like a hobby. I was doing it on the side. And then when I focused on it, suddenly, it- it was like I got the message pretty clearly during that time. Uh, you know, and this is sort of a mystical experience. I was going in and out of consciousness a lot, a lot while I was recovering. And I would just get the message.... you know, "You're supposed to be writing. You're supposed to be writing. What the heck are you doing still out there trying to make money?"

Joe Rogan 1:13:17 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:13:17 (laughs) "That wasn't what we agreed to. This is what you were supposed to do," right? And when I did that, things just flowed-

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 Mm.

Rizwan Virk 1:13:25 ... much more easily, you know, and the book went on to, to be quite successful and I was able to write another book. And then, then as my health recovered, I, I realized there was another thing that I'd always wanted to do which was be, you know, a professor in academia, and that's kind of what I'm doing now. So I went back for a PhD after, after many years, and now I'm teaching classes on the simulation hypothesis, doing research on it, yeah. So it was like these things that I kind of wanted to do before and I never got to, but they were optional parts of the story. Uh, and we still have the, the ability to make choices. But sometimes a quest hits us, or, uh, a situation hits us with a lot of difficulty, and, and maybe there's a bigger purpose to that, right? Maybe it has something to do with, uh, how we set up our character in the game, and, and the choices that we're making. Um, and so now we're getting into, like, the personal philosophy side of simulation, which I think is, is quite valid. That's probably the second, you know... Probably the, the biggest questions I get asked are, "Are we in a simulation? What's the percentage?" And then, you know, "What would it matter-"

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:14:30 "... if we're in a simulation or not?" And I think it can be a positive, uh, experience. And for, I think, people who grow up in the modern world with modern technology, it gives us a way to say, "You know what? Maybe what all those religions were saying wasn't bullshit," right? "It wasn't just stories that people made up, but they just didn't have the language-"

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:14:51 "... to express something that, uh..." A lot of people who have had near-death experiences, they use the word ineffable, right, which means unable to be put into words.

Joe Rogan 1:15:00 Mm-hmm.

Rizwan Virk 1:15:01 And so you... They can't really tell you what's out there, but they use these metaphors to try to describe it. And so I think whether you view simulation theory as a, you know, hardcore physics thing, or you view it as a metaphor for what this world is all about and how we go through our lives, I think there's value in looking at both of those, uh, both of those angles. And, and the metaphor side is what I think... Actually, for me personally, that was your question, "How does this change the way that I, that I view the world?" It actually has changed the way that I view the world so that when I go through difficult situations, I kind of step back. They don't bother me as much. I mean, they still bother me physically, but they don't bother me as m- much in other ways.

Joe Rogan 1:15:43 So you view them as challenges in this thing that you're doing.

Rizwan Virk 1:15:49 E-

Joe Rogan 1:15:49 So instead of, "Woe is me. Oh my God, how is this happening to me?" Which is the way a lot of people interface with problems, you go, "Okay, this is the challenge that I'm presented with. How do I overcome this challenge, and what feels like the thing to do?"

Rizwan Virk 1:16:03 Right, and, and why this challenge now, right?

Joe Rogan 1:16:06 Right. Why this challenge now?

Rizwan Virk 1:16:07 I- if, if there's a part of me that's, like, outside watching this, right? Like, maybe when I go to sleep or wherever, whenever, why would it choose this particular challenge-

Joe Rogan 1:16:18 Right.

Rizwan Virk 1:16:18 ... at this point in my life? Wh- wh- what is it that, you know, it's