Joe Rogan Experience #2151 - Rizwan Virk

1. 0:00 – 1:24

   Opening riff: UFO fascination and academic UAP groups (Galileo & Sol)

   1. RVRizwan Virk0:00

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. RVRizwan Virk0:06

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

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Oh, cool. You know her?

   5. RVRizwan Virk0:15

      Yeah, I know her pretty well, actually.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Boy, her theories are very, very, very interesting.

   7. RVRizwan Virk0:21

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      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.

   9. RVRizwan Virk0:35

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       I fluctuate throughout the day. (laughs)

   11. RVRizwan Virk0:37

       Yeah. Well, we can talk about that. You know, I'm, I'm peripherally involved with-

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Jim, you're making noise over there.

   13. RVRizwan Virk0:43

       Huh? Uh...

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Shut your mic off.

   15. RVRizwan Virk0:44

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       Um, you're peripherally involved with-

   17. RVRizwan Virk0:47

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RVRizwan Virk0:57

       And Gary Nolan is running... You, you had Gary on your show, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       I have not, but I-

   21. RVRizwan Virk1:00

       You haven't. Okay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       ... I'm in communication with him.

   23. RVRizwan Virk1:02

       Okay.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       I talk to him quite a bit.

   25. RVRizwan Virk1:03

       Yeah. So I'm ma-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       I'm very fascinated by his work.

   27. RVRizwan Virk1:05

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

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:09

       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?

   29. RVRizwan Virk1:21

       Yeah, well, so first question, how did I get involved in this, right?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Okay.

2. 1:24 – 3:10

   How VR broke his intuition about “realness” and sparked simulation theory

   1. RVRizwan Virk1:24

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan3:01

      But what, where did that computer game, where did that simulation come from, if we are inside of it?

3. 3:10 – 4:47

   Two flavors of simulation: NPC world vs RPG world (avatars outside the game)

   1. RVRizwan Virk3:10

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan3:37

      Okay.

   3. RVRizwan Virk3:37

      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?

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:46

      Yeah.

4. 4:47 – 6:39

   The “simulation point” and the tech ladder toward indistinguishable reality

   1. RVRizwan Virk4:47

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan6:00

      Or Neuralink.

   3. RVRizwan Virk6:01

      Or Neuralink, right. We're getting there, right? We're-

   4. JRJoe Rogan6:02

      Yeah, we're very close.

   5. RVRizwan Virk6:03

      We're, we're at the beginning of that hole.

   6. JRJoe Rogan6:05

      Yeah.

   7. RVRizwan Virk6:05

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan6:31

      Right.

   9. RVRizwan Virk6:31

      We're getting closer to that already, right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan6:33

       Yes.

   11. RVRizwan Virk6:34

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

5. 6:39 – 8:06

   Why suspect we’re already in it? The statistical ‘many sims vs one base reality’ argument

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:39

      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?

   2. RVRizwan Virk6:55

      Right. So that's kind of the leap, right, that you need to make.

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:57

      Right.

   4. RVRizwan Virk6:57

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:05

      Yeah.

   6. RVRizwan Virk7:05

      Uh, even 200 years ahead of us.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:07

      Right.

   8. RVRizwan Virk7:07

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:14

      Right.

   10. RVRizwan Virk7:14

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:20

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RVRizwan Virk7:20

       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?

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:04

       Uh, sort of.

   14. RVRizwan Virk8:05

       If you can't tell the difference, right?

6. 8:06 – 10:18

   Sleep, memory, and the unsettling idea that the past could be “loaded”

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:06

      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.

   2. RVRizwan Virk8:29

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:29

      It's a weird thing. We shut off every night.

   4. RVRizwan Virk8:33

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:33

      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.

   6. RVRizwan Virk8:51

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:51

      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.

   8. RVRizwan Virk9:11

      Right.

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:11

      I'm a little foggy already. Right?

   10. RVRizwan Virk9:13

       It just exists in your memory at that point.

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:14

       It just exists in your memory.

   12. RVRizwan Virk9:16

       Right. And so-

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:16

       This might be the first day of my life.

   14. RVRizwan Virk9:19

       Right. If suppose that you can implant false memories, right?

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:22

       Right.

   16. RVRizwan Virk9:23

       So, this was a popular topic for Philip K. Dick, right?

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:26

       Yes.

   18. RVRizwan Virk9:26

       Movies like Total Recall-

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:27

       Mm-hmm.

   20. RVRizwan Virk9:28

       ... and even in Blade Runner.

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:29

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RVRizwan Virk9:29

       You know, I interviewed his wife while I was researching, you know, my book. And-

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:33

       He was a wild boy.

   24. RVRizwan Virk9:35

       He was an interesting guy, right?

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:36

       Yeah.

   26. RVRizwan Virk9:37

       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.

   27. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       Hmm.

   28. RVRizwan Virk10:01

       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-"

   29. JRJoe Rogan10:15

       Right.

   30. RVRizwan Virk10:15

       "... in a different run of the simulation."
7. 10:18 – 13:22

   Rerunning reality: simulated multiverse, timelines, and anamnesis

   1. RVRizwan Virk10:18

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan10:31

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RVRizwan Virk10:31

      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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan11:15

      Hmm.

   5. RVRizwan Virk11:16

      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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan11:53

      Hmm.

   7. RVRizwan Virk11:53

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan12:02

      No.

   9. RVRizwan Virk12:02

      ... 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?

   10. JRJoe Rogan13:09

       Yeah.

   11. RVRizwan Virk13:09

       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?"

   12. JRJoe Rogan13:21

       Yeah.

8. 13:22 – 19:00

   Quantum weirdness and the ‘past’ in question: Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment

   1. RVRizwan Virk13:22

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan14:00

      Okay.

   3. RVRizwan Virk14:00

      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?

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:40

      I'm not sure I totally understand this.

   5. RVRizwan Virk15:42

      Okay.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:42

      Why, why is the decision made when you measure it?

   7. RVRizwan Virk15:46

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

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:52

      Okay.

   9. RVRizwan Virk15:52

      ... 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-"

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:50

       Right.

   11. RVRizwan Virk16:50

       "... 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.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:58

       And we don't know until we see.

   13. RVRizwan Virk17:00

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

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:03

       Right.

   15. RVRizwan Virk17:03

       ... it's one of those, right?

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       Right.

   17. RVRizwan Virk17:05

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:33

       Right.

   19. RVRizwan Virk17:34

       So-

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:34

       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.

   21. RVRizwan Virk17:48

       That's what it would seem like, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:49

       Right.

   23. RVRizwan Virk17:49

       That would be like common sense-

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:51

       Logical.

   25. RVRizwan Virk17:51

       ... point of view, right?

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:52

       Right.

   27. RVRizwan Virk17:52

       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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:15

       Right. The cat is maybe too simplistic.

   29. RVRizwan Virk18:17

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:17

       It's like a pl- placeholder.
9. 19:00 – 30:01

   Quantum computing, qubits, and the multiverse interpretation as an explanation engine

   1. RVRizwan Virk19:00

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:14

      Yes.

   3. RVRizwan Virk19:14

      ... new quantum computers that are coming out.

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:15

      I- I have, but I totally don't understand it.

   5. RVRizwan Virk19:18

      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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:58

      Right.

   7. RVRizwan Virk19:59

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:23

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RVRizwan Virk20:23

      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?

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:56

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RVRizwan Virk20:56

       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?

   12. JRJoe Rogan21:40

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RVRizwan Virk21:40

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:56

       Right. (laughs)

   15. RVRizwan Virk21:57

       It, that's an exponential problem.

   16. JRJoe Rogan21:59

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RVRizwan Virk22:00

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan22:32

       No.

   19. RVRizwan Virk22:33

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan22:39

       Oh, is this the game where it just creates a universe?

   21. RVRizwan Virk22:42

       Yeah, just-

   22. JRJoe Rogan22:43

       Yeah, we have-

   23. RVRizwan Virk22:43

       It just-

   24. JRJoe Rogan22:43

       It's kind of boring, I heard.

   25. RVRizwan Virk22:44

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan23:09

       All right.

   27. RVRizwan Virk23:10

       Okay, so come back to exponen- that's exponential growth.

   28. JRJoe Rogan23:13

       Okay.

   29. RVRizwan Virk23:13

       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-

   30. JRJoe Rogan24:20

       That's okay.
10. 30:01 – 43:13

    ‘It from bit’: digital physics, information realism, and rendering as optimization

    1. RVRizwan Virk30:01

       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?

    2. JRJoe Rogan30:17

       Right.

    3. RVRizwan Virk30:18

       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-

    4. JRJoe Rogan30:33

       Yeah.

    5. RVRizwan Virk30:33

       ... 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.

    6. JRJoe Rogan32:44

       Right.

    7. RVRizwan Virk32:45

       Yeah.

    8. JRJoe Rogan32:45

       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.

    9. RVRizwan Virk33:02

       Right, exactly. You get to this weirdness down at the bottom level.

    10. JRJoe Rogan33:04

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

    11. RVRizwan Virk33:10

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

    12. JRJoe Rogan33:15

        Right.

    13. RVRizwan Virk33:15

        ... which is called, like, the planck.

    14. JRJoe Rogan33:17

        But as we go deeper, we get less answers and it gets more weird.

    15. RVRizwan Virk33:21

        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.

    16. JRJoe Rogan33:36

        Have you ever taken this back as far as you can and, like, tried to figure out, like, what created this?

    17. RVRizwan Virk33:42

        Well-

    18. JRJoe Rogan33:42

        Or what possibilities could have created this, or was there ever a physical world?

    19. RVRizwan Virk33:47

        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?

    20. JRJoe Rogan34:04

        Mm-hmm.

    21. RVRizwan Virk34:04

        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?

    22. JRJoe Rogan34:14

        Right.

    23. RVRizwan Virk34:15

        You're rendering it on your screen and I'm rendering it on my screen.

    24. JRJoe Rogan34:21

        Right.

    25. RVRizwan Virk34:21

        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-

    26. JRJoe Rogan34:37

        Mm-hmm.

    27. RVRizwan Virk34:37

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

    28. JRJoe Rogan34:43

        Mm-hmm.

    29. RVRizwan Virk34:43

        ... 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.

    30. JRJoe Rogan35:51

        Right.
11. 43:13 – 50:41

    Religion as legacy simulation language: Maya, dream metaphors, and Yogananda’s ‘movie projector’

    1. RVRizwan Virk43:13

       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)

    2. JRJoe Rogan44:42

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RVRizwan Virk44:42

       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?

    4. JRJoe Rogan45:10

       Fun.

    5. RVRizwan Virk45:11

       Fun is one. Two is to try to have experiences that you probably can't have-

    6. JRJoe Rogan45:16

       Right.

    7. RVRizwan Virk45:16

       ... outside of the game. Like, even Grand Theft Auto, right?

    8. JRJoe Rogan45:18

       Sure.

    9. RVRizwan Virk45:18

       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)

    10. JRJoe Rogan45:26

        Right.

    11. RVRizwan Virk45:27

        As much as I might want to.

    12. JRJoe Rogan45:27

        Especially with no real world consequences.

    13. RVRizwan Virk45:30

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

    14. JRJoe Rogan45:36

        Mm-hmm.

    15. RVRizwan Virk45:37

        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)

    16. JRJoe Rogan46:34

        Hmm.

    17. RVRizwan Virk46:34

        ... 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-

    18. JRJoe Rogan47:39

        Yes, I read it. Yeah.

    19. RVRizwan Virk47:39

        Oh, you read it. Oh, great.

    20. JRJoe Rogan47:40

        Yeah.

    21. RVRizwan Virk47:41

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

    22. JRJoe Rogan47:44

        Yeah.

    23. RVRizwan Virk47:45

        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)

    24. JRJoe Rogan47:57

        Hmm.

    25. RVRizwan Virk47:57

        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.

    26. JRJoe Rogan48:44

        Hmm.

    27. RVRizwan Virk48:45

        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-

    28. JRJoe Rogan49:02

        Hmm.

    29. RVRizwan Virk49:02

        ... 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.

    30. JRJoe Rogan49:51

        Mm-hmm.
12. 50:41 – 55:20

    How to live with simulation theory: quests, karma as a ‘database,’ and suffering as difficulty settings

    1. JRJoe Rogan50:41

       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-

    2. RVRizwan Virk51:02

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan51:03

       ... 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?

    4. RVRizwan Virk51:15

       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-

    5. JRJoe Rogan51:21

       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-

    6. RVRizwan Virk51:31

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan51:31

       ... that it would be hard to just, like, be present, but you seem very present.

    8. RVRizwan Virk51:38

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

    9. JRJoe Rogan51:45

       Right.

    10. RVRizwan Virk51:45

        We're just N- this is, like, the materialist kind of view of the world-

    11. JRJoe Rogan51:48

        Right, right.

    12. RVRizwan Virk51:48

        ... 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-

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:05

        Mm-hmm.

    14. RVRizwan Virk52:05

        ... 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-

    15. JRJoe Rogan52:25

        Mm-hmm.

    16. RVRizwan Virk52:25

        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?

    17. JRJoe Rogan53:27

        Mm-hmm.

    18. RVRizwan Virk53:27

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

    19. JRJoe Rogan53:31

        Right.

    20. RVRizwan Virk53:31

        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.

    21. JRJoe Rogan53:35

        Right.

    22. RVRizwan Virk53:35

        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?

    23. JRJoe Rogan54:03

        Mm-hmm.

    24. RVRizwan Virk54:04

        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?

    25. JRJoe Rogan54:15

        Tough roles.

    26. RVRizwan Virk54:16

        Yeah, exactly. Tough roles-

    27. JRJoe Rogan54:17

        Yeah.

    28. RVRizwan Virk54:17

        ... right? The, the ones that really suffer typically too.

    29. JRJoe Rogan54:19

        Yeah.

    30. RVRizwan Virk54:20

        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

13. 55:20 – 1:24:51

    Near-death experiences and the ‘life review’ as immersive replay technology

    1. RVRizwan Virk55:20

       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.

    2. JRJoe Rogan57:07

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RVRizwan Virk57:08

       You might sit there and review on the screen what happened.

    4. JRJoe Rogan57:10

       Right.

    5. RVRizwan Virk57:11

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

    6. JRJoe Rogan57:19

       Mm-hmm.

    7. RVRizwan Virk57:19

       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.

    8. JRJoe Rogan57:28

       Mm-hmm.

    9. RVRizwan Virk57:28

       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.

    10. JRJoe Rogan57:59

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RVRizwan Virk58:00

        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-

    12. JRJoe Rogan58:28

        Right.

    13. RVRizwan Virk58:29

        ... 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-

    14. JRJoe Rogan58:37

        Right.

    15. RVRizwan Virk58:38

        ... 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.

    16. JRJoe Rogan58:51

        Mm-hmm.

    17. RVRizwan Virk58:51

        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-

    18. JRJoe Rogan59:10

        Yeah.

    19. RVRizwan Virk59:10

        ... 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?

    20. JRJoe Rogan59:36

        Like the concept of when you die.

    21. RVRizwan Virk59:39

        Exactly.

    22. JRJoe Rogan59:40

        That Saint Peter reviews your life.

    23. RVRizwan Virk59:43

        That's right. So in the Christian traditions you have Saint Peter, you have the Book of Life, right?

    24. JRJoe Rogan59:47

        Mm-hmm.

    25. RVRizwan Virk59:47

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

    26. JRJoe Rogan59:54

        Yeah.

    27. RVRizwan Virk59:54

        ... 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.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

        Uh-huh.

    29. RVRizwan Virk1:00:08

        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.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:00:15

        Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 2:38:11