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

The host says they have been drawn into simulation theory after hearing Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss it. Tyson has said he would not be surprised to learn that the universe is simulated by an advanced life form. He sets out the standard argument. We do not have the power yet, especially once quantum computing is added, but imagine building a world in a computer where the characters believe they have free will. Those characters go on to invent computers and build simulated worlds of their own, and so on, giving a chain of simulated universes "all the way down."

The probabilistic step comes as a thought experiment: close your eyes and throw a dart. Is it more likely to land on the first universe that invented simulation, or on one of the "zillion" that came after? Tyson grants that the dart is likely to hit one of the others.

Because all the middles have the power to create one.

This is his "escape hatch." Humanity cannot yet make a perfectly simulated world, so he argues we sit at one end of the chain: either the first, real universe that has not built one yet, or the last universe, which has not yet evolved to build one. By his reckoning, that moves the odds from "a zillion to one against us to maybe 50, 50." He says this makes him "a little more comfortable" and that he sleeps "a little better at night." It is an informal estimate, not a formal calculation. He also downplays the stakes: being fully simulated "wouldn't matter," because "You're living your life," though he admits people do not want to believe there are "puppet strings" on them.

The conversation then turns playful. Recent events are cast as a bored programmer's interventions. When everything on Earth seemed stable, a "once in a century pandemic" arrived, raising questions about who gets vaccinated, who fights and who lives or dies. Just as the world was coming off that, the programmer chose to make "a billionaire real estate developer from New York City, the most powerful person in the world" to "stir the pot again." The image offered is "a snot-nosed alien kid in the parents basement programming our existence."

Tyson brings in SimCity, which the host says they have played. As mayor, you can be voted out, so you have to keep an opinion poll happy. Spending too much in one place starves the schools, and then crime goes up. Even in this simple simulation, he notes, many interdependent phenomena are at work. Then Godzilla "plows through the city." When this is called unrealistic, he answers that "It kind of is," because it stands for any disaster nobody saw coming, such as a flood or fires.

He makes the point personal. The interview was recorded on September 11th, and Tyson lives four blocks from Ground Zero: "That's Godzilla walking through the city." Nobody knew the day before that it was going to happen.