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[Music] why reality cannot be a simulation that is what I'm gonna explain in this episode but before I get into that happy holidays as usual this time of year I hope you're having a good 2019 this is my last episode of the decade sometimes they say that the decade doesn't really end until the end of 2020 but oh well I'm counting it as the end of the decade now so this will be the last one of the ekiden we're starting on a clean slate come next year and we'll see how that goes if you'd like to support me on patreon you can go to patreon.com/scishow and distract you from the seriousness of the topic at hand this is a meaty topic for you today I'm gonna explain why reality cannot be a simulation I see a lot of foolishness on YouTube videos about this topic that are so misguided you know it's popular these days because we live in the sort of computer era that's basically where the 21st century is and those the 20th century you know the Information Age so it's popular to speculate about science fiction scenarios about how oh what if we're in a matrix what if we're inside of a computer virtual reality what's gonna happen in the next 500 years like Leo what's gonna happen when computers become super fast and there's a is and virtual reality gets so good isn't it almost guaranteed that we're gonna be creating really high-quality rendered virtual realities and video games than crawling inside of them and then you know it's just you know it's a small leap and logic to just assume that you know if video games keep getting better and better and better in in a hundred years our video games are gonna be indistinguishable from reality and then we're gonna find a way to interface with that and then you know before you know it we're inside a computer and bam we've got the digital sing and then this sounds like so profound this sounds like it's a profound understanding of metaphysics and it's not it's actually it's a joke it's a joke and it gets people thinking in the totally wrong direction and there's this kind of popular trend on YouTube where people discuss philosophy through these flimsy philosophy videos where people just speculate about all well maybe it is a simulation maybe it isn't a simulation maybe God exists maybe God doesn't exist what about this what about that this is not how I like to do philosophy I like to do philosophy and get actual answers and believe it or not it's possible to do philosophy and get actual concrete definitive answers to profound existential questions like this one so my radical claim for you today is that it's possible for you to definitively know that reality is not a computer simulation and I'm gonna explain how it's possible to know that and you know it's it's it's amazing because there are a lot of otherwise we would consider them intelligent people in the scientific community within academia in Silicon Valley who subscribe to these really silly easily debunk able metaphysical notions of some digital singularity or some simulation theory and that's what this is called simulation theory the idea that everything can be a simulation and you have big-name credible people like Elon Musk who subscribe to this theory there are quotes you can find online of Elaan musk for example saying that the chances that we're in a simulation are very high or if we're not in one already then the chances are almost certain that we will create one in the near future and then there are quotes from people like Neil deGrasse Tyson who's supposedly very scientifically minded or he's regarded as such anyways the mainstream media you got folks like max tegmark you've got people like Ray Kurzweil you've got others that whose names escaped me but there are there are academics who actually get grants and funding to research this [ __ ] and that's because they don't know how to think metaphysically about these topics so anyways enough bashing of them I like to bash the materialist a little bit just because how silly it is so we're gonna break all this down here in a minute a point I want to make before I forget about materialism so really simulation theory is materialism on stilts that's what it is it's like materialism 2.0 you know when when the old-school materialism 1.0 gets boring and uninteresting then we got you know people bringing out the matrix and all these things and it makes it sound as though you're being intelligent and metaphysical and really thinking deeply about reality when you're not and of course the Matrix movies that were popular in the late 90s and early 2000s they played a big role in this too and you know the reason that the Matrix movies were such a big cultural phenomenon when they came out is because it was the rise of the Internet the early Internet and the possibilities for the future and computers was all kind of wide open and there were these interesting possibilities of what can happen with AI what can happen with computers and virtual reality and so forth and so it's only natural that we start to think along these kind of metaphorical lines I'm like well what if what if life is just a computer or something like this and so the Matrix movies they'll have some serious metaphysical problems which we're gonna talk about right now so really this is the problem in general with simulation theory is that it doesn't really understand what it's talking about because the core issue here when we're talking about whether we're in a simulation is we're talking about what is the substance of reality itself what is reality made out of and of course if you're a materialist the way most people are then you believe it's matter of atoms or some other material substance may be energy if you're a little bit more fluid about that or maybe numbers and math like Max tegmark has this theory where he thinks that because you know he's a mathematician so he sees the whole world in numbers and he thinks realities matter of numbers that of course computers supposedly like may add on numbers that's what makes computers work and tick so isn't it only like you put two and two together and then reality is mathematics right that's what it is no it's none of that and you can know definitively reality is consciousness there's nothing to reality but consciousness and what is consciousness consciousness is what you and I are experiencing right now this is it this is rock bottom this is as fundamental as reality gets it's infinite consciousness now that's a very loaded notion we'll talk about that in more depth but let's let's just go back to this idea of a simulation what does it even mean to say that reality is a simulation so supposedly that means that right now I'm sitting here talking to you and you're sitting there listening to me and like I guess the idea is that actually this is a virtual reality which isn't the real reality because this is being rendered where where is the matrix happening where is the virtual reality happening according to simulation theory I guess it's happening in some sort of computer but what does that mean that means it's held in the RAM it's held on a hard drive it's it's bits within a CPU but what is that what is the CPU what is RAM really if you look at it well it's atoms moving back and forth it's you know bits of electricity circulating around it still grounded him in a material substrate see so if the idea is that some ancient alien civilization advanced very far in their technology and they created supercomputers that were able to crunch trillions of bits per second and all this crazy stuff and they developed AI and they've developed virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from reality then supposedly they could have stuck us in there and how would we know that we weren't born into one of those but of course you see all that this does is shifts the problem of the substance of a reality the question here is what is the sustance of reality it just shifts it back one level it's the same problem as many theists face when they tout God as sort of the metaphysical origin point of reality so you ask a theist well where did the earth come from and he says well God created it okay well if God created it then who created God or what is the substance of God is God made out of atoms molecules chemicals energy quarks numbers mathematics equations what is God has got an equation you see and then you ask the theist you you keep pushing the theist and very quickly the theist has no answer because the theist has only thought one move ahead his whole brilliant strategy for explaining reality was to posit some sort of entity like a God and then but then he has no explanation for the entity itself but the simulation theorists are doing exactly the same thing just in a different style instead of using a god they're just using a computer but the question still remains what is a computer made out of what is the simulation that the computer is rendering what is that made out of so if this is the virtual world here so then there's a computer somewhere behind the scenes that we can't see that computer supposedly as man of atoms or something some sort of substance right well then what is this made out of what are my hands made out of are my hands now made of atoms well you can't quite say that because atoms are something that are within the virtual reality so what are they matter of pixels voxels what what is that and how does the computer create that how does the computer this matter of atoms and molecules and bits of energy and so forth I guess electrons we would call them that are coursing through that CPU how is that being turned into pixels or voxels or whatever of this virtual reality how's that happening see and of course the simulation theorist has no answer to this because there's not even an answer to this question in theory it's not that they aren't able to like do the science to figure it out it the science this whole model is so absurd you can't even do science on it it's that absurd you can't even run a philosophical thought experiment on it really because it's so stupid it's a it's a deep misunderstanding of how consciousness works and of course what the simulation theorists do is they they sweep the problem of substance under the rug they don't want it really go into the metaphysical question of what is the substance of anything because you see when you ask the question what is the substance of anything it doesn't matter what it is it can be a cat dog and you'd be a videogame a virtual reality a computer it can be whatever was there prior to the Big Bang it could be some alien thing you know whatever it doesn't matter it can be inside the simulation outside of the simulation what is the substance of all of it see it doesn't help you to couch one thing inside of another thing inside of another thing because it's that classic old Hindu story where they ask you of like well what suspends the earth in space and so they need to find some kind of explanation for it and rather than just admitting that well the earth just hangs freely in space because it's got nowhere else to go in a sense the earth is following in all directions simultaneously and therefore it's going nowhere the earth is going everywhere and therefore nowhere and so it's just hanging around in the vacuum of space but rather than admit that they need to come up with some substance so they say well it has to rest on the on the back of four elephants okay why four elephants well I don't know just we know elephants you know the ancient Hindus they they knew elephants where they grew up and you know today the 21st century we we know computers so we're just substituting computers for elephants here and then you know but what about the elephants the elephants they got us be standing on something - right well okay a tortoise they knew tortoises back then so they use a tortoise and you know today we know atoms or we know quarks or we know energy so we say energy or Clarke instead of a tortoise because that's what we know that's what our best scientists haven't come up with okay but then what about the turtle weren't it what is it sitting on and here you you only have two choices really well maybe three you can just brush off the question you say well screw you you know we're done and then you just leave the discussion at this point exit the chat scientists exits the chat materials usually exit chats at this point or they bite the bullet and they say well it's just a turtle and it's not supported by anything well if that's the case why do you need the turtle in the first place and then of course by that logic why do you even need the elephants why can't we just directly say that the earth is not resting on anything if a tortoise doesn't need anything under it then an elephant doesn't need anything under it and the earth doesn't need anything under it I see it's simpler you don't need to come up with with weird you know magical substances and then the other possibility you could say well it's Turtles all the way down that's the Turtles all the way down so that means there's a turtle under a turtle under a turtle forever okay but what does that really mean because really what you're citing there is you're pointing to infinity you're saying there's an infinity of turtles so an infinity of substances so one thing nested inside of another inside of another so you can play the same game with the simulation theory you can either dismiss this whole discussion and say ah screw it I don't care which is what most scientists and materialists do they're not seriously interested in metaphysics because they regard it as something that's just speculative and not tangible or but you know it's funny because even though they regard it that way they still are eager to talk about simulation theory and treat it seriously so that's kind of hypocrisy or what they say is well okay so we'll bite the bullet and we'll just say that it's all happening in a physical computer man of atoms and molecules just like in the virtual reality except this is now in the real reality that we don't see behind the scenes whatever that is but it's basically made out of matter okay but where did that matter come from how do you explain that matter so if some aliens are simulating us who's simulating the aliens see it so the mystery is not resolved at all if you say that we're in a simulation it only adds an extra layer of complexity to the mystery of existence or you can say well maybe the aliens lyoha I got you the aliens are also being simulated by other even more advanced aliens okay well who's stimulating those and then well there's even more advanced ones and who's stimulating those we'll even more advanced ones okay so it goes on forever this is Turtles all the way down it's a aliens all the way up okay so you're talking about infinity there but do you really understand what that means well we'll talk about that and what infinity means in a moment so how do we resolve this problem by forcing ourselves to take the issue of the substance of reality head-on without trying to avoid it by creating other simulations or other nested objects and other weird substances face it head-on what is this that's right here this direct experience forget about stuff behind the scenes forget about atoms and molecules and all what is this right here this thing we call direct experience because this is all you have a reality is direct experience everything else is concept everything else is speculation your ideas of an external reality behind the scenes or aliens simulating this reality here this is all something that is being imagined and constructed within this direct experience right now this can be a little difficult for a materialist to swallow because they really are addicted to this idea that there's an external objective reality behind the scenes because they need that to explain what's here because if you remove the idea from your mind that there that there is an objective external reality behind the scenes or that there are some aliens behind the scenes or that there is some god behind the scenes up in the clouds running the show some sort of puppet master if you get rid of all that then you're forced to confront the mystery of consciousness right here you're not putting it off anymore and this presents a very interesting possibility which is the possibility that reality is not something that we can't know or can't discover because the thing we're trying to know is somewhere hidden behind some veil that's impossible for us to penetrate because we're locked in this sort of simulated bubble or whatever we can never get to the aliens see this is another one of the popular little kind of corollary to the simulation theory which is the idea if the simulation is so good if the aliens are so intelligent they could simulate us so perfectly that we would never even be able to tell that we're in a simulation and therefore it says though it seems like under that logic simulation theory can never be disproven and so therefore we must forever remain open to the idea that simulation theory might be true because Leo what if the aliens are just really really good and therefore even all the thoughts leo that you're having right now are simulated by the aliens and you would never even know it and this seems like a intelligent sceptical argument but it's false it's demonstrably and definitively false let's try to explain why that is the trick the magic key that unlocks this problem turns out to be consciousness see it just so happens and there's really no logic for why this is the case but it just so happens that you have access to reality exactly as it is at all moments including right now what's happening right now to you is exactly what reality is the only question is are you conscious of what it is or is your mind veering off into all sort of fantastical directions about atoms and molecules and brains and chemicals and external realities and aliens and simulations and computers and electricity and gods and all this is your mind doing all that or is your mind fully conscious of what's here right now so if you were fully conscious of what's here right now you would become conscious of consciousness itself you would become conscious that consciousness is not supported or grounded in any substance or substrate consciousness is the substrate consciousness contrary to the scientific materialistic paradigms and theories about it consciousness is not something that is happening in a brain or in a body or in a living organism consciousness is not something that is being mediated by molecules or chemicals or atoms rather all of those things are distinctions being imagined by consciousness so what reality is is consciousness imagining everything and anything which is reality so consciousness is imagining an atom consciousness is imagining energy consciousness is imagining mathematics consciousness is imagining the brick wall consciousness is imagining the floor you're sitting on right now there cannot be a brick wall without consciousness so science has it precisely backwards and most philosophers have it precisely backwards is they think that first you have all the physical stuff which is all real then you have the consciousness stuff which is all fluffy personal experiences the human lived experience that all this colors sounds sites quality as they call it and this stuff is all unreal it's the second order stuff which is somehow coming from the first order stuff of matter and energy and math equations this is precisely backwards what's actually true and real is qualia colors sounds feelings emotions that is what's real what you're experiencing right now that's reality it's so close to you that you are directly interfaced with it you are not even interfacing with it through perception or through sense organs or through any kind of medium it's totally raw raw consciousness is what's right here right now and then here's the here's the complication the mind then creates stories and imagines conceptual frameworks to try to explain this mysterious direct raw consciousness that's here right now the mind of the ego mind the human psyche does not want to admit that reality is made out of pure consciousness this is a very threatening notion because it throws a lot of stuff up in the air it's it makes reality seem less than real less than solid and the human psyche has a vested interest in trying to ground itself in a reality so the human psyche is constantly trying to construct reality but see you see to construct reality you have to construct in such a way that you're not conscious that you're constructing it and then that is what we call reality because if you were conscious that you were constructing your reality it would no longer really seem like reality anymore it would seem like imagination or mind consciousness but that's way too much responsibility for you and for the average person even for the average scientist they don't want to take this much responsibility for their reality so the difficulty in understanding what I'm communicating is not that we need better science experiments and we need better technology we need super colliders and we need mathematical geniuses like Einstein in Isaac Newton and so forth - you know to tell us what the answers are because we don't have them yet that's not the problem here the problem is that we have the answers we've had the answers to this question for thousands of years the problem is how do we get you specifically to understand the answer because your mind doesn't want to understand the answer because there's a conflict of interest here to be able to understand this answer would be very threatening to you and to your way of life into your entire notion of reality you see if you start to really understand what I'm talking about here you're gonna go down this slippery slope of realizing that more and more of the stuff that you thought your whole life was real and true and solid and grounded is it grounded in anything at all and that's a very threatening notion so the problem is that many scientists they like to hold this to this ideal of thinking that well we're objective scientists we don't care about emotions work we only care about the facts not our feelings we don't care about psychology we don't care about philosophy we just crunch the numbers man we're just purely rational we stand outside of reality and we we use our instruments and microscopes and telescopes and our logic and our reason and our mathematics to analyze what's really there and then we just report the facts and we can do that because we're neutral objective third-party observers and léa when you start talking about consciousness and emotions and feelings and colors and qualia and direct experiences this is all human stuff it's not real it's subjective what we care about is the objective but are you open to the possibility that you have exactly backwards that there is no objective there is only the subjective the objective is something that you're imagining something that consciousness is imagining right here right now so I want you to open your mind to the possibility that rather than atoms molecules and energy and general relativity and other theories like this science as a whole rather than that being the ultimate truth that is all second order derivative the ultimate truth is what you're experiencing right here right now this is it look at your hand take it out look at it this is more real than math than science then atoms than energy this hand and this hand is not atoms it is not energy it is not mathematics it is not a computer simulation it is the colors that it's made out of it is the shape it is how it feels this is reality imagine dare to imagine a reality which is pure consciousness what is consciousness look at it don't fear I'm not asking you to speculate about what consciousness is we don't need to speculate if we speculate about what consciousness we're going off in the wrong direction consciousness is right here take out your hand and look at it this is consciousness you have direct access to reality because you are reality and because you are reality try to notice become conscious right now that you you are reality you're not merely inside of reality you're not merely a part of reality you're not a biological creature running through reality you are reality itself you are the very substance of reality itself can you get that right now just a little bit try to focus your awareness on that just a little bit see so try to feel it feel I don't think it feel it what is this space that you're in you're feeling this space you're in it you're aware of it you're conscious of it your consciousness permeates the entire room permeates the entire world right this is your life try to recognize that if you drop dead right now because somebody shot you none of this would be here for you from your point of view all of it would be gone it would be so gone that it would be like it never even existed but but let's go a little bit deeper because it's it's it's more more of a mindfuck than you even think because if we're saying that all of us is gonna be gone surely what's also going to be gone is logic reason mathematics science atoms energy molecules experiments human history all of those things that you ground reality in all of those will be gone as well because all of those were a part of your consciousness this is a very simple little thought experiment to show you that it's all conscious science is consciousness history is consciousness atoms are consciousness even the brain itself is consciousness the brain here plays a very tricky role because it seems like the brain is a physical object in which consciousness occurs but that is not actually the case you got it backwards the mind is not happening in the brain rather the brain is happening in the mind and by mind we is just another word for consciousness we mean consciousness you see so because you are reality itself consciousness it's actually impossible to do what the scientists ideal of science is it's impossible to step outside of science and be an objective impartial third party observer and a reporter of objective fact this is impossible because you're intimately involved with reality itself see if you were separate from reality you could look down upon it but you can't do that because you're not separate from reality you are reality and there's nothing outside of reality because reality by the definition of that word reality means everything that's real everything that exists everything that's true everything that is see so if you think you can step outside of reality and look down upon it will what are you stepping into so to speak so if reality is over here and you step outside of reality and you look at it so where are you and what are you made out of to look at reality you'd have to be made of something real to be able to look down upon it or think about it use reason or whatever or to communicate it even to your own self you couldn't do that because all of those are parts of reality communication thinking reason sciences is all part of reality and all of this is a ball of consciousness but now of course the skeptic comes in here and says well Lee okay I may be conscious maybe it is all consciousness but how do we know that consciousness is not being generated by some sort of computer behind the scenes well for this you need to become fully conscious of what consciousness is what is consciousness that's a very deep question and again here it might seem like well okay Leah we've hit a dead end cuz now it's not possible to no philosophers have been asking the question what is consciousness for 2,000 years and we still don't have the answer scientists they still don't know it's a giant mystery no it's not it's not a mystery at all I mean it is a mystery but you can become conscious of a conscious is because you're conscious but the problem here is is that consciousness because it's an immediate thing and you are it the only way you can know what consciousness is is by you being conscious of it that means a scientist can't do it for you you can't read what consciousness is in a textbook you can't write down a mathematical formula for what consciousness is because the formula itself is within consciousness because the textbook itself is a part of consciousness you can read a thousand or even a million textbook textbooks for the next thousand years and you will still not understand what consciousness is because those are various forms all those books are various forms arising within consciousness but they can't tell you what it consciousness itself is see because again to understand what conscious is you have to hit the nail square on the head and you can't veer off with your mind to some direction about all well maybe consciousness as atoms maybe consciousness computers or something no no no consciousness is what's right here furthermore what consciousness is is its distinction and that's what reality is reality is distinction consciousness is that which imagines distinctions that's what mind is I'm using consciousness and mind interchangeably in this talk so if you can imagine the difference between any two things that is how reality is constructed so reality and consciousness are not constructed out of molecules and atoms and energy and brains and Stardust and whatever else you want to imagine time and space and all that but rather by the distinction of those things those things are all distinctions an atom is a distinction energy is a distinction a brain is a distinction within consciousness Stardust is a distinction so when we talk about Stardust you're thinking about Stardust that's what Stardust is it's what you're thinking it is it's what you're imagining it to be and notice how in order for you to think something it has to be distinct from some other thing so the only meaning that the word Stardust has is precisely the difference between it and everything that's not Stardust the only meaning of an atom is that it's distinct from the opposite of an atom what is the opposite of an atom Anan atom everything that's not an atom and so on for everything so here's the key problem with simulation theory is that it doesn't understand that consciousness is a distinction it doesn't understand it's not conscious of what distinction is and so simulation theory says that reality is a simulation without understanding that a simulation is a distinction within consciousness see so in the simulation theorists worldview there is something which is a simulation and then there is its opposite which simulation is defined against so if you say that reality is a simulation you must also imagine the opposite of a simulation see what you're doing here is you're creating a distinction or you're cutting reality to two now your reality on the one hand you're saying reality as matter of reality is a simulation on the other hand you also have to say that well but then there must also be something that's not a simulation and so that's what simulation theory is basically as it's like you have a simulation which is supposedly our world and then you have something behind the scenes that thing which is not a simulation the real reality because you've divided reality to two and so now you're placing this part and making it dependent on this part without realizing the interconnection between the two parts and what's being missed every time you're making these distinctions without realizing what distinctions are without being conscious of them is you're separating reality into different substances for example you say well that tables made of wood that glass is made of silicon that plant is mad at carbon that humans made of water and you treat the world as though it's been of these different substances carbon water silicon wood you know the ancients had earth fire and water and air and this you know the five elements and all this kind of stuff but I mean you know now we science has taken that idea and just expanded upon it we have quarks and we have different kinds of subatomic particle we have leptons and protons and antineutrinos and this and that I mean anti quarks science just keeps coming up with more and more of this [ __ ] every every year more new substances more new elements are added to the periodic table but what's being missed in all this is that reality is not actually made out of these things these aren't real things these are distinctions being imagined by consciousness consciousness is the only real thing and it's one it's singular there's not many consciousnesses there's only one consciousness the whole universe is one single consciousness but it can draw these different distinctions because that's what consciousness does is the only thing consciousness knows how to do is draw distinctions that's it so it draws these assumptions and it can separate itself or reality into parts and make it seem as a reality meant of different parts and different substances when really it's all just one but partitioned these partitions we might think of them as a virtual partitions like if we take a giant piece of paper blank white paper and we take a pencil and we start drawing lines across the paper dividing the paper these are all virtual lines it might seem like we're cutting the paper in half we're really not we're just drawing lines and then we're imagining that the two different halves of the line are two different pieces but ultimately if we look at the whole thing from a sort of a big-picture perspective from the ultimate zoom-out perspective sort of from God's point of view then what we clearly see is that it's it's one single sheet of paper with a bunch of distinctions drawn upon it which allows us to distinguish different objects see so here's the thing that the simulation theorists are missing is that consciousness cuts through all levels of reality so I'm not necessarily saying that there can't be different levels of reality there can when I'm saying though is that you need to come conscious that all levels of reality are made of one thing which is consciousness so let's explain it this way you know if you really bought at the simulation theory you might say well Leo but but just I mean I hear you're talking about some interesting ideas here but just very practically what do you think is gonna happen in the next hundred years aren't computers gonna get better and faster aren't video games gonna get better in higher res isn't there gonna be a virtual reality which is gonna be indistinguishable from earth reality and then aren't humans gonna just naturally want to play these games and play in these virtual worlds and then isn't is it really that far-fetched to imagine that a human can just like we could take a baby and just raise it in a virtual world and it won't even know the difference but that's exactly my point see simulation theory and all of science basically they're all a philosophy pretty much any theory depends upon crucial distinctions that it makes these distinctions have to be unconscious distinctions for the theory to do what the theory needs to do otherwise there wouldn't be a theory so a theory itself is interesting but anyways I'm getting too wrapped up in this anyways um to zoom out one level what I'm trying to say is that in simulation theory they make a distinction between real reality and virtual reality of the real world and the stuff that happens in a video game but this is a trick of consciousness there is no distinction between what's happening in a video game and a real reality or your life that's a distinction that you create it and or imagining so what I'm telling you is something quite radical see if you can bite this bullet I'm telling you that Mario inside of Mario world is as real as your physical body and that Mario is made of exactly the same thing as my body right here can you accept that little radical because he we like to believe that us humans we are the real ones and what's happening on the TV screen well that's not real Mario's not real mario world's not real but who's making that distinction we are of course and of course we draw our distinctions in a self biased manner see my episode about self bias there in Portland we draw our distinction a self biased manner in order to create a sense of reality see reality itself is a distinction because we need to distinguish as humans between reality on the one hand and fantasy on the other and so we're very very threatened when the boundary between reality and fantasy is blurred or erased or threatened in some way and that's exactly what this conversation is doing it's undermining entire sense of physical reality which is why you don't like it maybe if you're a special person you like it if you want to awaken maybe you like it but otherwise if you're a materialist you don't like this if you're a scientist you don't like this because what I'm doing is I'm erasing all the boundaries that you have used to anchor your entire psyche so for example what I'm telling you is that there's no there's no clear distinction between being sane and insane and you don't like that because you like to think of yourself as sane and you like to think of somebody who's your enemy or some crazy person some criminal you like to call him insane you don't like the idea that maybe there is no difference between him and you and then when I tell you that there's no difference between an ordinary citizen and a terrorist there's no such distinction other than what you imagine it to be you don't like that idea because you like to be able to point to the terrorists at all the terrorists are so evil they're such bad people but we weren't just were the good guys but of course there is no such distinction there ever was it's imaginary and then when I tell you something like oh this one if you're a materialist you're really not gonna like this one that the distinction between science and pseudoscience or science and fairy tales and myths that this distinction is not a real distinction but something that you are imagining oh you don't like that at all you don't like that at all because you've built your entire identity around the idea that there is such a distinction and you have elevated this part of the distinction the science part and you have denigrated the part about the myths and the fairy tales and the spaghetti monsters and all this flying spaghetti monster you've denigrated all that and you've built your whole identity about being this rational evidence-based person and you're really attached to that entity you might have built an entire career around it hell you might have gone to university you might have gotten whole PhD based on this premise that there's a difference between science and fairytales and now what I'm telling you is that there is no such difference you imagine the difference and now you're faced with the real possibility of an existential crisis because now you have to admit that science itself might be a fairy tale and you don't want that you're in denial about that possibility and so your mind starts coming up with all sorts of stories speaking of fairy tales your mind starts coming up with tough stories about how why I'm wrong and why I'm stupid and why everybody knows that science is not a fairy tale and you're gonna point to all this various evidence about why it's not a fairy tale you're gonna point to Einstein and Newton and you're gonna point to men landed on the moon and you're gonna point about smart phones and computers and all this stuff that science Tinley old science is so great you're so demonizing science and so denigrating science how come science can do these things but fairy tales can't well that's a deeper topic that I can't get into here it's complicated consciousness is complicated yeah I'm not saying it's simple it's devilishly ingeniously convoluted and deceptive because it's mind you are lost inside your own [ __ ] mind you have some spun such a story so many stories within stories within stories you've weaved such a tapestry using your own mind that you literally have confused fantasy for reality and you don't know how to distinguish them anymore or rather you're distinguishing of them itself is the fantasy there is no difference between fantasy and reality there's only one thing consciousness it's right here consciousness imagine a brick wall conscious can imagine a unicorn but don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you can imagine a unicorn that necessarily the unicorn acquires the same properties as a brick wall there is a difference between a brick wall and a unicorn and that difference we call physicality which is that distinction that we make and here you'll say aha Leah but I caught you now so now you're saying there is a real distinction between unicorns and brick walls no you're not understanding how deep this goes there only is a distinction between a unicorn and a brick wall if you believe there is if you imagine it to be and here you say well leo but but I can I can stop believing that difference and there still will be a difference between a unicorn and a brick wall I can touch a brick wall I can't move my hand through a brick wall but a unicorn isn't even a material thing and here is we're getting up against the limits of your consciousness so here now your state of consciousness is the limiting bottleneck you can't go further into understanding what I'm saying because the state of consciousness you're in right now is so rigid that literally you're not able to be conscious of the lack of distinction between a unicorn and a brick wall even if you wanted to you can't do it you can't will yourself to do it because consciousness is not the same thing as belief or as willing yourself to do something so you can sit here for a hundred hours and will yourself to walk through that wall to pretend as though that wall is imaginary and you will not be able to walk through it and the reason is is because not because the brick wall is real but because you're not conscious of how the brick wall is imaginary for that you need a radically new state of consciousness which you don't know how to access but if you could access that state you could realize that the wall is imaginary and then the wall would cease to exist for you as a wall you see so there's layers to this it's it's quite complicated it's quite tricky and it doesn't work as simplistically as you want it to because when I start talking about imagination people get these stupid naive ideas of like well since lis houses everything is imaginary that means she should be able to just walk through the brick wall otherwise he's full of [ __ ] no you have to understand that I am a limited consciousness right here I am limited in in various ways these limitations are what we call physicality now that doesn't mean these limitations are there forever they're just here now it doesn't mean that I can control all these limitations doesn't make me Superman so you have to be careful so now you might want to really okay but but so what you're saying distinctions so now there's distinctions and you're saying conscious but isn't conscious as itself a distinction and what are distinctions made out of these a distinction itself a distinction and here is where again here is where thoughts and words can't take us because thoughts and words are themselves distinctions you have to become conscious of what a distinction is or what consciousness is consciousness is not a distinction consciousness is an absolute it is the substance out of which all distinctions are made so what are all distinctions made out of what is what is the thing here's the way to phrase it what is the substance of the line that separates a unicorn from a brick wall what is that line made out of I'm not talking about the brick wall and I'm not talking about the unicorn I'm talking about what is the thing that separates the two what is that made out of that's an interesting question try to contemplate that for a moment it's not as easy as it seems how would you even go about becoming conscious that tricky or if you're a scientist here's a good question for you what is the line made out of that distinguishes science from fantasy and myth and fairytales what does that line made out of can you see that the line that separates science from pseudoscience cannot itself be made out of science or pseudoscience that would be begging the question because before the line is drawn there is no difference between the two after the line is drawn there is a difference between the two but what is that line made out of and the answer is consciousness but then what is consciousness what consciousness is nothing it's absolutely nothing which means that distinctions are absolutely nothing this nothing is so nothing it's a complete absence of substance it's so nothing that to even call it nothing is already too much because the way we ordinarily use the word nothing and the idea of nothing that's a distinction between nothing and something but the nothing I'm speaking of is not the nothing that is the difference between the nothing into something I'm talking about absolute nothing it's a nothing which is one it's a nothing which has no opposite it's a nothing which has no properties and no substance to it which means you can't talk about it you can't think it you can't see it you can't feel it and yet it's absolute and it's here right now and in fact it is the only thing that is here right now which is what all of this is it's absolutely nothing so the key mistake that to tie this back to our original question because we've kind of gone deep here a little bit off-track the key mistake that simulation theory makes is that it posits some sort of other substance it up it pauses two substances the virtual world and in the physical real world and now there's two this is like creating that elephant in that tortoise what needs to be realized that there is not - there's only one thing happening reality is a singular thing and that the substance of everything is nothing not an ordinary nothing not the ordinary nothing you're thinking of you can't think of the nothing that I'm talking about actual nothing actual nothing is not what you're thinking it is it's actually this right here look at your hand pull out your hand and look at it this is actual nothing not what you're thinking about whatever you're thinking nothing is that's not nothing that's something actual nothing is this but you say but Leo this isn't nothing this is a hand why are you calling it nothing it's not a hand a hand is a distinction you've made what is the distinction of a hand made out of that thing is nothing absolute nothing nothing which has no opposite which is of course not separate from the hand itself if all of this sounds very confusing and nonsensical and illogical and contradictory and paradoxical it is that's not a bug that's a feature of reality reality is a paradox why is there anything here at all well consider the possibility that maybe there isn't unless you imagine that there is and the reason that you think there's something here is because you think there's something here and if you stop thinking that there's something here something real there will not be anything here nothing real that's the twisted mind [ __ ] of consciousness now none of this is possible or makes sense within the materialist paradigm of atoms and molecules and so forth but fortunately that paradigm is false because it's imagined it's made out of imagined distinctions within consciousness and how can you know that what I'm saying here is true and that I'm not just making this [ __ ] up by thinking through it all for yourself very carefully and be coming directly conscious of what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is found right here I'm merely describing what you will find if you bother to look right under your own nose very carefully the problem is that people don't like to look under their own nose they like to fly off into Fantasyland about computer simulations and atoms and molecules and external realities and brains and science and Stephen Hawking and whatever else multiverse theories matter and antimatter that's fantasy this is reality but Leo you said there is no reality that's right reality is a distinction but this is what we've got here it's one thing it's one whatever it is is what it is you can't really say what it is because to say what something is is itself to create a distinction so consciousness is prior to your ability to say anything about it because to say anything about anything is something that is created by consciousness see so consciousness is the rock-bottom basically what I'm sort of saying here if you want to draw an analogy it says though you've lived your whole life believing that the earth is a globe which needs to rest on a elephant on top of a tortoise and so on and what I'm telling you is that there is no elephant there is no tortoise there is only the earth floating in a vacuum except now we're not talking about the earth we're talking about this very present moment right now you've spent your whole life living and believing that this present moment is grounded in atoms and molecules and history of the universe and big bangs and multiverses and whatever else mathematics and now I'm telling you all of that was fantasy and all there ever was and is is right here right now this and this is nothing and so in this way we can know definitively for sure that we're not in a simulation why not again this is very important because you're still probably thinking if you buy the simulation theory you're still probably arguing with me and you're saying well Leo but but still couldn't it be the case that in the future we'll in Computers then will will inhabit them and live in them and there will be additional singularity sure we could do that we have that already you can go buy a VR headset and put it on and you can lose yourself in the VR world you don't even need a VR headset you can just go play go play an RPG go play some Skyrim or something or some grand theft auto is one of these games you know that is engrossing is immersive play one of these games how do you feel you lose yourself in the game it doesn't even matter what the graphics are like you've lost yourself in games back when they were in the Nintendo 64 era you played some mario 64 and that thing was ugly as hell you can go look at some videos of how ugly that thing looks now by today's standards but you still got lost and it doesn't matter how many polygons Mario could be man out of 10 polygons or a million polygons it doesn't matter because Mario's had a consciousness either way every video game world you've played in has been consciousness and it's been as real as your life it is part of your life which is why it impacts you so much which is why if you're a gamer you take your game seriously if you're a film fan you take your film seriously you don't treat them as some sort of derivative realities you lose yourself in these games have you played some MMORPG like World of Warcraft or something like that EverQuest you get lost in these worlds people people get so lost in these worlds they die from hunger you can find cases like this on the Internet people die of hunger from just like play or die of tiredness from just playing these games non-stop just grinding away these games for for day after day after day without leaving their computer right because they got lost in a new world but it's not really a new world it's just more the same its consciousness see so the mistake of the simulation theorists is that they're not recognizing that computers are consciousness computers mana consciousness virtual world to mana consciousness there's no difference between a virtual world in a real world not really so actually what I'm telling you here and this is a possibility that many scientists and simulation theorists and philosophers don't fathom is that consciousness because reality is one consciousness must always cut through every level and nesting layer of reality so even if we do create a flawless virtual world and we take a baby and we grow it up hooked up to this machine from birth such that it doesn't even know what anything outside that virtual world is let's say he grows up in mario world mario land and it's a super high-res you know high-resolution hyper real mario land he grows up in that according to the simulation theorist he would be so deluded and so deceived by this illusion that he would never even be able to tell or break out of it but that assumes that there is a fundamental distinction between the two and what i'm saying is that no matter how many virtual worlds you create no matter how good they are and no matter how many virtual worlds you nest inside of one of that because you know we could imagine that you create a virtual world that's so good that it can also have its own simulation of another virtual world that's so good that we could have another one and another one and no one forever so there could be ten thirty fifty a hundred thousand levels of these virtual worlds and so you would think that well if these virtual worlds are so damn good and we can just get like a child to grow up in in indies he would be so lost and it's so many levels deep that he would never be able to break out and what I'm telling you is no he would always be able to break out because the truth is from the absolute highest perspective all of it is consciousness just different forms of consciousness different distinctions within consciousness but all of it is consciousness and since there is nothing but consciousness and since you are consciousness even though it's easy to get lost in the forms of consciousness there's always the possibility of breaking free and becoming what we call awake to become awake is to see through an infinite number of layers and forms of consciousness to realize what consciousness is cutting through everything all possible illusion is cut through with a deep enough awakening now there's there's layers of awakening and there's layers of of illusion to shed so a single awakening may not be sufficient it may not be sufficiently deep we could imagine in this kind of nested doll scenario that we've been thinking of these different virtual worlds nested inside each other that one could awaken from one virtual world but not yet the next one and not yet the next one and not yet the next one so in this case we can imagine if there's ten virtual worlds there's ten possible awakenings that could happen or there can be one single grand awakening that cuts through everything with a person realizes that he or she or it's is infinite consciousness which is the scene through the entire illusion and the reason that we can know for sure that worse that there's not one more simulation behind us somewhere you know cuz you would wonder like Willy okay so if there are ten simulations all you know ten virtual worlds nested in each other and we've awoken from ten of them isn't there a very likely possibility if there's an eleventh one or a twelfth one how would we ever know if we got to the very end and so again Leo it's impossible to know for sure and so we must always keep our mind open to the possibility that we're in a virtual world and my answer to you is no if you think that you still don't understand what consciousness is because for consciousness to be one it must also be infinite and I can't really explain to you infinity here it's a deep topic I've explained it elsewhere and go check out my two-part series understanding absolute infinity where I talk about infinity in more detail I won't explain it here but I'll just briefly say that when you realize infinity you cut through all possible virtual worlds you're totally conscious of consciousness and you realize that consciousness is one singular substance which is nothing and you realize that this nothing permeates absolutely all possible realities multiverses dimensions realms whatever you want to call them it cuts through it permeates and creates all of them and that all of them are absolutely nothing and here you're absolutely conscious this is absolute consciousness what absolute means is that it's true under all conditions it's true in all possible universes it's true not possible virtual realities it's the one thing that unifies all things that you become conscious of that and you are of all illusion and no evil demon no Cartesian evil demon no alien race no matter how intelligent they are can ever trap you into any kind of simulation when you're that conscious you're totally conscious of the entire universe and all possible universes at all possible times past future and present that's a very ordinary extraordinary state of consciousness which very few people have experienced but this is what is called enlightenment and this is a real possibility and if you ever do encounter and reach this state of consciousness you will have complete understanding of reality and you will know for sure absolutely that reality cannot be a simulation because again a simulation is just one distinction it's perfectly clear to you once you're awake that simulation is just once one distinction and it's just one facet of the absolute and so that answers that tada there's your answer this is not speculation this is not something you should believe this is something that I invite you to become conscious of to work towards and if you keep watching me in the future I can guide you share with you methods and techniques for how you can become consciousness I have already in the past in Prior episodes I talked about meditation I've talked about yoga I've talked about psychedelics I'll be talking about more of all that stuff in the future sharing more powerful techniques with you I'll be sharing new psychedelics that I've discovered I've just new psychedelics that mankind hardly knows about that you can use to to catalyze your awakening process and to verify all the things that I say everything that I say is is perfectly scientific it just requires your intimate involvement that's really the only mistake that science makes it's not that science is evil or SuperDuper wrong or something like that it's just that science is dissociated from consciousness science tries to be too objective for its own good trying science tries to be so objective it misses the one absolute which is pure empty subjectivity itself now you might say leo okay but um but shouldn't you know you talk about open-mindedness Leo shouldn't we just be open-minded still maybe maybe you're wrong Leo maybe there is a possibility maybe you've made some kind of mistake maybe there's just a possibility that we are in a simulation I mean who really knows no if you think that you don't understand what I'm talking about you haven't fathomed what I'm saying there is no possibility whatsoever that we're in a simulation because all simulations are consciousness this is one of those things you have to get it can't be explained to you beyond what I've already said you have to grow kit and now here's a skeptic will say Ollie oh but but prove it to me prove prove what you're saying is true but again if you're demanding proof you're not understanding the depth of the epistemic problem here it can't be proven to you because what is proof proof is a distinction dummy you can't prove consciousness because it's right here proof is second-order proof and evidence and reason and logic and argumentation is something that occurs within consciousness so you can't use it to reach underneath and to grab the substance of conscious itself because the substance of conscious self is nothing how do you prove nothing how do you prove absolute actual nothing only by recognizing that you're it it's the same problem is trying to get a donkey to recognize his own reflection in the mirror no amount of argumentation or proof will work on the donkey the donkey has to sit and look in the mirror until he goes oh my [ __ ] god that there is me and no amount of science or logic or math is gonna prove it to him you can beat him you can kick him you can you can cram his face into the mirror you can scold him you can call him names you can call him stupid and it's not gonna help him the only thing that will work is if he sits there for a long time and he has an awakening there's no substitute for consciousness precisely because there's nothing here but consciousness if you can't be conscious of what consciousness is you're [ __ ] God Himself can't help you and by the way God is consciousness this is God you get all that good cuz I'm done here I've beaten this horse to death this donkey to death now the work is on you happy holidays of course Happy New Year happy 2019 my next video will be after I come back in 2020 if you want to pursue this further start meditating start doing yoga maybe experience like a telex I don't want to tell you what to do it's your responsibility to figure out how deep you want to go with this start contemplating you can start reading books on my book list very powerful book list I have go check it out over 200 life-changing books on there if you read I guarantee this if you read all 200 books I have a little bit more in 200 on the list and you fathom everything in those books and you start to embody even a quarter of it you're gonna become superhuman you're gonna become a God among men if you can do that and then beyond those children you will need to read another book in your life if you fathom everything that's said in those books see the thing with the book list is and just in general the thing with reading books is that it's really important which books here eat a lot of people read a lot of different kinds of books there have been many people who have read way more books than I have various professors academics Nobel laureates intellectuals of various kinds whoever thousands of books I haven't read thousands of books I've probably read maybe around 300 books in my life estimating but what really distinguishes me from those people is that I've read the right books I was really really careful to read the right books reading the right books is everything in this work it's not sufficient to awaken you but it's it's a necessary foundation so if you read the right books I'm telling you you won't need to read the books to rush your life spend the next five years reading these 200 books and you will understand yourself and the world and reality so deeply that you'll be set you'll be set for life and then everything else after that will just be my new show so yeah and that's sort of a point where I've reached recently is that I've become so conscious recently that I can't read books anymore because anything that I read in a book is like it's sort of like being Albert Einstein and then being forced to sit through first grade there's no there's no point once you're Albert Einstein you don't need to go back to first grade anymore you know what you're doing so these books will help you to do that and that's ultimately what I'm trying to do with all the material that I publish on actualised org is I'm trying to one of my goals is to get you to this point where you become so deeply soaked in understanding of life self psychology non-duality reality metaphysics epistemology culture dynamics of the ego self-deception you understand these things so well that all of life becomes clear to you of course that doesn't mean you're perfect doesn't mean you can't make mistakes I can still make mistakes I'm not saying everything I knows is perfect but you can reach a certain critical mass of understanding we're really it's amazing it's amazing how deep in this is this is one of the most rewarding aspects of this work which is so difficult to communicate is just how profound your understanding of reality self in life and humanity becomes once you reach this sort of super critical mass of understanding through reading books through contemplating through watching videos you reach this mass it takes I would say it's gonna take you five or ten years probably more like ten years for you to reach this super critical mass if you're serious about it if you're just screwing around you'll never get there but if you're serious about it like I was it'll probably take you ten years and man will that be the best decision you've ever made in your life that you did that so many doors and opportunities will open to you that I can't even begin to enumerate them your life will change in such profound ways you'll have amazing mystical experiences you'll avoid so many traps so many bad situations so much suffering will be avoided by having this understanding you'll have so much wisdom and this wisdom will be universal wisdom that you can apply in all situations you'll be able to apply it with your children at school in business at work in your relationships in your marriage in your sexual relationships in your dating life in politics your life purpose with your emotions the power of wisdom is that it's universal if it's true wisdom so there you go I'm down here please click that like button for me come check out actualize it or check out my blog find the book list there find the left purpose course there I'll have more resources coming out in the future go hang out on the forum sign up for the forum is free and stay tuned for more this is philosophy as it is meant to be done I really despise philosophy done as mental masturbation or s speculation real philosophy changes your whole life real philosophy rewires your mind real philosophy removes suffering real philosophy gets you tangible absolute answers to life's deepest questions real philosophy leads to profound mystical experiences this is not the kind of philosophy that they teach unfortunately in in most universities that's [ __ ] that's philosophy as mental masturbation that's studying old dead men's ideas dead men who were deluded and didn't understand what consciousness was and now you waste all your time studying their stupid ideas that just infects your mind with more duality and more ignorance and delusion real philosophy is practical philosophy you know what that means love wisdom fill us Sophia Phil is love and Sophia is wisdom the love of wisdom that's what actualize ever I guess it's my love wisdom shared with you and your love wisdom which keeps you tuned to these lectures and your love of wisdom which keeps you on this journey of thinking about life contemplating reality asking deep questions meditating doing psychedelics going to retreats doing yoga and other such things that's love of wisdom love of truth and philosophy is the most rewarding activity that you can do in life and philosophy of course is identical to spirituality these two are sometimes separated in the minds of people as though they're different they're different when they're done poorly when done well they converge and what you realize is that true philosophy and true spirituality are actually identical and that's a beautiful discovery to make and I want you to discover that in your life and so we have more philosophy to do so stick around for 2020 and we'll see what comes the new year you