In this episode, we talk about a theory that Malcolm and Simone have been obsessed with for a long time. It's called the "Time Cube Theory of Reality" and it's based on the premise that if there are multiple universes, then there must be multiple things that exist within the confines of our reality.
00:01:02.480But what we're about to talk about, I joke with Malcolm about this a lot because there's this amazing YouTube channel called Down the Rabbit Hole.
00:01:09.480And one of the documentaries or videos is on this crazy guy who has this like theory about the time cube and everything's like cube-based logic.
00:01:19.500And ever since we watched that video, I make fun of Malcolm saying like he has pile-based logic because he totally doesn't believe in like folding clothes or putting anything away.
00:01:30.560Like he has a separate room for his like office and bedroom and it is just piles.
00:01:37.120I have like buckets, like literally like these big plastic bins that I just throw my clothes in.
00:01:42.940And my system for clothes is all of the clothes I'm actively using, there's two buckets.
00:01:48.040So I can dig through one bucket and throw it in the other bucket as I look for what I want that day.
00:01:52.740I would be completely boned if I didn't have you in my life, Simone.
00:01:58.040So actually we wanted to start this thing where we're going to end our videos with little snippets from our lives.
00:02:02.940We created this great video of, at least on YouTube, I mean on the podcast, you know, people aren't going to be able to see it, but to force people to build a parasocial relationship with them.
00:02:12.180So we're going to, at the end of this one, I'm going to try to get that one of you cleaning up so people can see how useless I am at anything.
00:02:20.720Well, while I'm doing that, you're watching the nuggets.
00:04:08.820But that's still within the confines that you give the math, two things and two things is always four things.
00:04:15.280And so when I accept this, that means that math must exist outside our reality as we perceive it.
00:04:24.280So essentially sort of like all equations kind of exist outside of our reality as truisms.
00:04:30.840The second thing that I take as true is that the thing a mathematical equation represents exists as an emergent property of that equation.
00:04:44.320So let me explain what I mean by this.
00:04:46.460So if you have a graphical line, like I can write an equation that is used to describe a line.
00:04:54.960If this is true, it means that that line exists as a property of that equation, even before I physically graph that line.
00:05:06.320Finally, so this is just three assumptions I'm making here for if you include my assumption that because math exists across reality, that math exists outside of any individual reality.
00:05:20.580So four assumptions of you include that.
00:05:21.840But I'm only having four assumptions here.
00:05:22.820So the fourth is that our reality, the way things interact in our reality, can be described with an equation or set of interlinked equations.
00:05:35.420Now, this is not something that physics has found yet.
00:05:39.000So this is a predictive assumption about something physics will find that physics has not yet found, but it's making this predictive assumption.
00:05:50.960And by that, what I mean is we keep finding, like if you go into physics and you dig into particle physics or something like that,
00:05:57.140we keep finding that forces that originally appeared to be two different forces, like magnetism and electricity or the small force and electricity, later turn out to just be the same thing once you go higher in the equation.
00:06:15.000Now, physics has not yet, like there's the concept of the unifying theory of physics that we don't have yet, right?
00:06:21.060But, you know, they're working towards that and I'm predicting that we will find one and it will be basically a single mathematical equation.
00:06:29.000So if all of those things are true, then that single mathematical equation that describes how reality is interacting, all the little things within what we perceive to be reality, must exist outside of reality.
00:06:43.660And the reality that it describes in the same way, like a graph that it describes would also exist parallel to our reality, even if the equation wasn't graphed.
00:06:56.780I'll use the term graph, manifested, however you want to put it, even if it wasn't simulated.
00:07:01.160Occam's razor, you don't need to assume that physical reality exists for us to be experiencing all of the things that we think we're experiencing.
00:07:10.320Does that make sense to you, Simone, or is there anything there I need to elucidate on?
00:07:17.680What I'd love for you to elaborate on is a lot of people are like, oh, what if we live in a simulation?
00:07:24.220And I feel like this dovetails in interesting ways with that kind of theory, because what you're saying kind of is, yeah, sure, kind of we're like a sort of an algorithmic simulation,
00:07:35.380but also like, that doesn't mean that our reality is any less reality.
00:07:41.520And I think people who think that we're in a simulation kind of get this perception that there's like some other more removed reality, like the real world, you know?
00:07:50.340So if this theory is true, it means the master reality, the reality outside of a simulation is a self-simulating reality.
00:07:59.800And so a reality that was contained within a simulation wouldn't be particularly less meaningful than the master reality.
00:08:08.620It also has some other moral implications.
00:08:10.540It means that all possible realities that can be described by an equation simultaneously exist.
00:08:18.240So there are multiple universes, but you cannot travel between them.
00:08:23.500But any reality described by the same equation, depending on how the equation works, potentially you can travel between them.
00:08:32.100Multiple ways for solving the same equation lead to splitting realities.
00:08:37.080So if there is one equation, but this equation can be solved in multiple ways, then you would have different realities for each one of those ways the equation can be solved as a different graphical representation of the equation.
00:08:48.140So it has some implications on the fundamental underlying like reality.
00:08:52.860So you can say, why do you believe this about reality?
00:08:54.860Like this seems like a lot of things to believe.
00:08:57.400This is the model for reality that relies on the fewest assumptions that I can come up with at least.
00:09:03.000And the least complicated assumptions and the assumptions that seem the most obviously and intrinsically true to me.
00:09:09.540One thing that's really fun about this is, you know, a lot of people are like, well, how can you be secular Calvinist?
00:09:14.860Or how can you be, you know, have all this deterministic thinking, you know, with also like a fairly atheist background in terms of truth in our metaphysical understanding of reality?
00:09:25.700Well, this is how, like we, we can believe that everything that could happen has happened and will happen has happened in the same way that with an equation, when you plug in different numbers, you're going to get like the, the outputs are there.
00:09:39.460So every graphical representation, as you say, you know, every reality is there.
00:09:47.820And I don't, I don't know, I guess it does color our, our moral view of reality.
00:09:55.220It, it, it, I would say offers some comfort in that.
00:09:58.680I think a lot of people are like, well, if this is a simulation, we have to like, please the players of the game or some like simulation builder.
00:10:07.620And like, that's no, no, no, that's not it.
00:10:28.960You know, it doesn't like change because, you know, it doesn't practically on a day-to-day basis change anything about how we live.
00:10:35.020We still have the things that we want to fight for and we don't know how things are going to play out.
00:10:39.740So we're still excited to see what happens per the weird way that humans perceive the world and reality and time on this sort of arbitrarily linear basis.
00:11:07.780So it's a fairly old theory in terms of my views of the world.
00:11:10.840And so a lot of other views I have on the world, like the concept of the future police, which, which we have as a family religion, this idea that eventually a million, 10 million years from now, if my distant descendants are still around.
00:11:24.600If I ask myself, are they more of the way I would think of a human today or more of the way I would think of like a God today?
00:11:30.680And I consider that we're only like 200 years away from being able to literally create heavens, right?
00:11:36.760Like simulated environments that we can upload people into where they can get their every need served.
00:11:41.240Where we can have an AI lattice around the world that you could beseech for favors, basically pray to, and it can solve those favors.
00:11:49.020The type of God that these entities, that my descendants could be a million, 10 million years from now, is beyond anything that we can conceive today.
00:11:58.080And that being the case, used to say they relate to time the way we relate to time.
00:12:02.040And that being the case, you know, we built this family structure around these descendants.
00:12:07.380We call it descender worship instead of ancestor worship are rewarding us for creating a prosperous future for the human species and a pluralistic future for the human species and a future where people are thriving and having new ideas and everything like that.
00:12:22.340So we, you know, raise our kids believing that.
00:12:25.580So they have this motivation, both to have kids, right?
00:12:28.400But also to try to make the future a better place and feel like they have agency over that future.
00:12:32.420So I think that this belief and the determinism that is sort of a result of it has big implications on the future.
00:12:41.340And we did another video, which is one of our least watched videos.
00:12:44.020It's on like free will and determinism.
00:12:46.300And I'd really suggest people check it out if they hear this theory and they go, oh, this means we don't have free will.
00:12:50.780Because I don't think free will and determinism are incompatible at all.
00:12:55.880I really like what it means for a world in which we're simulated.
00:12:58.380Because a really cool thing about a world in which we're simulated is in many ways, for the way some people judge morality, it could be a world with more meaning than a self-simulating world.
00:13:10.880A self-simulating world exists simply because all equations bring simulations of themselves into reality, right?
00:13:18.720But a simulated world, it exists for a purpose.
00:13:22.900It's creators were trying to do something with that simulation, whether it was do historical research or predict some future event or maximize like Qualia because they have some belief around like that's a positive thing in the world.
00:13:37.680And so you are potentially serving your role within this great function, even if you don't understand it.
00:13:44.620Um, but yeah, another interesting thing about this theory is it becomes potentially less likely we're in a simulation in that literally an infinite number of self-stimulating realities will exist based on these equations.
00:14:01.500However, a higher infinite number of simulations will exist because even if an infinite number of realities will exist within each of those realities, people could create simulations.
00:14:11.040But I think for a lot of people, what they assume is that a like fixed number of realities exists.
00:14:16.380And this would assume that a literal infinite number of realities likely exists depending on how these equations work.