The Paranoid Style Podcast
The Paranoid Style Podcast
Simulation Theory and The Mandela Effect
This week The Paranoid Style Podcast is forcing an unexpected reboot on the world… The Simulation Theory! We look into all the reasons you might have to believe that the nature of existence is just a very sophisticated MMORPG. From philosopher’s caves to physics’ double slits. From The Matrix to Mandela, simulacrum to Silly Putty. We're embracing our Non-Player Character status and just waiting for the next software update to complete. Now with even more artificial intelligence!
If you have any topic suggestions for the show or any tales to share, please email us at theparanoidstylepod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @theparanoidstylepod or on twitter @style_paranoid.
Music used in this episode is from: Purple Planet Royalty Free Music
Opening theme music provided by Tony Molina. You can hear more of his music at https://tonymolina650.bandcamp.com/
ARK: Hey, Sister!
CCK: Hey, Sister! Hey, listeners! This is the Paranoid Style Podcast. A show where two sisters talk about weird conspiracy theories, bizarre mysteries, and high strangeness. Thank you for downloading and pressing play.
ARK: Hopefully, it wasn’t a butt-dial.
CCK: If it was a butt-dial, please consider having your butt subscribe or follow The Paranoid Style Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and consider leaving a rating or review. My name is Christine and I’m the non-player character in the library that has really helpful advice to give but takes too long to get to the point.
ARK: And I’m Amanda and I’m the NPC that is standing right next to your quest, that you keep accidentally activating while you’re trying to do something else, and I just won’t move out of the freakin’ way!
CCK: So, if we’re accepting our roles as NPC’s in this Massively Multi-Player Role Playing Game we call life, then there can be only one topic we’re covering today. Sister, tell me what you know about Simulation Theory.
ARK: The first thing I can tell you about simulation theory is that philosophically speaking, its origins go back way further than I ever would’ve guessed. Specifically, we’re going all the way back to circa 400's BCE and the Ancient Greek philosopher known as the Laughing Philosopher, Democritus.
CCK: DE-MO!
ARK: Democritus is primarily credited with his atomic theory of the universe. Basically, Democritus believed that everything is composed of atoms. Those atoms are physically indivisible, indestructible, have always been and always will be in motion, and that in between these atoms lies empty space.
CCK: Ok. If my science is correct, which it surely is not, that is pretty much what we believe today per modern science, not very simulation-y.
ARK: Yes, but then comes Demo's frienemy, Plato.
CCK: Frienemy is putting it lightly. Plato, the original mean girl, is said to have hated Democritus so much that he wished all of Demo’s books would be burned.
ARK: On Wednesdays, we wear togas. So, in direct contrast to Democritus’ materialism theory, was Plato’s idealism, meaning, he believed that ideas are more fundamental than objects and that consciousness is what creates physical matter.
CCK: So, Plato is all… “I think therefore I am” and Democritus is like, “We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl. Or boy.” Plato proposed that while we inhabit the material world, there was also a world of ideas or forms and that anything in the physical world is just a mere imitation of the form or idea. The perfect circle can only exist as a mental form, and can never actually exist in the material world, and not even the ratio of pi can truly describe a perfect circle.
ARK: Perhaps it cannot, but pie is still delicious and therefore perfect or is my mind pie even more perfect?! Curse you, Playdough!
CCK: I think it’s very appropriate that in order to demonstrate this theory, Plato presented the “Allegory of the Cave” which has come to be an often-cited metaphor for people that believe that there is a secret cabal perpetrating a vast conspiracy against the majority of the human race and that only some have come to recognize the what the real truth is. And now… Plato’s Allegory of the Cave…
ARK: Oooh, I sense some royalty free music coming up… *****SONG*****Imagine a cave. There are people that have been in imprisoned in this cave since birth; they are tied up, facing the back wall of the cave and they can only look straight ahead. Behind these prisoners is a fire and while objects pass in front of this fire, shadows are cast onto the wall which the cave people are facing. The shadows on the wall are the prisoners’ reality, but they are not an accurate representation of the real world outside the cave. And then one day, one of the prisoners escapes his bindings and he makes his way out of the cave and into the real world. Let’s call this escapee the philosopher. The philosopher is at first terrified at what he sees, not flat, featureless shadows on the wall, but a whole wide, three-dimensional world. At first he believes that this cannot possibly be real, but over time, he begins to realize that his former view of reality was wrong. One day the philosopher returns to the cave to inform the other prisoners of what he has discovered. Some of the prisoners do not believe him, others accuse him of being a total wing-nut, but most just have no desire to leave the cave because they have known no other life and are thoroughly terrified of what they will find if they do. The only world these prisoners have known was experienced through their senses, the shadows they saw on the wall, the sounds that echoed through the cave, it was their reality, but it was still all just a dumb show.
CCK: New title of our podcast… And now I know why modern science has mostly sided with Democritus. However, more and more, there are those that are starting to come around to Plato’s way of thinking. In October of 2020, Anil Ananthaswarny wrote an article for Scientific American called, “Are we living in a simulation? Chances are about 50-50.” According to this article, using something called the Bayesian formula, the probability of us living in a simulation is nearly fifty-fifty, with a base reality just barely holding onto a fraction of a lead.
ARK: But, what does it all mean?
CCK: Exactly…
ARK: Um, no really, I don’t understand any of these words strung together… what does it all mean?
CCK: Oh! It’s been awhile, let me see if I remember how to do this. And now it’s time for clarification corner with CCK… The simulation hypothesis is the idea that we not living in an objective reality, meaning a reality that is only perceived using one or more of our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, but rather we are part of a massive, extremely high-tech computer simulation, being programmed and run by who knows who or what, only that it must be a higher form of intelligence. It could be likened to dreaming while you sleep. Your brain creates this world, a physical experience that for that moment in time, for all intents and purposes, is real. Or to put it another way, “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. You can see it when you look out your window or turn on your television.”
ARK: Skip ahead a couple of thousand years and we have a Swedish-born philosopher named Nick Bostrom. Bostrom is a Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University and heads the Future of Humanity Institute and he is one of the primarily credited pioneers of modern-day Simulation Theory. And now… we are going to totally butcher his hypothesis as it was presented in The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 53, Issue 211, in April 2003. The article is entitled, “Are we Living in a Computer Simulation?” question mark. Christine, would you like to go first?
CCK: Certainly. Nick Bostrom’s paper begins: “I argue that at least one of the following propositions is true: 1. The human species is very likely to become extinct before reaching a “posthuman’ stage.” to paraphrase… humans will go extinct long before we are ever able to create a cyborg. On the one hand, as time goes by it’s easier to conceive of the end of the human race, either by superbug, superstorm, or superbomb. But, on the other hand, we are already pretty freakin’ close to reaching a posthuman stage in our evolution. Humanity, has made some pretty amazing developments in cybernetics, prosthetics, and even artificial intelligence.
ARK: Yes, artificial intelligence, as proven by our podcast! Thanks to TikTok commenter, whomstymcgraw, for the following feedback on The Paranoid Style Podcast: “Bro it literally sounds like ai talking to each other 😭😭😭😭👎👎” Continuing… Bostrom’s second proposition is as follows: “2. Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of its evolutionary history (or variations thereof)”. So… in dum-dum speak, I think he’s saying, if 1 is not true, meaning a civilization could reach the point of post-humanism, but, they would not bother creating simulations that resemble their world, or their past evolutionary journey. I’m calling this one false as well. We may not have reached our technological maturity as a species, but we love running simulations of ourselves and our world, the best example of this is that I still cannot get a PlayStation 5.
CCK: Not to mention that we already use simulation exercises to answer all sorts of questions; everything from the course of a storm, military invasions, or even the path and spread of a pandemic…
ARK: Two out of three ain’t bad. I agree, number two of Bostrom’s hypothesis does not sound true to me… which means, it must be proposition number three… Christine?
CCK: Proposition number three, according to Bostrom is… we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
ARK/CCK: WHOOOOA…
ARK: The human race is not quite post-human yet. But, even in our just human state, we still cannot help ourselves from running our versions of simulations, albeit, rudimentary, but lots of them from Sims to CPR dummies. So, if we accept that one day we will in fact be able to create a simulation that is so close to what we think of as reality that it is indistinguishable from that reality, then it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there could be a more advanced civilization that has already done it. And that means that there could be billions of simulations being run, and if there are billions of simulations being run, then the chances of this world, this reality, being the base reality is one in billions.
CCK: Dammit. I was just trying to pick up this coin and now I have to listen to this crazy rant again. Ok. So, we are the human equivalent of a golden retriever doing science experiments… we have no idea what we’re doing. But we will try our best to stumble our way through this topic. And I think a good way to start is to look at all the clues that our world is not what it seems. Or rather it is what it seems, but the way in which we experience it is not what we think. Although, it’s the brain in a vat hypothesis, does it really matter where we are if our brain is just creating our reality for us? Let’s begin.
ARK: Finally. I didn’t think this NPC was ever going to get to the point.
CCK: This first thing we’ll start with is actual science.
ARK: Noooooo.
CCK: In physics, there is something known as the double-slit experiment. First the basics. Particles or little balls of matter are shot at a wall through a slit in a plate. The particles that make it through the slit all accumulate within the same pattern, that of a line where the particles went through the slit. Add a second slit and the pattern changes so that now there are two lines of particles accumulated on the walls. Now, we do the same thing with waves by submerging all of this under water. First the waves are directed through a single slit, and although the waves radiate out, their highest intensity is still in the line where they came through the slit, similar to the pattern created by the particles. But, if the waves are directed towards two slits, the waves interfere with each other, so now the pattern on the wall is showing several lines, some brighter than others depending on if the tops of the waves came together and became more intense or the if the bottom of a wave met the top of the wave and canceled each other out. Ok. I’m tagging you in, Sister. **CLAP**
ARK: (Randy Savage) OH YEAH TIME TO GET QUANTUM. At this point, the exact same experiment is done again, but this time with electrons. Electrons are fired through a copper plate with a single slit in it towards a photosensitive screen. And we see the exact results we got with the particles, a single band of electrons accumulate in a line. But, you bring in the ol’ double-slit plate and fire the electrons through it and instead of getting the two lines on the screen, we get the interference pattern on the wall, just like with the waves. At this point, the doggie scientists decide that perhaps those electrons are just bouncing off each other and creating that interference. BarkingTo account for this they decide to shoot the electrons through one at a time, but several hours later and they are still getting the same interference pattern on the screen. It was deduced that the electron starts out as a particle, but then when it reaches the slits, something happens. Does it split into two, and go through each slit and then comes back together and interfere with each other, or does it become a wave? And mathematically is it doing even weirder stuff? Like sometimes going through one slit, sometimes going through the other sometimes going around the plate entirely? And I’m spent…
CCK: The scientists decide the only way to really know what is going on is to observe it. So, they put a measuring device by the plate with slits in it, with the intention of recording which slit the electron went through. But once the electron was being watched, it started behaving like a particle once again. Just shooting through whichever slit it was fired at, hitting the screen and clumping together in just two bands in line with the slits, instead of the interference pattern they had seen before.
ARK: And if you want to blow your mind even further, although I know my explanation won’t do this justice, but at some point a physicist named John Wheeler introduced the Delayed Choice experiment, which meant the scientist’s decision to observe or not observe was not made until the last moment. And then once the choice is made to observe the experiment, the electrons which may have been acting as waves, once again begin to act as particles. But then, to make things even more effed up, electrons, now acting as particles, retroactively change the past to show that they were particles when they passed through the slits. But, what does any of this have to do with simulation theory?
CCK: It depends on if you believe that consciousness effects how these electrons decide to act? And I realize that in these scientific experiments “observation” does not mean a person standing there actually looking at what’s happening; there are physical detectors and machinery involved, which of course will automatically disrupt the things that are happening, but the question that arises is still the same… Does the universe choose to act a different way depending on if it’s being observed? It’s hard to reconcile this kind of improvisation with a materialist world.
ARK: And doesn’t it make it seem a lot like the concept of rendering in video games? A game does not render the frame until a player is looking at it. If that player looks around, then the game needs to render the new view that is being observed. It has been pointed out in several sites, posts, and YouTube videos that perhaps our limitation for space travel is the only indicator we have of the limits of the great processor that is running our world. Or perhaps it’s an intentional barrier to keep us from seeing beyond the boundaries of what exists… Space is for future game expansions!
CCK: Well, as long as we’ve ventured into outer space anyway, I wanted to bring up the Fermi Paradox, which we discussed briefly in our Alien Visitation episode. A quick recap, The Fermi Paradox, named for the Italian-American physicist, Enrico Fermi, who proposed the question “Where all the aliens at?”. It’s the idea that even if we had never been visited by extraterrestrials, we should, by now, have some evidence that there either is or was at some time, extraterrestrial life. So, perhaps, this is another limitation of the simulation? What if there just isn’t enough RAM to simulate multiple civilizations at one time.
ARK: Adding to this theory is the fact that this server known as Earth is in a Goldilocks Zone within our solar system. Basically, a habitat that is just right in terms of proximity to and type of star we’re around. As a designer it takes care of that problem of only running one type of simulated civilization at a time. Sure, there’s zillions and zillions of other planets out there, but yours is the only one that is capable of sustaining life. But to get back to the terrestrial, perhaps there is proof of our coding much, much closer to home. Like, literally in our flesh homes. In 2017, at the University of Washington, a team of researchers used strands of DNA to successfully hack into a computer.
CCK: We oversimplified and probably grossly misunderstood physics… let’s jump into biology while we’re at it!
ARK: Not to mention the number we’ve been doing on computer science.
CCK: These researchers were able to encode malicious software into a physical strand of DNA. When that DNA was then analyzed by a gene sequencer, the exploit corrupted the gene-sequencing software and was able to take control of the computer.
ARK: It might not be the most effective way to hack into a gene sequencing computer, and I think I read that it only worked about 37% of the time, but it just shows that the potential is there. And not just for hacking purposes. Also in 2017, researchers from Harvard were able to store moving images into the DNA of a living cell; this opens up possibilities of using DNA as storage for digital information.
CCK: There was also the claim by theoretical physicist, James Gates, from the University of Maryland. Gates said that while he was studying quarks and electrons, within his equations he found what looked like error-correcting codes, basically algorithms that are used to check for and correct errors in a string of bits.
ARK: So, in theory, let’s say I’ve coded a single frame that shows a field of green grass and clumps of yellow dandelions. But, I’ve accidentally fat-fingered the coding for one of my clumps of dandelions, and this mistake would actually be more like a clump of amanita mushrooms growing in this field. Well, luckily, I have my error-correcting codes that recognizes that this string of input I just entered is most likely meant to be dandelions, not amanitas and it makes the necessary adjustments. But, occasionally, the error-correcting codes might not work, which could result in the next things we’ll talk about, which I think are the more fun, more familiar signs that people might recognize.
CCK: Yes. Glitches in the matrix, as they are commonly referred to. This comes from a scene in the movie The Matrix where Neo sees a black cat run by him twice. He refers to having déjà vu and Trinity explains that déjà vu is actually a glitch in the matrix. This term has come to be used for weird, unexplainable events or sightings.
ARK: One of the most common examples of this to be found on the interwebs is the seemingly lazy NPC coding that will have almost identical people sitting together on the bus or standing near each other in a store. But there are other really cool photo examples, like of trees that seem like they didn’t finish rendering or buildings that fade into the sky. Or normal everyday objects that appear pixelated. But there are tons of fascinating stories out there. The Glitch_in_the_Matrix subreddit has lots of really fun reads about peoples’ encounters with their doppelgangers or missing time or slips into alternate realities. If these are just creative writing projects, who cares, it’s a great way to pass some time, but if they are real experiences, it’s really chilling. Have you ever had or seen what you consider a glitch in the matrix?
**Discussion? Silly putty story.**
CCK: I think it’s possible you may have more glitch stories… I’m not sure how common it is to think about things like ghosts, cryptid sightings, ESP, or even just strange coincidences as glitches, maybe they’re more like easter eggs in the game? But they are definitely not something that is programmed into our regular work-a-day world, at least for most of us, but then they’ll pop up from time to time.
ARK: Is it possible that there are a subset of glitches that have become so numerous and prevalent that they have been categorized as their own phenomenon? That of the Mandela Effect. The Mandela Effect is when a group of people have a different memory or recollection than what is reported or recorded about an event or product.
CCK: This was coined by a paranormal consultant named Fiona Broome and is named for the South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, Nelson Mandela. There are large swaths of people that claim to remember Mandela dying sometime in the 1980’s, while he was still imprisoned for sabotage against the government. But, any searches on the subject now state that Nelson Mandela did not die in prison. He was imprisoned for 27 years, was eventually released in 1990. He worked to end apartheid and would become the first President of South Africa in 1994. He served as President until 1999. Nelson Mandela died in 2013 at the age of 95.
ARK: One of the first examples I remember seeing and having it actually blow my mind a bit is the children's literature franchise about a family of bears. The Berenstein Bears. Or to be more precise about it… the Berenstain Bears. That’s B-e-r-e-n-s-t-A-i-n. I am a Berensteinite all the way. I do really recall the name being spelled with an E, not an A.
CCK: There are so many examples of the Mandela Effect. Although, I noticed that there are two main things where it is prevalent. Pop culture, especially movies…
ARK: Even super popular movies, that most people have seen, like Star Wars. I mean, even if you haven’t seen Star Wars, it’s possible that you’ve used the quote, “Luke, I am your father.” Which is not the original quote from the movie. What Darth Vader actually says is…
CCK: SPOILERS!
ARK: I think we’re past that at this point… what he actually says is “No, I am your father.”
CCK: And the other place it seems to pop up a lot is in product names. So many of the examples are corporate product misspellings, which is done to have a name that is legally protectable. Like Fruit Loops, spelled FROOT, or Oreo Double Stuff with only one “F”. It makes sense that the majority of people would remember fruit being spelled correctly, because it’s the default to spell it correctly.
ARK: Or is it because software upgrades never go perfectly. Even in the simulation.
*****GAME SHOW*****game show music with wrong and right buttons
ARK: it’s time to play Have You Been Mandela Effected? The game that asks our contestant to answer a series of questions to determine which timeline they are currently in. Our first contestant hails from San New Francisco.
CCK: umm… just San Francisco.
ARK: you’re not from the New Francisco timeline? Nevermind… Meet Christine. Christine. Are you ready to play?
CCK: yes.
ARK: I am going to ask you a series of questions and based on your answers, we’ll know if you have been Mandela Effected. Let’s get started…. Question 1. My bologna has a first name, it’s Oscar. My bologna has a second name, it’s…what?
CCK:
ARK: Question number 2. My Rich Uncle Pennybags also known as the Monopoly Guy wears a monocle… True or False?
CCK:
ARK: In the Disney classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, what does the Evil Queens say when she performs scrying magic?
CCK:
ARK: And finally for all the marbles. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are all beloved characters of the classic cartoons know as Looney what… and please spell it.
CCK:
ARK: I want to thank you for playing, Christine. And while you may not be in the correct timeline, that's ok. You hopefully had some fun and just remember what our old friend, Philip K. Dick said, "If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others!" Thank you everybody. See you next time on Have You Been Mandela Effected!
****END GAME SHOW*****
CCK: But, we still haven’t really covered why these upgrades are getting done. Why would some future version of ourselves run a simulation like our world?
ARK: And the answer is probably: why not? The good folks on the Starship Enterprise seemed to love their holodeck. They used it for entertainment and training purposes. There’s also an interesting theory that we’re an ancestor simulation being run in order to see if we can find a solution to climate change. If that’s the case, so far, we’re really getting pwned.
CCK: But that is assuming that our world is a simulation for some other being’s education or entertainment. Maybe it’s a sandbox for humans to learn how best to be human. Although, I suppose that starts to dip a toe into religion.
ARK: Which is not that far off the mark anyway. There are concepts in Buddhism and Hinduism that point out that the world is an illusion. And the consciousness is more important than matter.
CCK: Also, I guess it does add a very interesting spin to the concept of reincarnation. You didn’t flip the game the first time around, so now you are forced to respawn, as a different avatar and try again. And it’s not just Eastern religious concepts that lend itself to the Simulation argument. Afterall, if we’re living in a simulation, it means we’re living in an intelligently designed world and watched over by an omniscient creator or creators.
ARK: This whole time we’ve been talking about this idea as if it is a computer simulation. But, what if it’s another kind of simulation? As Alan Watts would say, what if we are simply the universe experiencing itself. The universal consciousness simulating life as trees and animals, and 7 billion people. But, I would just like to say, that if we are living in a simulation, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I mean, you still should live by tenants of don’t be a fucking dickhole to your fellow NPC’s. If you are consciousness and feeling, then it’s safe to assume that everyone around you is as well. But, it does also open up some interesting possibilities. Like you can rewrite your code every day. Every morning I get up and drink a cup of coffee… that is part of my coding, but if tomorrow I wake up and drink a mimosa instead, I have officially made a change to my code.
CCK: And you’ve given the simulation observers a real thrill! Of course, they’re going to have to debug that code by giving you a headache and reminding you why you drink a cup of coffee every morning.
ARK: Oh, yeah.
CCK: Instead… only try to realize the truth.
ARK: What truth?
CCK: There is no coffee.
ARK: Whoa! (No coffee?! Fuck that… gimme the blue pill).