This Week in Startups
00:28:19 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:28:19] S0: In simulation theory from your perspective. [00:28:21] S1: I mean, thankfully, we have a great pop culture reference point that I think we can all sort of agree on, which would be the, 1999 classic, The Matrix, which sort of proposes, I think, the general idea. Get away from human beings or the batteries or whatever. But the idea that we could all be living in or our consciousness could be living in some sort of a virtual reality simulation of the world rather than the real world, and that we don't have any objective way to know because everything we sense about the world is through our senses. And so if we could suspend a fly brain in a computer simulation like this and it believes it's a fly, it's flying around, it's flying in a virtual world, and it has every reason to think that that's a real world. What if we had much more sophisticated computers, much faster GPUs, much more, you know, like, elaborate models? Could any one of our brains be in this kind of a computer simulation as well walking around a virtual world, doing a virtual podcast, believing that it's real Yes. But not really is is, the idea. There is a great documentary called Glitch in the Matrix that plays on this idea and that speaks with people who believe we are, in fact, in a simulation that I that I really recommend if you wanna learn. [00:29:37] S0: What percentage? We we have p doom a lot. Oliver, what percentage are you? Somebody building world models and putting essentially, this is a simulated fruit fly. Yeah? This is a... How do you simulate the fruit fly's existence then?
00:29:37 · Jason Calacanis, Oliver Cameron
[00:29:37] S0: What percentage? We we have p doom a lot. Oliver, what percentage are you? Somebody building world models and putting essentially, this is a simulated fruit fly. Yeah? This is a... How do you simulate the fruit fly's existence then? [00:29:55] S2: There was this open source project, that takes this mapped brain and then connects it to actions, that it can perform. So I wouldn't necessarily take from this that this is the brain of a fruit fly as a fruit fly operates in our physical world. It's a sort of, I don't know, baby version of that. Sure. But, yeah, on its way. [00:30:17] S0: Got it. And and at some point, are you planning to put... Is there a way to connect a fruit fly's brain or some a mouse's brain, a rabbit's brain? Obviously, there's Neuralink and other things. But in three, four, five, six years, what would you be simulating here in the world model? Could you actually connect a biological creature to a world model and just shoot it into their brains?
00:30:17 · Jason Calacanis, Oliver Cameron
[00:30:17] S0: Got it. And and at some point, are you planning to put... Is there a way to connect a fruit fly's brain or some a mouse's brain, a rabbit's brain? Obviously, there's Neuralink and other things. But in three, four, five, six years, what would you be simulating here in the world model? Could you actually connect a biological creature to a world model and just shoot it into their brains? [00:30:40] S2: I mean, our focus is primarily on these as environments for agents to learn in. And so, really, one thing that strikes me as really interesting to pursue is this idea that we humans exist inside this world model and all of these systems that we are raised in shape us, shape our intelligence, shape what we do and how we do it. And language models as they're currently trained, I don't feel are faithful to that idea. They sort of short circuit a few of these and have, versions that I'm not quite convinced by. And so what I think is really exciting is this idea that you could place agents, both mature or nascent agents, inside these environments that to the agent are utterly real and actually place it with other agents too and say, hey. Learn the world. Learn how the world works. Try to accomplish tasks. So
00:30:40 · Oliver Cameron, Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:30:40] S2: I mean, our focus is primarily on these as environments for agents to learn in. And so, really, one thing that strikes me as really interesting to pursue is this idea that we humans exist inside this world model and all of these systems that we are raised in shape us, shape our intelligence, shape what we do and how we do it. And language models as they're currently trained, I don't feel are faithful to that idea. They sort of short circuit a few of these and have, versions that I'm not quite convinced by. And so what I think is really exciting is this idea that you could place agents, both mature or nascent agents, inside these environments that to the agent are utterly real and actually place it with other agents too and say, hey. Learn the world. Learn how the world works. Try to accomplish tasks. So [00:31:39] S0: Percentage you're convinced that we're in a simulation right now. If you're being honest, like, and you've had a range of this from, you know, over time. And let's just assume 0% of us before seeing The Matrix or having read some of the philosophers who the books were based on. If everybody starts at zero, where are you at now in terms of this reality we're in? Is the base reality or we're in a simulation. Base reality would be we're the ones running the simulation versus [00:32:10] S1: Core core reality. The matter you
00:32:10 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis, Oliver Cameron
[00:32:10] S1: Core core reality. The matter you [00:32:13] S0: Core reality. So where are you at, Oliver? Be honest here. You're not gonna lose investment or anything. People don't need to know where people are building world models sit. How... Where where do you sit? Be honest. [00:32:23] S2: I'm 90% certain that this is a simulation, a very advanced simulation of some sort. [00:32:30] S0: This is why I'm the world's greatest moderator, and I can convince people to actually answer the question. I am fifty fifty. I'm fifty fifty at this point. Where are you, Lon? [00:32:38] S1: I used to be a lot more skeptical. I sort of thought this was like, people read too much sci fi, and then they get, like, wacky ideas. Because it's always like, well, it'd be like, well, what's the point? You know? Like, that that was my way in. It's like, why would an alien species do this to us? Like, why would you run this all day? What would be the point? But now that we are humans building them and putting animal brains in them, it's like, oh, the point would be to see if you could do it like that. It it unlocked that for me. So now I'm a lot more open to it because it'd be like, yeah, if you have the technology, someone would be like, well, let me put 6,000,000,000 human simulated brains in here and see what happens. Like, maybe we're gonna see what happens. I can't rule it out.
00:32:38 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:32:38] S1: I used to be a lot more skeptical. I sort of thought this was like, people read too much sci fi, and then they get, like, wacky ideas. Because it's always like, well, it'd be like, well, what's the point? You know? Like, that that was my way in. It's like, why would an alien species do this to us? Like, why would you run this all day? What would be the point? But now that we are humans building them and putting animal brains in them, it's like, oh, the point would be to see if you could do it like that. It it unlocked that for me. So now I'm a lot more open to it because it'd be like, yeah, if you have the technology, someone would be like, well, let me put 6,000,000,000 human simulated brains in here and see what happens. Like, maybe we're gonna see what happens. I can't rule it out. [00:33:20] S0: I'm gonna I'm gonna show you a paper. I have a friend, Ali. We used to play cards in LA when I was there. And, know, when you play poker, and this, paper, we'll put the link in the the show in notes so you can search for it, Beyond Perception, colon, Proposing Our Reality as an ASI Alignment Simulation. [00:33:38] S1: Sure. Okay.