Episode 967 Scott Adams: I Teach You How to Reprogram Your Brain Using the Simulation Filter

Date: 2020-05-11 | Duration: 31:21

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Reprogramming your subjective reality Whiteboard1: Simulation “Evidence” Whiteboard2: What if Simulation

If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

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## Transcript

[0:07]

[Music] hey everybody come on in this is the place you know in the morning when do we do these periscopes it's all about enjoying the beverage but in the evening it's about enjoying the knowledge that's right the insight to the the awareness that you'll be gaining right now it's gonna be incredible now I hope you all saw my video that I made last night teaching you the user interface to reality if you look at the comments you can see that it was well-received just about a hundred thousand views since yesterday and it's on fire and the podcasts are referred to and that that same periscope is screaming up the charts on iTunes well deserved so I thought I would extend the

[1:10]

deserved so I thought I would extend the concept since I went over well and I'm going to teach you today a little technique for reprogramming the simulation oh wait did I say reprogramming the simulation because when I tweeted it I said reprogram your brain is that different I'm not sure if you reprogram your brain have you reprogrammed the simulation well let me ask you this have you noticed that we live in a country in which there are two completely different worlds living simultaneously and one the president is a big orange monster destroying everything in another he's sort of a god-king or at least very entertaining these are not the same world and yet we seem to be able to still reproduce still still exist so you tell me

[2:12]

exist so you tell me there was different mindsets we're experiencing entirely different realities is that their reality and have they reprogrammed their own simulation well I'm going to take you on a little bit of a mind trip today I'm first going to reinforce the concept of the simulation for anybody who needs a little a little bit of more of a nudge to accept it as a useful tool then I'm going to teach you how to use stories to reprogram your brain or is it the simulation itself maybe we can't tell so it goes like this the simulation is not meant to be a reality which replaces whatever your prior version of reality was it doesn't replace anything and it

[3:14]

was it doesn't replace anything and it doesn't even need to be true because the base assumption is that our little human brains don't have nearly enough processing power to know what's true anyway that's why we can walk around in these different movies we each think we have a truth but it's sort of generated by our brain to keep us sane that's why the Republicans and the Democrats have different little bubbles and they just walk around them there is no larger truth this seems to affect them they stay alive if they they go go through their lives and it seems to work that they're in different little bubbles so the first thing you must accept is that you can live a life in which you can create a bubble that's better than the bubble you're in will that be the true bubble will that be the bubble that's the right one and everybody else has the wrong bubble of reality probably not probably not because one of the odds

[4:15]

probably not because one of the odds that you would be the one who figured out reality and nobody else could it seems far more likely that we live in our own constructed somewhat subjective world I happen to live in one that's pretty darn good I seem to find a way to enjoy myself just about all the time some people are living in a bubble and they could be in what looks like my same world except they're struggling and everything looks like it's going the wrong direction is there a larger truth to it all don't know don't know if we can ever know but I do know that you can reprogram your at least your subjective reality and I'm gonna teach you how so don't think about the simulation as true or false think about it as fun it's a fun exercise it's an alternative way to think of the world and every time you can think of the world in an alternative

[5:17]

can think of the world in an alternative way there still works it should take you to a higher level of awareness that you shouldn't be so sure about your view of the world if there are so many interpretations they can all work so just for fun I'm going to say simulation evidence to get you a little bit closer to enjoying the let's say the utility of thinking of this as a filter on reality doesn't have to be true just have s to have utility something will make you happier maybe it predicts better see for yourself so don't get too hung up on evidence this is not like scientific evidence or core evidence it's just stuff that's compatible with the idea first of all the basic idea is that there will always be more simulations than there will be real universes and that has to be true if you look at the entire arc of time that might not be true at the moment but if you were to

[6:17]

true at the moment but if you were to look at the entire arc of time of course there will be more artificial worlds than originals because originals take time but as soon as somebody can make an artificial world whether that's in ten years or 50 years they'll make more than one and so there are probably being far more artificial worlds over the entire arc of time you don't know where you are in that art what are the odds that your you're at the point where they're you're the first original species and you're not one of the billions or more of of simulated realities that come after so the math is compatible with you being more likely to be a simulation is it true that history has always been here which would suggest there's some kind of deep reality and we have a have a notion of what that's about or its history created only when

[7:17]

about or its history created only when we need it when we need an observation when you dig a hole in the backyard does it put the does the dinosaur bone just appear when you're digging because if this is a simulation that's the way it would work because there wouldn't be enough processing power to create the universe and all the possibilities so instead it would do what a regular computer programmer would do today they would build a limited world you wouldn't be able to get out of it it wouldn't have as much detail as as the entire universe would need it would only add detail when you were observing it so in other words the world would come into focus only upon observation and there's some suggestion in physics maybe that's actually what's happening so I think it's history created on demand well consider the the idea of spooky action at a distance if you've never heard of this after this is over a googol spooky action at a distance

[8:20]

googol spooky action at a distance you'll find that if you separate two entangled photons you can put them anywhere in the universe and if what is observed it changes the state of the other instantly now we have no rules of physics that can explain how that can happen how could observing this photon when one part of the universe instantly which is faster than the speed of light because there's not enough time to transmit it by the speed of light it actually happens instantly that when you observe one the other one comes into some kind of a defiant state now is that an example of creating history because how could something happen on the other side of the universe without any time passing the only way it can happen is if maybe history is somehow affected now is that a good example I don't know probably not but I'll bet that you could find him about that you could find in physics examples where it seems the

[9:20]

physics examples where it seems the history is being created by the present I think the double slit experiment might get you closer to that - but fact-checked me on that all right if it we were simulated you wouldn't be able to get to the outside and look in and in fact we can't the speed of light you know because as a boundary so we can't get to the edge of the universe and ever look in just the way you would make it if it was a if it were a computer program it simplifies things you don't need a big bang you don't have to explain you know how everything came from nothing because that's how software works the software seems to come from nothing it's just an arrangement of zeros and ones on some kind of a structure so a lot of thorny questions that are hard to understand hard to explain just sort of become easy well the software it was written that way how do you explain this spooky action at a distance well it was just something we couldn't reconcile with the software so we just made it so we just made the code

[10:21]

we just made it so we just made the code say if one thing is observed the other thing happens at the same time sure it's not very neat it's a little sloppy but you know that's the way software is sometimes sometimes you just have to paper things over isn't it nice that there's a perfect balance of physical laws and everything and that we happen to be the humans who always win well of course there's some kind of survivor you know a reason that that could be true the reason that we're even talking about it is because we're the winning species if we were not the winning species we wouldn't be having this conversation but isn't it convenient very much like if you were to design it for let's say putting you our personality into it so that you could play it like a game this is what you would do you would make sure that it didn't destroy itself while you're playing so it would have some kind of amazing balance and your species would be the dominant one does why wouldn't it and then of course we would

[11:22]

wouldn't it and then of course we would not be made of anything if we were a simulated world we would never be able to find what we're made of now you're thinking to yourself we know what we're made of it's like you know electrons and photons and particles and quarks and charms you know so you know maybe you don't know but physicists know it's all that stuff those elementals stuff but here's the thing what are those things made of yeah I get that they're you know quarks and leptons and stuff like that but what are they be enough well eventually you get into just word weird salad like you know well its energy but what's energy what's energy it's the movement of stuff what's the stuff so you end up getting into nonsense if you keep drilling down if you keep saying but what's that made of you you get to really just a nonsense situation so we can't actually determine we're made of anything which is

[12:22]

we're made of anything which is suspiciously what a simulation would discover it's like I can't find out where we're made of if you're worried that evolution doesn't explain everything you don't need to be if we're a simulation we're just software and you don't need any aliens which would certainly explain why we haven't made first contact or seen any signs of life now you could also explain this by just hasn't happened yet but if we're a simulation there's no reason for other planets to have aliens it just there's no reason just the way if you were playing a video game you wouldn't create planets that you're never going to visit within the context of the game would just be a waste of time so are any of these evidence per se no not really I wouldn't call it evidence but it's fun it just tells you that the the simulation filter holds it's sort of robust that's the only thing I want you to get out of this you

[13:22]

thing I want you to get out of this you don't have to believe it's true you just have to have a sense of what it is and then once you have a sense of what it is you say to yourself well if that's what it is let's just say what if what if we're a simulation what would that imply well one thing it might imply is that you might be able to hack it you might be able to find a way to within the rules of the simulation get a better result now I've got a little insight for you that I learned from being famous cartooning guy there are a lot of people who are really really successful and just because of my weird life I get to meet a lot of them and if you ask them privately they will tell you that it feels as though they can they can hack the simulation now they won't use those words but they will tell you quite often

[14:23]

words but they will tell you quite often that their life has suggested that they can simply make things happen there shouldn't be possible it's very common and so it seems that there are people who believe they can hack the simulation and have I believe that as well and when I say I believe that I mean it's a convenient and useful frame or filter for looking at the world that makes me happy and it also seems to be predictive all right now if we're a simulation you would also expect there would be some kind of a challenge built in some kind of a game some kind of a a purpose because it's hard to imagine that anybody would build go through the trouble building a simulation without putting in some kind of a mission a goal an objective to it so do we know what that is maybe it could be that the purpose is to ever increase our

[15:23]

purpose is to ever increase our awareness to just go up to higher levels of understanding of our situation until maybe there's some kind of godlike ending to the gave but we both imagine if you will that were a simulation built with some kind of game rules and as we figure out the simulation we get to we get to advance in levels so you can imagine that there are certain things that would be introduced into the game for the purpose of challenging our understanding of our situation and giving us a shift in consciousness something like a corona virus which just comes out of nowhere and it's going to have the effect of massively changing human awareness the the very way we feel about our place in the world how we relate to each other and we work together how we communicate how you know who we trust who we don't we'll be reassessing every single part

[16:26]

we'll be reassessing every single part of civilization from the from the ground up we'll be reassessing everything all of our priorities all of our assumptions all on the table I'm even starting to wonder was it always true that we could just make money and nothing like we just did now of course it's a special case where it's almost impossible to have inflation so maybe in the in the case where it's impossible to have inflation because there's not enough demand maybe you could just print money did we just learn that in a special case we can literally print trillions of dollars and there's no there's apparently no but if there's no downside to it now I don't know does it come back and bite us in the ass later I'm actually confused about this because the stock market's actually like there's nope there's no penalty to it so I would just say that there are a whole bunch of things that we've assumed to be true that we no

[17:27]

we've assumed to be true that we no longer assumed to be true a lot of it has to do with it with what experts have told us and then I think we're going to have a big awakening about privacy and you might not like it but I think that the the ultimate outcome of that is going be that people will not people will give up more privacy that you think they ought to so I don't want to have that conversation but just to say that there's going to be these massive consciousness shifts now here's the fun part if you are software if you are a simulation and if you can reprogram yourself I would say that this is how it works your brain is a pattern recognition machine it just automatically sees patterns often incorrectly but it sees patterns patterns patterns it's not a logic machine it can do a little bit of logic but it's mostly a pattern machine so stories are how you program a pattern

[18:29]

so stories are how you program a pattern machine because you want to put in stories to become the new patterns that are better than whatever the other patterns were because you're sort of operating on the software that's in there it's just working on habit and pattern introduced a story that will upgrade some of that let me give you an example you see this lovely mask this was sent to me by a viewer who might be watching this right now her name is young and Jacob and young sent me a nice note with this mask that apparently she made this will all tie together in a moment and so Young told me this she said she'd read all of my books and especially my tips on goals versus systems so that that's from this book had a failed almost everything and

[19:30]

book had a failed almost everything and still win big and upon learning the system's being better than goals idea which Jung says was a game changer for her business and her parenting and went on to thank me and etc and then she sent me and Christina a pink version of this which are the coolest mess that I have so I'll actually be using this so thank you
you young Jacob who and I guess your real estate business is is doing well thanks to that now that was a story this is a story that one person just just turned into code because there's a really good chance the young is either watching this live or will watch it on replay and not knowing that this was coming is saying something along the lines of I can't believe this is happening right now because I read his book I used his ideas

[20:34]

because I read his book I used his ideas it changed my my business and my parenting for the better I sent him this thing and now he's talking to me on this screen young Jacob learned the user interface for reality what she just did doesn't seem like it's easy to do it doesn't and she did it effortlessly after learning the the very tips that I've been telling you are useful for reprogramming your reality now what she did is she created a story that's now part of her permanent I would say permanent structure of her brain now the next time she thinks to herself hey there's a thing that there's a thing that's a little bit hard I wonder if I could do it this story will will be part of that part of that history this says yeah because that other thing worked out give it a shot what's the worst that could happen so

[21:36]

what's the worst that could happen so she now has a little bit of an inventory of a success story I likewise have a whole inventory of stories that collectively form what I call my personality and collectively they become my reality so I have a completely artificial let's say subjective reality formed by the some of my life stories you too should look to find ways that you can add stories to your your history because those stories directly affect the pattern-matching of your brain and when you could match the pattern matching of your brain to a new story it can it can kind of clamp on easily and become part of your permanent code so do some things that you know will work out find some minor challenges try some things that won't hurt you maybe be nice

[22:36]

things that won't hurt you maybe be nice to somebody see how it works out do a kindness to somebody as as you know this is what Jung did she just used the technique that I actually write about in my books the reciprocity so she did something for me without being asked it was actually very nice it's a really good mask and I actually needed one so it was like sort of perfect and in return she got a shout out and the story so she understood that about the the way the universe works if I do this for somebody I get a little bit back so go find your story find the thing you can do that can build your inventory of things that work for you I'll tell you I'll tell you a few another one of my stories so one of my stories that I try to keep going in my head is that I I can win against all odds and indeed through my life I've had just ridiculous success at things I shouldn't win at because I

[23:38]

at things I shouldn't win at because I don't have any experience you've you've witnessed some of them so here's one of the stories that just fits into that inventory years ago I lived at at an apartment buildings at some tennis courts that a tennis tournament from the people lived there and they they somewhat randomly paired us up and it was going to be a doubles mixed doubles tournament meaning men and women playing on the same teams and I was paired with a young woman who had never played tennis so I was in a tennis tournament and I got paired with somebody who had never hit a tennis ball not once and that's my that's my doubles partner now I of course said to myself I think I'm gonna win this thing she'd never played before but here's the positive part she was a college athlete basketball player so she was a a well

[24:38]

basketball player so she was a a well trained well coached athlete in general which meant that she had all the physical coordination you had ever walked all the hand-eye she had height you know she was strong enough because she was an athlete in seven and so I I said to myself we're gonna win this and I told her where to stand you know I had her play the net mostly and I said you're just gonna learn basically one thing you're just gonna go up to the net every time and you just got to get close enough that you can bag the ball down with it when it floats over if it gets to me I'll hit an aggressive shot because I was better than you know the other two people on the other side and there'll be a weak return and then you go and slap it down now of course you can imagine that we lost badly the first several points because they just slammed it at the what they imagined was the weaker player and they were right and the first few times she gets hammered it's just pretty pretty intimidating he's like ah and but each time I used my

[25:41]

he's like ah and but each time I used my then growing powers of persuasion and she was of course getting very very down on herself and negative and and I told her no I got this we got this you were so right that you're almost there just make this one adjustment you're 90 percent there just tap it down the next time you see it and you know three more points we'd lose we're down to game and she'd be oh you know maybe we should just quit you know I'm not even hitting the ball back and I'd say no we're almost there watch this we're gonna get the next couple of points before you knew it she'd win a point you know maybe by lucky would just hit the side of the racquet and fall on the other side but we got a point and she was her confidence started to come in and she started to get into her natural athletic vibe and it actually you know we took it all the way to the finals the first day she'd ever played tennis and we were we were chewing our way through the through the rankings now I

[26:43]

through the through the rankings now I added up losing the finals but we got to the finals and you know it was against all all odds I mean it couldn't have been more ridiculous we shouldn't have had any right to even be in the tournament much less make it to the finals so even though we didn't get the final thing it wasn't important it was just you know just a fun tournament but it's part of my inventory of stories that I remind myself that I can win against incredible odds and that's the story that seems to form for me over and over again now somebody says Scott was io4 oh yes I was approximately a four Oh at that point and she was approximately a zero that somebody says a lot of us have inventories of failure so here's what you do the stories that you think about the most will be the ones that influenced you the most focus is the most important

[27:45]

you the most focus is the most important thing you can do focus and repeat focus and repeat so playback your success stories as much as possible and also playback future success stories I like to literally imagine future successes and replay them in my head a million times and sometimes the success plays out just the way you imagined it it's really freaky so that's fun too because their stories don't even have to be all ones that have actually happened I'll give you the perfect example here's my most powerful story I have one story that rules my other stories right every other story that forms my personality in my subjective reality is the weaker version of this one and I call it the prisoner Island story and this is who this is who I think I am not because I was necessarily born this way but because I've programmed myself to be

[28:46]

because I've programmed myself to be this person and it's a source of great strength and confidence and the story goes like this and again it's a future story it doesn't have to be a real one it's like a fantasy story well actually I hope it's not my future but it's a fantasy story it goes like this there's an island of prisoners where all the bad people go and of course they're tough and they're you know they're murderers and you know just the worst bunch of people and for some reason I I get a blame for something and I'm convicted and they drop me off on the convict Island on de water the convict Island because I'm not as large as a lot of the other prisoners I get beaten up mercilessly on day two just as bad I get beaten up almost killed on day three they're using me for a toy a day

[29:48]

three they're using me for a toy a day for there's practically nothing left of me you come back in a year I've been charged in the island and I've killed every one of them that's my story because it doesn't matter how much badness happens the first week because I didn't go to the island for a week I went there to rule the island first week didn't go well second week I'm gonna find a way by the third week people are gonna start dropping by the fourth week in the fifth week people are gonna start saying maybe we should be on your side if you come back in a year I'm running the island that's my story now of course I'll never be dropped off on a prisoner island but I take that story with me as my core identity because every situation you put me in I just got dropped off at the island

[30:49]

I just got dropped off at the island like yeah I know today might be bad guess what best year's gonna be for you so that's my story find a story like that that works for you doesn't have to be real it could be one of those if it's compatible with your personality that's best that one fits me I don't know why but go build up your story inventory that is how you program yourself that is your tip for today I hope is useful and I will see you in the morning