Simulated existential crisis in the form of a video game. Please check out our sponsors:
- Tryolabs: https://tryolabs.com/lex
- Vincero: https://vincerowatches.com/lex to get up to 25% off + free shipping

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:48 - Round 1 - The Matrix
8:12 - Round 2 - Reincarnation
9:58 - Round 3 - Winning
12:39 - Round 4 - Adventure line
16:30 - Round 5 - Confusion
19:58 - Round 6 - Mind control
35:09 - Round 7 - A dream within a dream
42:28 - Round 8 - Ego death
47:49 - Death becomes meaningless

CONNECT:
- Subscribe to this YouTube channel
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

As if real life didn't have enough opportunities for an existential crisis, let us play Friends for a time, a game that I think simulates 1, or so I hear.

I'll try to play a video game once or twice a month for the fun of it.

Now let's play the Stanley Parable, which is a game that a bunch of people told me about that I absolutely must play.

Please check out our sponsors, Trio Labs, which is a machine learning company, and Vincero Watches.

1 is to make your robots smarter, the other is to make them show up on time.

I find it always useful when the world tells you who you are and where you are and what you're doing.

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

Stanley worked for a company in a big building Okay, let's begin the game.

He sat at his desk in room 427 and he pushed buttons on the keyboard.

Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk, telling him what buttons to push,

how long to push them, and in what order.

This is what employee 427 did every day, every month, of every year.

And although others might have considered it soul-wrenching, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job.

And then 1 day, something very peculiar happened.

Something that would forever change Stanley.

He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he realized that not 1 single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow.

No 1 had showed up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say hi.

Never in all his years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation.

Frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time.

But as he came to his wits and regained his senses,

he got up from his desk and stepped out of his office.

There's something about office work that serves as a good metaphor for the meaningless ritual of the human condition.

When Stanley came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left.

Where there is an overarching centralized power telling you what to do.

And on top of that a metaphor for free will.

Okay this is literally the choice here means is there free will?

We know that Sam Harris would choose the door on the left because there's no free will.

This was not the correct way to the meeting room, and Stanley knew it perfectly well.

Perhaps he wanted to stop by the employee lounge first, just to admire it.

Of course, Freewill already knew I was going to do that.

It had really been worth the detour after all just to spend a few moments here in this immaculate beautifully constructed room.

Stanley simply stood here drinking it all in.

really really worth it being here in the room.

A room so utterly captivating that even though all your co-workers have It's real.

At this point, Stan's obsession with this room bordered on creepy and reflected poorly on his overall personality.

It's possible that this is why everyone left.

This voice sounds a lot like my own inner voice.

He'd had enough of the amazing room and took the first open door on his left to get back to business.

That detour paid off but now it's time to get back to the Sam Harris

And so he detoured through the maintenance section, walked straight ahead to the opposite door

1 of life's rules is no matter what the man tells you, when there's a big glowing red button telling you to do something else, you must do it.

But Stanley didn't want to go back to the office.

He wanted to wander about and get even further off track.

it's locked Projection, another life's lesson.

I don't know how to kick the door down, but David Goggins would knock the door down.

Now let's see, we went down right, left, down, left, right.

This story is absolutely, definitely this

It's all rubbish now the whole story completely unusable I took the red pill waste my time trying to salvage and escape the matrix just restart the game from the beginning and this time suppose we don't want us so the

And yet I keep the memories of the journeys of the past.

These computers with the CRT monitors, remember those?

Last time people told me that I don't know how to aim the gun and I realized how much of a noob I am, especially at first-person shooters.

I swear, I definitely restarted the game over, completely fresh.

Stanley, did you change anything when we were back in that room with all the monitors?

I'll say it, this is the worst adventure I've ever been on.

I can promise you, there definitely was a story here before.

I find it unlikely that we'll ever progress by starting over and over again, but it's gotta be better than this.

Stanley decided to go to the meeting room.

It's always showing up to a room, empty, void of humans, and asking what does it all mean.

It's possible the story is back where we just came from.

The whole free will not being an illusion upset him.

He's probably sleeping on the floor there.

Okay, let us go all the way back to where we came from.

Okay, let's head back the other way and retrace our steps.

Walking around a lot in the space of ideas and getting nowhere, but in this process of suffering you arrive at a place of wisdom.

well I'll be honest, I don't recognize this place at all.

I can't quite recall, but I believe my story took place in an office building.

Since I've completely forgotten what we were supposed to be doing, how about this?

I know you put in a lot of hard work, and it really paid off, so good job.

We both know you didn't put in any actual work for that win.

Some people win fair and square and this was not 1 of those situations.

Okay, I'm getting weirded out by whatever this place is.

I don't care what might happen this time.

This time, to make sure we Don't get lost, I've employed the help of the Stanley Parable Adventure Line.

Rename it to the Sam Harris Adventure Line because free will is an illusion.

That was a joke I heard, I think, in high school.

Wouldn't wherever we end up be our destination, even if there's no story there?

Or, to put it another way, is the story of no destination still a story?

Simply by the act of moving forward, are we implying a journey such that a destination is inevitably conjured into being via the very manifestation of the nature of life itself?

Okay, Stanley, I need to follow this train of thought for a minute.

Now, we can both agree that the nature of existence is in fact a by-product of one's subjective experience of that existence, right?

Okay, now if my experience of your existence rests inside of your subjective experience of this office, is this office in fact the skeleton of my own relative experiential mental subjective construct?

Not sure where I was going with all that.

Osasco profundity, followed by musical ridiculousness.

Monthly ledgers, corporate imbalances, consolidation reports, there's the TPS reports.

I'm going to have to ask you to fill out the DPS reports.

I need to have this be the soundtrack of my deal existence.

Stanley, This fern will be very important later in the story.

Make sure you study it closely and remember it carefully.

Line, you do know we're looking for the Stanley Parable, right?

People wonder what's outside the simulation.

Well, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what it is.

An infinite wall of screens looking into the daily existence of all living beings through the various sensory devices available to those creatures.

We think we're special, but we're just ants.

And after we trusted you, after everything we've been

Why don't we simply start wandering in, well, I don't know, how about this direction?

Just me and Stanley forging a new path, a new story.

Whatever it might be, Stanley, I'm ready for it.

We're having fun me And my alter ego Stanley

To veto the line from having any role in our awesome new story.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Lex Fridman plays The Stanley Parable