Last week I went to the Flora Friday Film night where we watched the 1999 action film The Matrix. The Matrix is one of my favorite movies; I’ve seen it maybe 10 times. While its priority is obviously things like gunfights, stunts, and car chases, The Matrix brings up many classical sci-fi and philosophical themes. Real life philosophers argue about some themes gently touched on in The Matrix, like the notion that the world we live in is merely a simulation by a more advanced race.
There are real theories and scientific efforts to test whether or not we live in a universe that’s simulated by humanity in the future as an experiment to learn more about their past. Even Elon Musk, a prominent figure in the technological world, believes these theories to be true. I also personally believe it to be true. If we are to assume that running in a simulated universe is possible, then there’s no reason to believe that a civilization would conduct only one of these simulations at a time. Instead, they could run 5 or 10 or millions of simulations concurrently, all experimenting on different things by tweaking different laws of nature or creating different situations in those universes. Given the sheer numbers of simulations available to a civilization, a disparity arises between the number of real universes and the number of simulated ones. Therefore, the probability of us being randomly placed in a simulated universe is higher than being placed in a real one, simply because there are more simulated universes than real universes. In the end though, the debate doesn’t matter. It is incredibly difficult to test whether are universe is simulated or not, though some are trying. If we were to discover whether it’s real or not, it would make little difference. Our lives would continue as they have so far, and the physical laws that our universe follows would not change.
In addition to the theme of what is reality, The Matrix excels at its core goal, action. This movie has become a classic in western culture, with references to things like Neo dodging bullets in slow motion or Morpheus jumping through rain on to a helicopter available all over over the internet and different media.
Hi Charles, the Matrix is one of my favorite movies too! I had no idea that people like Elon Musk believed in the idea of our universe simply being a simulation. The concept makes sense to me, but it all seems to situate on the core belief that it could be possible in the future. If you don’t believe that it’s possible to set up an alternate reality, then you could hardly believe in thousands of varied ones. Therefore, I disagree with your statement that the probability of us living in a simulated universe is higher than us living in a “real” universe, because that necessitates a leap of faith in the concept. Also, this begs the question–does it matter? Would we live our lives any differently if we were told that this was not technically “real”? I think we wouldn’t, because though it may not be “real” to others, it is our own reality. Our reality is our experiences, and if we cannot perceive the existence of a truer existence, then this existence will continue to be “real”. All in all, this movie really makes you think, and I definitely agree with your comment that the action scenes are classically unforgettable! Thanks for sharing!
Great post! I would ask though: what defines real? If indeed we are living in a simulation, and we spend our entire consciousness within this simulated world, and there’s no way to escape, then how would we ever know? Wouldn’t this just be our reality? I’m sure you’re very familiar with all the weirdness that happens with quantum physics; it is so crazy to know that some of the world’s top scientists are actively investigating as to whether or not we live in a hologram.
The debate on whether or not we are living in a simulation (either created by future humans (if those even “really exist) or by some other “thing” or collection of “things”) is very interesting, but largely irrelevant to our daily lives. Like the comments above me have pointed out, reality is entirely up to our own perception. Nothing is safe from the possibility that they only exist in some sort of “simulation,” and frankly it shouldn’t matter. We’d live our lives largely the same either way.
One thing that we, as a civilization, have to consider, is the morality of performing such simulations ourselves. When we acquire the technological means to do so, we will be (and to some extent already have) encountered the moral dilema of creating something that thinks for itself, and believes it is alive, living inside a simulation.