At the turn of the y2k movement when everyone was worried that computer errors would stop the world from turning along with pop culture starting to take many different forms far different then from what was seen before, things started to get darker, nu metal and post grunge swept the western nations, teenagers started dying their hair in weird colors, the internet started to evolve into a tool for social construct. From this new tech age in 1999 a very influential and popular film that was known for its digital transformation with its use of CGI and implementation of special effects along with writing that would make any person think about their own place in reality The Matrix is all about simulation.
It depicts a world where AI has replaced reality, and its energy source is the thoughts of the people in The Matrix. This cyber world is a real time simulation of the real world and, as long as you don’t know about it, you would have no idea that you were stuck in The Matrix. A person living in the Matrix would live their lives knowing nothing of that of the outside world. This idea of living in a fake world without knowing that it was ever fake is blissful to some but daunting to others.
Hypothetically, if the Matrix had no errors in the simulation, then everything that we know about life would also be simulated, such as death, birth, and age. With the knowledge that the movie gives us by having some people break free of The Matrix, therefore the simulation must be able to simulate free will as well.
Free will, death, birth, and feelings are things that every human gets to experience in their own way. These cornerstones of life are something much more personal and profound to the individual than that of the general population.
So, if we know that the Matrix can simulate anything and everything that reality is and of each individual’s cornerstones of life, should it be considered real living even if it’s all in a computer? And not a physical world?
This socratic question can be answered and interpreted in a million different ways, but I would like to focus on a philosophical treatise named Simulacra and Simulation written by Jean Baudrillard that I think deals with our question perfectly. The treatise examines what it actually means to live in our modern world. Jean describes a simulation as “no relation to any reality whatsoever” this thought that something like the matrix can simulate reality but be the furthest away from it is the concept of Simulacra.
The treatise speaks on how modern society has gone further into doom because the individual beliefs are only built upon others people work. such as how media could influence people’s belief, instead of someone finding that opinion on their own they are spoon fed information and if this person believes them with no doubt then they have been successfully changed by a power they cannot control, this influence can control their behavior without them realizing it. This is one example of how modern society can be looked at with the idea of Simulacra.
Now, if we take this example and compare it to the confines of the Matrix, than NO the Matrix could never compare to living in the real world and its reality because it’s specifically built upon the work of that of AI and could never truly encapsulate the beauty of true reality. The AI bases the world off its knowledge of Humans using databases which is inevitable unreal since humans are imperfect. But, This a comparison on beliefs by other people, what you believe could totally contradict what was just said and that would be perfectly fine.
In my opinion, I believe reality is not based on what other people say or what actually is reality. What’s in my brain and what I want to do is the only reality that I need. As long as I have individual beliefs and free will, my reality will be true until my death, whether I’m living in a simulation or not.