# Are we in The Matrix? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 8, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059 "2012-10-08T04:33:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/61 "2012-10-28T20:25:49Z")
But how would you look for complexity? What, really, would you be looking for? I mean, for example, a simple body of water is very complex. There are 10^N (where N\>23) molecules all moving around in various complicated patterns. There are currents, groups of large numbers of molecules, moving in various patterns, at varying scales. There changes in density, temperature fluctuations, movements of impurities, osmotic processes, vortices, waves, refraction of light, chemical reactions. All this and more in a “dead” pool of water. It’s quite complex! How would your algorithm tell that it was the _type of complex_ you are looking for? I’m honestly not sure, there may be a simple way, but if so I’m not seeing it. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/62 "2012-10-29T03:03:30Z")
I dunno… The biggest thing I’ve ever simmed was a (vastly simplified!) model of freeway traffic. (Kinda fun!) It just struck me as odd that we could have all the data…and at the same time be overwhelmed by the task of searching it. But, again, I’ve never worked with REALLY BIG datasets… We could do the “Day the Earth Stood Still” thing and look for the existence of Plutonium… ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/63 "2012-10-29T04:43:17Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > An appeal to reason doesn’t necessarily work; the Matrix operators might have some totally unreasonable goal in mind, or even no goal at all. As noted above, we have nothing to compare it with. > > That said, it could be a test of something totally unrelated, and the “perfection” you note is just throw-away. Maybe they’re testing whether minds such as ours can find a way to live together in peace, and Relativity and Quantum Physics are just set decorations, having no more real purpose in the sim than Lebanese cuisine, or fins on old automobiles. Distractions! > > The best argument against this kind of solipsism I’ve ever heard is: why would they allow us to speculate about it? But that simply invites the next question: what is there that we are unable to speculate about? That’s the real secret! The one we can’t fnord! OK, let me answer these one at a time. 1. An appeal to reason seems pretty realistic. What being can you imagine that has the computer power to run a simulation of this complexity, but hasn’t got the technology to manage its emotions? Take away emotion, and you have logic. Therefore, the Matrix-maker would have to be logical. 2. I submit that any test of any kind would be passed/satisfied/etc. at roughly the same moment that the G.U.T. is found and proven. What else would we need to know about the Universe or ourselves, if we have mastered it to the degree that it can be mastered? Understanding the G.U.T. pretty much correlates 100% with being able to predict/control any biological process, because biology is really just physics, and we are biological. 3. I think your third point is interesting. I knew a wise man once who used to say “what you don’t see is more important that what you do see.” (props to that wise man, may he find joy in Whatever Lies Beyond) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/64 "2012-10-29T21:00:13Z")
> [@al27052](#): > > . . . 1. An appeal to reason seems pretty realistic. What being can you imagine that has the computer power to run a simulation of this complexity, but hasn’t got the technology to manage its emotions? Take away emotion, and you have logic. Therefore, the Matrix-maker would have to be logical. I would say, rather, that an appeal to reason is all that we have. It’s the best we can do. Without it, we can only throw up our hands and say, “Who knows? Whatever!” This is the real take-away from Descartes: not that reality is real, but that we pretty much must default to “reality is real” as a working hypothesis, because otherwise, we got nothin’ The only point I’m making is that it is an assumption. We don’t know that the meta-reality of the sim producers is in any way “reasonable” or “logical.” It might be some hideous Cthulhic realm of utter madness, capable of creating a simulated island of sanity, for whatever purposes of research they desire. (Maybe “sanity” is like food to them, and they raise us the way we raise pigs! When they pop the stack, release us from the sim, and we go insane – that’s simple nutrition to them!) A lot of this is like speculating on String Theory. It’s fun, but dismaying, because there isn’t anything we can really get our hands on and examine scientifically. ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/65 "2012-11-02T06:35:31Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I would say, rather, that an appeal to reason is all that we have. It’s the best we can do. Without it, we can only throw up our hands and say, “Who knows? Whatever!” This is the real take-away from Descartes: not that reality is real, but that we pretty much must default to “reality is real” as a working hypothesis, because otherwise, we got nothin’ > > The only point I’m making is that it is an assumption. We don’t know that the meta-reality of the sim producers is in any way “reasonable” or “logical.” It might be some hideous Cthulhic realm of utter madness, capable of creating a simulated island of sanity, for whatever purposes of research they desire. > > (Maybe “sanity” is like food to them, and they raise us the way we raise pigs! When they pop the stack, release us from the sim, and we go insane – that’s simple nutrition to them!) > > A lot of this is like speculating on String Theory. It’s fun, but dismaying, because there isn’t anything we can really get our hands on and examine scientifically. If you can build a complex simulation, you must be capable of logic, and pretty advanced logic at that. You also have a physical body, and probably need food from time to time…and no creature subsists entirely on emotion as food, that I’m aware of. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/66 "2012-11-02T20:28:26Z")
> [@al27052](#): > > If you can build a complex simulation, you must be capable of logic, and pretty advanced logic at that. Why? Maybe the sim is biological, the way other animals in our world have deceptive coloring or patterning. > [@](#): > > You also have a physical body, and probably need food from time to time…and no creature subsists entirely on emotion as food, that I’m aware of. No creature in our world, but our world is the sim, and you have no way to know if the same rules apply in the “overworld.” That’s the flaw in one commonplace rejection of the movie “The Matrix.” Critics say, “It’s stupid to think that they were using people as electrical batteries.” Well, yeah, that’s true…under the simulated rules of the world that the people were deceived into believing they lived in. They were also tricked into thinking they had cars and hamburgers and jobs. Maybe the rules of physics are completely different than the deceptions of the sim. You’re using an “as below, so above” form of reasoning…and you have absolutely no evidence that it actually applies. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/67 "2012-11-02T21:05:38Z")
Of course we’re in the Matrix… or something very much like it. Instead of everyone being turned into some sort of biochemical power source, though, we’ve all been programmed into being little economic batteries whose function is to exhaust themselves earning, spending and consuming as much as possible. (No? How many major life decisions have you made that were not based, in whole or in part, on your ability to acquire more consumption power? Include the inverse of that - decisions made knowing it was going to reduce your earning ability.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059/68 "2012-11-02T22:11:50Z")
**NitroPress** : This is a little like what sf author Vernor Vinge called a “perversion.” We’ve all gotten caught up in something much bigger than we are, something we actually had a VERY small part in the making of, and which we now can’t (easily) get out of. Stalinist USSR was a “perversion” of this sort; it glommed everyone up into itself, made them sustain it, divided power against itself so no one had the necessary force to change it, etc. The western industrialized democracies are, at least, slightly more benign. (I don’t much fear anyone knocking on my door in the middle of the night to take me away for writing this post.) But, ultimately, yeah, democracy and capitalism are “perversions” that are self-sustaining, using our energy, even suborning our consent and our energetic cooperation. Political philosophers speak of the social contract. When did anyone ever actually get offered the chance to sign it…or not to? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-in-the-matrix/637059.md?page=3)