Can Matrix be real?

Are we living in a computer simulation?

Is that an absurd idea? The first objection to this idea is: How can we know? What if I tell you that there is more possibility of this universe being a simulation than it’s not.

As it is known, today, the phenomenon of simulation and virtual reality has developed a lot. Existing games and a variety of educational programs are almost presenting the virtual world to us as it is real. If so realistic simulations can be made even with today’s technology, there is a great possibility that human beings can design a universe just like The Matrix in the future. And here the theory of simulation starts.

“If you believe that humans can write a program that simulates the universe in the future, then you have to believe that there is a simulation in the universe we live in. ” –Nick Bostrom

We have all heard that the movie The Matrix is not merely a fiction, it is the backlog of research that we do not know and that it is a small reflection of the results of these investigations.

Long philosophical and scientific theories have been put forward in the past that reality is an illusion. The simulation argument was originally proposed by Nick Bostrom. It’s like the movie “The Matrix” Bostrom said, ‘except that instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses.’ After him, many thinkers argued that this argument can be real such as Nick Bostrom, Tesla, or the founder of Space X, Elon Musk. According to Jean Baudrillard, too, the universe is nothing more than a simulation, everything is made from images and is inanimate. Elon Musk also thinks that we are almost certainly computer-generated entities living inside a more advanced civilization’s video game even though we may think we’re participants of the physical world. And he adds:

“There’s a one in billions chance we’re in base reality” – Elon Musk

“One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations.

Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea.”

If we are living in a simulation, then everything is software, including every atom in our bodies. Experiments were also conducted at Bonn University in Germany in 2012 and the results indicated the upper energy boundaries that should be in the simulations. Besides all of these, another question arises: If the simulation we are in is really well designed, then there is no doubt that in the future we should be able to design a similar simulation. So, how can we know on which stimulation we are at the moment?

Featured Photo: Pixabay