Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be In One?
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The Purpose of the Matrix
Why the Matrix? Why did the machines do it? (Human brains may be many
things, but efficient batteries they are not.) How could they justify a world
whose inhabitants are systematically deceived about their fundamental reality,
ignorant about the reason why they exist, and subject to all the cruelty and
suffering that we witness in the world around us? Children dying of AIDS;
lovers separated by war and poverty; cancer patients tormented by unbearable
pain; stroke victims deprived of their use of language and reason… One would
think nobody but a sadist could have the imagination to think up these horrors,
much less possess the desire to create a world that contains them in such
abundance. But the machines did it, at least that’s how the story goes.
Although the world of the Matrix they created is far from perfect, it is
– arguably – better than no world at all, the elimination of all human beings.
Still, the machines could have created a world containing much more goodness,
happiness, wisdom, personal growth, love and beauty, a world that was free of
most of the natural and manmade evil that pervades our world. Indeed, as the
story goes, they tried that, but supposedly it didn’t work.
Agent Smith: Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be
a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It
was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some
believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect
world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality
through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your
primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was
redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization
The existence of unnecessary evil is one of the most powerful arguments
against the belief that the world was created by an all-powerful, all-knowing,
and perfectly good God. Theologians have spent centuries trying to answer it
and with very questionable success. But the problem of evil is only a problem
if one assumes that the world was created by an omnipotent and perfectly good
being. If one assumes instead that the creator was not perfectly good, and perhaps
not even omnipotent, then it would be much easier to reconcile the view that
our world was created with its seemingly obvious ethical shortcomings.
What about you? You’re not all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.
But what if you could create this kind of Matrix, would you do it?
Even if you would not have chosen to create a world like this, many other people do not share your scruples. If these people could create Matrices, some of their works might well look like the world
in which we find ourselves.
Why might they choose to build a Matrix-like reality? One can think
of many possible reasons—setting aside the daft idea of using human brains as
batteries. But perhaps future historians would create a Matrix that mimicked
the history of their own species. They might do this to find out more about
their past, or to explore counterfactual historical scenarios. In the world of
the Architect(s), Napoleon may have succeeded in conquering Europe, and our
world might be a Matrix created to research what would have happened if
Napoleon had been defeated. Or perhaps there will be future artists who create Matrices
as an art form much like we create movies and operas. Or perhaps the tourist
industry will create simulations of interesting historical epochs so that their
contemporaries can go on themed holidays to some bygone age by entering into
the simulation and interacting with its inhabitants. The possible motives are
myriad, and if future people are anything like present people, and if they have
the technological might and the legal right to create Matrices, we would expect
that many Matrices would be created, including ones that would look like the
world that we are experiencing.
The Simulation Argument
If each advanced civilization created many Matrices of their own history,
then most people like us, who live in a technologically more primitive age, would
live inside Matrices rather than outside them. If this were the case, where
would you most likely be?
The so-called Simulation argument, which I introduced a few years ago,
makes this line of reasoning more precise and takes it to its logical
conclusion. The conclusion is that there are three basic possibilities at least
one of which is true. The first possibility is that the human species will
almost certainly go extinct before becoming technologically mature. The second
possibility is that almost no technologically mature civilization is interested
in building Matrices. The third possibility is that we are almost certainly
living in a Matrix. Why? Because if the first two possibilities are not the
case, then there are more “people” living in Matrices than in “real worlds.” As
a “person” then the chances are that you are living in a Matrix rather than in
a “real world.”
The Simulation argument does not tell us which of these three
possibilities are obtained, only that at least one of them does. The argument employs
some math and probability theory, but the basic idea can be understood without
recourse to technical apparatus.
Building a Matrix
Creating comprehensive Matrices that are indistinguishable from
non-simulated reality is, of course, far beyond our current technological
capability. Even so, we can estimate the computational requirements for
creating such virtual realities.
Rather than confining the construction project to creating a virtual
reality simulation, we can consider a more ambitious project that also involves
the creation of the inhabitants of the Matrix. Instead of having pink gooey
pods with biological humans floating in them being fed sensory input from a
simulated reality, it would be more efficient to replace the brains with
simulations of brains. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists believe that
such brain simulations would be conscious, provided the simulation was
sufficiently detailed and accurate.
Estimates of the human brain’s computational power have been given and
estimates of the computational power that would be available to a
technologically mature civilization can also be made. While these estimates
are very approximate, it turns out that even when allowing for a large margin
of error, the computational resources of a mature civilization would suffice to
create many Matrices. Even a single planetary-sized computer, constructed
with advanced molecular nanotechnology, could simulate the entire mental history
of humankind by using less than one millionth of its computing power for one
second; and this presupposes only already known computational mechanisms and
engineering principles. A single civilization may eventually build millions of
such computers. We can conclude that a technologically mature civilization
would have enough computing power such that even if it devoted but a tiny
fraction of it to creating Matrices, there would soon be many more simulated
people than people were living in the original history of that
civilization.
These simulations would not have to be perfect. They would only have to
be good enough to fool its inhabitants. It would not be necessary to simulate
every object down to the subatomic level (something that would definitely be
infeasible). If the book you are holding in your hands is a simulated book, the
simulation would only need to include its visual appearance, its weight and
texture, and a few other macroscopic properties, because you have no way of
knowing what its individual atoms are doing at this moment. If you were to
study the book more carefully, for example by examining it under a powerful
microscope, additional details of the simulation could be filled in as needed.
Objects that nobody is perceiving could have an even more compressed
representation. Such simplifications would dramatically reduce the
computational requirements.
Three Possibilities
Given that the Architects of a technologically mature civilization could
create a vast number of Matrices even by devoting just a small fraction of
their resources to that end, an interesting implication follows. Consider the
set of civilizations that are at a similar level of technological development as
our own current civilization. Suppose that some non-trivial fraction of these
eventually go on to become technologically mature. Suppose, furthermore, that
some non-trivial fraction of these devotes a non-negligible proportion of their
resources to building Matrices. Then most people like us live in Matrices
rather than outside them. There are thus three basic possibilities: either
almost every civilization like ours goes extinct before reaching technological
maturity, or almost every mature civilization lacks any interest in
building Matrices, or almost all people with our kind of experiences
live in Matrices.
Let us think a little about these three possibilities. If almost every
civilization at our current stage goes extinct before becoming technologically
mature, then our future looks relatively bleak. If such a premature ending
were the fate awaiting most civilizations, we would have to suspect that the
same will hold for our civilization in particular. This is because we seem to
lack any reason for thinking that our civilization will be luckier than most
other civilizations at our stage.
The second possibility is less depressing. It might turn out that almost
all technologically mature civilizations lose interest in building Matrices.
Maybe the potential Architects of the future will not share any of the possible
motives for building Matrices that we discussed above. Presumably, Architects
would have used their advanced technology to improve their own capacities, so
they may be superintelligent and have complete control over their own mental
states. Rather than resorting to Matrix-building for recreation, they may
obtain pleasure more efficiently by direct stimulation of their brain’s
pleasure centers. Their science may be so advanced that they have little to
learn from running simulations of their historical past. Furthermore, they
might develop ethical norms that prohibit the creation of Matrices. So we
cannot infer from the fact that many current people would be tempted to
construct Matrices that the same would hold for the super-advanced folks who
would actually have the ability to act on this motive.
The third possibility is the most intriguing. If the vast majority of all
people with other kinds of experiences live in Matrices then we probably
live in a Matrix. Unless we had some specific evidence to the contrary, we
would therefore have to conclude that the world we see around us exists only under being simulated on a powerful computer built by some technologically
highly advanced Architect.
Not the Old Brain-in-a-Vat Argument
For hundreds of years, philosophers have pondered the question of how we can
know that the external world exists. Descartes (1596-1650) posed this question
in his Meditationes and considered the scenario where a hypothetical
evil demon caused us to have erroneous beliefs about external objects. In more
recent years, Descartes’ skeptical scenario has been given a more modern
finish, and instead of a demon one is now asked to imagine a mad scientist who
has extracted one’s brain and who keeps it in a vat where the scientist is
stimulating it with electrical signals replicating the sensory input that the
brain would have had if it had interacted with a very different environment
from that which is present in the real world. This is, of course, the
predicament explored in the Matrix movie. How can one possibly know that one is
not such a brain in a vat, the philosophical skeptic challenges, given that all
the appearances we experience could be the experiences of an embattled brain?
The argument outlined above provides a much stronger reason for taking
seriously the possibility that we are living in a Matrix. The traditional
skeptical argument offers no positive ground for thinking that we are living in
a Matrix. At best, it shows that we cannot completely rule out that
possibility, but we remain free to assign it a very small or negligible
probability. If there are no mad scientists who experiment on conscious
embattled human brains, then we are not embattled. Even if there were a few such
brains-in-vats, they might be extremely rare compared to the brains-in-crania
that interact with the external world in the normal way; and if so, then it may
be highly unlikely that we would be among the envatted ones.
The Simulation argument, by contrast, adopts as its starting point that
things are the way they seem to be and that science gives us reliable
information about the world. Part of this information concerns the
technological capabilities that an advanced civilization would be able to
develop. Among these would be the capability to create Matrices. Crucially, it
seems that they could easily create Matrices in astronomical numbers. From this, we can then conclude that either technologically mature civilizations
that are interested in creating Matrices are extremely rare compared to
civilizations at our own current stage of development or almost all
people like us live in Matrices. And from this, the division into three of the
three basic possibilities mentioned above follows.
The Simulation argument itself doesn’t tell us which one of these three
possibilities is obtained. In fact, we do not currently have any strong evidence
either for or against either of these three possibilities. We should therefore
assign them all a significant probability. In particular, we should take
seriously the possibility that we are living in a Matrix. We might still think
that the probability is less than 50%. A degree of belief of something like 20%
would seem quite reasonable given our current information.
How Could You Tell If You Are In A Matrix?
Consider the predicament of Neo and his fellow rebels in the trilogy.
They know there are many Matrices. They lead parts of their lives inside
a Matrix. They know that most of their compatriots spend their whole lives in a
Matrix. Given this, they should be extremely reluctant to think that they have
escaped their Matrix. What appears to be an escape could easily just be a simulated escape so that they exit one level of the Matrix only to reemerge at
another. The Wachowski brothers can of course stipulate that this is not the
case and that the heroes really do get to experience “real” reality. But if Neo
were rational, he would never be able to be at all confident that this is what
happens.
If the Wachowski brothers had created a real Matrix (rather than
just a movie about a Matrix), then, if they were rational, they would
have to conclude that they are almost certainly in a Matrix.
If we develop the capability to create our own Matrices, and if we decide
to make use of this capability, we would obtain very strong evidence against
the first two possibilities: that it is not the case that almost all
civilizations at our current stage go extinct before reaching technological
maturity and that it is not the case that almost all mature
civilizations lose interest in creating Matrices. This would leave us with only
the third possibility—that we almost certainly inhabit a Matrix.
But what about the situation we actually find ourselves in? The
Simulation argument aside, would it be possible to detect any direct signs of
being in a Matrix? Is there a kind of “splinter in the mind” that would
indicate that all is not right with reality? Certainly, if the Architects of a
Matrix wished to reveal themselves, it would be easy enough for them to do so.
For example, they could make a window pop up in our visual field with the text
“YOU ARE LIVING IN A MATRIX. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION”.
In the movie, the Oracle tells us that UFOs, Ghosts, and other strange
sights are the manifestations of malfunctions in the Matrix that are being
covered up.
The Oracle: Look, see those birds? At some point, a program was
written to govern them. A program was written to watch over the trees, and the
wind, the sunrise, and the sunset. Programs are running all over the place.
The ones doing their job, doing what they were meant to do, are invisible.
You'd never even know they were here. But the other ones, well, we hear about
them all the time.
Neo: I've never heard of them.
The Oracle: Of course you have. Every time you've heard someone
say they saw a ghost or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about
vampires, werewolves, or aliens is the system assimilating some program that's
doing something they're not supposed to be doing.
Déjà vu is a sign of a glitch in the Matrix, which is re-running a
sequence to cover something that has changed. Some people have written to me
that they have found signs that we are in a Matrix. One person, for instance,
told me that he could see flickering pixels when he looked in his bathroom
mirror. Another person wrote that he could hear voices in his head. But even if
we are in a Matrix, it is far more likely that such phenomena are the result of
imperfections in the reporters rather than in the Matrix itself. There are many
perfectly ordinary explanations for why some people should report having these
kinds of experiences, including mental illness, over-excited imagination,
gullibility, and so forth. Dysfunctional brains could be simulated just as
easily as properly functioning ones, and including them in the simulation may
indeed add to its verisimilitude.
Building any kind of Matrix at all that contains conscious simulated
brains would be tremendously difficult. Any being capable of such a feat would
almost certainly also be able to prevent any glitches in their Matrix from
being noticed by its inhabitants. Even if some people did notice an anomaly,
the Architect could backtrack the simulation a few seconds and rerun it in a
way that avoided the anomaly entirely or else could simply edit out the memory
of the anomaly from whoever had noticed something suspect.
How To Live In A Matrix
If we knew the Architects’ motives for designing Matrices then the
hypothesis that we live in one might have major practical consequences. But in
fact, we know almost nothing about what these motives might be. Because of this
ignorance, our best method for getting around in our Matrix (if that is where
we are) is to study the patterns we find in the world we experience. We would
run experiments, discover regularities, build models, and extrapolate from past
events. In other words, we would apply the scientific method and common sense
in the same way as if we knew that we were not in a Matrix. To a first
approximation, therefore, the answer to how you should live if you are in a
Matrix is that you should live the same way as if you are not in a Matrix.
The Simulation argument does, however, have some more subtle practical
ramifications, even if we set aside the other two possibilities to which it
points (which do not entail that we are in a Matrix). Some scenarios that would
otherwise seem to have been foreclosed by our current scientific understanding
again become real possibilities if we inhabit a Matrix. For instance, while the
physical world cannot suddenly pop out of existence, a simulated reality could
do so at any time if the Architect decides to pull the plug. An afterlife would
also be a real possibility. When a person dies in a simulation, he or she could
be resurrected in another simulation, or the Architect could uplift the
deceased into his own level of reality.
It is also conceivable that only some people are simulated in enough
detail to be conscious while others may be simulated at a cruder level allowing
them to appear and behave much like real people but without having any
subjective experience. The so-called “problem of other minds”—how we can know
that other people are really conscious and are not just behaving as if they
were—is another old chestnut of philosophy. There is, however, no consensus
that such “zombie” people are possible even in principle. Some people have
argued that it is necessarily true that anybody who acts sufficiently like a
normal human being must also have conscious experience. (Whether this view
would entail that your least favorite politicians cannot be zombies is a
question on which more research is required.)
Another possibility it that the Architect might decide to reward or
punish his simulated creatures, perhaps based on moral criteria. If you
might be in a Matrix, this consideration may give you a novel self-interested
reason for behaving morally. The situation would be analogous to the case where
God is watching and judging you except that the role of the final judge would
not be a supernatural being but the physical person or persons who built the
Matrix.
It would be misleading to say that if we are in a Matrix then we and the
world around us do not really exist. It would be more accurate to say that the
reality of these things is of a somewhat different nature than we thought
before. Your nose would still be real; only, its reality would consist in being
simulated on a powerful computer. The computer and the electrical activity of
its circuitry would be physical phenomena in the more basic level of reality
inhabited by the Architect of the Matrix.
Matrices Repeated and Stacked
When Neo stopped the Sentinels with his mind outside the Matrix at the
end of Reloaded the speculation began. Was there a Matrix on top of the
Matrix? As Revolutions revealed, there was not. But there could have
been. A mature civilization would have enough computing power to run
astronomically many Matrices. If we are in a Matrix, therefore, there are
probably vast numbers of other Matrices, which differ from ours in some detail
or in their overall design. These other Matrices may be run sequentially, as in
the movie, or simultaneously by time-sharing the same processor or by using
multiple computers. From the viewpoint of the simulated inhabitants, it makes
little difference how the Matrices are implemented.
A Matrix may contain a civilization that matures and proceeds to build
its own Matrices in the simulation. Realty could thus contain many levels, with
computers being simulated inside computers which are themselves simulated, and
so forth. How many layers of simulation there could be depends on the computing
power available to the bottom-level Architect (who is not simulated). Since all
the higher levels of simulation would ultimately be implemented on this Architect’s
computer, he would have to shoulder the cost of all the simulations and all the
simulated people. If his computing power is limited, there may be only a small
number of levels.
As we noted above, all Architects would have strong reason to think that
they might be in a Matrix. (If the Architects at the basement level
believed this they would be mistaken, but only because of bad epistemic luck,
not because of any fault in their reasoning.) If we combine this insight with
the speculation that moral considerations may play a part in determining the
treatment some simulated people receive at the hands of their Architects, we
are led to the peculiar thought that everybody—not just the simulated
people—may have a self-interested reason for behaving morally. If behaving
morally towards somebody includes judging and treating them according to moral
criteria, this could further strengthen the reason that everybody has for
behaving morally. The stronger that reason is, the more we would expect that
people would be motivated by it. And the more people are likely to be motivated
to treat their simulated creatures morally, the stronger this reason would
become. This reasoning can be iterated indefinitely in a truly “virtuous
circle,” albeit a rather tenuous one as it relies not only on the possibility
that we are in a simulation but also on tenuous speculations about the motives
of the Architects.
At a minimum, the Simulation argument provides many exciting avenues for
philosophical thinking. But if it is sound—and so far it has not been
refuted—it could also provide various suggestions, however tentative and
ambiguous, for how we should go about our lives and for what we should expect
in the future. When we follow through the logical implications of what we think
we know, we discover just how much we don’t yet know.
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