25 years after the Matrix: Simulation theory more relevant than ever

It’s 25 years of Keanu Reeves starrer The Matrix, where Neo, the protagonist, lives in the year 2199 and, more significantly, in a simulated world that is a fake-out version of the late 20th century, created by 21st-century artificial intelligence (AI) to enslave humanity. The film popularised the notion that we are all actually lying in fluid pods, acting as feedstock for machines, and that reality is an illusion. The concept is as old as Plato’s Republic and as modern as Elon Musk’s Twitter feed.

 

For many years, sci-fi has emphasised topics like computer gaming, virtual reality, and AI. For instance, Daniel F Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3 (1964) describes a virtual city created as a computer simulation for market research, where the simulated inhabitants possess consciousness, with all but one unaware of the true nature of their surroundings.

 

Furthermore, it’s commonly held that a speech novelist Philip K Dick gave in France in 1977 provided the structural inspiration for The Matrix, highlighting the modest origins from which “sim-theory” initially gained popularity. A few years after the film’s release, “simulation theory” was formally developed, proposing that people are likely preset, coded constructs within a digital world, and that we are probably living in a computer simulation rather than as “real” and substantial individuals. In his 2003 paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom argued that posthumans might possess supercomputers capable of running intricate simulations of their ancestors, where the simulated entities exhibit a form of artificial consciousness. In essence, it would be similar to us simulating ancient Athens or Ujjain.

 

Bostrom’s argument presents a trilemma: Either such simulations are not created due to technological constraints or self-destruction, advanced civilisations choose not to develop them, or we are almost certainly living in one. Bostrom concluded that “we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.” The total number of simulated ancestors, or “Sims,” would far outnumber the total number of real ancestors if even a small portion of them performed “ancestor simulations.” Bostrom asserted that “unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.”

 

The depth of the rabbit hole was demonstrated by MIT computer scientist Rizwan Virk, author of The Simulation Hypothesis (2019). According to Virk, this indicates that there is just one “base reality” and numerous “simulated realities.” So, which reality — the one base reality or the 99 simulated realities — are you most likely to be in? Your chances of being in the 99 are certainly higher.

 

In Rodney Ascher-directed 2021 documentary A Glitch in the Matrix, people with varying perspectives, including journalists, philosophers, and likeable kooks who strongly think they live in a simulacrum, were interviewed. Indeed, there have been numerous notable proponents and debaters of the simulation idea. By proposing that the entire universe might be a massive quantum computer, MIT physicist Seth Lloyd took the simulation theory to the next level. And Elon Musk claimed in 2016 that the likelihood that we are truly living in the physical universe, or “base reality,” is one in a billion. This concept is thoroughly examined in David Chalmers’ most recent book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (2022).

 

And can we hack it if we’re living in a computer simulation? David Anderson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, asked this question. In reality, The Matrix and the “simulation theory” therein appear more relevant than ever in this AI era. Mark Zuckerberg, who aimed to create a fully immersive virtual reality environment akin to The Matrix, may attest to that. With the state of knowledge and technology today, the simulation hypothesis can’t be conclusively demonstrated or disproven, for sure. However, wouldn’t everything be pointless if we were really living in a computer simulation? But who cares! Isn’t Musk, a fervent supporter of the theory, the world’s most capitalistic person?

 

Regardless of The Matrix, Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, or the peculiarities of quantum physics, we might still be living in “base reality.” Or perhaps the world we inhabit is the truest definition of “base reality.”

 

The author is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata