Where is the Matrix?
Any inference about a secret plan staying behind everything happening in our day-to-day routine may have numerous fascinating arguments without any factual confirmation. A wide array of mental speculations that sound more or less convincing may lead us towards different conspiracy theories among which Matrix is one of the most popular concepts.
Why the hell do many people believe in hidden forces that rule this world from the shadows? What kind of proof are numerous truth seekers trying to find among tons of the garbage content multiplying regularly on the internet?
Poor explanations on the events around are making a lot of people throughout the world explore more satisfactory reasoning for why they live as they live. Sometimes, even the pure truth looks so silly that some alternative versions offer themselves.
Basically, apparent logical inconsistencies along with circular causation in the very fabric of existence push curious individuals to go look for different meanings. Namely, the loss of meaning is the largest problem the contemporary humanity faces these days.
When you come across nonsense articulated by the establishment with totally serious expressions on their faces, a woodworm of suspicion starts eroding your confidence in the adequacy of this world. While the majority ignore such challenges, conspiracy theorists invent more satisfactory (as they believe) explanations for the current pointlessness of human life. A highly secular population of Western civilization is lacking decent missions worth living and dying. We immersed in the ocean of goods, but we don’t understand for which final purpose we should consume all that stuff.
The conspiracy theorists are following a common fallacy — they all are looking for a hidden logic where no logic is merely available. They want to fit the reality to what they consider a more meaningful scenario. They ignore the fact that the mother Nature appreciates absurd and randomness. Logic is an invention of humans. The farther we were going away from the other primates, the stronger our logic became. In other words, the more human homo sapiens are, the less natural our relationships with life appear.
The very efforts of various truth seekers and whistle-blowers in disclosing a hidden more consistent plan behind the reality confirm that no plan is available. The irrationality of what is going on around is the strongest evidence against any sort of conspiracy. It is especially obvious with the actually weakest version of conspiracy — Matrix, a digital simulation where we all seemingly reside as just pieces of software.
Those who advocate the Matrix explain the mechanism working there through a powerful artificial intelligence. This is AI who simulates the reality for humans. The enormous computing capabilities of the AI make the simulation so graceful and sophisticated. We cannot notice even the slightest trace of the simulation because our consciousness is fully inbuilt in the AI algorithms — we merely have no frame of reference.
A couple of heavy discrepancies make the Matrix conspiracy unworthy of our trust.
1) If the reality were built by a super-intelligent computer, a lot more logic would be available in everything around. Intelligence in general and especially the machine-centric intelligence is nothing but an error-free modus operandi where rationality is the very basement of functioning. However intelligent a machine is, it can never make mistakes intentionally. Randomness and spontaneity are so irrational that simulation of them is too resource-consuming and, therefore, unfeasible. If an artificial universe were created by a supercomputer for us, it might be probably not less complicated than the present one but in any case, it wouldn’t be so disappointingly irrational and surprisingly wasteful.
Just look around and see how many phenomena in our life cannot be explained from any rational perspective: infinity of outer space, ephemeral structure of atom, quantum phenomena, billions of years of evolution of living creatures where random mutations in genes nullify the whole ecosystems, trillions of empty lifeless galaxies, biodiversity of insects, sexual reproduction of mammals, tsunami and earthquakes, human religions, random asteroids threatening to destroy Earth, love and poetry, dreams and sleeping, different races, self-sacrifice, viruses, mind and thinking, and many many other positive and negative phenomena that happen to have no comprehensible reasoning.
We are leaving in a reality where totally unpredictable Black Swans (regards to Nassim Taleb who feels the life in a way few others do) visit us with great regularity. Life and death are spontaneous, irrational, and unexplainable. A machine could create a less error-dangerous world, undoubtedly. Otherwise, the Matrix appears too costly to be kept just for humans whatever value humans might bring to machines.
2) Advocates of the Matrix conspiracy insist on our inability to detect the Matrix’s effects due to the absence of a reference point where we could compare the present reality with something different. Yes, such an imaginary reference point is hardly available. But who says that we have nothing to compare to figure out a possible simulation? Two huge classes of phenomena are always before our eyes: natural objects and phenomena and human-made ones.
Compare a flight of a moth with a flight of an aircraft. Compare a mating ritual of reindeer with a wedding ceremony of humans. Compare a volcanic eruption with open-pit mining. Compare whale songs with fake-news broadcasting. Compare a spawning salmon with a movement of migrants. Compare forests with cities and rivers with pipelines. Are you catching a hint? What distinguishes all natural phenomena from all artificial ones? Both covert and overt rationalities of all human submissions do.
Namely reasonable intentions staying behind everything humans do on purpose can show the very paradigm of algorithms with which an artificial simulation could be created. Even a very accurate AI-induced mimicry in behaviour and appearance could hardly camouflage the actual authorship of any human-made system. Matrix is easily detectable unless it covers very limited environments such as space-ship missions or some post-apocalyptic underground adventures. A simulation of a natural world in all its diversity can always be disclosed by our intuition which is, by the way, a natural and, therefore, unexplainable capability.
Both the Matrix and all the other conspiracy theories constitute a very facilitating psychological trick: accept that you live under total control and give up. But the trick is far from being innocent. It blocks our cognitive ambitions through selling us bogus plans: give up any effort to achieve more than you have, refuse opposition to what you feel unfair, leave any hope on social justice, shut up and get back to work.
In fact, such a conspiracy theory as the Matrix utilizes an old clerical principle “that’s what God wants” in a little bit modified wrapping. The very popularity of this theory proves that quite efficient propaganda technologies are applied to it. Someone wants people to believe in Matrix very much.
And this is not a conspiracy, this is social marketing.
