Simulated Reality?
The theory has been stated by the likes of powerful, rich and influential people such as Elon Musk, of Tesla, and Scott Adams, the Dilbert comic author, that we are living in a simulated reality. Before they proposed this, people like Phillip K. Dick and other sci-fi writers imagined this idea and before them philosophers such as Plato proposed this, although without the notion of a computer simulated reality. The Gnostics also believed we are in a false reality and that our souls are trapped in our material body. Movies such as “the Matrix” which premiered in 1999, “Total Recall” 1990 (based off the Phillip K. Dick novel “We will remember it for you wholesale”) and “Free Guy” in 2021 also make it seem as though its feasible that we live in a simulated reality.
The words “the Matrix” are now synonymous with a reality that is like actual reality but that is controlled by super intelligence but experienced as a true reality. Author Angela Tung writes about terms associated with the movie “The Matrix” in 2016:
The matrix as a VR-world might have first appeared in the 1984 novel by William Gibson, The Neuromancer: "He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high ... jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix."1
This means a disembodied mind could be joined to a computer simulation and that the experience would seem real. To understand this better I believe the movie “the Matrix” illustrates this idea very well.
In “the Matrix” we are introduced to the character of Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) and we find him a young man, working in a cubicle in corporate America, in a grey and dull world full of bureaucracy and defined by a meaningless existence. At night, when he is in his small apartment he is surrounded by multiple computer screens that seem to be downloading every bit of information he can gather on a person named Morpheus. He sleeps near his computer but one night he is awaken by his computer which starts self-typing and the words “the matrix has you” and “follow the white rabbit” appear in his computer screen. A moment later Anderson hears a knock at his door.
Anderson says “Who is it?”
“It’s Choi.”
Anderson opens the door “You’re two hours late.”
“I know” Choi says “It’s her fault” directing his comment to the beautiful girl on his arm.
Anderson says “It’s two thousand dollars” and Choi gives him the money.
Anderson puts the money in a hollowed out book “Simulacrat and Simulation” by Jean Baudrillard and grabs a disc of some kind and goes back to the door and opens it. We see five people dressed like goths from the future. We don’t know what’s on the disk but it elicits the response from Choi of “Hallelujah, you’re my savior man. My own personal Jesus.”
“If you get caught using that…” Anderson says but Choi finishes his sentence.
“Yeah I know, this never happened, you don’t exist.” the man replies.
“Right.” Anderson says.
Choi says to Anderson that he is looking pale and could use some “R & R” to which Anderson goes on to explain that his computer is acting weird and he can’t tell if he was dreaming something or if he imagined it or if it was real.
Choi says to the woman on his arm “What do you think Dujour, should we take him with us?”
She replies “definitely” and turns her body revealing a white rabbit tattoo on her left shoulder which startles Anderson as his computer typed “follow the white rabbit” moments earlier. He believes, we gather, that this sign is no coincidence and that the answers he is looking for will be given to him if he follows the white rabbit.
Interestingly enough, Jefferson Airplane, who performed the song “The White Rabbit” played live at the Matrix in 1968 2. And in 2021, in the movie “The Matrix Resurrections,” “the white rabbit” song plays a prominent role within the movie. I have not seen the movie but one can find the song easily enough in the movie’s trailer or on other platforms such as YouTube, owned by Google, now Alphabet. In the original “The Matrix” from 1999, Anderson, also known as Neo, works at a company called Metacortex, which could mean Meta or higher and Cortex or brain, meaning a higher intelligence. Was Metacortex owned by Google/Alphabet too? This, as some have said, like Elon Musk is that the simulated reality is a creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI).3 This theory is that by understanding computer coding to such advanced levels, someone could create AI and in turn could also create a simulated reality. This code would seem so real that those of us living within it would not realize we were part of the simulation. In the movie “Source Code” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, he lives in a simulated world but based off the real world and his disembodied mind can go back into time and learn pieces of information so as to solve or prevent crimes such as the bombing of public places which is what he does in that movie. Gyllenhaal’s character does not know he is actually alive but only in coffin of sorts and he has no arms or legs but his brain functions enough to be part of the source code. He nearly was killed in the war as a pilot and his family thinks he is dead but he is actually alive working in the secret program.
The reason for the matrix in the movie “The Matrix” is that at some point humans had achieved greatness and AI in the early 21st century. The AI was used to make machines and the machines would serve humanity. The machines, which ran on AI, spawned their own race of AI machines. They rebelled against the humans and when humans tried to shut them down by darkening the sky with nuclear weapons and thereby cutting off their solar power, the machines looked for another source of energy. That source was humans. The machines created a literal matrix of humans, all of which are plugged into a computer simulation, through their cerebral cortex via a cable inserted into the brain. Each human lived in a pod suspended in a liquid while being fed through tubes and their minds disembodied from themselves lived in a fake and simulated reality. The purpose of the reality was to keep them in the dream state and not allow them to “wake up” from this dream. In turn, their human body’s heat and energy coupled with fusion were harvested as energy. Entire fields of babies being manufactured by the millions and all being added to the matrix.
Neo after meeting Morpheus is told the truth and takes the red pill offered to him. The deal Morpheus offers him is to take the blue pill and he will wake up in his own bed as if nothing had happened, everything will go back to normal. If he takes the red pill, then he will know the truth. And in our world today this termed “red pilled” is now used for those who are awake to the truth, whatever that version may be. Another thought is now in our culture and it is the Non-Player Character (NPC) and the NPC are those who are in our world but are not real at all but just background actors meant to keep the simulation more real.
In the movie when Neo meets Morpheus, Morpheus explains the matrix to him, and it’s purpose.
“The Matrix is a system Neo,” he explains “and that system is our enemy.”
“What do you see? Businessmen…” and others who are NPC’s. Although Morpheus doesn’t use the term NPC that is what he is describing, a world full of those who are not real people. And there are those who are jacked into the matrix. And there are those who patrol the matrix, the agents, who can take anyone’s physical body within the matrix at any time. If you are in the matrix and an agent is looking for you and you are near an NPC, that agent can become that NPC and therefore, you are never safe if you are aware of the matrix and of course the machines can eliminate your real true self at any time if you too are part of the matrix.
Neo, is in his matrix pod, but after taking the red pill his real physical body is disconnected from the matrix and it dispatched to be disposed. Morpheus and his team recover his body and he is brought aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, their ship, where he sees real people for the first time. His body is covered in holes where the system was connected to him. He has holes on his arms, legs, stomach and the back of the head where the matrix loads their computer program into one’s brain. This is when he starts to learn about the true nature of reality and when he can start to fight against the machines and the AI which subjugate him and all humans and in effect turn all of us into batteries.
The reason for the matrix is not make people feel like waking up. It wants to keep us in a state of being asleep but a part of the false reality so as to not disrupt the power source keeping the machines alive. Later in the movie an agent, Agent Smith, captures Morpheus and explains to him how the first iteration of the matrix failed. It was a perfect world, where no one suffered, where everyone would be happy but it failed says the agent because humans cannot live in a perfect world because we are not perfect. The agent says that we can only understand a world that is full of misery and suffering and so the matrix as it is now is the way it is, a world that is full of misery and suffering. In the perfect world matrix, “entire fields (of human batteries) were lost,” he says.
The question then is, are we in a simulated reality? If the source code is good enough could we theoretically be in the matrix too? Maybe we’re not batteries as we are in “The Matrix” but maybe we’re part of a simulation that is meant for research or entertainment? We can’t know for sure.
This idea as I mentioned earlier is not new. Plato envisioned a cave where people were chained and all they could see from the moment of their birth were the images of others using light to make shadows. The shadows were made into images and the images were the only thing the people in the cave could see. Therefore, they thought what they saw was reality but it was not reality but only an image of something told to them but because they could not see “behind the curtain” they had no idea what they saw was a creation but not reality in total.
The Gnostics also believed a version of this. The oversimplified version of it is this, there is a real place, likened to our heaven, where the gods live, as spiritual beings. The gods had rules on what they could create. Sophia, a female god, created a being without her male counterpart which is against their rules. In their world both the male and female are necessary to create something new. So, this creation, became a lesser god who didn’t realize he wasn’t a true god. In his idiocy he decided to create a world and us humans. We humans are a creation of this god but we have a spirit and our spirit is imprisoned in our physical body. They believed Jesus Christ was a savior but that like Neo in “The Matrix” Jesus’ purpose was to free us from this little god, or what is called a Demiurge, or creator. The Demiurge is not good but evil. The Manicheans believed the same thing and was an extension of the Gnostics and propagated by a man named Mani. The idea is that we live in a world of dark and light and that we must escape the darkness, which is the material world, and become spiritual beings. Mani believed that he had two selves. His self and a twin self, called Thomas (like Thomas Anderson, in “The Matrix”) and this other self is divine and revealed to him the truth. In “The Matrix”, the hated Agent Smith, says to Thomas Anderson “It seems you have been living two lives” in another reference to Manicheanism or Gnosticism. The authors of “The Matrix” it would seem chose the name Thomas on purpose. The idea is that we have a true self, our spirit self, and our bodily self, which is trapped, like in “The Matrix”, in a false reality, a simulated reality.
St. Augustine was a Manichean as well before he converted to Catholicism. The idea that we have two selves is not totally foreign to the Christian mind. St. Paul writes in Galatians 5: 16 -24:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
A few days ago I found this web page that reads “The return of the gnostics and the matrix” by Miguel Conner. 4 In it he posits that what we see is not real but the real truth is hidden from us. It’s worth taking a look at but I don’t believe it is true. Whether or not we live in a simulated reality is debatable but we can ask the question who created the Demiurge, also known as the Architect in “The Matrix” series, the one who created the false reality? The Architect is also the All Seeing Eye on the back of the Dollar Bill.
Annuit Coeptis - Novus Ordo Seclorum or He favors or blesses our undertaking - A new order for the ages. What new order? The number of 666 if equated as 6 x 6 x 6 = 216. 1776 +216 = 1992. 1776 is the number at the bottom of the pyramid, MDCCLXXVI. 216 / 12 (there are 12 layers of bricks) = 18 years per period. The period of time or epoch is represented as one layer of brick. So, in this picture we see 12 stages of time built upon the year 1776 representing 18 years each (6+6+6) culminating in the year 1992. The next stage would then culminate in 2010 and the next after that 2028. Grown men put this very seal on our dollar bill, grown men, important men, not me. But these grown men did actually put this “great” seal on our money. So, while it may seem odd that these numbers do work, for instance, 18 does equal 6+6+6, and it’s not another set of numbers like 7+7+7 or 4+4+4. 216 is 6 to the power of 3. Our founding fathers were believers in the idea of the architect as god. A god who created us but then let things take their course. The architect is in “the Matrix” and he can be thought of as the personage depicted by the all seeing eye. A symbol that has meaning to them, enough so that they actually put this on our money.
Interestingly enough, in the TV show Lost, the characters had to push a button every 108 minutes or the world would be destroyed and 108 is half of 216. It was also represented in the show by a series of numbers: 4 + 8 + 15 + 16 + 23 + 42 = 108. All those numbers have 8 in common. 4 is 8 divided by 2. 8 is 8. 15 is 5x3 which adds to 8. 16 is 4x4 which adds to 8. 23 can be represented as 2 to the power of 3 or 8. 42 could be 4 x 2 which is 8. Now, all the numbers relate to 8 on on their own except 4. 8 divided by 2 equals 4, but the 2 isn’t there, we have to put it there to relate 4 to 8. We have to add it in. When you add something in you have to do the same thing to the other side of the equation, so we multiplied 4 x 2 to get 8 so we also have to multiply 108 by 2 to get 216 which is 6 x 6 x 6. And 216 + 1776 is 1992. I’m not sure I need to go into what happened in 1992 but that could very well be the beginning of the end of it all if you ask me. It was the beginning of the internet and the forerunner of AI.
Follow the white rabbit, no thank you. Let’s get back to something a bit more “realistic” and that will make us feel better. In the movie “The Matrix” Neo is told that he needs to meet the oracle. He goes to her apartment in the city and finds kids there doing things such as bending a spoon with the mind. Neo looks at the spoon bender and the child says “the trick is to not try and bend the spoon, the trick is to realize there is no spoon.” After a long discussion with the oracle, she gives him a cookie that she had been baking and said to him “Here, take a cookie… I promise, by the time you're done eating it, you'll feel right as rain.”5 So, if you’re feeling weird, have a cookie, you’ll feel right as rain.
One of the most interesting scenes for me is in the next movie “The Matrix Reloaded,” where we meet a character named The Merovingian. This man is part of a group of exile programs and is married to Peresophone, whose name is taken from the goddess of the underworld, and he is owner of the Club Hel. I guess if it were called the Club Hell that might be a little too transparent. He is a character one could call the devil but in the movie he is a Frenchman. He is part of a group called the exiles (“and a third of the angels were cast from Heaven”). His message to Neo is that all life is causality and that choice is an illusion, he says:
“Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.”
And I believe this is truly what the devil presents us. A choice that seems like a choice but is really causality. To eat the apple or to not eat the apple. The devil wants us to get sucked into his world a world in which he controls. He controls by working on the weakness of humans so that humans make no actual free will choice but only respond to the stimuli presented to them. If our life is only a choice of 1 or 0 as it is in code, 1 or 0, and Neo’s apartment number was 101 by the way, then every choice can be manipulated. If every choice can be manipulated then everything can be predicted. If everything can be predicted then the powerful become more powerful and moreover the devil has every trick at his disposal to trick you because he knows you better than you know yourself. As the Oracle said to Neo “do you know what that means?” pointing to two latin words on her wall “temet nosce,” “It means in Latin ‘know thyself.’” The devil knows you better than you know you and therefore through causality he controls you.
However, God, in turn says that love is sacrifice. To love one truly would be lay down one’s life for another. And how can the devil use sacrificial love to his benefit? He cannot, therefore, he wants all choice to be material and causal in nature. The only choice he cannot control is a pure act of love. Love is not part of the matrix because how could one predict if someone were to sacrifice themselves for others? How do you do 1’s and 0’s for love? However, he wants us to eat this, drink this, watch this, think this because those things are predictable. Hate is a tool. Anger is a tool. They lead one to a conclusion. Radicalization is a result. That is what he wants. Everyone sequestered in their little camps.
As for me, I have written in a previous post that to be Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, one must believe something totally unbelievable, and that is that our perception of reality is only an illusion. How could God, all encompassing, all powerful, all reality, become a man? As we teach all reality became small inside the virgin Mary and how could that man die on a cross but then rise again and ascend into heaven? And then how could He become our bread and our wine in reality, the Eucharist, which we claim to be the real body of our Lord Jesus Christ? The belief in transubstantiation is that the bread which we see is no longer bread but the body, blood, soul and divinity of our lord. What was bread, although we see bread, is no longer bread. How can this be? Are we just socially Catholic because we are born into it? Do we really believe that the Eucharist is Jesus in our world? It’s just as unbelievable as is the idea that we live in a simulated reality, isn’t it? And yet, if we live in a simulation why do we have Eucharistic Miracles?
The webpage www.therealpresence.org is dedicated to both Father John Hardon, SJ and the Eucharist of which I have dedicated my work here and entrusted it to two Saints, one St. Bakhita and the other Servant of God, Father John Hardon (not an official saint yet). One of the links on this website is dedicated to Eucharistic miracles. Our own Pope Francis has witnessed such a miracle in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 6 There are many, many Eucharistic miracles, each as unbelievable as the next. Read them yourself on the Real Presence. Pope Francis recently beatified Carlo Acutis. Carlo was a young man born in 1991 and died in 2006 who dedicated his life, starting at age 10, to making a website which cataloged Eucharistic Miracles. He died of Leukemia at the age of fifteen. A website for Carlo can be found here.
Why would AI who created the false reality known as the matrix allow someone like Blessed Carlo Acutis to darken the halls of this false reality? Why not suppress all religion or is religion part of the matrix in order to fool those of us within it to keep on believing the lie, the matrix itself? At some point, we have to believe the evidence that is in front of us or otherwise we will start to ask the question again “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”. It becomes meaningless.
I go back to what is real and what we are taught. We are taught that the devil, the deceiver, the sower of discord, wants us to believe what is false because he is creating for himself his own kingdom. This kingdom is hell. And he wants to drag as many souls to hell as possible. Therefore, he deceives us. This deception I believe would love a cover narrative of the matrix. For one, there would be no devil if there is a matrix and isn’t that the greatest trick he ever pulled? Also, if we are in a simulated reality wouldn’t that mean human life has little value, therefore, suicide and the culture of death would have nothing to stop them from their pursuit. Finally, a simulated reality would mean there is no God, no reason for religion, no reason for faith, everything is of no real value; the nihilists prevail. But who created the creator of the AI? And who created that person and who created the universe? If our universe is only a simulated reality, wow, what a perfect mind who could create such a thing? Thomas Aquinas calls God, the first unmoved mover, meaning that we could ask the question, who created that or who created him and continue to go back until we get to something like the big bang. The big bang, the start of our universe, and our stars, we are all made of stars, are we not?
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” -Carl Sagan, “Cosmos.”
But who created the big bang or how was it created? The first thing, the thing not moved by any other thing, the unmoved mover, God. The demiurge, the Architect, was a created being according to the Gnostics, but then who created those who created the demiurge and why? The idea that there is a God and that God is infinite and not created is not within our grasp to understand any more than infinity itself. It we continue to multiply a number by two we never reach the end and if we divide by two we also never reach the end and the very big things become small and the very small things become big. A galaxy becomes an atom. An atom a galaxy.
“Who is like God?” St. Michael the Archangel asks Lucifer which is what his name means, Mi Cha El. Who is like God? This is what Michael said to Lucifer, the light bearer, when Lucifer rebelled taking a third of the angels with him. So, maybe instead of a simulated reality, we are part of a reality we cannot understand, nor control. And our enemy, the serpent, lies to us in order to control us and keep us from the Eucharist and more importantly the ocean of divine mercy God has in store for us. I for one will not believe the lies of the enemy but will instead cling to the cross and I will live a Christian and die a Christian and nothing will stop me from this, not even a simulated reality.
“What is the matrix? It is a system and that system is our enemy?” to which I respond “Who is like God?”
And what is the Eucharist? Presence, Communion and Sacrifice. The sacrifice on Calvary is being re-presented each day as a means for our salvation. It is not being symbolically presented but truly re-presented and Christ’s death is happening today as if it were the very day two thousand years ago and this means that the devil doesn’t want you to know about it. He cannot control the sacrificial love of God but he can control you if you live in his world. The simulated world? Maybe. I don’t know.
And what is love? God is Love and there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for another as Jesus did for us. It’s the only way to beat the matrix.
The question remains though in relation to the Matrix is that in “The Matrix”, the people within it are tethered to a network but they are real people. This would imply that there are real people and if there are real people then we are back to square one. The people were created beings and we can presume the same arguments as have always been, for some say there is a God or and for some they say there isn’t a God. The Matrix is just a future state of humanity but not a negation of the debate of whether or not there is a God. The matrix isn’t saying we live in a simulated world but rather flesh and blood live but experience a false world that is known as the matrix.
Angela Tung, May 16, 2016, Downloaded 4/11/2022 from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/79981/14-mind-twisting-terms-matrix
KPMX, October 26, 2020, Downloaded 4/11/2022 from https://archive.org/details/jefferson-airplane-1968-the-matrix-sf-kmpx
Elon Musk Says We’re Probably Living In A Computer Simulation – Here’s The Science, by anonymous, downloaded 4/11/2022 https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/elon-musk-says-were-probably-living-in-a-computer-simulation-heres-the-science/
The Return of the Gnotics and the Matrix by Miguel Conner, downloaded 4/11/2022 https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia3/ciencia_matrix163.htm
Anonymous, from USCB professor William Warner, downloaded 4/11/2022 http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/WarnerTeach/E192/matrix/Matrix.script.html
The Magis Center, March 18, 2022, The Eucharistic Miracle Pope Francis Witnessed in Buenos Aires, downloaded 4/11/2022 http://blog.magiscenter.com/blog/the-eucharistic-miracle-overseen-by-archbishop-bergoglio-now-pope-francis