The Matrix Revisited

The Matrix Revisited



By Sam Vaknin

Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"



It is easy to confuse the concepts of "virtual reality" and

a "computerized model of reality (simulation)". The former is a self- contained Universe, replete with its "laws of physics" and "logic".

It can bear resemblance to the real world or not. It can be

consistent or not. It can interact with the real world or not. In

short, it is an arbitrary environment. In contrast, a model of

reality must have a direct and strong relationship to the world. It

must obey the rules of physics and of logic. The absence of such a

relationship renders it meaningless. A flight simulator is not much

good in a world without airplanes or if it ignores the laws of

nature. A technical analysis program is useless without a stock

exchange or if its mathematically erroneous.



Yet, the two concepts are often confused because they are both

mediated by and reside on computers. The computer is a self- contained (though not closed) Universe. It incorporates the

hardware, the data and the instructions for the manipulation of the

data (software). It is, therefore, by definition, a virtual reality.

It is versatile and can correlate its reality with the world

outside. But it can also refrain from doing so. This is the

ominous "what if" in artificial intelligence (AI). What if a

computer were to refuse to correlate its internal (virtual) reality

with the reality of its makers? What if it were to impose its own

reality on us and make it the privileged one?



In the visually tantalizing movie, "The Matrix", a breed of AI

computers takes over the world. It harvests human embryos in

laboratories called "fields". It then feeds them through grim

looking tubes and keeps them immersed in gelatinous liquid in

cocoons. This new "machine species" derives its energy needs from

the electricity produced by the billions of human bodies thus

preserved. A sophisticated, all-pervasive, computer program

called "The Matrix" generates a "world" inhabited by the

consciousness of the unfortunate human batteries. Ensconced in their

shells, they see themselves walking, talking, working and making

love. This is a tangible and olfactory phantasm masterfully created

by the Matrix. Its computing power is mind boggling. It generates

the minutest details and reams of data in a spectacularly successful

effort to maintain the illusion.



A group of human miscreants succeeds to learn the secret of the

Matrix. They form an underground and live aboard a ship, loosely

communicating with a halcyon city called "Zion", the last bastion of

resistance. In one of the scenes, Cypher, one of the rebels defects.

Over a glass of (illusory) rubicund wine and (spectral) juicy steak,

he poses the main dilemma of the movie. Is it better to live happily

in a perfectly detailed delusion - or to survive unhappily but free

of its hold?



The Matrix controls the minds of all the humans in the world. It is

a bridge between them, they inter-connected through it. It makes

them share the same sights, smells and textures. They remember. They

compete. They make decisions. The Matrix is sufficiently complex to

allow for this apparent lack of determinism and ubiquity of free

will. The root question is: is there any difference between making

decisions and feeling certain of making them (not having made them)?

If one is unaware of the existence of the Matrix, the answer is no.

>From the inside, as a part of the Matrix, making decisions and

appearing to be making them are identical states. Only an outside

observer - one who in possession of full information regarding both

the Matrix and the humans - can tell the difference.



Moreover, if the Matrix were a computer program of infinite

complexity, no observer (finite or infinite) would have been able to

say with any certainty whose a decision was - the Matrix's or the

human's. And because the Matrix, for all intents and purposes, is

infinite compared to the mind of any single, tube-nourished,

individual - it is safe to say that the states of "making a

decision" and "appearing to be making a decision" are subjectively

indistinguishable. No individual within the Matrix would be able to

tell the difference. His or her life would seem to him or her as

real as ours are to us. The Matrix may be deterministic - but this

determinism is inaccessible to individual minds because of the

complexity involved. When faced with a trillion deterministic paths,

one would be justified to feel that he exercised free, unconstrained

will in choosing one of them. Free will and determinism are

indistinguishable at a certain level of complexity.



Yet, we KNOW that the Matrix is different to our world. It is NOT

the same. This is an intuitive kind of knowledge, for sure, but this

does not detract from its firmness. If there is no subjective

difference between the Matrix and our Universe, there must be an

objective one. Another key sentence is uttered by Morpheus, the

leader of the rebels. He says to "The Chosen One" (the Messiah) that

it is really the year 2199, though the Matrix gives the impression

that it is 1999.



This is where the Matrix and reality diverge. Though a human who

would experience both would find them indistinguishable -

objectively they are different. In one of them (the Matrix), people

have no objective TIME (though the Matrix might have it). The other

(reality) is governed by it.



Under the spell of the Matrix, people feel as though time goes by.

They have functioning watches. The sun rises and sets. Seasons

change. They grow old and die. This is not entirely an illusion.

Their bodies do decay and die, as ours do. They are not exempt from

the laws of nature. But their AWARENESS of time is computer

generated. The Matrix is sufficiently sophisticated and

knowledgeable to maintain a close correlation between the physical

state of the human (his health and age) and his consciousness of the

passage of time. The basic rules of time - for instance, its

asymmetry - are part of the program.



But this is precisely it. Time in the minds of these people is

program-generated, not reality-induced. It is not the derivative of

change and irreversible (thermodynamic and other) processes OUT

THERE. Their minds are part of a computer program and the computer

program is a part of their minds. Their bodies are static,

degenerating in their protective nests. Nothing happens to them

except in their minds. They have no physical effect on the world.

They effect no change. These things set the Matrix and reality apart.



To "qualify" as reality a two-way interaction must occur. One flow

of data is when reality influences the minds of people (as does the

Matrix). The obverse, but equally necessary, type of data flow is

when people know reality and influence it. The Matrix triggers a

time sensation in people the same way that the Universe triggers a

time sensation in us. Something does happen OUT THERE and it is

called the Matrix. In this sense, the Matrix is real, it is the

reality of these humans. It maintains the requirement of the first

type of flow of data. But it fails the second test: people do not

know that it exists or any of its attributes, nor do they affect it

irreversibly. They do not change the Matrix. Paradoxically, the

rebels do affect the Matrix (they almost destroy it). In doing so,

they make it REAL. It is their REALITY because they KNOW it and they

irreversibly CHANGE it.



Applying this dual-track test, "virtual" reality IS a reality,

albeit, at this stage, of a deterministic type. It affects our

minds, we know that it exists and we affect it in return. Our

choices and actions irreversibly alter the state of the system. This

altered state, in turn, affects our minds. This interaction IS what

we call "reality". With the advent of stochastic and quantum virtual

reality generators - the distinction between "real" and "virtual"

will fade. The Matrix thus is not impossible. But that it is

possible - does not make it real.



Appendix - God and Gödel



The second movie in the Matrix series - "The Matrix Reloaded" -

culminates in an encounter between Neo ("The One") and the architect

of the Matrix (a thinly disguised God, white beard and all). The

architect informs Neo that he is the sixth reincarnation of The One

and that Zion, a shelter for those decoupled from the Matrix, has

been destroyed before and is about to be demolished again.



The architect goes on to reveal that his attempts to render the

Matrix "harmonious" (perfect) failed. He was, thus, forced to

introduce an element of intuition into the equations to reflect the

unpredictability and "grotesqueries" of human nature. This in-built

error tends to accumulate over time and to threaten the very

existence of the Matrix - hence the need to obliterate Zion, the

seat of malcontents and rebels, periodically.



God appears to be unaware of the work of an important, though

eccentric, Czech-Austrian mathematical logician, Kurt Gödel (1906- 1978). A passing acquaintance with his two theorems would have saved

the architect a lot of time.



Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem states that every consistent

axiomatic logical system, sufficient to express arithmetic, contains

true but unprovable ("not decidable") sentences. In certain cases

(when the system is omega-consistent), both said sentences and their

negation are unprovable. The system is consistent and true - but

not "complete" because not all its sentences can be decided as true

or false by either being proved or by being refuted.



The Second Incompleteness Theorem is even more earth-shattering. It

says that no consistent formal logical system can prove its own

consistency. The system may be complete - but then we are unable to

show, using its axioms and inference laws, that it is consistent



In other words, a computational system, like the Matrix, can either

be complete and inconsistent - or consistent and incomplete. By

trying to construct a system both complete and consistent, God has

run afoul of Gödel's theorem and made possible the third

sequel, "Matrix Revolutions".





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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)



Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant

Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West

Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,

PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International

(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health

and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and

Suite101.



Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government

of Macedonia.



Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com