Wednesday, November 17, 2010

To the Matrix

I would like to respond to the question "How do you know that you are not in the Matrix?", that was raised to Michal Shermer during the Q&A at a lecture that I attended.  My response is simply that "I do not know".  Further from that it is worth pointing out that it is not something that I should need to know in order to live my life with the assumption that I do not live in the matrix, or rather that I exist in an objective reality along with the questioner and everything else that exists in this universe.  Something that I do know is that I do not have a red pill and I would be willing to wager that neither does the questioner.

With out the red pill I am forced to assume that the world I live in is reality and my sensory perception of it is a strong enough approximation of reality as to allow me consistent navigation of life.  As for anyone who happens to have a "the red pill" I would congratulate them on their very personal and non-demonstrable quest for knowledge and then ask how they are to know, upon taking the pill, weather or not they have found an objective reality or simply a regress to a second simulation.

Ultimately the question holds no weight because we can not escape our reality even if it is the creation of an evil demon or a computer simulation.  Our experience of reality is objective with-in the reference frame of human experience until proven otherwise.

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