I have always been fascinated by the movie The Matrix (the first, not a big fan of the others), and I spent some time thinking about what it means.
- Are they predicting that we will live in a simulated reality?
- Are they implying that we already live in a simulated reality?
- Is it a metaphor for living in a dictatorship where the information you take in and what you can do is strictly controlled?
Now, I tend to think that the matrix is our "social reality", the one we experience by taking in second hand information through education, the media, and generally the opinions of other people. In this context, leaving the matrix means learning to verify what we know though our own experience and by reasoning from first principles. When we reenter the matrix with our new awareness, we are able to navigate it more effectively and even modify it.
Where this model breaks down is that we do never actually live in "natural reality", instead, we use use our experience and reasoning to update our social reality. We never really leave the matrix, we just create our own.
