Author: crimson

Imperfection in the Matrix

crimson

I like the Matrix story. I have written many posts regarding aspects of the story that I think are quite well done and thought provoking. However, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that there are also issues with the story. Some can be overlooked. Others are quite substantial.

To be clear, I still like the story. It is still one of my favorites. I consider the nature of the story to be such that one can overlook much and still gain from its viewing. A fundamental feature of the story is that it plays with the idea that we have a tendency to feel like something is amiss, almost all the time. In the case of the Matrix, this thing that is amiss is often the fact that the characters are trapped in a simulated world, unable to escape; unable to really detect on a conscious level that they are even trapped. This feeling drives many of the conversations and debates about aspects of the story. This is a good thing. The stories many imperfections can be overlooked as a result.

That said, there are some huge problems as well. In this post, I will raise two major problems with the story. One significant and straight forward problem relates to the scorched sky. The other, much more subtle problem, relates to the obviousness of the orchestrated “path of the one.” One of these problems, I believe, will be quite easy to see by most. The other may not.

At various points in the films and supplementary material, it is explained that the sky was scorched by the humans in an attempt to defeat the machines in a great war. The machines were, at the time, quite dependent on solar energy to sustain themselves. It was believed, by the humans, that blocking this source of energy would bring a quick end to the war. This assumption clearly failed, and the events that precipitated the creation of the Matrix simulation follow. The machines decided to use human beings as a source of energy to sustain themselves, considering this to be a viable alternative to the previously abundant solar energy.

Unfortunately, on this planet, there is no source of energy as abundant as solar energy. In fact, most other forms of energy we utilize are indirectly generated by solar energy. For example, the currents of winds in our atmosphere are, by and large, generated by the solar energy being absorbed by large land masses, which in turn heat up the atmosphere near the surface. The air rises, as a result of being heated, and this causes the air above to be pushed around. This isn’t the only manner in which the atmosphere moves, but it is probably the most significant. This is also why the melting of the polar ice caps is such a big deal related to climate change. The ice caps, by and large, reflect this solar energy, meaning the energy is sent back off into space. Less ice caps mean less solar energy bounced away, and more absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere, which in turn causes more green house effect.

In the world of the Matrix, if the sky has been scorched in such a way as to take away this abundant power source from the machines, it has the (likely) unintentional side effect of removing this same energy source from the humans as well. Without solar energy making it past the black clouds, none of that energy will reach the Earth to raise temperatures or offer other processes the energy required to continue. The movement of atmosphere is likely to stagnate. Furthermore, there is now no energy to allow plants to synthesize sugars or oxygen. After several hundred years, what sort of oxygen levels will remain for the humans to continue respiring?

It is often suggested that geothermal energy is utilized (at least by the humans) in order to power their last city. I will have to assume it is utilizing this energy source to produce the oxygen and other necessary life continuing elements for the humans. Growing crops deep beneath the surface of the Earth, using artificial light sources. Or perhaps there are no crops, and technology is such that the required food sources are manufactured, though from what I cannot guess. Visions of Soylent Green come to mind.

It is a fact of our “real world” that no conversion process is ever 100% efficient. That is, when converting mechanical energy into electrical energy, there will always be some energy lost in the conversion. This is often due to such things as friction (mechanical) or resistance (electrical), both of which end up producing a byproduct of heat. Are we to believe that either the machines or the humans in our near future will somehow resolve these efficiency problems? The swinging pendulum will eventually stop if not maintained by small pushes during its swings.

The biggest problem with scorching the sky is that it does not only present a significant problem for the machines, it presents an extinction level event for the humans as well. Without the abundant solar energy that our “real world” depends on, life cannot be sustained. Perhaps there might continue some small, strange creatures in the depths of the oceans where their respiratory processes are virtually alien to our own, but human life is pretty much impossible without the sun. To be quite blunt, without the sun, both the machine civilization as well as the human one will simply die out over a period of time, as their collective energy reserves are depleted. I would have given them perhaps one generation, but considering the energy requirements to maintain a war, perhaps I am being too generous.

The scorched sky problem seems to place a firm nail in the coffin for this story, but it is certainly not the only major issue. Another large theme in this story is the idea of free will. It is suggested that choice is a problem the machines are unable to resolve within their human farms. The earlier iterations of the Matrix did not properly account for the free will of the occupants, and disaster followed. And so, it was decided that humans had to have a say (however small) in the playing out of the grand simulation. Choices were programmed in, at a near unconscious level. Just enough to allow the humans to accept the program, though with a growing probability of disaster from systemic anomalous code brought about from the free will problem.

Essentially, the story is suggesting an incompatibility between the hard determinism of the machines and the free will of the humans. I will continue with this perceived false dilemma, but take a moment to point out that determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive. It may be true that we, as a species, have not found an entirely satisfactory explanation of how free will might possibly fit inside our seemingly deterministic universe, but this does not suggest that these alternative viewpoints are incommensurable. The story is making a bit of a leap here to suggest that one or the other must prevail. (And also that one of the two is somehow superior in the process.)

In the story, the solution to this problem is the creation of a prophesy: the path of the one. The anomalous code within the simulation culminates in the emergence of the One. That is, after a time, the progressive collection of all the doubts of all the occupants within the Matrix over time swells and manifests through an individual who we call Neo. Neo, in this case, is the key representative of freedom, unburdened by the rules of determinism. He is special. He is an exception. The rules of the Matrix do not apply to him. He doesn’t believe in all this “fate crap.”

And so he and his friends follow the path of the one in order to save humanity from the prison that is the Matrix… Wait, what? His key defining feature is that he believes determinism is fundamentally wrong, and he is going to follow a predetermined path in order to make his point? This is what prophecy is. It is fate. I would say it is fate repackaged, but it isn’t even that. Prophecy is fate. Okay, prophecy is the foretelling of fated events, whereas fate is the manifestation of those events. However, they are not separate things. They are clearly linked quite tightly.

In other words, the protagonists in the story of the Matrix are following a predetermined, causally established sequence of events in order to demonstrate how free will exists and will save them all. Neo will simply choose the path, over not following the path. His choices amount to making the correct choices, lest all fails and the world ends. It isn’t nearly as clear as a scorched sky, but am I to accept this really?

The characters insist that this free will exists and is why there is a problem. The system works as hard as it can to accommodate all these choices people are making, including the choices of the one himself. The path is a method to do this. After all, he has to be given these choices, even at a near unconscious level. Every conflict and event he encounters is a test, where he must make choices in order to progress the storyline and plot. He could always choose not to progress the plot, but lucky for us he does.

The Oracle does suggest why this is the case. For her, it isn’t about what choices he will make, as she suggests “you’ve already made it [the choice]. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.” For her, the choices are already predetermined. The issue is not making a choice, it is understanding why a choice was made the way it was. This is not an argument in support of freedom, this is an argument against. This is an argument suggesting that free will may look like it exists, but in fact it does not. It is all an illusion.

Neo may not want to believe in fate, but his actions persistently present an opposing belief. Morpheus is even worse in this regard. When the protagonists encounter each strange being with incredibly and ridiculously contrived instructions that are meant to allow them to prove that free will exists and free humanity from their enslavement in simulation, they quickly get in line and progress the plot as expected. The Merovingian himself makes a joke about this; about how understanding is power, and so understanding choices makes one powerful. He even offers the protagonists another wild goose chase in order to progress the plot.

Then note how Morpheus later suggests in the elevator that “what happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” This is the furthest thing from an argument in favor of free will. The characters entrench themselves in incredibly convoluted plans, like crazy Rube Goldberg machines, because it is this level of complexity that seems to suggest something greater. It seems like complexity is the key to freedom. The more complex a system is, the more it is believed to be representative of freedom.

As a very poignant example, when the Keymaker is telling the protagonists the precise plan that is required in order to allow Neo to open the door and enter the Source, and there just so happens to be all the things in place that are needed to accomplish this insane mission, Morpheus doesn’t pause and suggest a problem, he suggests it is providence. Instead of recognizing that this latest heist plan is simply too ridiculous and coincidental, he suggests the prophecy is coming to conclusion.

There are many such examples throughout the story. The characters are oblivious. They simply cannot see that these complicated procedures are orchestrated by a higher power. They take it as being fate. The audience similarly follows by the nose and doesn’t question it either. No one asks the natural question that ought to be asked: “who comes up with this stuff?”

My point, if it isn’t clear, is that making something hard to follow and complicated does not equate to breaking out of the chains of determinism. Just because I cannot see all the causal connections between two events does not mean those connections do not exist. To argue in favor of free will simply because I cannot understand, myself, how something could possibly come about. To do so seems to demonstrate a significant level of ignorance. It is like suggesting that “features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection.” Complexity is poor evidence in support of an argument toward Intelligent Design, or any other conclusion.

I am a limited being, with limited capacities. While I can know much, I will never know everything. In fact, the amount I am able to grasp at any given moment in time seems incredibly small when compared to all there is to know about everything. It is a fact of my existence that I will not have the complete picture of things all the time. I will be forced to make choices with insufficient information quite frequently. I do the best I can, given my particular circumstances at any given moment. This does not mean my choices are themselves unpredictable. This does not mean that there was no causal chain connecting my situation to my choices. It simply means I do not know how it is connected. This is very different from saying that it is not possible to know, or to say that it is entirely unpredictable.

It raises the question regarding what precisely free will or freedom might actually be. Human brains are incredibly complicated. Does this suggest that freedom exists in brains, as a result of the fact that I do not understand how brains operate? That because I cannot predict something, that something simply cannot be predicted by anyone or anything? It would be like suggesting that because I dislike a certain flavour of ice cream, that flavour must be disliked by all. If that were true, one might ask the question “why make that flavour of ice cream at all?”

The Matrix story isn’t without flaws. Even simply taking a moment to discuss a couple of its weaknesses can generate very interesting discussion. This is what makes the Matrix so interesting. This is what makes the Matrix story so enjoyable. It isn’t about how perfectly or imperfectly the The Wachowskis wrote their story, because they definitely seemed to overlook some significant things. What I think makes more sense to focus on is the questions and discussions raised by their story. This is what makes the Matrix interesting.

The Rarity of Free Will

crimson

What could possess me to make another post so quickly? An epiphany. A revelation. Many years in the making. The adjusted belief that perhaps freedom does exist, but it is simply so very rare.

In the beginning, about when I was in high school, I started to doubt the ideas of free will. More specifically, the idea of an effect without a cause. I would play Dungeons & Dragons with my friends, and I considered the randomness of rolling a die. When one throws the cube, it bounces around before settling down with one of its six faces showing up toward the person. The epitome of random. But is it really?

In high school, I took physics classes, and perhaps it was due to my novel education that I considered the situation carefully. Were I to know the precise velocity that the die was released, the effects of the atmosphere on the cube as it flew through the air, the imperfections in the surface as it struck down, the coefficients of friction, and all of the various minutia of the events, using a bit of math I could probably predict which face would end up showing. Sure, to know all of these details may not be feasible; I am merely human with limited capacities. But if I could have somehow acquired all of this knowledge, I feel quite confident I could do it. I could predict this random event.

But that becomes a contradiction, does it not? Part of what is baked into the definition of random is that it is unpredictable. To be truly random, no amount of knowledge should ever be sufficient to perform such a calculation. Certainly there is a conflict here. Either my idea is incorrect, or there are not as many random events in our universe as I believed. In fact, what if there are no random events at all?

I’ve been working on computers for most of my life. Computers can generate random numbers, can’t they? Well, as it turns out, no they cannot. The algorithms used by computers to provide seemingly random information can be exceedingly creative, running up against the feasibility concern I’ve raised above. But the results are still not truly or purely random. The use of seemingly unpredictable events from the outside environment (the passage of time, the manner in which I move my mouse, the choice and patterns I employ when utilizing my keyboard, etc) are called entropy and are used to seed the random number generators in our favorite electronic devices. It’s random, but really, it’s not.

There is a marked difference between something that is entirely unpredictable because no amount of knowledge could ever be acquired to predict a result, and something that could be predicted given enough time and effort. The question I posed to a philosophy group this past summer was to suggest that were I God, with an omniscient and omnipotent nature, the feasibility issue might be overlooked. God, I said, could predict these unpredictable events. Unfortunately for me, the suggestion of being God simply overshadowed any attempt at a reasonable discussion after that point.

However, this is the point I am making. For something to be truly random, even God would not be able to predict the outcome. If God could predict the outcome, then it isn’t truly random. Does true randomness exist in our universe? Or does everything bow down to the law of causality, with every single effect being caused by some other event? It seems impossible for us to ever determine such a thing.

If I exist in a hard deterministic universe, where all things follow causality, then there seems to be another very serious problem. There are other things I cherish and value that seem impossible. True creativity seems impossible as well; anything I may want to call creative is simply the reorganization and reassembly of other past things. Perhaps I might want to include the idea of accidents promoting creativity, but as with the previous discussion of randomness, accidents are simply expected events that may not feasibly be predicted either.

Freedom is another such thing. I am speaking of the sort of freedom that includes unpredictability as part of its description. The sort of freedom that I assume God would have, and that I hope I too have. The free will that allows me to break out of a purely deterministic universe by injecting something like an uncaused cause into the mix. If true randomness and true creativity cannot be, then neither can true freedom it seems.

I told my own mother my discovery one day, telling her that I could not believe in free will. Fate, I said, must be how things operate (using the term as I wasn’t aware of the term deterministic at the time). Her response was both passionate and quite surprising to me. “Go step in front of a moving bus,” she said, “if what you say is true, then you will not be harmed.” I was shocked. Of course I would be harmed I told her, but the discussion simply became ridiculous. I could not, for the longest time, understand why she had suggested such a thing.

Later, I realized that what she was suggesting wasn’t quite the same thing as I am discussing here. For her, I think I sounded pompous and arrogant. Like perhaps I felt I had divine protection and influence, or some other equally unlikely blessing. I think I understood the reactions Joe Bauers in Idiocracy was receiving from people after having been frozen for 500 years. Like Joe, I was not trying to impress or sound special. I was simply stating things as I understood them. Communications can be quite challenging at times.

As a result of that interaction with my own mother, I decided it would be best to broach the subject differently going forward. I would say that I don’t believe in free will, but I am open to the possibility. If ever someone was able to convince me of the possibility, I would take the argument seriously.

Fast forward now to the years of the pandemic. Marvel releases the television show Loki. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is a multiverse. That is, there is not one universe but many. There is not one me, but many, each just a little bit different than the others. In each case, the differences are typically caused by my exercising of my free will. When an event occurs whereby I can choose between more than one option, in truth I actually choose ALL options. Each option I choose forks the universe into another parallel universe. In one of these universes I chose the vanilla ice cream, but in another I chose chocolate.

One issue I found with the show was that there seemed not to be as many Nexus events (these free will events that fork the timeline) as I would have expected. After all, I am faced with numerous free will choices every day. Possibly each hour, minute, or even second. The administration of the timeline, trying to address the multitude of Nexus events caused by me alone would be untenable, let along that there are literally billions upon billions of other individuals with free will causing as many other Nexus events across time and space. So, in the show, why are there only a few at a time? The Time Variance Authority (TVA) seems pretty calm, simply sending out their teams occasionally to address these problem events.

The show never addresses my concern, but I have a theory: perhaps the reason Nexus events are so rare is that free will is not so prevalent as I would like to think. What if I am not expressing a free will when selecting between ice cream flavours, as my selection perhaps follows a more predictable structure due to my preferences and past experiences. If this is true, it may even be possible that not all individuals are even capable of expressing a free will. Perhaps free will is an extremely rare occurrence.

The Loki television show may have sparked this thought process, but it has been the immanent release of The Matrix Resurrections that has truly pushed my mind to think about this outside the box. Specifically, not the upcoming film itself, but rethinking about the previous films.

In particular, a person on Reddit posted a question regarding what would happen if two people inside the Matrix were to mate and have offspring. They wondered whether the offspring would be a computer program or somehow connected to a physical human outside the Matrix. Initially I laughed, but then I thought about it, and the question is absolutely brilliant. The answer is both surprising and depressing at the same time.

The Matrix is a simulation. Any individual who connects to the simulation will experience their own personal perspective of the simulation. While the simulation can offer the opportunity for individuals to interact with other individuals within the simulation, ultimately the bulk of any one person’s experience is being provided by the simulation itself. The simulation is what controls the environment and all things that the individual can interact with. If a bird flies by, the simulation will control that bird (unless the bird is an occupant jacked into the simulation, which is likely not occurring very often, especially in the storyline of The Matrix).

The answer to the above question is that any offspring would be a product of the simulation. The offspring would be a program, or part of the simulation’s program. Simply code. Similarly, if a physical baby human is born and immediately connected to the simulation, the simulation itself will have to provide virtual parents and all the other necessary elements to attend to the new life. Even if one thinks for a moment that those running the simulation might decide to take a moment to try and find appropriately similar parents or children to connect to the strange virtual relationship, aside from the most ridiculously complicated procedure that would render the simulation untenable, they would be mistaken. If the point of the Matrix is to sedate the occupants of the simulation in order to facilitate leaching energy off those occupants, a process attempting to maintain the connections between the occupants in this manner would use up all the available energy acquired in the process. It wouldn’t make any sense, because it is unreasonable. It isn’t feasible.

In other words, most of the “players” in the simulation must necessarily be controlled by the simulation and not be occupants. What is often refereed to in games as Non Player Characters or NPCs. There would be far more NPCs in any simulation than individuals connected to it. In fact, it would even make sense for there to be only one individual to be in simulation, with ALL other individuals being NPCs. To be in simulation is to enter into a sort of solipsism.

To further expand on this situation, consider the possibility that I am in simulation presently. It has been suggested that if a civilization develops the capacity to perform ultra realistic simulations, they are likely to run many, many such simulations. And if there are so many simulations in existence, the likelihood is quite high that I am within one of these simulations. To have so many simulations seems quite similar to the description of a multiverse.

If the probability is high that I am in simulation, then it is similarly high that any individual I encounter is an NPC. In fact, yes, it is also possible I am such an NPC as well. In any case, even if I am not an NPC, there are still going to be an incredibly high number of NPCs in this universe I find myself in. I could possibly be the only non NPC as well.

Finally, if I make the assumption that an NPC will NOT have free will, then I can now explain why free will would be so incredibly rare. With so few non NPCs in existence, even across so many simulated universes, the number of Nexus events in the Loki television show would be quite small and very manageable. And in my “real world” that I occupy right this moment, I can provide a reasonable explanation as to why free will itself would be so incredibly rare, to the point that it may not even exist.

In Simulation

crimson

The new Matrix film is nearly upon us, and so my partner and I are watching all the previous films and supplementary material. An important part of this process is discussing the films after viewing, sharing the various revelations we have that we may have missed on previous viewings. It speaks to the quality of the original story that we continue having revelations and epiphanies even 20 years later.

My latest revelation is one that is raising some rather disturbing questions regarding the story and regarding how consciousness operates in our real world. I might even suggest it is a weakness in my previous arguments regarding consciousness thus far. The issue of what it means to be “in simulation.”

Of course, before I can even talk about being “in simulation,” I will have to discuss what a simulation is. As it turns out, trying to elucidate the idea of a simulation caused a rather heated debate between my partner and I. We cannot agree what a simulation is. And so, in this post, I will be primarily focused on my interpretation. I will try to share her interpretation, but the honest truth is that I don’t really understand her interpretation.

I have spoken before about identity and of the world. My identity is what I (and others) consider to be what constitutes me. The “I” when I say I. In some sense, my identity is what separates what is me from the rest of the world, and from others. Which brings us to the idea of the world. The world is that which is not me, and very generally what is not others. You are not the world, but you are a part of the world, just as I am a part of the world as well.

However, the world also includes that which is not a part of you or me. The world, in some sense, can exist without either of us. The world (we generally believe) can and will persist even when I cease to exist. Furthermore, the world contains objects that both you and I can observe and generally agree upon. We can both see the same objects, albeit from slightly different perspectives. And so, very generally, the world is the same for me as it is for you. At least, this is a significant assumption I make about the world. And I believe most people make a very similar assumption, even if they are not aware they are making this assumption.

A simulation is also a world, though not the “real” world. The world we presently inhabit, I believe, most will agree is considered to be the “real” world. This blog, this website, is a part of the “real” world. This blog is not necessarily a part of a simulation. Having said all this, I will acknowledge that as I continue this discussion, questions may be raised regarding the integrity of this.

A simulation is loosely based on the “real” world, and will be a lesser version of it. That is, a simulation will bear some resemblance to the “real” world in some way, and may even share some elements of it. However, a simulation will always be absent some of the elements of the “real” world as well. This is a large reason we will call it a simulation. A simulation, in some sense, is a straw man argument of the “real” world.

Like the “real” world, a simulation is governed by rules and laws. Or, as my partner has pointed out, perhaps not so much governed by as perhaps explained by. For example, in the “real” world there appears to be some sort of attractive force that acts upon all bodies. We often refer to this force as gravity. We even have various mathematical formulas we use to predict how gravity will affect various bodies, and we use science in order to validate these formulas as best we can. Gravity is a sort of governing rule of the “real” world.

A simulation can include gravity, though it does not necessarily have to. The rules of the simulation may be similar to the rules of the “real” world, or they may be vastly different. What both the simulation and the “real” world share is the fact that there are these rules or laws. Navigating a simulation can be done in a similar fashion to navigating in the “real” world; an understanding of these rules is what is required. If I understand how gravity operates (at least on some rudimentary level), then I can navigate through a world governed by gravity.

The point of all this pedantic examination is that a simulation will bear some resemblance to the “real” world. In the case of the Matrix from the films, the Matrix is a simulation that bears a lot of similarities to the “real” world. However, as the character Mouse points out in the first film, it is possible the machines (who created the simulation of the Matrix) could have either accidentally or intentionally made errors:

“How did the machines really know what Tasty Wheat tasted like. huh?. Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn’t figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.”

While the machines may have correctly or incorrectly represented Tasty Wheat or chicken, the point is that these humans who are now discussing what their “single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals” actually tastes like are basing their assessment on information they have received from a simulated reality that they acknowledge may have provided them misinformation. In the end, in truth, they have no idea what their meal tastes like, only that it has a taste.

This is one of the critical issues with the idea of simulation and of simulacra. The information we receive from our interactions with any particular world are what we use to recognize and understand the elements of that world. This is the heart of the arguments made by the Empiricists of the 18th century; that all knowledge is based on experience. What they may not have concerned themselves with as much is the reliability of the world that provided them that experience.

Which brings us to the heart of my own discussion here. What does it mean to be “in simulation?” More specifically, what is happening when we are in simulation? In the story, when someone is in the Matrix, does their mind or consciousness or soul leave their body and exist within the Matrix? Or does their mind remain within their body, and the simulation is simply altering the interface one has with their world, hijacking their senses and replacing those experiences with alternate ones?

As I write these words, it seems obvious what the answer ought to be. In the case of the film, as seems to be presented, human minds exist in human bodies, and connecting to the Matrix does not somehow separate the two. A physical cable is connected to the brain stem, and all the sensory input normally fed to the brain by the rest of the body is replaced by alternative sensory information provided by the simulation. Morpheus rightly inquires: “What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” It does not matter the source of those signals, the brain will interpret whatever signals it receives.

The problem raised by the story is that if all of your senses have been hijacked, then you might not be aware that the world you think you are in is in fact a fabrication. You might be in simulation, and not know it. The issue my partner and I debated was whether one could be in simulation and still know they were in simulation.

The manner in which our debate manifested raised an even more insidious issue: where does one’s mind or consciousness reside while in simulation? For me, it seemed obvious: the mind continues to reside where it always seems to reside, in the body in the “real” world. However my partner did not agree. For her, while in simulation, the mind or consciousness left the body and resided in the simulation itself, inside the simulated body. Which case is true can have significant ramifications on events that follow.

As Morpheus suggests, the body cannot live without the mind. Therefore, the mind must necessarily remain within the body at all times, lest the body die. If this is true, then the mind remains in the body in the “real” world. But if this is how it works, then why would unplugging the cable that connects the physical body to the Matrix cause anything bad to happen? How did Apoc and Switch die? If the mind is always in the body, then disconnecting a cable should cause no issues for the individual, as their mind and body remain intact. Only the connection to the simulation is severed, which would seem to merely end the simulation for the individual. They should have simply woken like from a dream.

The alternative is equally problematic. If the mind in fact does leave the body and enter the Matrix, then the body is without a mind and ought to expire. Clearly, within the story, this does not happen. So if minds can successfully be separated from bodies, then Morpheus must be mistaken. Bodies can exist and continue without minds, perhaps on some sort of life support. However, if this is now the case, then how does anything that happens with the mind while it is disconnected from the body affect the body. How can the mind make real such things as injuries?

My partner and I did come up with another alternative that could explain what is going on. What if the mind does not entirely leave the body? What if the mind is sort of tethered to the body, so that a part of the mind remains with the body but a part of the mind enters the Matrix? This would resolve a number of issues, including how the mind makes things real for the body. This tether is what is maintained through the physical cabling that is connected to the brain stem. Severing the tether would be akin to lobotomy, which could then be severe enough to end a person’s life.

In some fashion, the mind is in both places at the same time. Both in the “real” world and at the same time in simulation. If we think of the mind in the “real” world and the mind in simulation as being two parts, then they could be considered connected like in quantum entanglement. I admit, this sort of view of the mind seems incredibly unsatisfying for me. It reminds me of René Descartes’s pineal gland.

In our “real” world, we really have very little understanding of minds or consciousnesses. What we can suggest is that minds and consciousnesses are very unlike bodies or other physical objects. One cannot crack open someone’s head and look at their thoughts. In fact, if you consider how a closed-circuit television (CCTV) system operates, there is nothing that guarantees that the mind exists within a body at all. The mind and consciousness could exist elsewhere entirely. Only the apparent localization created by the position of the various sensory inputs suggests that the mind ought to exist within the physical body.

Without the ability to experience what others experience, I cannot say much about experiences other than my own. What I can say is that when I have dreamed, I have had dreams where I was convinced that the reality of the dream was the “real” world. Only after I awoke from those dreams did I realize my error, and then acknowledged that the dream was in fact a dream and not real. I have also been so immersed in various experiences, such a watching a very engrossing film or a very intense video game, that I momentarily forgot that the world of the immersion was not the same as the “real” world.

In every case (so far) I can say that once I finished or left the simulation, I realized that it was a simulation. Once I had escaped, I felt that I knew with confidence what was “real.” But that only really suggests one thing: that in order to know that something is not real, I have to leave it into something that is more real. In other words, the only reason I have to suggest this is the real world presently is that I have not yet experiences a more real world.

Elysium

crimson

There has been a great deal of interest in space flight lately. Many ultra wealthy individuals have taken it upon themselves to compete with each other to see who can commercialize the “final frontier” first. After all, these individuals have already figured out how to squeeze every last drop of blood from our precious Earth. Space is the next natural step in this capitalist venture.

It is probably clear from my opening what I think about these people. Many of them reporting record profits over the past two years; two years which have had most of us locked up at home trying to avoid a deadly pandemic virus that is killing millions of people worldwide. I think it is pretty deplorable that these few individuals have virtually abandoned humanity in order to pursue their lofty projects, when a small fraction of their immense wealth could be used to prevent most of these tragic deaths. A small fraction of their wealth could have turned a two year pandemic into something much less devastating.

Of course, all that I say is speculative. Who knows what would have happened had various individuals made different choices over the past several years. As one who’s beliefs lean toward a hard deterministic view of the universe, I do have my doubts that they could have done otherwise. Which creates a rather depressing view of humanity and its future.

Which brings us to my topic of choice today: Elysium. Elysium was a film from 2013. The story was a commentary regarding the state of affairs observed in our modern world, and a prediction for the future. In this story, the future of humanity was not some Utopian civilisation, like in Star Trek where humanity had resolved its various problems, curing diseases and trying to spread joy throughout the galaxy. No, in this story humans did what they seem to often do, they dismissed and discarded the refuse and the undesirable.

In the story of Elysium, the ultra wealthy decided to abandon the Earth and live upon a large artificial habitat in high orbit around the Earth. Over the years, the Earth had become a miserable place to live. Pollution, climate change, poverty. It was just easier (it seems) for the wealthy to leave, than to repair the Earth.

The rest of the story focuses on an individual who was born on Earth. A sorry excuse of a person, surrounded by poverty and problems, dreaming of one day living on Elysium. Even promising his best friend that they would one day be there. Through significant hardship, he eventually makes his way to the orbiting habitat. The details of that adventure I leave to you to discover for yourself.

If it is not painfully obvious and clear, the recent interest in space exploration and commercialization by our real world wealthy elites has reminded me of this eight year old film. It seems like Neill Blomkamp‘s vision of the future may not be so distant as even he seemed to think.

We might have to wait about 150 years for an orbiting space platform to be constructed for our modern wealthy elites, but that is obviously just speculation. What isn’t speculation is that the current super rich are already setting their gaze toward space right now. What I don’t understand is how no one in the mass media has acknowledged this little gem of a film in the process.

Rigorous Philosophy: Knowledge

crimson

My partner was scrolling through her social media about a week ago, when she stumbled upon a Gettier Problem. In particular, the post she found referred to a specific case by Edmund Gettier, where an individual’s claim to knowledge is challenged, regarding who will get a job and who has ten coins in his pocket. The poster claimed to have solved the problem. Unfortunately, I cannot find this post, so I cannot look at their solution. If someone comes across this, I would be interested to know what sort of solution they decided upon.

For some background, epistemology is the study of knowledge. That is, epistemologists are concerned with what knowledge is and how we can be sure we have it. Essentially, when can we say that we know that we know something. If this brief introduction is already getting confusing, then you are still with me here.

The issue is of this idea of “knowing.” What is it “to know” something? And how can we be sure that we have it right? If someone else makes a knowledge claim, how can we verify their claim? And assuming we can, what does the claim tell us? It is an incredibly messy topic, and I don’t expect to resolve it here and now. I just hope to enlighten a little.

The first important concern to raise is the issue of certainty. That is, if I claim to know something, does this mean I am entirely certain, or just mostly certain? It seems unlikely I could ever make a claim with complete certainty; for one, I could always make a mistake. If I look into a field and see a sheep, and then make a claim that there is a sheep in the field, what if the sheep happens to be a dog disguised as a sheep? I may not have realized this, and so no amount of certainty will help me here. I could be completely certain but still entirely wrong. This clearly would not count as a knowledge claim. This is where the requirement for “truth” in knowledge claims comes in. Whatever I claim as knowledge must be true, in some sense.

The idea of truth itself has many problems, so I will work with a definition like the following: for something to be true, it has to match up perfectly with the world, at least the world as I know it. One will notice the subtle problem that has already infiltrated my claim: I already have to know something in order to make a knowledge claim. After all, I need to know something about the world in order to claim knowledge about something in the world.

It seems that a claim to knowledge is already falling into circular reasoning. To know, I must already know. I believe there is a simple solution to this dilemma: assumption. That is, if I assume the world is as I believe it to be, then I can claim knowledge about that world. Instead of starting with knowledge, I start with an assumption. Or, to put this a bit differently, my initial assumption has to be a knowledge claim.

Where I am going with all this is that all knowledge must necessarily begin with assumptions. I have to make an assumption before I can begin making claims of knowledge. For example, I have to assume that my senses are giving me accurate information regarding the world, and that that sheep I see in the field is in fact a sheep. If the sheep is not a sheep, then I do not know that a sheep is in the field. In fact, if my senses are not providing for me accurate information, then I cannot make a knowledge claim about the world either.

This leads me, inexorably, to a major problem regarding knowledge. As seems to be a growing concern among many people, what if we are all simply in a simulation? If the field itself is simulated, and does not actually exist, then I can certainly make no claim about a sheep being in a field that does not exist. Any attempt to make a claim will have to be challenged, as I can have no knowledge regarding no field.

However, if an assumption can count as knowledge, then I can start to make claims of knowledge. If I assume that this world I occupy is in fact real, and not a simulation, then I can begin to make claims to knowledge about this world. My assumption at the outset is a knowledge claim. This does sound counter intuitive.

To perhaps put this another way, I can instead suggest that every claim of knowledge includes underlying assumptions. Perhaps instead of claiming that assumptions can count as knowledge, I should instead suggest that all knowledge claims come pre-packaged with assumptions. Those assumptions are the grounding required in order to sustain the claim of knowledge. For example, I said there is a sheep in the field, but what I implied is that the field exists and is real, and that the object I see in the field is a sheep. This may now start to sound pedantic, because clearly my reference to a field obviously implies the existence of the field. This is entirely my point.

I, unfortunately, do not speak any other languages than English. So what I’m about to say may not hold true with some other languages. In English, there are many tricks of the language that bring in assumptions in subtle and sometimes insidious ways. For example, when I say “I see a sheep in the field,” my statement implies the existence of myself, my ability to see, a sheep, and a field. Also, I imply that there is a relationship of “in” that exists, whereby an object can exist within another object, in some sense. I do not say any of these assumptions, but my listener will understand these things. It is a trick of the language.

It is worth noting here that René Descartes‘s claim of certain knowledge of the self utilizes this trick. That is, to say “I think” automatically implies the statement “I exist,” which can be stated by saying “I am.” Therefore, to say “I think, I am” is simply to make a statement and make clear one of my underlying assumptions for the statement. It is, in fact, NOT a claim of certain knowledge, but instead an insidious way of suggesting that my underlying assumption counts as knowledge.

I think this is all needed. I do not believe there is any certain ground for me to utilize. Any attempt for me to find a certain ground fails, as Immanuel Kant pointed out in his Critique of Pure Reason. I necessarily must make an assumption in order to get the ball rolling. I would also argue that these underlying assumptions exist at all times, and that our language is preloaded with them. That is, when I say anything, there are many underlying assumptions that will be understood by my listener in all circumstances.

I will not dispute another if they insist that an assumption cannot possibly count as a knowledge claim. However, if they insist this is the case, I would simply point out that there can then be no claims of knowledge. After all, every possible claim to knowledge will fall flat without the support of an initial assumption about something.

Nihilism, Existentialism, and Basic Human Conditioning

crimson

I’ve been thinking about my identity recently. Who or what would I be, if it were not for the influences of my environment. Who or what would I be if I were somehow not situated, in Simone de Beauvoir‘s understanding of situation. I almost always come to the same conclusion each time: I would not exist.

Every day, I notice something else that has had a profound effect on myself and on the world I inhabit. A few days ago, that thing was Santa Claus. I had known for a very long time that the story of Santa Claus was a consumerist story, designed to sell products and get countless families out to the stores. What I realized, however, was how much the story seemed to insidiously form the foundation of consumerism as a whole.

What do you want? This is the question asked by the shadows in the 90s television series Babylon 5. For the shadows, it is a prompt to action. A call for races to fight for the things they desire. I imagine they would be quite happy if we spent all our time fighting with each other in our deluded attempts to acquire everything our hearts desired.

Ironically, this is the same question Santa asks. However, when Santa asks this question, it is not a prompt to action. Instead, it is held in front of the individual as a reward for good behavior. It is a call for individuals to conform and comply with the establishment. Be good, and Santa will give you what you want for Christmas. In fact, an individual who fights for what they want would be considered very naughty, and thus could expect coal in their stockings.

The heart of this transaction is obedience for a reward (often a material reward). Like Pavlov’s dogs, individuals are conditioned: when the bell rings, the dog becomes hungry, just as when Christmas time approaches, the children become expectant for their reward. It becomes an integral part of the individual’s behavior, just as it does for the dogs, manifesting itself in curious ways and causing potential harm.

But now imagine a world without these things. Specifically, imagine a world without Santa Claus, once a year granting everyone’s wish for the thing they most desire. For some, this will be easy. For other’s nearly impossible. For those who say it is easy, they will likely tell a story about how Santa is simply a myth. Of course a world without Santa can exist; it is the world we currently inhabit. To them, I ask if they are so certain…

Those who cannot imagine such a world, I suspect, are facing the same dilemma I face. Without those dangling rewards, without “proper” motivation, what ought I do with myself? This is the capitalist dogma, where the incentive of wealth and accumulation of property is the prime motivator to action. Santa Claus may be fictitious, but his face is the face of capitalism and consumerism.

I sometimes end up in discussions regarding universal basic income. My opponents suggest that if such a thing existed, people would lazily remain at home doing nothing indefinitely. They believe that without the motivation of money, nothing would get done and our societies would collapse. They often cite the former Soviet Union as proof of their claim. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union exhibited capitalist dogma better than the United States ever did, which led to its accelerated collapse; the Americans are well on their way to a similar outcome presently.

I keep beating around the topic. It is time I focus. All of this, as I see it, is for one purpose: purpose. Meaning. To direct large numbers of people in a direction. To motivate them to action. But not just any action. To the action that is deemed most beneficial to those decision makers in our world. This is why we are called “consumers.”

We don’t have to be though. For the nihilist, the world is without meaning or purpose. Period. No action is any better than any other action, because in a world devoid of value, all actions are truly equal. A world full of nihilists would never accomplish anything. But then again, they wouldn’t really care either, would they.

For the existentialist, there is no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. That is, there is no outside force or influence that has the privileged position of applying meaning to things. Instead, we all have that power within ourselves. It is our freedom. We choose the purpose and meaning in things. So things can have value, but only because we decide that things have that value. There are certainly better actions than others; generally the better actions are those that lead us to the things we value. But a world full of existentialists tends to have the same problem as the world of nihilists; each individual exercising their freedom is still an individual, and the actions they follow will not necessarily avoid conflict with the other individuals. Accomplishing of larger projects can be challenging.

The seemingly best option is to have an authority that establishes meaning and purpose for all. A single authority applying value to things guarantees that all individuals will agree to the value of those things. And where there is agreement, there is shared motivation toward common goals. No more pesky wasting energy assessing value on their own. No more fighting with others regarding the value of things. No, that energy can now be better spent on more important things, like innovation and progress and the accumulation of wealth.

Some will say that God is that external authority. Only God can establish the value of things. It is His will after all. In this, I will suggest that those of shared belief system will share an agreement. However, this is not the observance. Unfortunately, even those of the same faith cannot always agree on the same interpretation of that faith.

But there is still Santa Claus to save the day. Keeping all the little girls and boys highly motivated to behave in order to receive their reward. Their hearts’ greatest desires fulfilled at the flick of his nose. What better training could you hope for, for the future’s well grounded consumers.

Imperfection in Perfection

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I checked, and I haven’t yet spoken on this topic. I am surprised, as it is a pretty big deal for me. Of the things I’ve learned in this life, this may be one of the most important.

Growing up, my father was responsible for most of the things I know and think, directly or indirectly. The idea of an absolute truth, a truth about the universe that is true irrespective of all our perspectives, is one my father held onto very strongly. Even I find myself seduced by the charm of this idea. However, as I continue my life, I find that the idea of an absolute truth seems less and less likely. The world is so mysterious, and I discover things I never expected all the time. So much so that I wonder if those things we so strongly hold onto might possibly be shown false at some point.

Perfection is such a thing. What is it to be perfect? The idea seems simple enough. To be perfect is to be without flaws. To be without defects. So what is a flaw or defect? I decided to look this up online, just for completeness, and I was amused at the response I received: a flaw or defect is something that makes a thing imperfect. This loops right back to my original query. This is circular reasoning.

So far, to be perfect is to be without flaws, and a flaw is something that makes a thing imperfect. Great. That doesn’t tell me anything at all. Or, to be more accurate, it is suggestive of something about perfection. Perfection, it seems to me, is highly subjective. For a thing to be perfect, I have to decide it is perfect. For a thing to be a flaw, I have to decide it is a flaw. Only then will the definitions start to make sense. Only then can I hope to find perfection.

This all relates back to freedom, which I often talk about. I am free to decide what things will count as being perfect, and as such, I can thus decide what things will count as flaws. A perfect circle is perfect because every point in that circle is precisely the same distance from a very specific point that is not a part of that circle. This sort of definition of a circle works, but it may not be clear its reason for working. I have decided this is what counts as a circle, and so I now have a method for determining flaws: if a point on the circle is at a different distance from the specific point, then that point is a flaw in the circle. The more points that exist of this nature, the more flaws exist in the circle, and the more imperfect the circle becomes.

The question to be asked here is whether this definition of circles is justified. That is, can I suggest that there is such a thing as a circle, and thus a perfect circle? Do I need, as Plato did, to generate a realm of perfect Forms to contain these perfect objects, as our material world contains no actually perfect circles? If our current science is to be trusted, and all things are made up of atoms and molecules, then there are certainly no perfect circles in existence. Each atom is bound to each other atom in very particular ways, and those atoms are not stationary either. If I count each atom as a point in my hypothetical circle, then the distance to that circle’s specific point from each atom varies from time to time, making each atom a flaw in my circle. A very imperfect circle indeed.

This may all be quite pedantic, as no one is likely to notice those sorts of flaws at our scale. A circle that is drawn on a piece of paper may be perfect within the reasonable error of our measuring devices. I may still be inclined to suggest my circle is perfect, within reason. And that may be sufficient for most circumstances. That may be sufficient for an assessment of beauty, for example.

If this all works, so far, then I might be inclined to suggest that perfection is achievable within a certain amount of error. That is, if a flaw exists within the scope of error, then I may want to dismiss this flaw. Only when a flaw exceeds the error do I want to count it as a true flaw. But then, I have to decide now what constitutes an appropriate amount of error. In the case of my circle, I may decide that the amount of error may be determined by the limitations of my measuring equipment. However, this is still a choice that I am making. It is still subjective. Given different circumstances, my choice of an appropriate amount of error may change, and a circle that was once perfect may suddenly find itself to be imperfect.

It seems all well and good to discuss geometric objects, but what about real world objects. What about bodies? What about faces? Is there a perfect body or a perfect face? A perfect human? How would we define such a thing? I’ve heard it suggested that perfection in bodies and faces is related to bilateral symmetry. That is, every point on one side of the body or face is matched with an exact equal on the other side. The arms are precisely the same on both sides, or the eyes or the ears. Not just that those parts exist on both sides, but that they are of precisely the same size and shape and colour.

With a definition like this, it seems to suggest that what each side possesses is irrelevant, so long as there is matching going on. A person missing one arm is imperfect, but lop off the other arm, and they may possibly find their perfection once again. Would I consider a person with no arms perfect? This seems to flow naturally into the question of the perfect human.

A perfect human has both their arms. Both their legs too. In fact, there is a laundry list of features that all humans are expected to have. Physical features that I expect all humans to possess, and if they are lacking, I consider them deficient. Where does this list come from? Some might suggest the list comes from our genetic code. Upon growing from egg to fetus to baby, my genetics dictate that I will have two arms, for example. So what if a particular human’s genetics suggest otherwise? There are perfectly natural people out there with more or less appendages as a direct result of their genetic blueprints.

It can be found very easily online, if you perform a search for “human defect;” the flaws that exist as a direct result of our genetics. But if this is true, then our genetics cannot be the source of a list of perfect features. After all, we cannot use the same source for our list of perfect features that we at the same time use as our list for flaws and defects. How do I decide which features the genetics got right, and which it got wrong?

I hear some saying that if the feature promotes fitness, as in Darwin’s idea of survival of, then it is a perfect feature. But if we follow this, then different features will provide fitness in different circumstances. Where one is born, as well as when, will play a very important role in determining which features are desirable and undesirable. Not all places or times required stocky attributes over skinny ones. Sometimes the other was more desirable. Sometimes the other was more fit.

The more I ponder this, and I have been pondering for over 40 years now, the more I have decided that perfection is unreasonable. The very idea implies a subtle truth: that nothing is perfect. As humans, we seem to have decided that all things need to be categorized. This idea of categorization is important, as it helps us relate to our surroundings and the world as a whole. But it also is suggestive that there are many alike things in the world as well. Things that we can look upon and decide that they are all circles, or dogs, or people. And upon calling a thing by its category, we also decide what makes that thing representative of its category; what makes it perfect.

We decide what things fall into what categories. We, starting with Aristotle, made up these categories. As such, we decide perfection. It is subjective. To forget that we decided when something is perfect or imperfect, to elevate perfection to an absolute measure, claiming its source to be objective or from the universe itself, is to make perfection into simulacra.

A World of Illusions

crimson

I started another post a week ago. It was about simulation, as it relates to the topic of simulacra. I hope to finish it at some point and continue that discussion. However, I may need to readdress the topic of simulacra at the same time, as I think my interpretation may still be problematic. That all said, personal life reared its ugly head, and that is why I’m only getting back to writing now.

As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I understand many things that I did not understand in my youth. I see things I could not see before. Those concerns I had as a child have not gone away. Instead, I can recognize them more, seeing the fine edges; the sharp edges.

We are still amid a global pandemic. To be clear, it may be well beyond a year, but the pandemic is still going strong. The COVID-19 virus is still running rampant through most populations. So why doesn’t it feel like it anymore? At least, it doesn’t to me. You see, where I live, cases are down pretty low. In my community, if anyone happens to be infected right now, they are not spreading it.

The local university students have been particularly problematic in this regard. There are restrictions and rules governing people’s behaviors and actions. For example, there are not supposed to be groups of more than 50 people congregating outside. So when those students hold gatherings in excess of 8000 people, there are concerns. They didn’t do this just once either. They held similar outdoor gathers over the course of two consecutive weekends. As the pandemic is ongoing, this should worry me, shouldn’t it?

I am concerned, because a group of people are voluntarily breaking this rule. A rule in place to protect the community from a virus. However, now that these parties have concluded, there has not been a significant increase in cases. The fear that large groups will “cause” an outbreak seem unfounded. Breaking the rule seems to have had no serious consequences.

It is possible we are all simply lucky. If there is no one infected among the 8000, then of course there will be no transmission. But then why the rule? The rule is in place “just in case.” If there were people infected, then the probability of infecting others goes up dramatically if people are congregating in these large groups. The rule is not in place to prevent a certain event, only a possible one.

It gets better. The reason many of these rules were implemented at the outset of the pandemic declaration were to give time for our various health care systems to prepare. That is, it takes time to train medical workers and care givers, to create beds and equipment, to make space for the grievously ill. The rules were in place not to prevent the spread of disease entirely, only to slow it. It has been over a year; have the appropriate preparations been made?

In my part of the world, the short answer is no. No preparations have been made. The health care system is firing on the same four cylinders it was at the beginning. Some new equipment has found its way into their hands, but that equipment is by and large disposable. No new staff. No new beds. No new space. What happened?

In truth, I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get by like so many others, primarily focused on myself and my family. My area of expertise is not medical, and neither is my partner’s. We do our part, following the rules and not requiring the health care system to attend to us. But we don’t contribute to that system directly either.

It seems to me that the current rules I am asked to exist under were created with the intention of buying time for society to prepare. However, the time to prepare has passed. Those decision makers appear to have confused rules to delay for rules to protect. That is, these current rules were not intended to prevent the spread of disease, only slow it down. But it seems like decision makers seem to think that the rules will prevent disease. The rules are no longer serving the purpose they were intended to serve.

Are we, as a society, expected to remain at home indefinitely? The decision makers will suggest this is not the case. Of course no one is being expected to remain at home indefinitely. In fact, we need people to get back to work (as the supply chain crisis is making clear). However, I am receiving conflicting information in this regard. Don’t congregate in large groups, for fear of spreading a disease, but do congregate in groups at work (as is necessary) to maintain the continuance of our consumerist society. So which is it?

There is no straight or simple answer here. This is a pandemic, and the truth is there is no cure. We cannot stop the disease. COVID-19 (and its various variants) will continue to be a part of our world indefinitely. I imagine these viruses will continue to exist in some form even when I am much, much older than now. Probably even beyond my expiry date.

What seems important now is not to perpetuate false hopes and insincere mandates. Not to become seduced by rule worship, where we all simply follow rules blindly for the sake of those same rules. The rules ought to be rules for a reason. If there is a rule commanding me to remain at home, there ought to be a logical and sound reason for me to remain at home. Not simply “stay home because the rules says so.” Something like “stay home because it will protect others from infection.” However, if that happens to be the reason to follow the rule, and no one in my community is infected, then the rule is serving no actual purpose.

The last point I wish to make here is with regard to the vaccinations and lethality. That is, do the vaccines serve their purpose? Are people who are vaccinated actually protected from being infected. The short answer is no. There are many people who have been fully vaccinated who have ended up in the hospital with serious, life threatening conditions. Having said that, the number of vaccinated people who end up in hospital is much, much less than the number of unvaccinated people. So vaccination does seem to provide some protection, and so yes, people ought to get vaccinated for that reason.

But what about lethality? That is, does being vaccinated reduce the probability of fatality? Evidence seems to suggest so. Those who are vaccinated are dying less than those who are not vaccinated. I know how statistics work, so I am well aware of the various ways this can be delineated. Yes, if you look at the proportion of total deaths, and then look at how many were vaccinated people and how many were not, you will see that the number of vaccinated people dying has certainly increased since the beginning of the pandemic. But that only makes sense because there were NO vaccinated people at the beginning of the pandemic, and now there are tons of vaccinated people. It only stands to reason that the number of vaccinated people dying will increase as there is an increase in the number of people vaccinated.

So what am I saying then? What I am saying is that OF the number of people who are vaccinated, the percentage of them that die is less than OF the number of unvaccinated people, the percentage of them that die. In other words, if you are vaccinated, the probability of you dying as a result of COVID-19 is much less than if you are unvaccinated. Meaning, remaining unvaccinated increases your risk of dying as a result of infection. Conversely, being vaccinated decreases your risk of dying as a result of infection. There is also evidence to suggest that being vaccinated may reduce the probability of becoming infected, but that evidence is less clear.

What I am getting at here is that, purely from an egoist perspective, it is in my own interest to be vaccinated, as it reduces the probability of me dying as a result of infection, if I happen to get infected. Furthermore, if I follow the current rules, I am also less likely to become infected, as I am staying at home and not interacting with other people. In other words, if I remain a hermit who has been vaccinated, I will have a very, very small risk of dying.

Unfortunately, this is where the egoist argument ends, because if we all are egoists, nothing will get done. That is, if I remain at home, I am not producing any products or providing any services. I am not working. All those lovely luxuries I take for granted have to come from somewhere. My running water. My electricity. My food. It is through the efforts of people that all these things happen. So some people will have to go to work and not remain at home being hermits. Some people will have to throw themselves into the line of fire.

In our modern world, it is often suggested that equality ought to be considered very important. That is, everyone ought to be treated equally. This is what is meant by Human Rights: if you are human, then you are entitled to these rights. If we all are entitled to these same rights, then in that way we are expected to be equal. For example, no one ought to be forced to throw themselves into the line of fire. If one voluntarily does so, that is their choice and we can commend them and thank them for doing so. But no one ought to be forced to do so…

So this ends up being about freedom. That people ought to be allowed the freedom to choose for themselves if they want to sacrifice themselves for the good of society. In North American societies, where consumerism and capitalism are greatly valued, where egoism is commonplace, who do we expect to sacrifice themselves? And, over time, if all those who sacrifice themselves eventually die off as a result of infection, all that will remain will be the egoists who remain at home, slowly dying as a result of lack of food.

As I see it, this is one ridiculously messy situation. The problem, it seems to me, is that our currently established culture and value system is of concern. The rules of society are the problem. Not just the rules themselves, but how those rules are established. Even how the decision makers are decided upon. The decision makers are the egoists. The “common people” are being forced to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the egoists. The wealthy and powerful remain at home (because they can) and ask those who cannot stay at home (the common people) to sacrifice themselves in order to perpetuate a society that is in slow decline and ruin.

The problem is class. The problem is wealth. The problem is… Me… I am the problem. For I see all of this. I worry about all of this. I have a skillset that employs me such that it does not require me to embed myself within the masses of people out in society. Don’t get me wrong, I am far from wealthy. And I am not a decision maker. But I have sufficient wealth to be able to get by safely.

I am down a rather deep rabbit hole presently. I often feel like there is no point to any of this. This world where we are all like hamsters on the big wheel, running very very fast and getting nowhere. But it isn’t like the hamster wheel, because we are not actually going nowhere, we seem to be going backward.

Everything we do simply makes the situation worse. Every problem we solve generates several more problems that need to be solved (and sometimes these new problems are much, much worse than the original problem). No one really benefits, though there is a minority out there that are certainly more comfortable than the rest of us.

I was once told a story about robots, constructed to perform mining operations on other planets. The robots mine ores and other materials, and then use those materials to create more mining robots. It is a practice of efficiency, where the population of mining robots grows, allowing them to mine materials faster over time. This all sounds lovely, but the question I would pose is “why?” Eventually, the robots will be so plentiful and the planets to mine so few, until there are no planets left. Then what? It is a pointless venture. And what do we do with all the robots at the end?

I was taught in philosophy that I ought to present an alternative before I criticize something. If I think the current system is bad (for whatever reason), I ought to offer an alternative system to be used in its place. The truth is, I have several. However, each of these alternatives is considered outrageous and unreasonable. For example, one of my alternatives during this pandemic is that the health care system ought to prioritize people who are vaccinated over those who are not. In fact, I would suggest that the health care system turn aware the unvaccinated entirely.

This requires some further explanation. It has been over a year since the pandemic began. It has been over six months since vaccines have been made available to the populations (at least in my part of the world). Those who support the existing system have had ample opportunity to get themselves vaccinated. Most of them have in fact been vaccinated at this point. The majority of those who remain unvaccinated have done so by their own choice. This entire situation is an expression of people’s freedom.

It is the health care system that has made vaccination possible. It is the health care system that has urged the populations to get vaccinated, in order to alleviate the preventable stress on the health care system itself. Getting vaccinated amounts to supporting or “buying into” the health care system. In other words, those who choose to get vaccinated are choosing to support the health care system. Conversely, those who choose not to get vaccinated are choosing not to support the health care system. If someone isn’t supporting the health care system, then why is the health care system supporting them?

The health care system is like insurance. Not everyone who purchases insurance ends up using insurance. It is a way for a group of people to work together toward assisting individuals. If everyone “buys into” insurance, then those few who need to use insurance coverage will have much more resources available to support their need. In the case of health care, if everyone “buys into” health care, those few individuals who need support can receive much better, and more expensive, support. This all works ONLY if most people who are supporting the system do not need to receive from that system. If everyone who buys in also needs support, then the system breaks down and each individual would be better off supporting themselves (generally, there still may be good reason to support such a system in order to equalize the support for those who are able to buy in less than others).

In our present situation, we have a large number of people supporting the health care system by getting vaccinated. We also have a significant number of people choosing not to support the health care system by not getting vaccinated. We also have a group of people who would like to get vaccinated but are unable (mostly small children at this point). What I suggest is that those who actively choose not to get vaccinated ought to be turned away by the very system they are not supporting. We don’t give insurance support to individuals who did not buy insurance, so why should this be any different?

The obvious controversy in this scenario is that it amounts to allowing thousands of people to simply die. (Also, the logistical nightmare in implementing such a process is likely untenable.) The value system we seem to have adopted is one suggesting that we do not allow humans to die. (I know people think we have adopted a system where all life is precious, but to them I suggest you start by investigating where your food comes from.) Thus, in order to implement this alternative solution, it would require a shifting in our current value system. We would have to reduce the prioritization of human life.

Is this a good solution? I’m sure many would think not. But I would point out that our current system, the manner in which we have already been running, thousands of people are already dying. Changing to this alternative system would likely not change the numbers of people dying (certainly not in the short term); it would really only change which people were dying. It would effectively reduce the lifespan of those who do not support the system.

Simulacra

crimson

It is time to elucidate my concept of simulacra. In reviewing Jean Baudrillard‘s version of simulacra, I realize that my perspective (while heavily influenced by his perspective) is probably not quite the same. My original intention today was to discuss his perspective, and then try to related it back to my ongoing topics. However, I realize now that the better approach is to discuss my perspective instead.

In short, for me a simulacra is akin to an imperfect copy of something whereby the original being copied no longer exists, and those who view the copy no longer realize the copy is a copy. There is a lot going on in this description, so I will break it down into parts and discuss each aspect individually.

The first aspect of a simulacra is that it is, in fact, a copy of something else. That is, at some point, in some distant way, the simulacra is related to something real. I will call this real thing the “original.” The original does or did exist. The original was a real thing, observed or experienced. The original is real, in some fashion.

However, the connection between the copy and the original is somehow disrupted. Perhaps the copy bears so little resemblance to the original that one is unable to connect the two together. Perhaps the original has been lost, through time and decay. Perhaps the original has been forgotten. Somehow, the connection between the copy and the original has been lost, so that the copy is all that remains to discuss, without an original to related it to.

The last aspect, which is critically important, is that the copy is no longer regarded as a copy. That is, for the observer, the copy is its own thing in reality. The copy possesses signification and meaning in itself without needing to relate back to the original. Without the knowledge that the copy is, in fact, a copy of something else, it becomes regarded as an original in its own right. This, for me, is when it becomes the simulacra.

This description belies a major problem: if no one knows the copy is a copy and is regarding the copy as its own original, real thing, then how does one come to realize it is a simulacra in the first place? After all, if we all believe the thing is real and original, then we would not suspect its dubious nature as simulacra. This is the point for me. This is the reason I consider the situation significant and in some sense malicious.

The best way to discuss this concept is going to be by discussing examples of simulacra. Due to their very nature, those examples I now present will be wrought with controversy. This will be because I cannot provide “hard evidence” to support my claims. If the evidence existed, then the examples wouldn’t be of simulacra, but instead of known artificial copies of things.

The example I most often raise in discussions of late is of gender. I believe gender is a simulacra. Gender, as I see it, is an imperfect copy of sex. Sex, being the physical description of a living entity, often incorrectly delineated as being either male or female, is a flawed manner used to describe certain aspects and traits of an entity. A male is usually considered to be the portion of the population that has the masculine sexual characteristics; in humans, this would include such things as the possession of a penis, testicles, and a significant amount of facial hair growth. A female is usually considered to be the portion of the population that has the feminine sexual characteristics; in humans, this would include such things as the possession of a uterus, ovaries, and a significant lack of facial hair growth. A problem should be apparent in such descriptions, as there are entities that can exhibit both or neither sets of characteristics. What sex is a person with both a penis and a uterus? I will not probe further into this inquiry, as my interest is in gender, but it should be clear that if gender is an imperfect copy of sex, it will inherit many of these problematic qualities.

Gender, as I understand it, is a way to clarify the problematic situation of sex. Gender, unlike sex, is not predominately focused on physical characteristics, though physical characteristics will influence an entities initially determined gender. That is, an entity whose sex is considered male, is likely to have their gender considered male as well. Similarly, an entity of sex female is usually considered of gender female as well. However, in our modern times, there are definitely those who are of sex male but of gender female (often a trans woman), and of sex female and gender male (often a trans man). One whose sex and gender match are usually referred to as being cis gendered, while those whose sex and gender do not match are usually referred to as being trans gendered. These are very broad descriptions, and I’m sure there will be those who can find fault with them, but I am trying to simplify something very complicated in my discussion to present my point.

In the ways I have described above, gender clearly has a relationship with sex. However, sex itself is problematic, and human societies have often attempted to reduce sex to a false dilemma in order to accomplish some, unknown to me, agenda. It will frequently be said that there are only males and females, and anything else does not exist. Sometimes it will be said that males and females make up the dominant portion of a human population, and the non binary component is in great minority. I do not know what to think about this, as I suspect the amount of the non binary population is far greater than we are led to believe. This is where gender steps in.

Gender, in its greater artificiality, can claim the false dilemma much more strongly as it is not focused on physical characteristics. To say one’s gender is male is to suggest that they possess certain characteristics that are expressed by their behaviors and temperaments. A man is masculine: he likes sports, he likes cars, he is loud, and he drinks beer. A woman is feminine: she likes children and small animals, she likes cooking and cleaning, she is quiet, and she drinks wine. These characterizations are just that: characterizations. They are also very much artificial. The descriptions of man and woman a century ago would likely be quite different. In fact, the description I just provided is technically about 30 years old, as the current descriptions are likely different still.

When you hear someone tell another to “be a man,” you are witnessing the called individual being shamed into conforming to whatever the currently established characterization of “man” is. Perhaps he isn’t fulfilling his responsibilities, something a man would do. Perhaps he isn’t drinking beer. It could be any number of things. Similarly, to be called “a woman” bears similar connotation. This sort of shaming is highly suggestive of the source of gender. Unlike sex, where the source of the description is focused on physical characteristics which are incredibly difficult to alter, with gender, the source of the description is on aspects that should be relatively easily changed.

For example, my friends told me that I ought to enjoy drinking beer as I am considered of gender male by them. I do not like beer, and regardless of the expectations put upon me, I refuse to consume it. In an attempt to get me to consume it anyway, I was told by one of them that no men really like beer, they just learn to like it over time. Whether he was correct or not, I believe he was attempting to get me to conform to the established description of the gender I am supposed to belong to. It wasn’t important whether my personal preferences or characteristics actually matched my gender assignment, what was important was that I conformed to it anyway. As one who has gender male, I am supposed to like beer; if I happen to not like beer, I need to change until I conform to my assigned gender.

The problem with gender is that it is not a reflection of my attributes, it is a guide to the attributes I ought to possess. Sex, it can be argued, is at least reflective of a reality: I have physical characteristics and my sex is a reflection of those characteristics. Gender, on the other hand, is an established set of characteristics I am meant to adopt as my own. Those of gender male are supposed to like beer, therefore I ought to learn to like beer. If I do not demonstrate a liking for beer, then I am to be shamed and pressured until such time as I start to exhibit those desired traits.

This is how gender becomes a simulacra. It is not actually associated to a reality. I never liked beer. If one goes far enough into history, before there is a history that we can properly trace, can it be shown that men have always enjoyed beer? What about before beer even was invented? The gender of male became associated with the liking of beer through the ages, by mechanisms I know not of. To be a man means to like beer. To drink beer is a manly thing to do.

I have focused on this one aspect and example, but I hope it is clear this applies to so many more. Like how the gender of woman includes such characteristics as wearing make up, dresses, and liking to cook. If a woman today does not exhibit these characteristics, she is shamed and pressured until she does. This is how human society works.

Therefore, gender is something that is an imperfect copy of something else (sex), but has lost its connection to the original (it no longer reflects a reality, instead creating a reality). Gender is its own thing. Gender is itself real, and we are meant to conform to it. But gender also does not reflect any sort of reality itself. Think about it. How does one’s fondness for a beverage relate to anything about that person, other than their preferences. One cannot say that a person who likes beer is also a person who likes cars; to do so is to perform a stereotyping upon the person. Like relating the hue of one’s skin to their intelligence, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

In these ways, I believe gender is a simulacra, and an insidious one at that. After one is born, they are assigned a sex based on their characteristics. Immediately after this assessment is made, their gender is assigned to match their assigned sex. And it is their gender that is used to instruct that individual’s upbringing. They are trained and conditioned to like wearing dresses if female, or pants if male. They are trained to cut their hair short if they are male and long if they are female. They are trained to fix machines if they are male and raise babies if they are female. Wearing blue if they are male, and pink if they are female.

I hope this all makes sense so far. In my next post I will bring social media into this mess, and try to demonstrate how social media is also a simulacra. How individuals who create profiles of themselves (copies) in social media, end up trying to reflect their profiles instead of allowing their profiles to be a reflection of themselves.

What is “Real?”

crimson

Before I can really dive into simulacra and social media, I need to take a moment to discuss something I brought up in my last post. The challenge to determine what is “real.” While I may want to believe this should be obvious, as the last post suggested, this is not the case.

I will begin by lumping some other ideas in with this idea of the “real.” There is the idea of what is “true.” There is also this idea of what is “I,” the pronoun used to describe what I consider to be myself. These ideas all have something very much in common: while I feel confident I have a solid grasp on them, so that I use them constantly in my day-to-day life, it turns out when pushed, I cannot for the life of me explain what exactly they are.

In the case of “I,” it seems like what makes up me is what is not outside me. That is, if I assume the existence of the world, then I am not the world. If I suggest the universe is made up of me and the world, then I might suggest that I am the part of the universe that is not the world, and vice versa. However, this quickly devolves if I considered how my body sheds cells and molecules constantly. I consume parts of the world, taking them into myself and using those pieces to generated more of myself. Later, I will shed parts of myself and those pieces will again become part of the world. I am my own personal Ship of Theseus, bringing with it the same challenges to identity.

This line of reasoning holds until I raise the question of the unmeasurable. That is, if all that I am is these molecules, the billions upon billions of them that constitute my cells and body parts, then the Ship of Theseus thought experiment seems to hold true. However, what if there is something more? What if there is a part of me that is not merely these molecules, something unmeasurable? Then what is me may not be as simple.

The intention of this post is not to focus on identity issues, so I won’t dive any deeper into this topic for now. But I hope my point is clear. To explain myself in a way that is clear, to describe myself in a way that delineates me and only me, and not anything else, is quickly becoming a rather challenging endeavor.

The idea of what is “true” is similarly challenging. For my discussion, trying to explain what is true has a strong linkage to what is “real” as well. In fact, part of what I believe most people would want to say about truth has to do with what is real. The explanation I chose to go with in my previous post was to suggest that truth is in some way matching up with how reality is, and reality is what matches up with what we all, collectively, agree to.

That last statement probable raised some hairs, so I will elaborate more. When I utter something, you will likely want to say that what I’ve uttered is true or false, but how do you decide? If possible, you are likely to look to your world and verify my claim, comparing it to your experience of the world. If I suggest that the sky is blue, you will look to the sky and see for yourself if the sky really is blue. If it is, you will say that I uttered a truth. If I instead said the sky was green, you are likely to suggest I uttered a falsehood, as the sky is not green.

Immediately there is a problem with all of this. For a truth assessment to be made, there needs to be something to assess the statement against. Something like facts and evidence. However, there are many, many things I might utter that you will be unable to verify in any way. For example, if I utter “what I see when I look up at the sky appears green to me,” you will have no recourse. You cannot say whether that statement is true because you have no access to my experiences. You could look at the sky and compare your experience to mine, but that would not tell you if my statement were true or not. It would only provide you a possible correlation to my experience.

This is where the idea of “my truth” comes from. The idea is that my perspective on the world, and my experience of the world, is mine and mine alone. No one else can experience the world as I do, and so what is true for me is indisputable. It is my truth that the sky appears green to me, and no one can verify my claim either way. And there are a great many better examples I can give than simply my experience of the sky.

This brings us to the idea of the “real.” For me, what counts as real is a personal experience. I assess when reality is real, and when it is not. This is not to say I cannot be deceived or make errors in my assessment; only that it is ultimately up to me what makes up what is real. What is more, if I do make an error, I have to come to the conclusion that I came to an error on my own; no one can tell me I made an error. To be more accurate, others can tell me I made an error, but I will not necessarily believe them; I have to believe I’ve made an error myself before I will see beyond my assessment of the real.

It is a messy business determining for one’s self what is real, what is true, or who one is. It requires a great deal of effort. It can even be painful. This is why I believe so many people defer these sorts of judgments to others. It is much easier to simply allow others to dictate the answers to these questions than to work tirelessly one’s self to determine the answers. This problem is further compounded when groups of people decide to collaborate their efforts together, often with an aim to convince those around them to their side. From what I’ve seen, this appears to be the job of main stream religions, as well as modern commercialism.

I hope that it is apparent to you at this point that I have spoken very little about science and the universe. Not that these things are unimportant, especially in a discussion about what is true or real. What I want to emphasize here is that what science tells us about what is true or real is unfortunately quite biased. And this is what also brings us to Jean Baudrillard‘s simulacra.

I will go into much more detail regarding simulacra in my next post. For now, I will simply say that a simulacra is something like an imperfect copy. Initially, the copy is of something real, but over time the copy no longer refers back to the thing copied. Where there may have originally been a linkage between the copy and the real, no linkage exists any longer. Like if you photocopied a piece of paper over and over repeatedly; eventually what came out of the photocopier would not look at all like the original.

The significance of the simulacra with science is the very same. Science is a process. It was first used long ago by the likes of Aristotle, nearly 2500 years ago, though he never used the term “science” back then. Science is about taking something, like a procedure, and repeating that procedure endlessly. To run an experiment, and to see what the result is. If I run that same experiment repeatedly, do I get the same result each time? How about if others run the same experiment I did, do they get the same result? It is about agreement and consistency. And it is about reality.

However, if you and I and many other people all run this same experiment and we all observe the same results, does that mean we have found a truth? Does it actually tell us something about reality? It was believed that all swans were white for a very long time, until one day a black swan was discovered. It was believed that the Earth was flat for a very long time, even when there were people out there fighting to suggest it was round. It is interesting to me that even today, there are still people who argue that the Earth is flat.

If one follows pure logic, and deductive reasoning, one can feel very, very confident in the results of such experiments. If I assume that Socrates is a man, and that all men are mortal, then I can be very, very confident that Socrates is mortal. However, note that I made 2 important assumptions at the outset: that Socrates is a man, and that all men are mortal. Were either of these assumptions shown to be untrue, my conclusion suddenly looses its veracity.

Science, like so many things, begins with assumptions. So long as we can agree that those assumptions are good assumptions, then what follows can be trusted. But we cannot prove an assumption. Circular reasoning cannot be used. To say that God exists because it is stated so in the holy scripture that He Himself wrote is circular reasoning; the evidence neither proves nor disproves his existence. It simply provides no meaningful information.

What is real is an assumption. It is clearly a critically important assumption that we all must make. Even if we do not do so consciously, our actions and choices will be a reflection of that assumption. When I walk across the floor of my kitchen, I have assumed that the floor is a real thing, trusting it to support my weight and allow me to get to the door I wish to go through. I’ve made the assumption, even if it isn’t obvious.

This is the key to everything, in my mind. Not to suggest our assumptions are necessarily bad assumptions; but to recognize that we are making assumptions. When we fail to recognize the assumptions we make, we mistake confidence for certainty. We take something that we are 99% certain about and make it into something we are 100% certain about. In general, this may not seem like a dangerous choice to make, but if we continue to make this assumption repeatedly, over and over, taking the results of one experiment as the assumptions of the next, we will end up with something that does not match up at all with the original. We will end up with a simulacra of reality.