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Credited cast: | |||
Nick Bostrom | ... | Self | |
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Joshua Cooke | ... | Self |
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Erik Davis | ... | Self |
Paul Gude | ... | Self |
Are we in fact living in a simulation? This is the question postulated, wrestled with, and ultimately argued for in the latest provocation from acclaimed documentary stylist Rodney Ascher (Room 237, The Nightmare) through archival footage, compelling interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a collection of cases from some of our most iconoclastic figures in contemporary culture.
The conventional notion of a sort of artificial, ultra-super-computer generated "matrix" as a substitute for objective/organic reality (which owes so much to a mediocre sci-fi film from a little over twenty years ago), is actually quite absurd. Assuming we're not all floating about in tanks, like in the film (and yes, I'm gonna assume that, because I am an adult), then the idea is absolutely dependent on the ability to create sentient software artifacts ie. the population of this so-called "matrix". The idea one can create sentient software artifacts is only slightly less absurd than the idea one can create sentient chairs, or sentient jugs-of-moonshine. Sentience only occurs within animal neuron clusters ("brains", for all practical purposes), and perhaps may be expressed on some level by plants, fungi, and other living things. Anyone who asserts a real whiz-bang tabulation device ("computer") can somehow attain sentience, either hasn't thought about it very much, or isn't very bright. It's patently absurd. There is ZERO probability for such a notion (and if you disagree, please explain HOW sentience would occur within some glorified toaster; you can't, of course...because it's not something you believe due to any actual evidence in support of said thesis - there isn't any - but rather it is something you believe because you wish that it were true...and religious faiths based on sci-fi movies don't usually work out very well).
With all that said, I am very much looking forward to seeing this movie ASAP. Because the Universe IS a very strange place, where seemingly "impossible" things do occur...for reasons we don't seem to quite understand. It's just that the idea these mysterious events are somehow explained by an approximation of the plot of some late 90s sci-fi film, is asinine. It's like if you had never seen (or heard of) a hippopotamus, and then one day you saw one in a Congolese lake. You could conclude that the Earth was under invasion by a species semi-aquatic, quasi-bovine extra-terrestrials. You could postulate they are ruled by a Galactic Emperor named "Admiral Zorlock" or some such. But it would probably make more sense to just assume you were encountering a previously unknown species of African megafauna.
Which seems more in accord with Occam's Razor ie. that the Universe actually exists, and yet has some very strange qualities that we can not yet explain..or that the Universe is some software routine? To even ask the question, makes me feel like an imbecile. The answer is self-evident.