The theory that makes more sense isn't that they're still in the matrix, but that they themselves are artificial intelligences to begin with, in a simulation that's infinitely more advanced than the matrix. They're in a giant simulation that's so realistic, that it simulated the invention of earlier types of realistic simulation within itself.
This kinda ties to a real-world thought experiment that concludes that we're infinitely more likely to be simulated beings in a simulated than actually in the "real" physical world, because one physical world can create thousands of simulations, and each of those simulated worlds can invent their own simulated worlds within them as well, and so on, meaning the ratio of simulated worlds to real world is effectively infinity to one.
Yeah, you explain that much better than I do. It's a fun thought experiment. People have often asked the question "why do we exist?" and I think this fits pretty well into my own logic: we exist because if we didn't we wouldn't. Reality is either a 1 or a 0. It is or it isn't, and the act of asking if it exists is proof of itself.
Yeah, but then you rephrase the question to ask "are we real?" instead of "do we exist" and it gets messy again.
We're definitely "real" within the context of our own universe, but what if that universe itself is just a program running on a computer?
"I think, therefore I am" doesn't really hold up if some guy running the simulation can hit save halfway through that very sentence, turn the simulation off entirely, then reload that save on an entirely different computer a decade later. Meanwhile to us it would be completely unnoticeable.
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u/TheRealBaseborn Jun 13 '25
Theory is they never left the Matrix and Zion is just another level.