Are we all living in an alternate reality? That’s the question the Wachowski brothers asked in the film “The Matrix”.
Professor Daniel Came, a University of Oxford lecturer in philosophy, is posing the same question, just without the leather coats and stunts.
Came will be hosting a lecture at The White Hart Hotel in Lincoln on Monday, January 14th 2012, posing the question “Are we in the Matrix?”
Came explained: “The talk at The White Hart on Monday is aimed at an audience without a background in philosophy so the concepts are easy to pick up.
“The idea in the film The Matrix is that reality essentially an elaborate computer simulation. Reality is in essence a hyper complicated computer simulation created by some technologically advanced civilization.
He continued: “Although we of course take ourselves to be real, we are in fact just parts of that simulation. The argument that I will be giving, even though it sounds ridiculous at first, we have quite strong reasoning for believing that we are in a Matrix.”
This won’t be the first time Professor Came has argued the case over, as this lecture is one of many the academic has given on the subject, allowing him to formulate a compelling argument.
He says often turns sceptics into believers: “The idea that reality might be a computer simulation is one that is taken extremely seriously by a number of scientists and philosophers.
“I suppose it stands as part of a long tradition of philosophy, of scepticism about the world. In more recent years, physicists and philosophers have come to take the idea much more seriously, and have come to think that there are strong empirical reasons for believing we are in a Matrix type situation.”
Came continued: “Once people have heard the argument I present though, they tend to take the idea a lot more seriously. It may be very possible that within fifty or 50,000 years. It doesn’t matter in the case of the argument that some sort of augmented reality is able to be created.
“Any civilisation that had the technology to run simulations like The Matrix, would most likely not be content with running a few simulations, they would run billions. If there is only one real world and millions of simulated worlds then, it’s much more likely that we are in a simulated world.”
There will be a free champagne reception at the lecture and there is no charge for admission. The lecture takes place at The White Hart Hotel in Lincoln on Monday, January 14th at 7pm.