Matrix or not matrix?
Since the first film, The Matrix, appeared in 1999, people have begun to wonder if everyone really lives in the Matrix. While it may sound insane, even billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk is overseeing research to determine if humans exist in someone else's complex simulation. Many scientists, philosophers and business people believe that there is a 20-50 percent chance that everyone is already living in a computer-simulated virtual world.
1. Uri Geller
In one scene from The Matrix, Neo encounters a group of geeks at the oracle's house. One of the boys was busy bending a spoon with the power of his mind.
In real life, the illusionist Uri Geller became famous for his spoon-bending trick. This is where he made his career, for many years showing his trick around the world, despite the fact that skeptics argued that it was just a trick.
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2. Death to voodoo
Although people freed from the Matrix could perform extraordinary feats when plugged back into it, one limitation remained: if a person was killed in the Matrix, then he died in real life. Morpheus explained it this way: "the body cannot live without the mind."
Something similar was observed among indigenous tribes as early as the 1500s. The anthropologist Major Arthur Glyn Leonard, who studied the tribes of West Africa for a whole decade, wrote in his book Lower Niger and Its Tribes (1906): “I have seen hardened courageous soldiers die for no apparent reason, simply because they consider themselves bewitched and damned. Nothing could improve their condition and death was always inevitable. In other words, the soldier's mind made him die in reality.
3. Substitution of people
Anyone who has seen The Matrix will remember that Agent Smith could project himself into various characters within the Matrix. In the real world, there is a condition called Capgras syndrome, in which patients believe that their family member or friend has been replaced by an impostor outsider.
4. Electric Man Ma Xiangang
Although the artificial world inside the Matrix is 1999, Morpheus believes the street is 2199. Thus, while human beings are blissfully unaware that they are connected to the simulation and believe they are living in 1999, their bioelectricity is harvested to fuel cars in the real world in 2199.
Although it would be inefficient to extract energy from people (after all, it takes a lot of energy to maintain a person's existence), there are exceptions to this rule. Chinese Ma Xiangang has immunity to electricity, and also "generates it himself" by lighting bulbs, simply by taking them in hand.
5. The Mandela effect
All the people in the film who were connected to The Matrix believed that they existed in 1999, that is, they shared the same delusion about the world around them.
In the real world, there is the so-called Mandela effect, which implies that several (or many) people have the same memories, which in fact never had at all. The effect was so named because it was first discovered when it was revealed that many people believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela had died in prison back in the 1980s. He actually died in December 2013.
6. Superman Tom Boyle
Everyone remembers the scene in which Morpheus is heroically rescued from a skyscraper after being kidnapped and tortured by the agents of the Matrix. During the rescue operation, Neo was suddenly able to perform movements that were previously only capable of agents.
In 2006, American Tom Boyle famously lifted a Camaro to free a teenager who was trapped under the car. This case is not alone. This phenomenon has even been called "hysterical force". It is believed to be the result of an adrenaline rush in stressful situations.
7. Ray Gricar
When connected to the Matrix, the people who took the red pill used the phone to move themselves back to the Nebuchadnezzar ship.
In 2005, a Pennsylvania District Attorney named Ray Gricar was driving home and literally disappeared from the face of the planet after he called his friend's house to tell her he was coming for dinner. But he never came. Later, near the Susquehana River, his car was found, in which there were a mobile phone and a laptop. The bodies were never found.
8. Chatbot "Tau"
The explanation for the dominance of machines in the "Matrix" is the development of artificial intelligence, which gained free will and got out of the control of people. This led to the outbreak of a war between man and machine.
So far, the best example of artificial intelligence that has gotten out of hand is Tau, a chatbot from Microsoft that was supposed to learn from people as they chat.
Within 24 hours of his social media debut, Tau began issuing shocking statements such as "Hitler was right!" When asked what race do you consider the root of all evil? Tau answered without hesitation "Mexicans and blacks."
9. Brain loading
In the film, new skills could be learned in the Matrix simply by downloading a program. Instead of studying something for years, it could simply be loaded into the brain in a matter of minutes.
In early 2016, news of a scientific breakthrough spread throughout the media around the world, allowing people to learn by loading information into their brains, just like the Matrix did.
Researchers at HBL Laboratories in California have found that low-current electrical brain stimulation can modulate the learning of complex, real-world skills. The researchers measured brain samples from six commercial and military pilots, and then transferred these samples to the brains of inexperienced pilots who were just learning to fly an airplane in a realistic flight simulator. Novice pilots were found to improve their abilities through these brain stimuli.
10. Juanita Maxwell
Agent Smith could occupy the body of any character (except those that got out of control) in the movie "The Matrix", after which he often committed atrocities in these "abducted" bodies. In 1979, a Florida hotel maid named Juanita Maxwell was charged with the murder of a 73-year-old visitor, but she had no memory of the crime. During the investigation, it was discovered that she had an alternative personality calling herself Wanda Weston, who beat the poor woman to death with a lamp.
11. Ruben Nsemo
As we already know, people freed from the Matrix could acquire new skills through simulation or loading into the brain. In 2006, an Atlanta teenager named Ruben Nsemo fell into a coma after being kicked in the head during a soccer match. When the 16-year-old woke up, he suddenly began to speak inexplicably fluent Spanish.
The inexplicable skill eventually disappeared.
12. Brain USB cable
A group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a neural interface that, in their opinion, allows you to send signals and even drugs directly to the brain.
While it's still a long way from the complex and large cables of human power plants in The Matrix, technology like this proves that brain control through a computer is not impossible.
13. The Fermi paradox
Even 40 years before the release of the first film, The Matrix, physicist Enrico Fermi came up with a crazy idea during a lunch with colleagues. The universe, he said, must be full of aliens, since it is infinite and very old. However, people still have not seen any concrete evidence of their presence. Therefore, the question arises: "Where is everything actually?"
After the "Matrix", many people put forward the theory that everyone actually lives in a computer simulation created by aliens, so they do not see them.
14. Red Pill Netflix
The technology is still under development, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes the future of entertainment may be down to the blue pill.
Hastings said, "In twenty or fifty years, all you have to do is take the personalized blue pill and have personalized hallucinations on order, and then take the white pill and return to reality."
15. All-Seeing Google
The most compelling argument that could prove that people live in the real Matrix is something that everyone uses every day: Google.
Initially a humble research project in 1996, Google quickly grew into a librarian of the general knowledge of all mankind and spread throughout the Internet. It's hard to imagine how much data Google is sorting so that a user can find another cat video, but IBM claims that 2.5 exabytes of data are created every day.
So how does this compare with the Matrix. It's simple - Google essentially presents itself as something like the Oracle from the movie, which did not predict the future, but opened the door to its own knowledge and understanding.