Bank of America Analysts Say There's A 50% Chance We Live In The Matrix (independent.co.uk)

Bank of America analysts have suggested that there is a 20 to 50 percent chance that the world around us is a "Matrix-style virtual reality." The report stated, "It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and computing power, members of future civilizations could have decided to run a simulation of their ancestors." The idea is certainly nothing new, as many influential visionaries have come to similar theories. What some may find most unusual about the report is who issued it. According to Business Insider, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America's wealth management company, sent out a briefing to investors outlining their Matrix theory. In response, Slashdot reader marmot7 writes: Personally, I'd like to see all that brain power go toward a better and more stable banking system, not toward the promoting the nihilistic and self-indulgent idea that this might be the Matrix. Don't worry that banks behave in ways that create instability, it's not real. Just relax and enjoy the ones and zeroes. I have no doubt there are good, well meaning people there. I just don't really need my bank weighing in on the mystery of reality any more than I need them to come up with a unified theory of physics at long last. Well, unless it's in their spare time then by all means.

Comments

False Idol.

[TapeCutter]

As with God, one has to ask what kind of morality would lead our descendants to (re)create the pointless cruelty and misery seen in the media.

Re:False Idol.

[Anonymous Coward]

/sauercrautism: What is this "Free-Will" you types keep on yammering about? I thought that the whole Calvinist Protestant Doctrine was based on Predestination, and choosing to do Good Works to gain admittance to Whatever was just some old corrupt Catholic Church nonsense, along with Indulgences and not eating meat on Fridays.
You're all Damned anyway, so why not just selfishly enjoy yourself; it makes no difference in the long term. The Concept of Free Will negates itself unless there is _no_ God, and the Universe is truly random and chaotic. Then Free Will makes sense, but even then, there are biological and legal limitations and consequences.
This is the core of Atheistic Libertarianism, and a direct outcome of The Enlightenment, along with its corollary- The Social Contract, because if there is no God, well then, who makes the Rules and determines the consequences for breaking them, and Bang! Free Will goes out the window again.

There is no Gift of Free Will unless one acknowledges that there is a Giver with Conditions, and if there is such a Giver, there is nothing Free about it. (I was taught for a while by Jesuits...)
One has to go back to Thomas Aquinas and Luis de Molina, and start all over again. It helps that we know a lot more about how the Universe actually works now, so a lot of their rubbish can quickly be discarded. And in the Process...

This entire discussion is rubbish. The Matrix is just recent bad Science Fiction. It has no Scientific, Philosophical or Theological foundation. Anybody who takes any of it the least bit seriously needs psychological... adjustments.
A good start would be the Ethics of Aristotle. Once one _gets_ the difference between man-made Ethics, and dispensed Morality, one can see that the last is always fictional, and thus The Matrix, or any variation thereof that invokes some kind of Predestination by a higher or greater Force, is Balderdash.

(For what it is worth, I'm a Pragmatic Socialist that believes that a bottle in front of me beats a pre-frontal lobotomy. My old Jesuit teacher later went to the Vatican Observatory, and I went into Physics.)

Nope

[Sqreater]

Sault's law says a thing cannot make an artifact as complex as itself. It is an asymptotic goal. And it is unlikely any civilization would get even close to simulating the universe it lives in.

Re:Nope

[crunchygranola]

Googling "Sault's Law" turns up no obvious references to this "law". This actually sounds a lot like Creationist propaganda, which frequently claims that evolution cannot create greater complexity, when in fact evolution - including artificial genetic algorithms - have no problem doing this.