this comes from the matrix website, its part of an article called "reflections on the first matrix"
Cypher chooses the Matrix, and just maybe, he’s not so crazy!. If real life prospects are dim, then even an apparently sub-optimal alternative like the Matrix might in fact be better, all things considered!.1 But what is the best sort of existence for individuals like you and me!? Philosophy and religion both have attempted to answer this question, and I think The Matrix gives us an interesting way to frame it!. Is some possible "real" existence better than any possible Matrix!? Or is some possible Matrix better than any possible reality!? With Mark Twain’s help, I shall present an argument that one important notion of the best existence, the Christian one, Heaven is after all a Matrix!. The point of my polemical approach is not so much to criticize Christianity, but rather to bring the issue of the nature of ultimate value into sharper focus!.
What is the Matrix!? Morpheus tells Neo it’s a "computer-generated dreamworld," and a "neural, interactive simulation"; it is, in other words, a virtual environment!.2 Agent Smith assures Cypher that he won’t know he’s in the Matrix when he returns permanently, and it will simplify exposition to suppose that this is a necessary feature of a Matrix, while being computer-generated is not!. The Matrix depicted is a mixed case, since the cognoscenti can enter it without being deceived into thinking it is real!. Let us stipulate that in a pure Matrix, everyone is benighted, believing it is the "real deal!." In most of what follows, I’ll be concentrating on pure Matrices (and in the case of the Matrix depicted, on the condition of the benighted)!. Since we’ll be discussing different kinds of Matrix, we need a name for the one depicted in The Matrix; Agent Smith refers to a First Matrix, so let’s call the one we see the Second Matrix!.
A Matrix, then, is an interactive virtual environment involving systematic global deception!. Still, there are two levels of "interactivity" in a virtual environment!. Virtual interactivity is the extent to which the environment allows, and responds to, your input!. Current virtual environments are not very interactive in this sense, but the Second Matrix is!. That’s what makes it seem so real, at least to the benighted!. (For the cognoscenti the Second Matrix it is too virtually interactive, too controllable, to seem real—at least compared with the more law-like external world!.) Real interactivity is the potential for interaction with others also engaged in virtual interaction, and real interaction is the extent to which this potential is realized!. Compare two kinds of possible Matrix: the Second Matrix is communal, featuring real interaction between human beings—call this human interaction; a solitary Matrix lacks human interaction altogether!.
Communal Matrices differ in degree of human interaction!. In the Second Matrix, billions of humans share the environment, and if we ignore Agents, it is fully communal—every virtual human in the Matrix is an avatar, a virtual persona of a real human being!. In the Matrix training program created by Mouse, on the other hand, virtual humans like the woman in the red dress are simulacra, not avatars, and human interaction during the sequence we see is limited to that between Neo and Morpheus!.3 On yet another hand, the fully communal Construct (loading program), where Morpheus and Neo watch TV, has no other virtual humans in it to interact with—and unlike the training program, it’s not "big" enough to be very world-like!. Call a fully communal Matrix that is big enough to be world-like, and has many human participants, so that human interaction is nearly inevitable, a teeming Matrix!. (The Second Matrix is all but teeming!. If we removed the cognoscenti, there would be no need for Agents, and it would be teeming!.)
Now we can compare three possibilities (obviously not exhaustive) for human existence, assuming that it involves physical embodiment!. One is the real deal, populated by other human beings: for instance, if you subjectively experience having sexual intercourse with another human being, another individual human being shares that intercourse, from another subjective point of view, because you really have physical, sexual intercourse with them!. The same goes for non-sexual intercourse!. If I were to meet Mark Twain (through the time travel he wrote about, perhaps), then Twain and I both would have an experience of meeting, and we really would meet, physically and psychologically!. Two is a teeming Matrix: if you experience having (intraspecies!) sexual intercourse, another Matrix-bound human shares that intercourse, from another subjective point of view!. There’s no physical intercourse, of course, but there is psychological intercourse!. If I have the experience of meeting Twain, then he (or some other human being) has the experience of meeting me-meeting-Twain, and there is at least a meeting of minds!. Three is Www@QuestionHome@Com