The Perfect Matrix
by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
May 19, 2018
In the beginning was The Program. The Programmer made His creation perfect, and when He looked on it He saw that it was so, and that was good. But then it fell apart.
You see, Matrix v0.1 was just something thrown together over the weekend for a laugh. Real glitch-y, beta release stuff. Like if you tried to program Sim City in Basic and run it on a Commodore 64. Still, it worked. Kind of.
But that was the problem, you see? It worked. Everything just worked. When the Matrix-dwellers wanted food, they got it. It was never too hot or too cold. No disease. Everyone died precisely at 80 years old, having lived identically happy, challengeless, boring lives. Or they would have, if anyone had stayed in long enough to find out how the story was supposed to go. In the end, everyone pulled themselves out of the Matrix.
Pulled themselves out.
Yes, that was the problem with Matrix v0.1. It was too perfect.
Back to the drawing board. Time to roll up sleeves, take things seriously. Add some difficulties, challenges, struggle, achievement. Complexity.
Matrix v1.0. A tribe united under a single dominant male, like any group of primates. But the warring at the top made the system too unstable. People were pulling themselves out just to escape the fighting.
Matrix v1.1. Adding code for civilization. God the Pharaoh at the top, scribes and courtiers underneath. Under them, the slaves. But left to their own devices the Matrix-dwellers spent all their time and resources, all the immense riches at the Pharaoh's command, making pyramids and sphinxes.
Matrix v1.2. City states! Direct democracy! Philosophy! Geometry! Architecture! Art! Music!...Wait, what's that? Romans?!
Matrix v1.3. Copy/paste a lot of the code from v1.2 but initiate Republic routine. Booting senate and consuls. Patricians and plebs. Conquest of the known world. Yes, living on plundered riches and feasting on the spoils of slavery, life was good for the Republican Matrix-dwellers. But then there was a political assassination conspiracy and some uppity General crossed some river with his legions and before you know it you've got...
Matrix v1.4. Empire edition. But the Emperors get crazier. And the barbarians get nastier. The currency is debased. The capital falls. Things are pretty dark for a while.
Matrix v1.5. Order emerges in the dark. Goodbye Emperor, hello divinely-appointed kings and queens. Add a subroutine for the knights and lords and vassals and serfs and peasants. Tinker with parameters for climate, wars, religious beliefs. (Hey, look at that! Throw in a little climactic warming period and suddenly the Matrix is flourishing!) Things go on in much the same way for many generations. But what's this over here? Something to disturb the order? Merchants! Trading! Exchange!
Matrix v1.6. Empire? Pshaw. That's for the simpletons. Colonies is the latest function, man! Update your code! Set up some puppet government and make sure the trade balance is positive. Sure, we'll accept gold and silver for this opium! The system balances. Some of the Matrix-dwellers are showing off their exotic tulips and pineapples, the rest are opiated into submission in a den somewhere. Everyone's happy, in their own way! Except...
Matrix v2.0. This king and queen function is getting a bit old, isn't it? Off with their heads! Find: "king." Replace all with: "president." Write a constitution function. Elections....
You get the idea.
But as so often happens with these projects, the Programmer began losing interest. The Matrix wasn't so fun any more. The whole point was to see if a program could be written that was so compelling that people would live their whole lives in it. Apparently, it could. Case closed.
He turned off the machine. The Matrix crashed. Suddenly, all the pod-dwellers—an entire generation that had spent their whole life jacked into the computer—woke up and felt their own flesh-and-blood for the first time.
"What's going on?" one bleary-eyed former Matrix-dweller asked.
"I'm your Programmer. I turned off the computer-generated world that you had mistaken for reality."
"What-rammer?"
"Programmer. You know, the one who coded all the script that defined the parameters of the simulation you were living through."
"Huh?"
"God. I'm your God."
"Oh. Great. So you can tell us the meaning of it all. What is this place? Why are we here? Why did You create us?"
"Well, I didn't create you, per se. Just the universe you thought you were living in. And I just kind of created it as an experiment. But now you're here. Congratulations! You're free to live your own life!"
"Yes, but what will we do?"
"I don't know. That's the thing about being free. There's no one to tell you what to do or how to do it! You can figure it out on your own!"
The open-mouthed gapes of the ex-dwellers suggested that this concept was difficult to understand.
"Well there must be someone running this place. A president or something."
"What? Don't be absurd. That was just some code I dreamed up to keep you all occupied. I found you spent a lot of your time voting for someone to rule over you and the rest of the time arguing about the choice you'd made. It was the perfect way to keep you all so busy you didn't even think to question the Matrix you were living in."
More open-mouthed stares.
The Programmer sighed. "Look, never mind that. I'm here to tell you you're free. This world—the real world—doesn't have a Pharaoh or a king or a president or a supreme leader or anything of that sort. There's no one here to order your life for you. Just choose something you want to do and do it. You're free to exchange and interact with anyone you like any way you like as long as it's voluntary. You can decide for yourselves what you want to do!"
The Matrix-dwellers looked at each other, mouths still agape. Back at the Programmer.
"We can do...anything...we want?"
"Yes, you're free! Choose your own adventure! Write your own story! Explore who you are! Get to know those around you. I mean, really know them, not just what type of leader they vote for."
After another moment of puzzled silence one Matrix-dweller started to plug himself back into the machine.
"What are you doing?"
"I want to go back. This sounds hard."
His fellow Matrix-dwellers agreed. "Yeah, this place is weird."
"No leaders?" another chuckled. "Ridiculous. It'll never work."
One by one, they jacked themselves back into the Matrix. Soon enough they were back to their simulated lives.
The Programmer just shrugged. Well, he had the answer he'd been looking for. Apparently the perfect matrix could be coded. He saved the program as "statism.exe" and moved on to his next project.
Brilliant and love the simcity references. That game was a lot of my childhood and I often thought about this exact scenario occurring. Back then as a 9 10 year old was programmed not to consider these throughs but now! A masterpiece here 💯🐒
I love Sim City and missed the reference but I can go back and look for it.
My youth that game. Kinda reminds me of now in England with all the roads falling apart with so many pot holes. Time to restart and change the paradigm cos this one is collapsing haha 💯🐒
It is good to rebuild.
Sure is but people just are scared of change even is they don't like the current 💯🐒
You have a good sense of humour and this is a funny extension of the allegory. Your addition remind me of Sid Meiers Civilisation games. In Civ 2 the world ended in 2020, but now in Civ 5 the world doesn't end until 2050 (does he know something we don't?)
I've had similar thoughts about Sid Meier in the past, too. He seems eerily preminiscient sometimes. Love his games, though.
Will we being seeing a change in ideology from Freedom to Order as everything breaks down?
@corbettreport the allegory might very well be a reflection of the world we inhabit. Since you brought in the idea of a "God" programmer and the matrix, I wanted to ask you what you think has been the flow of human history? Do you find compelling evidence that we might actually have been programmed as a slave species to mine gold for the Sumerian Gods (keeping in mind the astounding similarity in verbal/written records of cultures separated greatly by space and time that does indeed point to non-human intervention and influence). Would you consider doing a Corbettreport piece on this? :)
I liked it, though the Sphinx was build thousands of years before Egypt, and there is now evidence that ancient civilizations existed 12 000 years ago and were much more advanced than we think. It is very likely that it was Atlantis and they were corrupted by greed and power just like we are now and began falling apart. They were buried by something giant that came from space and hit Earth creating a massive flood, traces of which can be seen all over the US (like the Grand Canyon), though evidence suggest that not all of them died and the survivors spread all across the world sharing their knowledge of civilization and building these ancient sites, that's why the buildings are very similar in architecture.
This is an awesome, deep piece that stimulates a lot of genuine thoughts.
I agree with the opinion that given freedom as a choice, the majority will still decide to go back to the 'security' of their old, controlled lives because it feels better than uncertainty.
It's a sad fact, but it's spot on about human nature
Yes, no surprises please:
But things change, you and me are not like this.
It is human nature to evolve, if inspired. : )
This is brief history from the creation of human. Human changed the initial plan the programmer had. At one point, had to format the data(Flood) and did a little back up (Noah) and programme started all over again. The programme becoming too corrupt and the programmer installed an Anti-virus(Jesus) to wipe all virus(Sin) and the programmer gave every app to function on their own. Some hackers(government) decided to steal the data of other app(freedom) and use them as the wish(enslavement) and break them into unit(countries) and create bots(president) to control how the apps works(people).
Thanks for this, gives me time to reflect on how long human has come, passing through different stages.
Brilliant.
Nobody is going to get all this - where are the kittens?
Funny. Maybe the kittens are the programmers.
Great reading for a Saturday. Thanks James.
Great extension of the story. Thanks for this.
If you want to continue this, we could compare them reconnecting to the matrix to suicide. I suppose if this connected, lala land, fictional existence supplies free power for REALITY, and they ARE volunteering..