What is real?

**MetaLogic**

This is one of the underlying questions of the Matrix trilogy as well as the game MxO. What is real? In "The Matrix" Morpheus said this:

Morpheus: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain

We can feel, smell, taste and see things inside the Matrix, so why don't we consider the Matrix a reality? Maybe the question isn't if the Matrix is real, or is it just fake, but more so is the Matrix simply another reality, another dimension? What do you guys think?

**Illyria22**

I look at it as a part of reality, not a seperate reality.

Illyria

**zeroone506**

Everything in the Matrix is real code. Everything you perceive are real signals sent to your brain.

It's rather simple.

**ShiXinFeng**

Illyria22 wrote:

I look at it as a part of reality, not a seperate reality.

Illyria

lol, you would, Lyr! SMILEY

Not jabbing, just making a point. The reality of the Matrix is subjective, depending on who you ask. To a machine, the Matrix cannot be physically distinguished from the Real, which is why it works and why Morpheus said what he did. However, a human being must psychologically define the Matrix as not real because to define it otherwise would require a redefinition of a human being's reality. That is what Morpheus was trying to get Neo realize.

A good example of this perception difference is part of the original plot of the movie, Cypher's 'conversion'. He started out (long before the beginning The Matrix, mind you. He had already betrayed Trinity to the Agents at the beginning of the movie) as a human denying the reality of the Matrix, and ended up a Machinist (if you will) denying the reality of the Real.

**imax**

All i can say is, Whats the difference if you cant tell the diffrence. I use margerin instead of real butter, and i dont care becasue i cant tell the difference.

**ShiXinFeng**

You could if you had been eating butter all your life. SMILEY

Try drinking a different kind of milk than what you are used to. Can you tell the difference between Whole and skim?

**Kemy**

Shi+Xin+Feng wrote:

You could if you had been eating butter all your life.
Try drinking a different kind of milk than what you are used to. Can you tell the difference between Whole and skim?

If you don't know any better then 'real' is limited to your knowledge and expierences, but it's still real. It's part of how you're raised. If you are told to believe from your birth that cola is actually milk, but no one would ever tell you the lie then it'd still be 'real' milk for you. Everyone else calls it cola.

It's like locking a pet inside a small cage from the first day its born, for its entire life. The pet doesn't know any better and accepts its life and learns to live with it. We find this sad for a pet (I would never do such a thing), but the pet has no choice than to live with it. And if you gave it toys and pet-candy, cheer it up every once and a while then the pet would even be happy. Is such a life for a pet 'real'?
Nope. It's cruel, no pet is supposed to live like that. But that's our perception of what's real, because we know better. We find that all living beings deserve freedom and happiness, which is still just an opinion based on our emotions. For the caged pet it's reality and it could even live a happy life.
(not saying a pet could live locked up all day long. Just overexxegerating the point of taking away all freedom from a living being)

What is real?
Morpheus suggests that 'real' isn't just what you see, smell and can touch. I think what he tries to say is that 'real' is knowing the truth, knowing about your existence, that you were trapped inside virtual reality. But such definition of 'real' is merely an opinion. Because if you don't know any better; would you not live in a real world? 'Real' for me is what I accept it to be until I know it isn't.

The Leo

I think awakening is a big bart of showing some1 what's real. The awakening has to be in the simulation showing something unbelievable for the one inside.

Amad3us · 03/01/2007 08:02:05

Well, let's get down to the core, literal question. What is real?

real (adj) (from dictionary.com)

3.being an actual thing; having objective existence; not imaginary

The Matrix is real in and of itself. It exists. The Matrix is there, we can interact with it, and the things inside of it. When we jack in, we aren't imagining that we jack in. The question then is, what are we jacking in to? Are we entering a world where our minds are tricked into suspending reality for any amount of time? Or are we entering an alternate realm? Not another world, but the same world on a separate, yet similar mental plane.

I believe that the Matrix is only as real as you want it to be. That said, can anyone completely and undoubtedly differentiate between the Matrix and what we see as the "real world"? Take a look at Cypher's reference to food while meeting with Smith. It's there, he can taste it, yet he knows it isn't real. Whether or not he knows it, it tastes the same and has the same mental and physical effect as it did before he was awakened. Does that make it any less real?

EDIT: Minor spelling and spacing errors.

Shadow Griever

Descartes tried to answer this, went so far to the point where he believed that nothing exists really. Not even himself.

But then he came up with a simple statement. "I think, therefore I am."

You are real, everything outside is subjective

**GoDGiVeR**

Reality is what matters most to you. There could be an infinite ammount of "realities" (Matrixes) layed over each other, systems of control. Again, looking to break through these layers (if they exist) is useless, except you really strife to be in a "real" world (would that person or we sane?).

It does not matter for me if the Matrix is a "fake" world. It's part of another reality. The whole of all these realities is my reality. I accept them. Your mind makes it real but only as real as you can go to accept it even if you are forced to accept it.

As for the Matrix being a prison: Like an animal, humans strive for a large area to life in. For some people it doesn't matter how big it is (the bluepills thereof, having accepted the limits of the Matrix and thus consider it real) and some cannot ever have a large enough land (the redpills, thus who cannot accept the limits of the Matrix, thus they are part of the 1%).

((ShadowGriever, do you know the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? This from Decartes reminded me of the passage where the Guide explained what the Universe and it's population and life is. It's explanation: Population = 0, Life = Nonexistant))