Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Battle Report

Real Life vs The MatrixOne Pill to Choose the Destiny of Humanity

Franco Avi[mat.175670], Fabio Bernardi[mat.183819]Mutiah Binti Abdul Hamid[mat.188927], Simone Calciolari[mat.187922]

Francesco Contaldo[mat.190626], Michael Dallago[mat.187366]Andrea Ferlini[mat.190285], Giulio Carlo Gialanella[mat.179967]

Giannoni Federico[mat.187406], Tadie Medimen[mat.181512]Alfred Mudonhi[mat.182218], Giuseppe Munafo[mat.187395]Sarmad Saleem[mat.188925], Alessio Spallino[mat.188930]

AY 2016-2017

Chapter 1

Real Life VS The Matrix

Trento, December 11, 2016University of Trento, DISIInnovation and EntrepreneurshipAY 2016/2017Authors: Prof. Matteo Bonifacio, Giulia Corsi, Lorenzo Angeli

1.1 Executive Summary

• Battle Scenario

– 1962: The world is destroyed by a Nuclear War. Survivors are plugged by Martians in theMatrix in order to survive.

– 2020: Humans are awakened and need to face the choice between the Matrix and the Earth.

– Choice one: take the Red pill and stay in the real world.

– Choice two: take the Blue pill and go back to the Matrix.

• Red Pill Team View

– There is no free will possible in the Matrix.

– The Matrix is a limited environment with bounds. In real life everything is possible.

– According to Locke’s Empiricism a human’s identity is generated by his experiences. Thusthe very concept of identity would crumble in the Matrix.

– The Bugs in the matrix could affect the people living inside, possibly leading to injury,death or madness.

– Rebuilding Earth is not only possible, but it is a great opportunity to create a new societydevoid of all the faults that destroyed mankind.

– Living on the Earth is the only path to avoid extinction of mankind.

• Blue Pill Team View

– Maslow’s Pyramid illustrates the needs of the human beings. On the lower layers we findSafety and Physiological needs. Self-Actualization, Love and Esteem constitute the upperlayers.

– The Earth is not able to satisfy basic needs due to the scarcity and harshness of theenvironment, the limited human knowledge and the possibility of conflicts and wars.

– Defining what is real is not a trivial task. Berkeley’s Immaterialism states that existenceis only linked to perception.

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– Whether our perception of the environment is generated by the real world or by the Matrixmakes no difference.

– Progress is only possible in the Matrix because of the many possible accidents and thecruelty of the real world.

– Bugs are a drawback for the Matrix, but they are not as bad as death, suffering and diseasethat plague real life.

• Reconciliation

– After the awakening, people on the Earth divide into two factions: the Dormants whostayed inside the Matrix, and the Awakened, who decided to unplug.

– For the Awakened rough times lie ahead. Famine, poverty and sickness make any progressimpossible.

– The Awakened are eventually able to connect to the Matrix from outside.

– The tension between the Awakened and Dormants makes cooperation difficult at first.

– Eventually the two factions are able to land a deal to cooperate.

– Through their cooperation they are able to improve both the Dormant’s and the Awakened’squality of life.

• Conclusion

– Both views have their baggage: real life comes with the steep phase of rebuilding, while theMatrix juggles with explanation of reality, ethical choices and bugs.

– At the same time both pills have aspects that can be used for betterment as a whole.

– Both agree on goodness of technology’s use to make human life better and the need to takeinto account ethical and philosophical implications.

– Humanity must be able to guide technology in an ethical way and to evolve with it.

1.2 Introduction

What is science? According to the Collins dictionary, it is:

�The systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, basedon observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these factsin general terms� [1]

So, we can also say that science studies everything around us, trying to make its best to explainwhatever we can measure and quantify. This, also means that by knowing how things are done andhow certain phenomena occur, science brought us a deep knowledge on the world. The world: it isso big, that even science divided into several branches in order to study and focus on specific things:physical, life, social, applied, interdisciplinary, philosophical and historical sciences are all examples ofthese subdivisions. For example, applied science includes computer science and engineering, studyingthe theory, experimentation, and engineering that forms the basis for the design and use of computers.

We could be tempted to say that, even if right now there are phenomena and concepts that can notfully be understood or explained, certainly the future will bring us solutions. But one thing is clearhere: science considers only measurable and quantitative things; there still remain many unmeasurablechallenges from which, up to now, we can only try to evade but that we certainly cannot elude.

In this report we want to focus on both life and death: they seem simple and short words but,behind the scenes, they represent two of the most studied and inexplicable concepts of human life.They have been with us since ages and in most cases have left us with a lot of unanswered questions.Both of them have proven to be inevitable, but our doctors, scientists and engineers have not givenup on looking for remedies as far as this challenge is concerned.

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Science allowed us to understand and build wonderful machines, which in turn allowed us towork less and to think more. The role of technology in sustaining life - bringing longevity - is huge:the invention of X-ray machines, pacemakers, inhalers and defibrillators (among many many others)allowed us to make a big step into a better and longer life. They have saved many lives since theirintroduction and consequently this has seen the global life expectancy rising and thus in turn thesudden interest in researches related to Active Ageing and Health & Well-being [2].

Notwithstanding technology’s positive contribution in guaranteeing longevity, the challenge ofdeath still remains formidable. Humans have always disagreed on many aspects and have always seeneach other as threats just because they belong to different races, cultures, religions, beliefs, politicalaffiliations etc. For this reason numerous lives have been and continue to be lost through wars: peoplefighting for resources, power and control. As nicely posted by Enoch A. Moijueh on the Board ofWisdom platform, ”In this life, the things that make us happy, sometimes they are the same thingsthat can make us sad, our source of joy can be our source of tears, so let us be careful with the thingsthat make us laugh because they can be the same things that will make us cry.” [3]

Technology does the very same; it saves lives and it also takes lives. A lot of studies and researcheshave been carried out in the field of weaponry (nuclear missiles,biomedical weapons such a toxic gases,viruses etc). We all know from the Second World War that these weapons have left nothing but scarswhich are still visible to this very day like children born from parents who were exposed to nuclearradiation in Japan.

In our battle titled Real Life vs The Matrix, we are going to look into a scenario that includesall concepts introduced above: the use of technology to determine either our life or our death. Morespecifically, we will assume that the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis eventually led to the Third WorldWar: a nuclear war (as will be clearly outlined in the battle scenario). The battle looks forward toaddressing the issues like what is real and what is not.

1.3 Battle scenario

This chapter presents the battle scenario and the constraints related to it.

In 1962 during the Cold War between USA and USSR something went terribly wrong and anuclear war broke out, atomic bombs have been dropped and nuclear missiles have been launched. Asa consequence, the majority of the world has been completely devastated and the radiations causedby the bombs have polluted the air, the soil and the water. For those who survived the fallout thereseemed to be no chances of survival on the Earth.

But not everything was lost and an opportunity to continue to live was provided to humanity.The Martians, the ones who gave us life at the dawn of time, have decided to save the human race bybuilding a set of benevolent machines, called The Matrix. These machines, stored in safe undergroundcaves are capable of preserving the human body and at the same time simulate a virtual reality inwhich people could continue to live. All human beings were plugged inside this machine and timeflowed with no setbacks for 58 years.

Fast forward to present day, in the year 2020. Radioactive pollution has disappeared and a partof the vegetation has started to grow again, so the world is liveable again but it is completely desert,there are no more buildings and resources are scarce. The Martians have decided to give humansanother possibility to rebuild the world as it was before the nuclear war.

Every human is woken up and each of them has to take the following decision:

1. Red Pill: decide to exit the Matrix and start to rebuild society and world from scratch. Thepeople who decide this option will have the knowledge and the books of 1962 at their disposalin order to survive. The world outside is desert and there will not be any buildings or medicinethat will help them except the presence of basic resources to use.

2. Blue Pill: decide to continue to live inside the Matrix forever, so live in a tasteless simulatedreality where everything is almost perfect, with the exception of some little bugs. The Matrixprogram will provide them everything they need to live a satisfactory life.

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Either way the decision is definitive and there will be no way back.

The battle was held with the following rules of engagement:

1. Presentation Phase : each team had 15 minutes to present to the audience their respectivepoints of view by showing their theses, their strong points and the weak points of the other team.

2. Debate Phase: first the two teams answered the questions from the audience, and then theyattacked and responded one another.

3. Final Pitch: both teams had the opportunity to make a short speech to summarize their viewsin a last effort to sway the votes in their favour.

The preparation of the battle, which included the construction of the presentations and the researchof the material, has been done with the help of the critical minds.

The next section will present more in depth points of view of the two teams, their theses and theirscenario interpretation.

1.4 Red Pill Team View

What Makes Real Life Real

The question to be answered in this chapter, the one that most people will pose to themselves whenpresented with the scenario, is the following: “Why should someone leave the life they have right now,in the Matrix, to go live in a wasteland?” Undoubtedly, the Earth nowadays is in critical conditions,since the World as we know it today has ceased existing after the nuclear apocalypse of 1962. Survivingin a barren land is obviously way harder than living in an ad-hoc made reality, such as the Matrix.Additionally, life in the Matrix seems to be pretty real to everyone inside of it and if someone decides tostay, he/she will not be able to remember that it is a simulation after all. That is because everyone’smemory will be flashed once they have taken their decision. However, before anyone rushes theirchoice, we should take a look at things from a different perspective.

Consider this: the Matrix is nothing but a software, something that can be described by analgorithm, which is, by definition, deterministic. This means that everything inside it, accordingto 1962 state of the art of whatever science, is determined by the software itself: every action, everyfeeling, every emotion, every achievement, everything is driven by the System, while the humansliving inside of it are just passive actors [4].

Let us break this down to understand better what the implications are. If we talk about achieve-ments and choices, they depend strongly on the environment we are put in. If the environment isdetermined by the Matrix, then so are the choices we make inside of it and the same goes for thethings we achieve in it. More broadly, progress itself does not exist in the Matrix, rather it justseems to exist. Everything that is discovered in the Matrix, was already there to begin with, in thecode. This means that there is no room for actual innovation in the virtual world, no one can be thenew Steve Jobs or the new Bill Gates. Being a real innovator is not possible, we can only become oneof the many, an ordinary person, just another variable in the code.

But things do not stop here, as the Matrix also alters people’s identities. As the doctrineof Empiricism suggests, what defines who we are, our ideas, our ambitions and everything else, is aproduct of experiences, lessons taught to us by our parents, our teachers, books and so on [5]. However,as we have already said, inside the Matrix, all of this is controlled by the System itself, which meansthat humans’ identities as well are under its control. The ones living in the Matrix are nothing but claydolls in the hand of the System, that shapes them as it desires. On top of that, any other person thatone might meet while living inside the Matrix, is not an actual real human connected to the System,but just a projection generated by the software itself, to make you think that you are not alone whenyou actually are. Each person, in fact, lives in its own sandbox, detached from the others. This meansthat any human interaction that one might experience while living in the Matrix, is actually fake [6].

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To summarize what has been said up to now, in the Matrix there is no room for free will,since every choice made inside of it is conditioned (and therefore partly dictated) by the System itself.Additionally, for the same reasons, preserving one’s own identity is also a utopia, since it canpotentially be altered, as already described, by the Matrix[7]. This means that anyone in the Matrixthinking to be in control of his life, actually is not. Before taking our decision then, we have to keepall of this in mind.

Under the light of what has been said, not taking the red pill is the same as consciouslyrejecting a life of progress, room for opportunities and real achievements, all just for thesake of an illusory comfort. Renouncing to all of this, is like going against what has characterizedthe human race since the dawn of civilization.

Bugs of the Matrix

The points that have been brought up are not all. There is more that has to be taken into account.We have to remember that the Matrix is a software, and like every software, even if it is coded by thebest programmers in the world (or of the galaxy in our scenario), it is affected by bugs. There is nosoftware which is not buggy. Below, a few images show what we could expect from a life in theMatrix.

Figure 1.1: Bug example 1 - Imagine if you are walking to your office and all the things in front ofyou start to assume different shapes or, in the worst case, start falling on themselves. Both of thissituations can happen inside of the Matrix and you cannot do anything, in the second case you willprobably die [8]

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Figure 1.2: Bug example 2 - Imagine if during your normal routine inside the Matrix, all the thingsaround you start to become blue and some lines of words will appear saying fatal exception. Matrixis a system so, as we said previously, this things can happen. In this case our life is in the hand ofMatrix developers: Click Continue or Restart the system? If the decision is the second one, we willbe born again.

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The worst thing is that, while living in the Matrix, one does not realize that what he is witnessingis actually a bug, which means that bugs, could be considered as real events. This would seriouslyalter the perception one has of the world in which he/she is living.

Figure 1.3: Bug example 3 - The mother of all bugs: bounds in the matrix are real, and you can touchthem. The example refers to the limited and artificial space created by matrix. [9]

And now let us move to what could be considered the mother of all bugs: boundedness. Sinceit is a software, the Matrix has a finite size, which means that everything in it is bounded. Whathappens when (not if, but when) scientific progress reaches these borders? It is reasonable to thinkthat the entire simulation would crash, instantly killing everyone that is still plugged in [10]. To makethings worse is the fact that the Matrix was introduced as a temporary solution to help our race insurviving the nuclear fallout. This gives us reasons to believe that the software itself is very limited(as provided exclusively as a temporary solution) and it would not take that long to eventuallyreach the breaking point when its limitations are discovered by those who live inside of it.

The Condition of the Earth - Possibility for a Fresh Start

To recap, staying in the Matrix means deciding to live in a buggy, limited world, thathas the power to manipulate your choices and identity and in which the people youmeet and the things you achieve are nothing but illusions. This is why people should chooseto wake up and come back to Earth, take control over their lives once again, for the first time in60 years. Sure, things may not look that bright in the real world right now, but they are not thatbad either. The Martians have in fact preserved all of the human knowledge from beforethe fallout (1962). This means that the blueprints, the textbooks and everything else we require torebuild a modern society is already here. Not only that, clean water, seeds and primary resourcesneeded to reconstruct our world are also available. Humans are great because of their abilityto create new things, to shape the world into what we can imagine (rather than a limited simulationlike Matrix). Plus, having to start over also has positive aspects. A fresh start can also be seenas an opportunity to fix what was wrong before. If humans all work together, not only theycan quickly rebuild society, but they can make it even better. Waking up can also be seen as anopportunity to become one of the founding fathers of a new and improved civilization, and have asaying in what this Humanity 2.0 should look like.

The Concept of Living Forever

Of course, there is a lot of work ahead and who decides to return in real life probably will not liveenough to see the fruits of a hard labour pay-off, but still, they can give real meaning to their life.They can leave a legacy behind. This is what living forever means, not making sure that heart keeps

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beating while the body is stuck in a cell-preserving tub, but making sure that whoever comes afteryou will remember you and what you did for them and your kind.

Furthermore leaving the Matrix is the only chance of survival for the human race, staying in thevirtual world would be the end of the humanity. Humans will remain stuck in a fake world withoutthe possibility to give real meaning to their lives. No more new technology improvements, no morenew discoveries, no more evolution of the human being but just a fake world. An artificial world thatwill remember forever the humanity mistakes without the possibility to correct them. The red pill isthe choice that will lead to a brave new world.

The Concept of Active Aging

A critical problem that we will have to face is Active Aging; according to the World Health Orga-nization, Active Aging is the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation, quality ofliving and well being through the life course [11], [2]. Well, we cannot say that all these issues will besolved within the first years of our new life, but we must not forget that we will come back from theMatrix with knowledge that will help us on connecting researchers and entrepreneurs to stimulate thedevelopment of age-friendly objects, products, services and environments that may help older peopleremaining active and aging gracefully. Definitely, during the first years it will not be as good as agingin a normal world, but this is a risk that most of the actual old people will take, we must not forgetthat they already saw bad situations of the planet during the two World Wars, they have lived throughsituations others cannot even imagine: they fought for their country, their ideals and to give a betterworld to future generations.

Old people are the ones that will understand better our reasons and we are sure that they will behappy to help using the best of their ability; they will play a crucial role, transmitting experience andknowledge, helping with caring responsibilities and so on. These contributions are the ones that helppersons enjoying good health, the growth of our new life from all points of view will be faster thannormal.

1.5 Apology of The Matrix

Problem with Human Rights - Maslow Hierarchy

The pursuit of perfection is something we cultivate in our culture especially in this modern era. Itis often difficult to resist, and reinforced everywhere in the media. It often implies that absolutehappiness lies at the end of this tunnel, full of many pursuits of perfection. These cultural messagesfeed into the deepest individual insecurities. We often hold ourselves to an impossible standard:perfection leads to ultimate happiness. This leads to a situation when we do not know how to enjoythe simple pleasures of life, that the journey is every bit as important as the destination. Everyonearound can be seen striving for a bigger house, a better job or a higher salary, our scopes of life arerelative often undermining the bigger picture.

Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1940, a highly valuable tool inunderstanding how happiness is achieved and maintained. This five stages model can be dividedinto deficiency needs and growth needs. The deficiency needs are said to motivate people whenthey are unmet. Also, the need to fulfil such requirements will become stronger the longer the durationthey are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food, the hungrier they will become.

According to Maslow, our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thingthat motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates then,and so on. It includes food, water, sleep and sex. However, the real world now is facing a potentialcrisis regarding food security. We are responsible for providing the world’s growing population witha sustainable, secure supply of safe, nutritious, and affordable food. Due to a scarcity of land, thisobjective cannot be fulfilled [12] [13].

We are also suffering from water scarcity which affects almost one-fifth of the world’s population[14]. Almost one-quarter of the world’s population, faces economic water shortage. There is enough

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freshwater on the planet but it is distributed unevenly, too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsus-tainably managed. A homeostasis issue is also troublesome to us in the modern world. The world isgetting warmer, big floods, tropical storms, frequent wildfires, more droughts, flooding, and extremeweather.

The next level is Safety Needs. These two steps are essential to the physical survival of the person.However, we are still living in the world full of war. We can see there is still war due to politics,religion, difference of opinions to name just a few things. Hence, if there is no stability we cannotachieve safety and security.

On the upper level of the pyramid there we can find self-fulfilment needs. Therefore if we cannotachieve and fulfil the basic need stated in the hierarchy it is impossible to reach the self-actualizationin life. Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by a failure to meet lower level needs. Theentire modern era problem as stated above may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of thehierarchy. Therefore, not everyone will move through the hierarchy in a unidirectional manner butmay move back and forth between the different types of needs. With admission to the fact that theremay be other ways of seeing Hierarchy of Needs, it is important to note that physical survival mustlie at the bottom of every other approach that intends to nurture life.

What is Real?

Technology is a tool that can be used to improve the quality of the users’ lives and this is its ultimategoal. Technology has a significant influence on how the society evolves and thus on its values andethics. Sometimes these changes are so rapid and questionable that one cannot help but wonder if theimplications a technology brings are worth the improvement it makes.

Sixty years after the nuclear disaster, the earth is habitable again and so the time is coming forquestioning ourselves if a virtual life has less meaning than one lived in the real world. This hasparticular relevance because we are given the choice of leaving the simulated reality and go back inthe real but hostile world to rebuild society from scratch. In this sense, two of the most importantthings to reason about are the concept of reality and perception and how these are entangled together.

In this regard, it is useful to take a look at the work by Berkeley, a philosopher who developed theconcepts of immaterialism and subjective idealism. With his famous quote “Esse est percipi” (thatcan be translated to “To be is to be perceived”) [15] he explains his immaterialistic vision for which anobject exists as long as it has been perceived. According to Berkeley then there is no such a thing asa material universe, and thus the metaphysical dualism between thoughts and objects ceases to exist.To better explain his thinking, the philosopher used an example of a tree falling in the middle of aforest, without anyone around to hear the noise of it. If this is the case, does the tree actually makeany noise?

Moreover, his thinking has led him to the creation of a doctrine called subjective idealism whichmeans that reality is entirely dependent upon the perception that every individual has of that reality.This concept is recalled in a more scientific and contemporary way in the film The Matrix [16] byMorpheus, who uses these words to explain to Neo what real is:

What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you cansmell, what you can taste and see, then ’real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.— Morpheus

This philosophy can be directly applied to the field of simulated reality; that is a simulation of theworld pushed to the degree that the simulation is no more distinguishable from the true reality.

If we agree with Berkeley, the difference between matrix and the outer world is minimal. Weexperience the world through our perceptions, and our life is shaped by them and not by the thingsthat generate those perceptions. In the external world, objects and living entities create perceptions,while in the matrix they are artificially created by a high-tech machine. Our life is inevitably dependentupon the environment in which we are in; society, relationships, social class, the place where we live,etc. shape our lives and define our identity. The environment, however, can be seen as a generator ofperceptions and thus it is not the environment per se which is important but the knowledge which we

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have of it. In this contest, it is then trivial to understand that there is not a real life and a fake one,because perceptions are equally real, no matter how they are generated.

In order to get the reader in the right mindset and suspend his disbelief, the entrepreneur ElonMusk (SpaceX and Tesla CEO) recently said in an interview that is actually plausible the fact thatwe are living in a computer simulation right now and the odds of this being true are in the order ofone in a billion [17].

Definitely, we are not choosing between simulated and physical reality but we are looking at twoalternative realities, and it is up to the individual choosing the one he prefers. Beside the ethicalissues and moral judgements, it seems that the more rational choice is Matrix, as it is a reality thatcan guarantee you a quality of life way higher than the one in the wild.

Simulated Reality Challenges and Solutions

The problem of the crucial decision posed to every survivor after the nuclear disaster is important.The simulated life decision implies the interruption of the real evolution of the human being and notonly that, people have to decide to leave their aspirations, their family, their friends; so globally thereal reality.

This decision has a lot of implications:

• Progress: the only plausible progress able to satisfy people life is the simulated one. Why?Because the real world is wild, cold, and evil. We have to think that human being is thrown intoa desperate place where the life inside does not forgive anything. So, what progress can humansreach in this bad reality? There is no guaranteed progress in real life. The simulated life canreplicate everything and people can continue their personal progress.

• Love: after the nuclear disaster, it is impossible to imagine the affliction of the humanity.Every person lost friends, relatives, acquaintances; some or all of them. This aspect implies thenecessity of the survivors to erase these catastrophic memories. The simulated life can makepossible the impossible.

• Sensations and aspirations: the simulated reality is a subjective reality, but it is subjec-tively real. The simulated machine perfectly manages every human feeling. Even our sensationsare a composition of some complicated formulae. Another important aspect is that people re-member nothing about the catastrophic world outside. The structure of these two key pointsshows that people can achieve their aspirations or not depending only on their will.

• Aliens dependence: this important aspect is, of course, true if people choose simulatedreality. Each machine has the goal to support the human life with food, medicines, heat, etc. Thismeans that machines are entirely benevolent but also aliens. The alien assistance demonstratesthe reason without any agenda. So, people only have to be grateful.

• Bugs: a negative aspect of the simulated reality is the presence of bugs. This can cause someerrors inside the simulated life. Is this a good a compromise? Yes, because bugs, in real life, arereplaced by unfortunate events, hunger, stressful job with no achievements, death, and despair.This thing hides the bug problem completely.

1.6 Reconciliation

The Day After

The day after people had made their choice, those who ate the red pill woke up from their 60-yearsslumber, while the others kept on living their life in the Matrix, with absolutely no memory of theday before. Those who woke up, were the only one to remember the choice they had taken. Theydecided to call themselves The Awakened and those who stayed in the virtual world The Dormants.The name they chose to give themselves however, was pretty pretentious, as they had not discoveredthe whole truth yet.

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After arising from the pools in which their body were preserved after the fallout, the awakenedwandered towards a giant building in the center of the field in which all the survivors were disposed(many of them, still asleep). Inside the building lied the mainframe of the Matrix. On one side ofthe giant machine, a large monitor and a keyboard were present. A few of the Awakened, who hadexperience with electronic devices in the pre-war era, were delegated to investigate, while the othersstarted to lay down the foundations for a base camp.

After fiddling with the machine for several days, the awakened found out how to use its commandline interface and discovered that the machine contained a very large text file and an executableprogram. Nothing else was present. As far as the text file was concerned, judging by its contentand its size, it could only be one thing: the uncompiled source code of the Matrix. However, it wascomplete jibberish and no one had any idea on how to decipher even a single line of it. The programpresent on the main frame was not of any help either, as every time it was launched it asked for apassword, prompting the following hint: ’dream’ in the Dream.

The Struggle of the Awakened

As time passed, the Awakened started to realize that the rebuilding of the Earth was not as easy asthe Martians made them believe. The weather and soil conditions did not favour large harvests andsupplies were low most of the times. The lack of resources hindered technological progress as well.People started to falter and to regret their choice of taking the red pill. The question “Why wouldthe Martians lie to us about the chances of survival in the real world?” was on everyone’s mind andtension was at an all-time-high in the new society. It was around this time that a priest came up witha surprisingly brilliant hypothesis. In his mind, the Martians did not lie when they said that survivalon Earth was possible. There had to be a solution for all of this and if no one of the Awakened wasable to see it, maybe those still sleeping could. This statement pushed many people to think outsidethe box. Was there an actual way to ask the Dormants for help? As more days passed, the engineersthat were working on the main frame hypothesized that to crack the Matrix code, they probablywould have had to rely on the knowledge that they acquired while they were still living inside thesimulated world. However, this was easier said than done, as memories of their virtual life were fadingrapidly, day after day, and everything in the Matrix, from literature to math, was profoundly differentfrom how it was in the real world. And yet, it was exactly by relying on their fading memories aboutthe simulated world, that the password for the program inside the main frame was discovered. Thesolution to the riddle ’dream’ in the Dream was the word “dream” spelled the way it was in thevirtual world. Once inserted, a hidden folder popped up in the main frame. Inside, there was anotherprogram, this time completely intuitive, such that the Awakened and no problem in figuring out howto use it.

New Horizons

This new program caused something unpredicted to happen: out of the people still sleeping inside theMatrix, it took the best minds, those that were once leading scientists, doctors and engineers, andmoved them to a different layer of the simulated world. This layer was very different from the mainone: the people inside it were able to communicate with each other, and, through the very same consoleused by the awakened, to communicate with the real world. The first contact between the Awakenedand the Dormants was anything but a success: the Dormants’ disbelief towards the Awakened wasway too strong, and cooperation seemed out of the question. However, the Awakened did not losetheir hope, and kept trying, and in the end, the human determination proved to be successful.

The Awakened explained the situation and the two parties started to get to know each other.After a while, the Awakened decided to send to the Dormants what they believed to be the Matrixsource code. Surprisingly, the Dormants were able to decipher it without too much trouble. This wasreasonable: since the Matrix was built by Martians, the basis of knowledge in the simulated world hadto be of Martian origin as well, so it made sense that the Dormants were able to decipher Martiancode. At this point, a deal was struck between the Dormants and the Awakened: the Dormantswould aid the Awakened in their mission by providing their knowledge, while the Awakened would

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run specifically designed commands to spawn resources in the simulated world that would aid theDormants with their research.

The Dormants working on this task would then refer to themselves as the Head Administration ofUnited Sciences, or HAUS in short. On the side of the Awakened, the Computer Experts and EngineersCommittee (C2E2) was born, featuring those that, before the war, were experts in such fields, andwere the most qualified to interact with the HAUS.

Tweaking the Matrix

The source code found by the Awakened in the mainframe was sent to the HAUS, who then modifiedit so that the basis of knowledge, together with the scientific principles in the Matrix, would mirrorexactly those of the real world. This was achieved through the use of the books, blueprints andpapers that were kept by the Martians, for the Awakened, after the world entered the nuclear war era.Now that both the simulated world and the real world were based on the same scientific principles,anything that was achieved or discovered in one of the two worlds, could then be transferred to theother. Functions to provide resources to the HAUS from the main frame were implemented, togetherwith functions that allowed time in the Matrix to flow faster with respect to time in the real world.This was done so that years of scientific progress in the Matrix, could be achieved in only a few daysof the real world.

The Vision of the Martians

This was exactly what the Martians wanted. After having plugged those who survived the nuclearwar into the Matrix, they decided to give humanity one last chance. When they presented humanswith the choice to wake up or to stay in the virtual world, there was no right answer to begin with, asboth of them would have led the human race to extinction. The Dormants would have kept living inthe Matrix until it eventually ran out of power, while the Awakened would have eventually lost theirbattle against nature. The only way to avoid this scenario was through cooperation. The Martianswanted to see if humans were still able to come to terms with those who made a choice very differentfrom theirs (Awakened on one side and Dormants on the other), for the sake of everybody’s well being.Humans had to redeem themselves and prove that they were worth saving, by avoiding unnecessaryconflicts, just like those that led to the nuclear war.

An Important Trade-off

Time passed, and thanks to their joint effort, the Awakened were able to aid the scientific progressof the Dormants, whom, in exchange, shared their knowledge with the Awakened. Additionally, theDormants aided the Awakened in finding new ways to build useful devices with simpler and moreefficient techniques. All tests were run inside the Matrix by the HAUS, while the Awakened providedthem with the necessary resources through commands run on the mainframe. The results were thendownloaded from the Matrix by the Awakened, so that they could make use of them too. Basically,through the collaboration and group work of both parties, the Awakened were able to reach a certaindegree of social stability in the real world, offering a solid basis for the human race to be reborn.

However, there were still some major issues left open. The Matrix needed energy and resourcesto keep working, that would then be unavailable to the Awakened in their quest to restore humanity.On the other hand, conditions in the real world were still harsh, and healthcare was still at its basiclevels. Life expectancy was still fairly low for the Awakened, which meant that many people lackedthe opportunity to give to society a lot of what they had to offer.

The solution to the Matrix resource consumption problem however, had already been found: theHAUS, by aiding the Awakened in their mission, justified the sacrifice in resources needed to keep theMatrix up and running. Furthermore, thanks to the HAUS’ research, it would be possible to reach atechnological state where the Matrix could be fueled more easily and much quicker than initially. Thesolution to the Awakened life expectancy problem, to think about it, was already there too: the Matrixitself. If it was somehow possible to plug those in need (like sick, old, or physically disabled people)back inside the Matrix, it would be possible for them to keep contributing to the progress of human

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society in a similar manner to the members of the HAUS. It was just a matter of understanding howto do it. The elite of the HAUS started working on this as soon as the idea came out. After a while,exploiting the source code of the Matrix itself, they were able to build a new layer in the simulatedreality, very similar to the one in which they were in, where people coming from the real world wouldstill be able to communicate with each other and with the outside world. To avoid any overpopulationissues, the Dormants and the Awakened agreed that in this layer, people would still age and eventuallydie, but even so, they would retain their capability to aid the Awakened, by directly passing to thenew generations the knowledge and experience they built up during their life. [18]

Parallels with the Active Ageing topic

The trade-off underlined in the last part of the story is very much similar to the one related to theconcept of Active Aging, that we are currently dealing with in the real world. Growing old in oursociety often leads to exclusion from the collective life. As physical, mental and economic capacities ofa person degrade, the person starts to gradually get excluded from the community, as he/she is seenas no longer able to take part to group activities.

Unfortunately, physical, mental and economic deterioration happens to each one of us as we age.To make things worse is the fact that our society nowadays is aging extremely fast. We have reachedthe point in which the contribution of elders is essential for the community to keep functioning, asthey make up a big chunk of it. Active ageing is the process of optimizing opportunities for health,participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. The discipline of activeageing aims to reintroduce elderly people to activity in the community (or to keep them active init), by changing the community itself, for instance, through the introduction of policies that facilitateelderly people’s lives.

Just like our society requires the participation of elders in the community, the Awakened requiredthe participation of the Dormants in theirs. Similarly, just like our society needs to undergo changesand adaptations to allow elders to take part in collective activities, the Awakened had to sacrificesome of their energy to maintain the Matrix and therefore the Dormants, alive. Additionally, theMatrix allowed sick people among the Awakened to live over their life expectancies, by allowing themto plug themselves into the virtual world. Active ageing is also trying to achieve the same purpose ofextending the life expectancy of individuals, with the difference that it targets old people rather thansick people.

1.7 Conclusions

An apocalyptic nuclear war forced our creators, the Martians, to step in and put us in a simulatedMatrix till the time Earth is safe to live again, hence preserving human race. After 58 years of living inoblivious simulation, humans have been woken up and presented with a choice of red or blue pill thatdefines their future. Red pill entails waking up and rebuilding the real post-apocalyptic world withharsh conditions and knowledge from 1962 whereas blue pill represents the choice to continue livinginside the matrix with no memory of the choice event. Advocates of red pill question the differencebetween neutral experience and reality, ethical standpoint with respect to freedom, illusion of controland prevalent bugs in the matrix. Basically they affirm the impossibility of free choice in Matrix,since all the environment in which we take choices is predetermined by the matrix code and so allis established in a way that forces us to take that choice, even if we think to have taken it freely.Advocates of blue pill on the other hand claim Matrix to be a new way of survival, emphasize on howprovision of basic needs can lead to self actualization and maintain that real is nothing more thana neural experience which in turn makes matrix indistinguishable from reality. So, other than theimpossibility of evolution on Maslow’s hierarchy, they affirm that it is wrong to consider the choiceas one between a fake and a real world, it actually is between two alternative realities, because real isjust what is perceived, so what really matters are perceptions and not what generates them, and asa consequence what matters is not the environment (since it is the generator of perceptions), but theknowledge we have of it.

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Both the sides concede that each choice has some baggage, real life being more tough with initialphase of rebuilding being extremely steep whereas matrix life seemingly stable juggles with explanationof reality, ethical choices and bugs. Yet there seems to be consensus that part of what both pills offercontains substance and can be used for the betterment on a whole. Reconciliation is realized inestablishing communication bridge between reality and matrix, making the most of what both haveto offer.

So they both agree on goodness of technology’s use to make human life better. More importantly,both sides implicitly claim technology cannot help alone, ethical and philosophical implications mustbe taken into account. Consequently they touch upon arguments such as explanation of reality andliving forever. Furthermore, their viewpoints gravitate towards respective philosophical doctrines, redpill’s one on empiricism and blue pill’s one on subjective idealism.

As already said, technology, especially in today’s world with its exponential growth, surely has asignificant influence on how the society evolves, not only on its organization (just think on how socialorganization got much more rationalized and mechanized after industrial revolutions), but also onits values (for example, this consumer society is characterized by a very liberal approach to ethicalarguments). However, both sides recognized the human role in guiding technological innovation in anethical way, since the right orientation of it does not come from itself, but it must be wanted, yearnedfor and conquered. Potential examples could be the will to break the link between economic growthand environmental degradation, to answer demands for justice and equality from those most in need.So technological innovation is also a path of maturity for human beings, that must be accompaniedby a moral growth.

It is paramount that mankind must not just have a passive relationship but a strong active onetowards technological progress, since its path cannot be written in isolation. The battle scenarioimplicitly supports this, Martians who created man giving him will, reason and free choice know itvery well to not let the human race continue living in Matrix indefinitely without giving them thepossibility to choose. So, whichever pill one may favour, in this battle man has had the opportunityto be actually human, to question, to reason, making his own choice bearing in mind the consequencesof philosophical and ethical nature.

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