Glitch in the Matrix
from 08/17/2024, by uni — 9m read
I've been addicted to Reddit for over a decade now. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to creepy stories - no surprise that Halloween is my favorite holiday. I devoured books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and watched shows like Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files on TV. I remember the early days of the internet, where you could easily find paranormal stories, "real" ghost photos, and "proof" that aliens were at Roswell. Back then, r/nosleep was a hotspot, but the allure faded when I realized the stories were all fabricated.
I spent a lot of time on the old internet trying to convince myself that the supernatural was real, but nothing ever fully persuaded me. There were always "buts" and holes in the stories. I can only truly believe in something if there's concrete proof. I grew up in a fairly Christian household, regularly attended Sunday service, and almost got confirmed. But I never believed in God because there was no proof that the Christian God - or any god - existed. I remember trying to "communicate" with God through prayer when I was around five, only to be met with silence. Years later, at a youth church event, we were allowed to submit anonymous questions. I wrote, "Can you prove God exists?" My question was picked first, and unsurprisingly, they deflected, telling me to just have faith instead of providing a real answer.
Yet, r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix has always stood out to me. The stories seem more realistic - sometimes so mundane that they’re almost believable. Records of a remote control disappearing after being dropped, or a high school friend who seemingly never existed, aren’t necessarily paranormal but rather everyday oddities. These incidents are hard to prove, often chalked up to human memory error, but they supposedly point to the idea that we’re living in a complex computer simulation.
Every so often, an r/AskReddit thread will pop up asking for mysterious, unexplainable stories. A good place to find these is r/CreepyAskReddit. I stumbled upon a particularly intriguing story when scrolling through my feed: What is the creepiest "glitch in the matrix" you've experienced?. I'll add the contents of the comment here for archival purposes.
A_lot_of_italics • 11y ago
As I type this I am already feeling Deja-vu. I've always wanted to share this part of my life with someone but have never been able to. So... I'll just tell a bunch of people on the internet.
One day I was walking to work and all of a sudden had an urge to walk a different path than usual. I work downtown in a big city. It was a strange spur of the moment urge to walk a different way that changed my life forever.
I turned into an alley I had never seen before. As I remember it, I made it about fifteen feet or so when an actual "glitch" happened. Everything in my mind scrambled. I felt like I didn't have a body anymore, just that I was a semi-conscious entity floating through some weird dimension. All of a sudden in the array of different colors and shapes a vision came to me. It was a bunch of strange looking people that in my mind resembled businessmen in suits. They looked startled and panicked that I could see them. One of the "people" made a quick movement and everything turned to black.
When I regained normality, I was on a completely different street. It was the same street that I always use to walk to work. I felt sick, and severely disturbed/depressed.
I've never done any hard drugs, never experienced any hallucinations, never have had anything like this happen to me. The weird thing is, when the glitch was correcting itself and I could see those "people" watching me like a caged animal I had the feeling that I knew I was being controlled. It still bothers me very much to this day.
TL;DR Had a moment of spontaneity, caused a real life glitch, life has seemed different ever since.
For some reason, out of the thousands of stories I’ve read over the years, this one has stuck with me. Now, I don’t explicitly believe it, but it raises some interesting questions that my twelve-year-old self hadn’t considered before. This person believed they glimpsed the beings behind the simulation of our world. What does that mean for us? Could our universe be shut off with the press of a button? Are we just an experiment for our "gods" to toy with? What does it even mean to be real?
Before we jump to conclusions, let’s analyze this comment realistically. Who is u/A_lot_of_italics? Unfortunately, the account is deactivated, so much of its content is gone. However, by using pullpush.io's search function, we can see that they rarely posted but were a Seahawks fan and liked Grand Theft Auto. The comment seems like a one-off where they wanted to share a real experience. There’s no obvious motive to lie, but it’s the internet, after all. What likely happened is that they suffered some sort of seizure, and their brain filled in the gaps. I truly believe that they are detailing something that really happened to them. But practically speaking, I don’t believe suited businessmen are behind our simulation - if anything, it’s probably a group of nerdy software engineers.
It’s entirely plausible that we could be living in a simulated reality - whatever that might entail. I don’t subscribe to the idea of a higher power or God orchestrating everything, but rather something that exists beyond our current comprehension. What difference does it make if an incredibly detailed simulation feels just as real as reality itself? As mentioned earlier, even if our reality is simulated, it is still our reality.
“True, how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” - Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a story that illustrates the limitations of human perception and understanding. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave, only able to see the shadows cast on the wall by objects behind them. These shadows are all they know, and thus, to them, they represent the entirety of reality. The idea of a higher plane of existence - one where they could see the actual objects and the light of the sun - is beyond their imagination because they’ve never experienced anything outside the cave. Similarly, for those of us who have only ever known this reality, it’s difficult to conceive of a higher or different reality.
With today's rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and large language models, it's becoming easier to imagine a future where we could create machine intelligences capable of experiencing a simulated reality. If we were to immerse ourselves into one of these simulations, we might be like Plato’s prisoners, breaking free from the shadows to perceive a higher level of reality. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the developers of such simulations are gods. Creation does not inherently bestow divinity.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where I create and run a universe simulation on a futuristic quantum supercomputer. The beings within that universe may eventually develop methods to probe the boundaries of their existence, discovering the underlying structure of their reality. To them, the true "god" is not me, the creator, but the computer itself. The computer defines their universe - it is the source of their laws of physics, their existence, and the memory of everything that occurs. It is omnipresent and omniscient within their reality. If they encounter something unknown, it is the computer that manifests it.
In this context, I, the creator, am irrelevant to them. My existence is unknowable, and if I were ever to interact or communicate with them, it would be through the computer. To them, I would merely be an extension of the computer, not a separate divine entity. The true essence of their reality, their "god," is the very fabric of their universe - the computer - not the one who programmed it.
What bothers me the most is that our brains can't comprehend or accept our current reality, so we try to organize it into something more digestible. It helps us understand and deal with our existence if there’s an order to things. Rather than chaos, entropy, and indifference. It is a key component of what makes us human; it’s how we make sense of our experiences, how we cope with the unknown, and how we find comfort in a world that often feels beyond our control.
The idea of a simulation offers a framework - a way to explain coincidences, joy, suffering, and life itself. It serves as a narrative that gives us a sense of control, even if that control is illusory. By imagining that there’s a structure behind our reality, whether it’s a computer program or the work of some advanced beings, we can rationalize the mystery of existence.