Why “The Matrix” Is Fascinating from a Psychophysiological Perspective
Among the many films where creators use various cinematic techniques—from classic art films to digital cyberpunk—to explore the mysteries of the human mind, “The Matrix” stands out as a truly unique event. Created in 1999 by the Wachowski brothers, then known mainly as comic book authors and the creators of a couple of modest thrillers, “The Matrix” exploded into the public consciousness. It shattered the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds, confronting viewers with the unanswerable question: “How is everything really arranged?”
Simulated Reality
The Wachowskis succeeded in popularizing the idea of the reversibility of the virtual and real worlds far more than even the great RenĂ© Descartes, who once entertained royal audiences with puzzles about whether all human sensations might be nothing more than a masterful illusion created by an evil demon. Descartes himself probably doubted the possibility of creating such an illusory world, one where the “seams” between frames, logical gaps, and other signs of artificiality would be invisible. It was easier to believe that people gain their sensory experiences through direct contact with reality—by listening, watching, and feeling its details.
Only with the advent of “The Matrix” did it become clear that the rapidly growing computing power of human civilization could one day be enough to simulate not just “Star Wars” or “Jurassic Park,” but real human life itself: from the sound of an alarm clock and the sizzle of breakfast eggs to spiritual insights and interpersonal relationships. The only problem: how could this supercomputer impose its simulated reality on a person? After all, no matter how much children scream at the sight of terrifying dinosaurs on an IMAX screen, they always know it’s just a movie—the dinosaur won’t jump out of the screen, and they live in the real world, not a cinematic one. This intuition, and even more so adult common sense, can never be fooled by multimedia presentations, simply because images, sounds, air currents, and scents cannot fully recreate reality.
William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”
William Gibson, the author of the literary foundation for “The Matrix,” proposed a completely new approach in his novel “Neuromancer”: artificial realities are presented to a person not by affecting their sense organs, but by directly transmitting sequences of electrical impulses to the brain—using the same channels and codes as if these impulses came naturally from the senses. In this case, the brain has no way to distinguish between artificial impulses generated by a computer and natural ones from the senses, since it is inherently programmed to trust sensory input. All that remains is to synthesize a mega-program that generates electrical impulses which not only replace sensory messages but combine them into compositions that create a believable mental world in all its richness of objects, events, and relationships. There is no limit to mathematical abstraction, so eventually, such a mega-program could be created—what Gibson called the Matrix.
Natural Intelligence vs. the Matrix
But is it scientifically possible for a person to have a consistent picture of the world and their own activity in it, when everything they see, hear, taste, smell, and do is actually just a self-sufficient mental world, not the real external world? Could you imagine walking through a city where everything you see and hear—buildings, trees, people, their fleeting conversations—are just virtual objects in your mind? Modern psychophysiology gives a definite yes.
This is because information about the world reaches the brain not as photos, recordings, or smells, but as sequences of nerve impulses, generated by receptors all over the body—in the ears, eyes, nose, muscles—anywhere that needs to send continuous signals to the brain. The visual, auditory, and other images we “see” or “hear” in our minds are just secondary reconstructions, created by the brain based on our life experience. The mechanisms by which the brain reconstructs subjective images from streams of nerve impulses remain one of its greatest mysteries—one even the creators of “The Matrix” did not attempt to solve, stopping at the idea of artificially generating myriad nerve impulses to induce mental images.
The only major scientific inaccuracy in “The Matrix” might be its lack of attention to the necessity of interaction between a person and their environment for creating a mental picture of the world. It is through testing our mental images against external reality that we behave appropriately in the world outside our brains. Where is this testing in “The Matrix,” where the characters’ physical bodies are locked in pods filled with nutrient solution? Here, the film’s heuristic quality shines: it not only generates new insights in its characters but also in the minds of viewers. If you think about it, the Matrix generates not only artificial streams of sensory nerve impulses but also sends commands to muscles and receives feedback from muscle receptors and other senses about supposed changes made by the person in the external world. Thus, the Matrix allows its characters to constantly test the adequacy of their mental world—though this testing never leaves the boundaries of the Matrix itself. As a result, people controlled by the Matrix adapt to be adequate within the illusion created by the Matrix, making it impossible for them to expose the deception.
It would seem that the Matrix’s puppets are doomed to a life of fake mental activity and nutrient broth in a pod. But true masterpieces differ from mere craft in that, upon closer inspection, they reveal new qualities. In “The Matrix,” the main intrigue is the struggle of natural intelligence against the imposed illusion. Can human intelligence resist the supercomputer Matrix, which controls all its inputs and outputs?
This is, in fact, the fundamental question of psychophysiology: can a person’s mental world recognize the foreignness of an imposed virtual reality? Since the Matrix cannot directly control human will without solving the brain’s main mystery—its ability to create mental reality based solely on input data—if a person suspects something is wrong with their sensory input, their intelligence can develop a defense strategy by reinterpreting the data as possibly artificial and testing new hypotheses. As a result, human intelligence can begin to generate input data for the Matrix that creates the illusion, within the Matrix, of controlling the person’s mental world—gradually taking over the levers of control from the Matrix itself!
And that’s what happens: in a moment of danger, a swarm of bullets meant to kill the protagonist is stopped by his willpower, intercepting them at the level of the Matrix’s supercomputer calculations. The world can rest easy—both science and the Wachowskis’ script suggest that human intelligence, honed by evolution to reconstruct the real world, is too well-adapted to be easily deceived, even by a Matrix created by evil geniuses.