Buddhism and “The Matrix” (Sam Littlefair)

Twenty years ago this Sunday, The Matrix was released. I went to see it in theatres with my dad (I was in third grade), and it instantly became an all-time favorite. A lot of the movie went over my eight-year-old head, but even so the film’s central concept — that all of humanity exists in a simulation called “the Matrix” — blew my mind.
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The movie had that effect on a lot of people. Within a few years of its release, a popular theory arose that, statistically, it’s extremely likely that humanity only exists in such a simulation. To this day, philosophers, tech moguls, and journalists openly debate the question, “Do we live in a ‘Matrix’-like illusion?” more...