The Real

Whether it be a numerical simulation, dancing shadows in a cave, demon engendered dreams, working-class illusions, or vicariously experienced avatars, challenging the reality that the individual or the masses experience is nothing new.   Plato's analogy for human ignorance, in the cave allegory portion of The Republic, certain functions in this vein. Descartes' conclusion that he (or we) cannot rely on our senses to distinguish between dream and reality is just as frustratingly appropriate. He advocates for dualism, where the senses, or body, and mind work together. Posits by others, such as Engels' "false consciousness" and Baudrillard's simulacrums and "desert of the real" can be applied at this scale as well.

It is difficult to surmise exactly what amount of evidence would convince the writer that the reality we (or I) are experiencing is not a "Matrix".  It is far less difficult to confidently state that it would take considerably less convincing to believe that we are in fact living in one.  Given that senses cannot be trusted, it would behoove of one skeptical of a Matrix-scale delusion to take a lesson from Aristotle's expression of humble sagacity at Delphi, and admit to how little (if anything) one knows.  Unfortunately, there is no way around the sense problem.  This is why it may be best to assume that physicists (such as Silas R. Beane, et al) who claim to be able to potentially answer the question--based on assumed constraints of a cubic space-time lattice--through further quantum level exploration, are actually agents of the system.  In all seriousness, there is likely no amount of evidence that could vitiate the walls of my skepticism towards the issue.  What evidence could plausibly be relied upon?  Despite this, the application of the term, 'reality,' to the way we (or I) perceive the universe is not necessarily negated--but semantics and term identification is a luxury afforded by papers of greater length.  To my current state of mind, 'agnosticism' towards this issue is the best policy.