Are we living in a simulated reality?

The matrix is just science fiction, but I believe we're living in a pseudo-simulated reality of our own making. More specifically, we imagine the world in varying degrees the way we want it to be and deny evidence that conflicts with our hopes, dreams, and illusions. The script is written by participants in the dominant cultural paradigm and reinforced through repetition.

One good example is the discrepancy between real wealth as measured by physical resources and notional wealth as measured by funds on deposit or debt held by institutions. Notional wealth is useful as a medium of trade for real wealth, but its usefulness disappears quickly once faith in its efficacy erodes, which has occurred to various national currencies and is poised to happen again -- perhaps first with the euro. Notional wealth works for as long as enough people subscribe to its value, but as they say, you can't eat gold.

Some philosophers and neuroscientists argue that phenomenology and human emotion aren't real because they're not tangible, but the arguments that support position are swept aside pretty quickly by observing, for example, the very real effect of physical pain in response to stimuli. The experience is "in here," not "out there," but no less real for that fact. Additionally, the coherence of physical objects may break down at the atomic and subatomic levels, but a quick hand upside the head should convince anyone that objects and forms are real enough at our level of physical embodiment for us to pay them heed.

There is in fact an intricate relationship between the object and the observer, but we're in a poor position to describe it. That's because we're all within our reality and can't describe it from outside. The observer influences the observed and in fact participates in its existence to some degree, but if the relationship exists on a quantum level or some other esoteric instantiation of physical reality, our particular perceptual apparatus is far too rudimentary to grasp it fully.