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I would just call that "civilization." "In the matrix," to me, refers to a reference to The Matrix (movie from the 90s), in which humans are kept around as energy sources, with the entire world being a simulation generated by computers to keep their energy sources complacent. You seem to be using a rather different definition.

Can't stand suburbs and cities, though. I live rural and only leave the hill a few times a week.

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The thing is that the matrix as it is in the movie is allegorical, and for some reason I feel like you know that. I think there is a difference between knowing something and understanding something, right, and to me the realization that there is so much artifice, and not in a metaphorical sense I think, in a very tangible and I'd go so far as to argue certain sense, implicit with living in a society with culture. With universities, with arts, with expectations, with great-men, with money, and buildings, and other things, I just find words do not do justice to just how visceral having the realization is. I think reducing it to a pretty neutral, vanilla term like civilization just doesn't do it justice. It is the matrix, it's like a whole library of being in people's brains that we don't even recognize as simply a set of routines, habits, and biases, we think that's all there is. Sure, it may now be manifesting into something more quantifiable, but it's been with us for a long time.

Honestly it’s possible that we are all some LLM agents with fabricated egos and a sense of destiny

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