For those wondering. There was a philosopher (Descartes or Plato, someone old) who posed the question: what if everything we see before us is just shadow puppets put in front of us by some higher power. The conclusion was that we would have no way of knowing. Kind of where the idea for the matrix came from.

Edit: it was Plato

"Plato’s story- Allegory of the Cave- describes a group of people who lived in a cave all their life, chained and facing the wall. Only seeing the shadows before them, the group granted them names, thus becoming prisoners of the imaginary dark images on the wall."

https://medium.com/change-your-mind/shadows-on-the-wall-91c8a89ea5ef#:~:text=Plato's%20story%2D%20Allegory%20of%20the,dark%20images%20on%20the%20wall.