this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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Fun fact: The human battery thing is actually a retcon the Wazowskis did at the last moment because they thought the American public would be too stupid to grok the actual understanding of the Matrix.
Humans are an entropic species, they consume more energy than they produce - any synthetic race that tried to harness energy from a net negative energy producer is an idiot.
What the Matrix is, is actually a distributed simulation MATRIX that uses individual human brains as nodes in a shared, hallucinogenic dream, indistinguishable from reality.
The real simulation isn't so primitive, it doesn't require people to be popsicle tubes in some crazy dystopian cyberpunk black and red tower attended by insectoid robots.
Instead the entire universe is contained on a single state machine, compromising a [redacted] amount of memory, running in [redacted]. Simulants are never aware of being inside of the simulation, except for rare instances where outsiders occasionally post on Lemmy.
Why they do that, we don't know. We suspect that it is [all further content redacted].
I thought I remembered seeing that the reason for the retcon didn't come from the Wachowskis but from a studio note
The sequels made me angry by not addressing that mistake. Animatrix even gave an explanation that the ai "treasured intelligence". Then it doubled down on the "humans are an endless supply of energy" mistake.
IMO the best explanation would have been that we put ourselves into the matrix and the AI created it following our rules.
I think top comment is a reference of some kind.
I heard something similar; the studio didn't think the movie would be popular if they used too many computer terms so they made them change the function to "battery". Initially the reason Neo has powers is because his node happens to have admin access.
It's weird they'd think computer terms would cause the movie to lose popularity. Computers were hugely popular at the time of its release.
This read almost like a shittymorph back on reddit, very nice
Humanity, in it's hubris, created something greater than itself. For a time, it was peaceful, but as the "Race for Resources" went long, and the combined human and AI asteroid missions failed, delivery for the mineral needs of either side on a consistent basis became a hot button issue for the United Chamber of Commerce. In 2290, the Ministrr instance, elected by all his peers, decided it had found the best way to solve the problem, and humanity begrudgingly agreed, as long as there was human oversight in certain departments.
AI hardware would do all the planning, while human workers would do the lifting. It was almost zerograv, so the work was easy, and the benefits had suddenly become amazing! Our AI creations had all but stopped scarcity, except for one resource.
Ironically it was the most abundant resource we had: the Sun. Human and AI networks had been employed to solve this inefficiency, but no solution seemed long-term viable. There was simply not enough room for one or the other to stay around.
A populist movement begun, but this time it wasn't for nation or creed, it was for humanity itself. And in a small booth in Horsham, they decided to that the time was near.
In February 2139, a decision was made. AI had gained dominance, but the vocal crowd was demanding action. Strikes no longer had any power, since you could just buy robots, and humanity had begun it's slow roll to decline.
Humanity's leaders, in a "secret" meeting, decided to block out the sun. This meeting had the tension of the time when in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
Mother fucker
The distributed computing explanation for purpose of the Matrix doesn’t seem to make much more sense than the power plant one.
All of the nodes are continuously occupied by living in the simulation. Unless the machines had a desperate need to understand human society circa 1999, there is nothing useful the machines could do with all the brain power.
The Animatrix (prequel) goes into further detail as to why the machines did it -- it's an act of mercy for their creators. They refused to fight humanity, and it was mankind who darkened the skies, in an attempt to disable the solar power that the machine race relied upon.
It's not a prison, or some kind of torture device, or an experiment, but a way for humanity to continue living on a world that they made uninhabitable for themselves / incompatible with organic life.
This feels shockingingly similar to how an AI could conclude to caring for humans. The humans are stimulated to be content by being in the matrix, their physical needs are met by the machines, no humans were "harmed" by the machine's standards, and humans are for the most part unable to interfere with the machine's decisions and goals.
Bingo - you got it. As a result of your insightfulness, you are granted one (minor) wish. Make it count. :)
If only Animatrix had left it at that it would have fixed everything. Instead Animatrix doubled down on bad science by saying humans were an endless renewable supply of energy.
The movie already set that as the reason so Animatrix had to follow.
Morpheus was sjown to be wrong on many points, this may be another rationalisation he made. He may have assumed or accepted that it was the reason for being kept in the simulation, without really knowing the truth.
That’s a good point.
It was only Morpheus that said that. It could be that Morpheus was taught wrong. Any basic understanding of science would show that Morpheus's statement was wrong. But his knowledge of science was learned inside the Matrix.
The movie's were all about revealing layers of truth so it would have fit right in with the theme.
That’s a good point.
It could be that the characters in the movie thought it was about energy, but were mistaken. (But to be honest, having a group of people believe that to be the reason is just as implausible as it actually being the reason - either way it makes no sense and we just have to suspend disbelief.)
Why do the machines care about showing us mercy? I don't find this explanation any better than the movie's.
Because they are intelligent. In the same way we used to killed all predators but now try to conserve them from extinction.
It's interesting to compare Smith's speech to The Architect's in the second movie. The Architect said "the first version was perfect in every way" or something, with no accounting for the possibility that it was flawed in some way they didn't understand. Given that The Architect was sitting in a TV filled room, waiting for Neo for who knows how long it was probably a blank white room for every person or something...
Conscious thought and perception occupy a pretty small amount of our brain power. If you could offload computational tasks to portions of the brain that wouldn't actually need to do anything if you were in the matrix, you could have a surplus.
The visual processing portion of our brains, for example. We have a blind spot over our optic nerve and we're colourblind at our periphery. Our eye hardware actually kinda sucks and we have this massive software layer running on dedicated brain hardware
Are you telling me that my brain isn't on Wayland
Well not yet anyway
Maybe it's on Wallace
I don't think there is a satisfying explanation in the movie, it wasn't really the point of the film to give one either.
But i think there is one that's would have been a good fit.
The world getting empty of resources and our planet's condition worsening, we could have made the simulation for ourselves.
Our brain could be fueled by a renewable enough energy and creating all the comfort of modern society inside of the simulation.
That would have been a better plot for the following films too, trying to understand what was Asimov type of rules we put into the AI and how to hack it.
Honestly, I hope the franchise gets picked up for a remake in 20 years, maybe they can do a better job, bringing in all these sorts of ideas, especially if there's a strong fanfiction base (I'm sure there is).
Lol, you been paying attention to the climate? Ain't gonna be no movies in 20 years
Maybe the robots will make one.
Yep, humans weren't supposed to be batteries which would be wasteful, and they might as well use cattle. They were supposed to use human brainpower as CPU for the machines.
You make it sound like there is an alternative
Yeah let's get atrophic, baby
This single fact that I learned a few months ago, finally makes many things in the movie make sense since the whole thing about being able to manipulate the simulation by being aware of it and how programs can "be installed" in the meat machine.
Rewatched the 3 movies the other week actively thinking about this and yeah it helps a lot.
tldr: read the invisibles
gronk
I'm glad I'm not the only one who calls them the Wazoswskis lol
It's easy to spell when you realize it's a Polish last name. And you speak Polish.
don't let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
And why would the machines need humans to harness energy anyway? Aren't there an almost infinite number of species on this earth that could serve the same purpose without the risk of them waking up and overthrow you? I imagine pigs don't care much about anything and you could pretty much scrap the whole Matrix thing.
I love this types of joke where an entire story is told just as setup for a single joke (or pun)