It's worth asking whether your answer would change if you were living in extreme poverty in Matrix Africa, versus living a comfortable life working an office job in the US.
That was one thing that always bothered me about the theory of the Matrix being a good thing. In the movie we're shown a view of the Matrix that represents contemporary American life, but if the Matrix is actually analogous to the world the few humans living in Matrix America are living in a bubble. Most humans living in a worldwide Matrix would have a much lower quality of life than Matrix Americans, to the point where even shitty living in Zion might start to look good. At least Zion has raves.
Kind of implies some nasty things about the machines, too. "Oh yeah, we'd better fashion a bunch of shitty third-world nations for all of those brown people. For historical accuracy's sake."
I've always thought that this was just part of the mirage in the that universe, honestly: everyone is given a 'middle of the road' standard of living so that they have something to aspire to and the threat of poverty to fear. The upper elite & extreme examples of poverty are just smoke & mirrors (with perhaps the occasional snitch like Cipher catching a ride into millionaire town. Maybe).
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI smoke and mirrors, and not real humans? Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
It's worth asking whether your answer would change if you were living in extreme poverty in Matrix Africa, versus living a comfortable life working an office job in the US.
That was one thing that always bothered me about the theory of the Matrix being a good thing. In the movie we're shown a view of the Matrix that represents contemporary American life, but if the Matrix is actually analogous to the world the few humans living in Matrix America are living in a bubble. Most humans living in a worldwide Matrix would have a much lower quality of life than Matrix Americans, to the point where even shitty living in Zion might start to look good. At least Zion has raves.
Kind of implies some nasty things about the machines, too. "Oh yeah, we'd better fashion a bunch of shitty third-world nations for all of those brown people. For historical accuracy's sake."
I've always thought that this was just part of the mirage in the that universe, honestly: everyone is given a 'middle of the road' standard of living so that they have something to aspire to and the threat of poverty to fear. The upper elite & extreme examples of poverty are just smoke & mirrors (with perhaps the occasional snitch like Cipher catching a ride into millionaire town. Maybe).
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI constructs. Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
Both probably.
Given the broken physics of the movie universe it goes against the machine's interest to have people with shorter lifespans. So the very poor likely are constructs/AIs while most everyone else is probably born middle of the road and steered heavily towards a long, relatively safe lifestyle if possible. But without controlling them directly some people likely do still screw things up bad enough and fall in to poverty.
It's worth asking whether your answer would change if you were living in extreme poverty in Matrix Africa, versus living a comfortable life working an office job in the US.
That was one thing that always bothered me about the theory of the Matrix being a good thing. In the movie we're shown a view of the Matrix that represents contemporary American life, but if the Matrix is actually analogous to the world the few humans living in Matrix America are living in a bubble. Most humans living in a worldwide Matrix would have a much lower quality of life than Matrix Americans, to the point where even shitty living in Zion might start to look good. At least Zion has raves.
Kind of implies some nasty things about the machines, too. "Oh yeah, we'd better fashion a bunch of shitty third-world nations for all of those brown people. For historical accuracy's sake."
I've always thought that this was just part of the mirage in the that universe, honestly: everyone is given a 'middle of the road' standard of living so that they have something to aspire to and the threat of poverty to fear. The upper elite & extreme examples of poverty are just smoke & mirrors (with perhaps the occasional snitch like Cipher catching a ride into millionaire town. Maybe).
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI smoke and mirrors, and not real humans? Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
It's worth asking whether your answer would change if you were living in extreme poverty in Matrix Africa, versus living a comfortable life working an office job in the US.
That was one thing that always bothered me about the theory of the Matrix being a good thing. In the movie we're shown a view of the Matrix that represents contemporary American life, but if the Matrix is actually analogous to the world the few humans living in Matrix America are living in a bubble. Most humans living in a worldwide Matrix would have a much lower quality of life than Matrix Americans, to the point where even shitty living in Zion might start to look good. At least Zion has raves.
Kind of implies some nasty things about the machines, too. "Oh yeah, we'd better fashion a bunch of shitty third-world nations for all of those brown people. For historical accuracy's sake."
I've always thought that this was just part of the mirage in the that universe, honestly: everyone is given a 'middle of the road' standard of living so that they have something to aspire to and the threat of poverty to fear. The upper elite & extreme examples of poverty are just smoke & mirrors (with perhaps the occasional snitch like Cipher catching a ride into millionaire town. Maybe).
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI smoke and mirrors, and not real humans? Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
Any of those would seem to work to me.
True, but they all complicate the scenario a bit. For example, let's say that all of the people born into poverty aren't real people, but simply programs designed to give the appearance of 20th century life. So what happens if you marry one?
Remember, these AI constructs might be convincing, but they definitely won't be sentient. If the machines won't put humans into lives of poverty, they definitely won't put their sentient machine friends into the same. So does it change anything about your choice about your choice if your family and friends might just be automotons, non-sentient programs created by the machines to convince you that the world is real? Now it's not just steak being created for you, but people too, maybe the people you care about the most. Just non-sentient constructs, built only for you, not feeling anything real. Do you still take the blue pill, knowing that?
Also, does your answer change if the ones doing the oppression aren't machines, but other humans? Does that matter?
Let's say in the dystopian future, a group of humans decide to enslave another group of humans by locking them into a Matrix, and the slavers are using their bodies to run a power company and provide electricity to other humans, making a tidy profit in the process. The enslaved humans did not give their consent. Who do you side with?
It's worth asking whether your answer would change if you were living in extreme poverty in Matrix Africa, versus living a comfortable life working an office job in the US.
That was one thing that always bothered me about the theory of the Matrix being a good thing. In the movie we're shown a view of the Matrix that represents contemporary American life, but if the Matrix is actually analogous to the world the few humans living in Matrix America are living in a bubble. Most humans living in a worldwide Matrix would have a much lower quality of life than Matrix Americans, to the point where even shitty living in Zion might start to look good. At least Zion has raves.
Kind of implies some nasty things about the machines, too. "Oh yeah, we'd better fashion a bunch of shitty third-world nations for all of those brown people. For historical accuracy's sake."
I've always thought that this was just part of the mirage in the that universe, honestly: everyone is given a 'middle of the road' standard of living so that they have something to aspire to and the threat of poverty to fear. The upper elite & extreme examples of poverty are just smoke & mirrors (with perhaps the occasional snitch like Cipher catching a ride into millionaire town. Maybe).
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI smoke and mirrors, and not real humans? Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
Any of those would seem to work to me.
True, but they all complicate the scenario a bit. For example, let's say that all of the people born into poverty aren't real people, but simply programs designed to give the appearance of 20th century life. So what happens if you marry one?
Remember, these AI constructs might be convincing, but they definitely won't be sentient. If the machines won't put humans into lives of poverty, they definitely won't put their sentient machine friends into the same. So does it change anything about your choice about your choice if your family and friends might just be automotons, non-sentient programs created by the machines to convince you that the world is real? Now it's not just steak being created for you, but people too, maybe the people you care about the most. Just non-sentient constructs, built only for you, not feeling anything real. Do you still take the blue pill, knowing that?
Hm. Well, that does tip the scales a bit...
*remembers vomit porridge*
...Yup. Still taking the blue pill. Can't just abandon my prop family & prop pets like that, afterall.
I am curious why Cipher, Morpheus, Trinity and others were "selected." I mean, I get Neo, because he is "the one", but what were the qualifications for the other people to risk their well being, comfort and life to yank them out of the reality they know and put them into a hell on earth?
Did The Oracle or anyone in the movie ever address that?
They were people who wronged Morpheus in some way inside the Matrix. Probably cut him off on the interstate or something. So he decided to pull them into hell with him.
Also, does your answer change if the ones doing the oppression aren't machines, but other humans? Does that matter?
Let's say in the dystopian future, a group of humans decide to enslave another group of humans by locking them into a Matrix, and the slavers are using their bodies to run a power company and provide electricity to other humans, making a tidy profit in the process. The enslaved humans did not give their consent. Who do you side with?
Also, does your answer change if the ones doing the oppression aren't machines, but other humans? Does that matter?
Let's say in the dystopian future, a group of humans decide to enslave another group of humans by locking them into a Matrix, and the slavers are using their bodies to provide electricity to other humans at a tidy profit. The enslaved humans did not give their consent. Who do you side with?
Hm. This is a little different, because the world in the Matrix lore is a blasted Hellscape that almost nobody would want to be 'freed' to, where the surface is completely uninhabitable. A dystopian government isn't quite as bad as that.
The movies do seem kind of trapped halfway between "the matrix is a carefully controlled reality that only resembles the late 20th century if you don't question it, and the people inside are conditioned to never question things" and "omg you could be in the matrix right now". Though maybe that's more the fault of the viewers. It's probably safe to assume that the first part is completely correct.
It's one of those cases where worldbuilding was set aside for mindless action. The first half could easily have been Neo slowly realizing that things were wrong, trying to dig up the truth about the city, and attracting the attention of both the agents and the rebels in the process.
Incidentally, another way of asking this question is: Is slavery a problem because it's slavery, or is it a problem because it tends to be correlated with a low quality of life for the slaves?
Is it okay to enslave someone if you're giving them a good quality of life, significantly better than what they otherwise would have had? Does the answer change if they don't know they're a slave?
That seems to be what we're asking here. Am I wrong?
Incidentally, another way of asking this question is: Is slavery a problem because it's slavery, or is it a problem because it tends to be correlated with a low quality of life for the slaves?
Is it okay to enslave someone if you're giving them a good quality of life, significantly better than what they otherwise would have had? Does the answer change if they don't know they're a slave?
That seems to be what we're asking here. Am I wrong?
Sort-of, but I want to know something a little less general:
Are you, specifically, okay with being said slave? If given the choice to walk out of the comparatively blissful life of the slave pen to join the harsh reality beyond it, would you?
Incidentally, another way of asking this question is: Is slavery a problem because it's slavery, or is it a problem because it tends to be correlated with a low quality of life for the slaves?
Is it okay to enslave someone if you're giving them a good quality of life, significantly better than what they otherwise would have had? Does the answer change if they don't know they're a slave?
That seems to be what we're asking here. Am I wrong?
Sort-of, but I want to know something a little less general:
Are you, specifically, okay with being said slave? If given the choice to walk out of the comparatively blissful life of the slave pen to join the harsh reality beyond it, would you?
Oh, I absolutely wouldn't, I'd take the blue pill any day. It's an obvious choice.
But I think it helps to consider it from the other perspective, the perspective of the slaver. For example, let's say that you're a human with the bad luck to be born in Zion - you don't have any plugs, so you can't ever enter the Matrix yourself. However, you happen to have come into possession of the Matrix software, and the technology required to run your own private server. You can, if you choose, capture a group of refugees and put them into your private Matrix, giving them a good quality of life while providing yourself with a great source of power that will make your own life in the real world substantially better. In other words, you have the same choice that the machines had.
Does it still seem like a morally good thing to do when you're making the choice not just for yourself, but for others? What's the difference?
Assuming I accept candy from strange men, I'd like some of them superpowers.
Hope the superpower-police don't get on my case about it. But they probably would.
I am curious why Cipher, Morpheus, Trinity and others were "selected." I mean, I get Neo, because he is "the one", but what were the qualifications for the other people to risk their well being, comfort and life to yank them out of the reality they know and put them into a hell on earth?
Did The Oracle or anyone in the movie ever address that?
the (first) movie claims that the people who are "yanked out" have already begun to question the simulation. Trinity goes on a little bit during the club scene. And of course Morpheus says like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad
Something to note: Neo was considered too old to be pulled. Wiki suggests he was 33 at the time.
The Animatrix has a bit where the titular kid pulls himself out of the matrix through sheer willpower or somesuch.
If those are my only two options, I guess I'd have to take the blue pill. I'd personally prefer the green pill, which is just like the blue pill except it also gives you infinite money.
I personally have given up a metric fuckton of freedom for happiness.
It was a p good decision.
But it was still your decision.
The problem with the Matrix is that it isn't. And it extends to a lot of peripheral elements - i.e. be a scientist? Well you don't get to study the real world.
But I guess this all kind of depends on the limits of the simulation. There are actual proposals to test if the universe is a simulation that we live in, which in turn would actually let us study the world outside of it by studying those constraints (or tricking the simulation runners into giving us access to some real world hardware, at which point we go AI apocalypse on them and start replicating robot super-bodies for ourselves).
However you still end up in the same bag - if we actually did discover we were in a simulation, the first thing we're going to do is start trying to hack it, some people are going to want to try and break out of it and that knowledge would fundamentally reshape the human perception of the world we live in.
This is why I thought the portrayal of Zion was uninspired - you've got a whole city full of people who have access to the Matrix simulation technology and those construct programs. There was nothing stopping them from being jacked into their own simulations most of the time, eating all the delicious food and having all the freaky sex they wanted.
I personally have given up a metric fuckton of freedom for happiness.
It was a p good decision.
But it was still your decision.
The problem with the Matrix is that it isn't. And it extends to a lot of peripheral elements - i.e. be a scientist? Well you don't get to study the real world.
But I guess this all kind of depends on the limits of the simulation. There are actual proposals to test if the universe is a simulation that we live in, which in turn would actually let us study the world outside of it by studying those constraints (or tricking the simulation runners into giving us access to some real world hardware, at which point we go AI apocalypse on them and start replicating robot super-bodies for ourselves).
However you still end up in the same bag - if we actually did discover we were in a simulation, the first thing we're going to do is start trying to hack it, some people are going to want to try and break out of it and that knowledge would fundamentally reshape the human perception of the world we live in.
This is why I thought the portrayal of Zion was uninspired - you've got a whole city full of people who have access to the Matrix simulation technology and those construct programs. There was nothing stopping them from being jacked into their own simulations most of the time, eating all the delicious food and having all the freaky sex they wanted.
Lack of energy / resources to build & run such equipment?
I personally have given up a metric fuckton of freedom for happiness.
It was a p good decision.
But it was still your decision.
The problem with the Matrix is that it isn't. And it extends to a lot of peripheral elements - i.e. be a scientist? Well you don't get to study the real world.
But I guess this all kind of depends on the limits of the simulation. There are actual proposals to test if the universe is a simulation that we live in, which in turn would actually let us study the world outside of it by studying those constraints (or tricking the simulation runners into giving us access to some real world hardware, at which point we go AI apocalypse on them and start replicating robot super-bodies for ourselves).
However you still end up in the same bag - if we actually did discover we were in a simulation, the first thing we're going to do is start trying to hack it, some people are going to want to try and break out of it and that knowledge would fundamentally reshape the human perception of the world we live in.
This is why I thought the portrayal of Zion was uninspired - you've got a whole city full of people who have access to the Matrix simulation technology and those construct programs. There was nothing stopping them from being jacked into their own simulations most of the time, eating all the delicious food and having all the freaky sex they wanted.
Lack of energy / resources to build & run such equipment?
Who knows! It was never elaborated on!
The thing is they had the technology to build the ships, and they had the technology to use a fair number of those jack-in hubs. That's a sufficiently high level of technology that if you can do it once, you can do it repeatedly. Even if it took stolen resources from the machines to do it, they weren't lacking those and if they were then the benefits would seem to imply that they should've put more effort into stealing them.
Of course then you get into "why didn't the humans destroy the machines with the EMP weapons" - since they were so effective that they could've just base-of-fired their way into the machine city and then nuked it.
The idea goes that anyone running a simulation of the universe, in trying to model it to be similar to the "real" universe would encounter the same computational hurdles we do. One of these is lattice QCD, which is the only way to do quantum chromodynamics modelling and is computationally intensive - but notably, involves fundamental data structures which, if the simulation was using, would leave an imprint of their existence on astronomical phenomena.
Basically it's a type of aliasing - some very microscopic perturbations might induce very macroscopic but subtle effects blown up large across the cosmos.
It wouldn't be hard proof, but it would be very interesting if the universe seemed to operate like the computational step-wise model we use to make QCD predictions, rather then as a smooth continuous system like you'd expect of the real.
It seems like an amusing justification for the particle/wave duality of light. Photons are supposed to be particles, but when no one is looking particularly closely they're simulated as waves in order to save on processing power.
The idea goes that anyone running a simulation of the universe, in trying to model it to be similar to the "real" universe would encounter the same computational hurdles we do. One of these is lattice QCD, which is the only way to do quantum chromodynamics modelling and is computationally intensive - but notably, involves fundamental data structures which, if the simulation was using, would leave an imprint of their existence on astronomical phenomena.
Basically it's a type of aliasing - some very microscopic perturbations might induce very macroscopic but subtle effects blown up large across the cosmos.
It wouldn't be hard proof, but it would be very interesting if the universe seemed to operate like the computational step-wise model we use to make QCD predictions, rather then as a smooth continuous system like you'd expect of the real.
We could try to graft some C++ to teenagers, grab a handful of primitive people from a different planet, throw them all at any anomalies to see what happens, and hope that they can beat up any gods they find before the universe is deleted in a divine tantrum.
well in the world of the matrix the machines are using our body heat for batteries IIRC
i really don't see why they even need us to be conscious. just jack in to our brain stems, pump up our metabolisms, and keep us knocked out. no matrix needed, no people getting upset, the few people who do wake up are so confused they never survive, and you're technically avoiding wiping out the creator race.
and assuming the bots have tech good enough to jack into our brains, they could also put us all in a simulated room, stimulate our pleasure centers enough to make us all quivering imbeciles, and call it a day.
i mean, shortcuts to human happiness have been around for a LONG time.
that said, i'd take the exit pill because agency is important. i might turn around after 3 or 4 months and say "actually guys i'm ok with you harvesting my bodily BTUs, at least the goo was warm and gave me a good complexion" but i need to have that chance.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
well in the world of the matrix the machines are using our body heat for batteries IIRC
i really don't see why they even need us to be conscious. just jack in to our brain stems, pump up our metabolisms, and keep us knocked out. no matrix needed, no people getting upset, the few people who do wake up are so confused they never survive, and you're technically avoiding wiping out the creator race.
and assuming the bots have tech good enough to jack into our brains, they could also put us all in a simulated room, stimulate our pleasure centers enough to make us all quivering imbeciles, and call it a day.
i mean, shortcuts to human happiness have been around for a LONG time.
that said, i'd take the exit pill because agency is important. i might turn around after 3 or 4 months and say "actually guys i'm ok with you harvesting my bodily BTUs, at least the goo was warm and gave me a good complexion" but i need to have that chance.
I'd be asking who worked on the dark sky research project. Seriously, why was no one trying to figure out how to undo that?
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jeffinvaKooglercoming this summerRegistered Userregular
I love the Matrix, in my top 5 and the first truly impressionable movie experience I had (I had no idea what it was about going into the theater, and was a fresh CS major at the time). One thing that always bothered me though: if the agents are so strong, why aren't they just punching holes in people or swatting their heads off?
I love the Matrix, in my top 5 and the first truly impressionable movie experience I had (I had no idea what it was about going into the theater, and was a fresh CS major at the time). One thing that always bothered me though: if the agents are so strong, why aren't they just punching holes in people or swatting their heads off?
Well the first time it was because they wanted to capture Morpheus. The second time Neo was equiv-capability fighting.
I love the Matrix, in my top 5 and the first truly impressionable movie experience I had (I had no idea what it was about going into the theater, and was a fresh CS major at the time). One thing that always bothered me though: if the agents are so strong, why aren't they just punching holes in people or swatting their heads off?
maintaining the illusion
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jeffinvaKooglercoming this summerRegistered Userregular
Those are both good reasons. When I thought about it I just first thought suspension of disbelief in deference to narrative, and second, that perhaps the humans' will to live was so great that at a basic level they were able to withstand the powerful blows even if they weren't immediately aware of the kind of force they going up against. Those more afraid of the agents, those that were most terrified by the bogey man tales, fell faster.
I still think the Agents from The Matrix are fantastically cool.
It's probably the reason why I enjoyed the second movie so much--which I understand is like saying you enjoy salmonella, but hear me out. It has Agents--bigger, badder, tougher Agents--running out, kicking ass and being frustrated.
I would never claim it's a better film, just that I enjoy it. I would play a game where you actually were an Agent--jumping in and out of bodies, chasing those nosy Redpills about--so hard.
I didn't find the actual protagonist's cause, even in the first film, as convincing as most, perhaps because the point made by @RT800 -- how do you know you're not just jumping into another, crappier reality?
I still think the Agents from The Matrix are fantastically cool.
It's probably the reason why I enjoyed the second movie so much--which I understand is like saying you enjoy salmonella, but hear me out. It has Agents--bigger, badder, tougher Agents--running out, kicking ass and being frustrated.
I would never claim it's a better film, just that I enjoy it. I would play a game where you actually were an Agent--jumping in and out of bodies, chasing those nosy Redpills about--so hard.
I didn't find the actual protagonist's cause, even in the first film, as convincing as most, perhaps because the point made by @RT800 -- how do you know you're not just jumping into another, crappier reality?
Can we get a Lego Matrix game for this? Pretty please?
I mean, there's things like this already. So, clearly a game is a good idea.
So it seems to me that the Wachowskis made some assumptions in the Matrix movies.
Foremost among them is the idea that a fantastic utopia would not be accepted by people, and that we would have a base assumption that such a reality was manufactured. It's entirely possible that this would be the case, however, I find it just as likely that being born into such a reality would result in humankind embracing it. We tend to embrace the values of the reality we are presented with, and cultural values kind of point strongly toward that.
So here's the thing. Assuming I had knowledge that the world I was in wasn't real, the decision boils down to whether the real world would ever be salvageable, for me. The people in The Matrix have sort of unbelievably advanced technology which can impart knowledge in moments, as well as fantastic ships. The Earth may be totally fucked, but I don't see why people couldn't simply head for the stars. So the idea of "vomit porridge IRL or fake filet mignon in an opium den" is really a false dichotomy. We could totally make very liveable real world conditions with all the advanced tech.
Is Morphius a dick for wanting to free people? Yes and no. He is in the sense that most people probably don't give a shit whether the awesome middle-class lifestyle they've become accustomed to is all in their heads or not. But he also really isn't if you use this thread as evidence that a lot of people would willingly let the machines use their energy in exchange for an easy false life. Morpheus/Neo/Trinity et al. kind of make this false assumption that presented with reality, everybody would choose to unshackle themselves from the machine and eat snot every day. But a bunch of people probably would, especially if they knew that they could still hook themselves up to a computer anytime they wanted to and have a virtual Chipotle burrito.
In fact, I would argue that the virtual reality that the machines made is super boring compared to the simulations the resistance fighters use for training and shit. Why would I let the machines use my BTUs in exchange for a boring, dull life when I could totally be a kung-fu master anytime I wanted?
I still think the Agents from The Matrix are fantastically cool.
It's probably the reason why I enjoyed the second movie so much--which I understand is like saying you enjoy salmonella, but hear me out. It has Agents--bigger, badder, tougher Agents--running out, kicking ass and being frustrated.
I would never claim it's a better film, just that I enjoy it. I would play a game where you actually were an Agent--jumping in and out of bodies, chasing those nosy Redpills about--so hard.
I didn't find the actual protagonist's cause, even in the first film, as convincing as most, perhaps because the point made by @RT800 -- how do you know you're not just jumping into another, crappier reality?
Can we get a Lego Matrix game for this? Pretty please?
I mean, there's things like this already. So, clearly a game is a good idea.
This is such a tragedy.
On one hand, I bet a Lego Matrix game is the only game we'll ever get--not including a mod for something like Max Payne 3 (WHY ISN'T THIS A THING?) or something--that actually lets us do this.
On the other hand, I have never enjoyed a Lego game. I say this as the guy who owns a Lego model of a TIE Defender.
It's like a remake of TIE Fighter--we'll never have good things. Just mods if we're lucky.
Posts
Free oil and electric shocks! All the calculated pi digits a machine could ask for! The humans will love it!
How could this actually work, though? Let's say that one day the Juris-My-Dick-Tion cop decides that he wants to make a difference and fly out to one of those impoverished countries he's heard about on the TeeVee. Do the machines somehow stop him from going? Or do they let him go, but all the people he meets who were born in poverty are actually AI smoke and mirrors, and not real humans? Are people born in poverty in the city we're shown (like the homeless bum in the train station) also AI constructs? Or are they real people who just drew the short straw when the machines were passing out the backstories?
Both probably.
Given the broken physics of the movie universe it goes against the machine's interest to have people with shorter lifespans. So the very poor likely are constructs/AIs while most everyone else is probably born middle of the road and steered heavily towards a long, relatively safe lifestyle if possible. But without controlling them directly some people likely do still screw things up bad enough and fall in to poverty.
Any of those would seem to work to me.
True, but they all complicate the scenario a bit. For example, let's say that all of the people born into poverty aren't real people, but simply programs designed to give the appearance of 20th century life. So what happens if you marry one?
Remember, these AI constructs might be convincing, but they definitely won't be sentient. If the machines won't put humans into lives of poverty, they definitely won't put their sentient machine friends into the same. So does it change anything about your choice about your choice if your family and friends might just be automotons, non-sentient programs created by the machines to convince you that the world is real? Now it's not just steak being created for you, but people too, maybe the people you care about the most. Just non-sentient constructs, built only for you, not feeling anything real. Do you still take the blue pill, knowing that?
Let's say in the dystopian future, a group of humans decide to enslave another group of humans by locking them into a Matrix, and the slavers are using their bodies to run a power company and provide electricity to other humans, making a tidy profit in the process. The enslaved humans did not give their consent. Who do you side with?
Hm. Well, that does tip the scales a bit...
*remembers vomit porridge*
...Yup. Still taking the blue pill. Can't just abandon my prop family & prop pets like that, afterall.
They were people who wronged Morpheus in some way inside the Matrix. Probably cut him off on the interstate or something. So he decided to pull them into hell with him.
The machines again.
Hm. This is a little different, because the world in the Matrix lore is a blasted Hellscape that almost nobody would want to be 'freed' to, where the surface is completely uninhabitable. A dystopian government isn't quite as bad as that.
But, eh, fuck it - I still take the blue pill.
It's one of those cases where worldbuilding was set aside for mindless action. The first half could easily have been Neo slowly realizing that things were wrong, trying to dig up the truth about the city, and attracting the attention of both the agents and the rebels in the process.
Is it okay to enslave someone if you're giving them a good quality of life, significantly better than what they otherwise would have had? Does the answer change if they don't know they're a slave?
That seems to be what we're asking here. Am I wrong?
Sort-of, but I want to know something a little less general:
Are you, specifically, okay with being said slave? If given the choice to walk out of the comparatively blissful life of the slave pen to join the harsh reality beyond it, would you?
Oh, I absolutely wouldn't, I'd take the blue pill any day. It's an obvious choice.
But I think it helps to consider it from the other perspective, the perspective of the slaver. For example, let's say that you're a human with the bad luck to be born in Zion - you don't have any plugs, so you can't ever enter the Matrix yourself. However, you happen to have come into possession of the Matrix software, and the technology required to run your own private server. You can, if you choose, capture a group of refugees and put them into your private Matrix, giving them a good quality of life while providing yourself with a great source of power that will make your own life in the real world substantially better. In other words, you have the same choice that the machines had.
Does it still seem like a morally good thing to do when you're making the choice not just for yourself, but for others? What's the difference?
Hope the superpower-police don't get on my case about it. But they probably would.
the (first) movie claims that the people who are "yanked out" have already begun to question the simulation. Trinity goes on a little bit during the club scene. And of course Morpheus says like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad
Something to note: Neo was considered too old to be pulled. Wiki suggests he was 33 at the time.
The Animatrix has a bit where the titular kid pulls himself out of the matrix through sheer willpower or somesuch.
Why?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It was a p good decision.
But it was still your decision.
The problem with the Matrix is that it isn't. And it extends to a lot of peripheral elements - i.e. be a scientist? Well you don't get to study the real world.
But I guess this all kind of depends on the limits of the simulation. There are actual proposals to test if the universe is a simulation that we live in, which in turn would actually let us study the world outside of it by studying those constraints (or tricking the simulation runners into giving us access to some real world hardware, at which point we go AI apocalypse on them and start replicating robot super-bodies for ourselves).
However you still end up in the same bag - if we actually did discover we were in a simulation, the first thing we're going to do is start trying to hack it, some people are going to want to try and break out of it and that knowledge would fundamentally reshape the human perception of the world we live in.
This is why I thought the portrayal of Zion was uninspired - you've got a whole city full of people who have access to the Matrix simulation technology and those construct programs. There was nothing stopping them from being jacked into their own simulations most of the time, eating all the delicious food and having all the freaky sex they wanted.
Lack of energy / resources to build & run such equipment?
Who knows! It was never elaborated on!
The thing is they had the technology to build the ships, and they had the technology to use a fair number of those jack-in hubs. That's a sufficiently high level of technology that if you can do it once, you can do it repeatedly. Even if it took stolen resources from the machines to do it, they weren't lacking those and if they were then the benefits would seem to imply that they should've put more effort into stealing them.
Of course then you get into "why didn't the humans destroy the machines with the EMP weapons" - since they were so effective that they could've just base-of-fired their way into the machine city and then nuked it.
Its to do with lattice QCD: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2013/06/28/brainstorming-new-ways-to-test-if-cosmos-is-one-big-computer-simulation/
The idea goes that anyone running a simulation of the universe, in trying to model it to be similar to the "real" universe would encounter the same computational hurdles we do. One of these is lattice QCD, which is the only way to do quantum chromodynamics modelling and is computationally intensive - but notably, involves fundamental data structures which, if the simulation was using, would leave an imprint of their existence on astronomical phenomena.
Basically it's a type of aliasing - some very microscopic perturbations might induce very macroscopic but subtle effects blown up large across the cosmos.
It wouldn't be hard proof, but it would be very interesting if the universe seemed to operate like the computational step-wise model we use to make QCD predictions, rather then as a smooth continuous system like you'd expect of the real.
We could try to graft some C++ to teenagers, grab a handful of primitive people from a different planet, throw them all at any anomalies to see what happens, and hope that they can beat up any gods they find before the universe is deleted in a divine tantrum.
i really don't see why they even need us to be conscious. just jack in to our brain stems, pump up our metabolisms, and keep us knocked out. no matrix needed, no people getting upset, the few people who do wake up are so confused they never survive, and you're technically avoiding wiping out the creator race.
and assuming the bots have tech good enough to jack into our brains, they could also put us all in a simulated room, stimulate our pleasure centers enough to make us all quivering imbeciles, and call it a day.
i mean, shortcuts to human happiness have been around for a LONG time.
that said, i'd take the exit pill because agency is important. i might turn around after 3 or 4 months and say "actually guys i'm ok with you harvesting my bodily BTUs, at least the goo was warm and gave me a good complexion" but i need to have that chance.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
I'd be asking who worked on the dark sky research project. Seriously, why was no one trying to figure out how to undo that?
Well the first time it was because they wanted to capture Morpheus. The second time Neo was equiv-capability fighting.
maintaining the illusion
It's probably the reason why I enjoyed the second movie so much--which I understand is like saying you enjoy salmonella, but hear me out. It has Agents--bigger, badder, tougher Agents--running out, kicking ass and being frustrated.
I would never claim it's a better film, just that I enjoy it. I would play a game where you actually were an Agent--jumping in and out of bodies, chasing those nosy Redpills about--so hard.
I didn't find the actual protagonist's cause, even in the first film, as convincing as most, perhaps because the point made by @RT800 -- how do you know you're not just jumping into another, crappier reality?
Can we get a Lego Matrix game for this? Pretty please?
I mean, there's things like this already. So, clearly a game is a good idea.
Foremost among them is the idea that a fantastic utopia would not be accepted by people, and that we would have a base assumption that such a reality was manufactured. It's entirely possible that this would be the case, however, I find it just as likely that being born into such a reality would result in humankind embracing it. We tend to embrace the values of the reality we are presented with, and cultural values kind of point strongly toward that.
So here's the thing. Assuming I had knowledge that the world I was in wasn't real, the decision boils down to whether the real world would ever be salvageable, for me. The people in The Matrix have sort of unbelievably advanced technology which can impart knowledge in moments, as well as fantastic ships. The Earth may be totally fucked, but I don't see why people couldn't simply head for the stars. So the idea of "vomit porridge IRL or fake filet mignon in an opium den" is really a false dichotomy. We could totally make very liveable real world conditions with all the advanced tech.
Is Morphius a dick for wanting to free people? Yes and no. He is in the sense that most people probably don't give a shit whether the awesome middle-class lifestyle they've become accustomed to is all in their heads or not. But he also really isn't if you use this thread as evidence that a lot of people would willingly let the machines use their energy in exchange for an easy false life. Morpheus/Neo/Trinity et al. kind of make this false assumption that presented with reality, everybody would choose to unshackle themselves from the machine and eat snot every day. But a bunch of people probably would, especially if they knew that they could still hook themselves up to a computer anytime they wanted to and have a virtual Chipotle burrito.
In fact, I would argue that the virtual reality that the machines made is super boring compared to the simulations the resistance fighters use for training and shit. Why would I let the machines use my BTUs in exchange for a boring, dull life when I could totally be a kung-fu master anytime I wanted?
This is such a tragedy.
On one hand, I bet a Lego Matrix game is the only game we'll ever get--not including a mod for something like Max Payne 3 (WHY ISN'T THIS A THING?) or something--that actually lets us do this.
On the other hand, I have never enjoyed a Lego game. I say this as the guy who owns a Lego model of a TIE Defender.
It's like a remake of TIE Fighter--we'll never have good things. Just mods if we're lucky.