As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

A Very Silly Discussion About [Taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill]

13

Posts

  • Kyoka SuigetsuKyoka Suigetsu Odin gave his left eye for knowledge. I would give far more Registered User regular
    I would tell Morpheus to get shit on and take both pills at once.

    Presumably this would cause my brain to melt or something

  • curly haired boycurly haired boy Your Friendly Neighborhood Torgue Dealer Registered User regular
    guys

    what if the agents in the matrix are just the first guys who got released

    and the whole architect thing is bullshit

    and they're just ganking newbs

    RxI0N.png
    Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    I've always imagined an awesome Agent game where it plays out like the Hitman series--you have a certain objective to prevent or a certain number of redpills to catch, and you're graded not on whether or not you succeed, which is usually a given, but how you do it.

    Sure, you can always jump into a truck and squish a redpill and a bunch of innocent locals into paste against an alley wall, but if you want Agent Smith rating, you better chase his ass personally the whole way, get into a kung-fu battle, and shoot out his phone at the last room.

  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    Well unless the red and blue pills are contraindicated, we can infer what would happen from taking both from their effects.

    Taking the red pill shocks your consciousness out of the Matrix, while the blue pill presumably causes you to fall asleep and lose your recent memory.

    So taking both would take you to the real world without you recalling how you got there?

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    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?

    One assumption that the films make is that humans (or at least, some humans) have an inherent preference for 'reality,' such that they notice that they're inside a clockwork universe and reject it. The resistance in the films only frees the people who are already on the verge of seeing through the fourth wall, and it's never made clear whether this is their choice, or if they just lack the capability to free the people who don't have that predisposition. Morpheus (and Cypher) presents red/blue as a choice, but I don't think it really is.

    I mean, it's not as though the pill is an actual drug; morpheus isn't up in battery tower sticking a syringe in neo's arm. Neo is already rejecting the matrix, morpheus just brings things into relief for him. And it's not as though going back would be much of a choice anyway, since he knows the agents are after him. Assuming his circumstances are fairly typical, I wonder if anybody ever picks red.

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    Wall-E included a utopia for humans, where all their needs were met by robot servants and the humans still rejected utopia by the time the credits began to roll.

    emnmnme on
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    You see that theme pretty strongly in any kind of fiction involving a utopian setting. If there's a utopia in a piece of fiction, it's either driven by evil, or secretly unsatisfying. For whatever reason, we really want to believe that we'd be above that sort of thing.

    Squidget0 on
  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    well, if a utopia is humming along fine and everything's awesome, you aren't left with a very interesting story

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • PLAPLA The process.Registered User regular
    Star Trek. Earth.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    PLA wrote: »
    Star Trek. Earth.

    And even that has a weekly crappy problem to be fixed.

    Like a time-invasion or something.

  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    A story needs conflict, but you'll notice that the goal is never to fix the broken utopia. Nobody gets to go back to having robots serve their every need at the end of Wall-E or the Matrix. Instead they're stuck on a dead barren world trying to grow life out of nothing, and this is presented as a good thing, a victory for humanity.

    In the movie world, all of that technology and quality of life just makes us 'soft.' Utopia keeps us away from the things that make us truly human, like disease and starvation.

    Squidget0 on
  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    Heh, maybe. There are more happy billionaires than unhappy billionaires, I'd bet.

  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary The softer edge of the universe.Registered User regular
    I already took the red pill. It was not a choice so much as a gradual awakening that I would not like to go back from even if I tried, even if I don't always like the truth that I have found for myself.

    I don't know whether or not a Utopia would be desirable or not, good storytelling aside, but it does seem like it would be both boring and encouraging of the less then ideal aspects of human nature seen in people who are sheltered and spoiled. We have to try and strive always for something better then we have now, but we need to be careful not to become too proud or overindulge.

    488W936.png
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    Corehealer wrote: »
    I already took the red pill. It was not a choice so much as a gradual awakening that I would not like to go back from even if I tried, even if I don't always like the truth that I have found for myself.

    I don't know whether or not a Utopia would be desirable or not, good storytelling aside, but it does seem like it would be both boring and encouraging of the less then ideal aspects of human nature seen in people who are sheltered and spoiled. We have to try and strive always for something better then we have now, but we need to be careful not to become too proud or overindulge.

    Well, bear in mind that it's all relative. Our brains are wired so that whatever experiences we happen to go through feel like the 'right' level of hardship for a person to experience.

    Remember, simply by the fact that we're able to access the internet and post on this forum, you have an extremely high standard of living by worldwide standards. To someone who lives in a culture where basic necessities are scarce, the way we can quibble over things like internet access and health care would make us seem like spoiled brats.

    Our brain has one scale and applies it to everything. We'd do the same in a utopian world, find some flaw or challenge and make it out to be a hardship, the same as the super-rich do now.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    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 the other issue which really, really needed to be more thoroughly addressed: the VR mode of the Matrix let you download actual, practicable skills to yourself.

    Zion the city could've been filled with humans with high-level understandings of every single scientific discipline, military skill and fighting style. Even if you couldn't keep all that in your head at once, or it didn't persist, you'd still be able to wake up each morning, hit "play" and suddenly have all the information you needed to program sophisticated VR simulations, perform surgery, build nuclear reactors or what have you.

  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    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 the other issue which really, really needed to be more thoroughly addressed: the VR mode of the Matrix let you download actual, practicable skills to yourself.

    Zion the city could've been filled with humans with high-level understandings of every single scientific discipline, military skill and fighting style. Even if you couldn't keep all that in your head at once, or it didn't persist, you'd still be able to wake up each morning, hit "play" and suddenly have all the information you needed to program sophisticated VR simulations, perform surgery, build nuclear reactors or what have you.

    And suddenly all the natural born people without the plugs become second class citizens, because they're all basically brainless dolts that have to spend like 30 years learning a real craft, and growing up.

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    BYToady wrote: »
    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 the other issue which really, really needed to be more thoroughly addressed: the VR mode of the Matrix let you download actual, practicable skills to yourself.

    Zion the city could've been filled with humans with high-level understandings of every single scientific discipline, military skill and fighting style. Even if you couldn't keep all that in your head at once, or it didn't persist, you'd still be able to wake up each morning, hit "play" and suddenly have all the information you needed to program sophisticated VR simulations, perform surgery, build nuclear reactors or what have you.

    And suddenly all the natural born people without the plugs become second class citizens, because they're all basically brainless dolts that have to spend like 30 years learning a real craft, and growing up.

    Well with that level of talent working around, presumably there'd be some enthusiasm for reverse engineering and duplicating the plug-tech, since presumably there's a risk of damaging them in day to day life when you're out and about and not just in a tube.

  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    BYToady wrote: »
    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 the other issue which really, really needed to be more thoroughly addressed: the VR mode of the Matrix let you download actual, practicable skills to yourself.

    Zion the city could've been filled with humans with high-level understandings of every single scientific discipline, military skill and fighting style. Even if you couldn't keep all that in your head at once, or it didn't persist, you'd still be able to wake up each morning, hit "play" and suddenly have all the information you needed to program sophisticated VR simulations, perform surgery, build nuclear reactors or what have you.

    And suddenly all the natural born people without the plugs become second class citizens, because they're all basically brainless dolts that have to spend like 30 years learning a real craft, and growing up.

    Well with that level of talent working around, presumably there'd be some enthusiasm for reverse engineering and duplicating the plug-tech, since presumably there's a risk of damaging them in day to day life when you're out and about and not just in a tube.

    The squid bots were originally DRM enforcers, so it turns out the plugs are the only thing they can't find diagrams for!

    They just want their proprietary devices back guys, its ok

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    Ironically, it turns out that in this post-apocalyptic age, information is the only thing that wants to be free

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    You see that theme pretty strongly in any kind of fiction involving a utopian setting. If there's a utopia in a piece of fiction, it's either driven by evil, or secretly unsatisfying. For whatever reason, we really want to believe that we'd be above that sort of thing.

    But is that really a utopia?

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    Crap now I'm going to watch the Matrix again.

    Also I really think I should get it on Blu-Ray.

  • Kyoka SuigetsuKyoka Suigetsu Odin gave his left eye for knowledge. I would give far more Registered User regular
    Well unless the red and blue pills are contraindicated, we can infer what would happen from taking both from their effects.

    Taking the red pill shocks your consciousness out of the Matrix, while the blue pill presumably causes you to fall asleep and lose your recent memory.

    So taking both would take you to the real world without you recalling how you got there?

    Sounds like a plan

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    Ok seriously guys, you're all "no I'd stay in this reality".

    KNOWLEDGE DOWNLOADING.

    Like, trumps all other problems. Learning things by just downloading direct to the brain. That would sell me right there.

  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    Ok seriously guys, you're all "no I'd stay in this reality".

    KNOWLEDGE DOWNLOADING.

    Like, trumps all other problems. Learning things by just downloading direct to the brain. That would sell me right there.

    Doesn't that downloaded stuff only work in the Matrix? Inside the Matrix, Neo knew kung fu. Outside the Matrix, a middle-aged man inhabited by Agent Smith's consciousness beat the shit out of Neo.

  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Ok seriously guys, you're all "no I'd stay in this reality".

    KNOWLEDGE DOWNLOADING.

    Like, trumps all other problems. Learning things by just downloading direct to the brain. That would sell me right there.

    Doesn't that downloaded stuff only work in the Matrix? Inside the Matrix, Neo knew kung fu. Outside the Matrix, a middle-aged man inhabited by Agent Smith's consciousness beat the shit out of Neo.

    This is another thing the Wachowski's made up as part of the lore that didn't make any sense to me. If your brain is getting instructions on how to do a thing, you should be able to do it inside or outside the computer.

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    I always chalked it up to Neo being a pasty, half-atrophied stick-man outside of the Matrix.

    I mean, even if you know how, you can't just start doing expert-level kung-fu after having spent ~33 years immobile in a fish tank. His physical body's just not up for it.

    RT800 on
  • ShivahnShivahn Unaware of her barrel shifter privilege Western coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderator mod
    Ok seriously guys, you're all "no I'd stay in this reality".

    KNOWLEDGE DOWNLOADING.

    Like, trumps all other problems. Learning things by just downloading direct to the brain. That would sell me right there.

    Yeah but it probably won't sell anyone else :P

    I dunno what I'd do. I'd guess it'd be linked to body issues, though. Hard to think of much trumping that.

  • PLAPLA The process.Registered User regular
    Not if your muscles suck because you sit in your damn vidyagame all day.

  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    PLA wrote: »
    Not if your muscles suck because you sit in your damn vidyagame all day.

    Then I guess somebody needs to take a crash course.

    "I know physical therapy."

    "...Show me."

  • Jeep-EepJeep-Eep Registered User regular
    well, if a utopia is humming along fine and everything's awesome, you aren't left with a very interesting story
    There's conflict to be had if you need to defend the utopia from some manner of threat.

    I would rather be accused of intransigence than tolerating genocide for the sake of everyone getting along. - @Metzger Meister
  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    Movies where one or more of the inhabitants rejected a society free of crime, poverty, and unhappiness:

    Wall-E
    The Prisoner
    The Island
    The Island of Dr. Moreau
    THX 1138
    Logan's Run

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Jeep-Eep wrote: »
    well, if a utopia is humming along fine and everything's awesome, you aren't left with a very interesting story
    There's conflict to be had if you need to defend the utopia from some manner of threat.

    Or if you just really want to traipse around the galaxy spreading your utopian outlook to other civilizations but sometimes they fail to comply with your transcendent humanist values

    eg star trek

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • PLAPLA The process.Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    In Star Trek, some people want more work and stuff in their lives.

    So they get a little shop to run, or go to space, or whatever, and don't bother anybody in the utopia.

    PLA on
  • Linespider5Linespider5 ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGER Registered User regular
    Thinking about it now, and the whole bit about the 'Original Utopia' that humanity rejected and so on...

    This may not be entirely rational, but now I really wish that part of the third Matrix movie was Neo uncovering that the paradise version of the Matrix somehow still existed and needing to reach it for some reason or another.

  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    The third movie could have been about a particularly strenuous defecation that Neo was having trouble with and it wouldn't have been better than the second or third movies, but it might have been more entertaining.

    I really want Red Letter Media to review the second and third Matrix movies.

  • Linespider5Linespider5 ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGER Registered User regular
    I'm serious, though. There could have been a ton of weird, wonderful, out-there shit in a machine AI's perceived version of human paradise (see Futurama quote earlier in thread) and could really open up this weird unknown territory in the storyline, rather than...well. Jada Pinkett-Smith's homemade bazooka in a sewer tunnel, or whatever.

    For all the messianic allegory garble, we got hell (Earth) and limbo (the Matrix) but Neo storming the gates of Heaven would've given the whole thing a proper finality and allowing the story to finish on a bigger level.

    A friend of mine likes to revisit the fact that Neo wasn't the first One, which, to him, implied the other Ones still exist in the Matrix in a greater hierarchy, six of them, like warped archangels or grand dukes of hell or such, secret kings of their own little pocket realities, nested within the higher consciousness of the Matrix. This would have given Neo legitimately challenging new opponents, higher stakes, and...well, a lot more meaningful plot.

    Alas.

  • MagicPrimeMagicPrime FiresideWizard Registered User regular
    Point of Order on the Second Renaissance.

    Even by the time of the Matrix Movies, the Resistance is still using EMP weapons against the machines. And they are still effective. The Humans were dropping nukes on 01 all-day-erry-day. Yes, the Machines aren't subject to the same effects that radiation has on organic living creatures, but radiation does effect electronics.

    But despite this -- every nuclear bomb has an EMP. And an EMP has a larger blast radius than the destructive force of a nuke. So shouldn't the nuclear bombs been even more effective against an entire city that was more-or-less one big computer/robot/machine?

    BNet • magicprime#1430 | PSN/Steam • MagicPrime | Origin • FireSideWizard
    Critical Failures - Havenhold CampaignAugust St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    If I choose the blue pill, isn't that agency and freedom?

    I mean, that's the premise of the argument - what choice do you make - but if I'm choosing to maintain the illusion of a nice prison instead of the shitty prison that is the ships / Zion, that's up to me.

    I don't even consider it learned helplessness. You have no agency as part of Zion that you don't have living inte Matrix, and in fact by participating in that form of a social contract so to speak - not making waves in exchange for a relatively comfortable life is a no brainer.

    Assuming that people are people and not just AI constructs - my wife / children are teal people with comparable agency in the AI world, it's just trading one level of abstract control for another. There are certain points where freedom merits some suffering, but freedom isn't an end unto itself. There should be something better that agency will eventually get me / my family, and I just don't see that in the matrix world. Freedom is just eternal sucking...not the revolt against the slave master or dystopian government scenario that promises a better future.

  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    They were supposed to be symbolic of fuckawesome CGI scripted fight sequences

Sign In or Register to comment.