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The Science of the Matrix
KamehamehaWarrior writes "Peter B. Lloyd, author of Taking The Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, believes that many of the plot developments in "The Matrix" that seem to contradict the laws of physics, biology, etc. can actually be explained with a closer look at the science. He addresses issues such as "Can humans really be an energy source? How does the Matrix know what fried chicken taste like? Why do the rebels have to enter and exit the Matrix via a telephone system (that doesn't actually exist)?""
This is a truly impressive article, even if this guy does have a
little too much free time on his hands.
The breakdown of the Bio-Port is wonderful. It's really a
fantastic explanation of how the Bio-Port could work, and what
it would be doing.
The Red pill, I've always seen this as similar to some type of
virus that is injected into the system. His deconstruction is
similar in flavor to what I thought.
The power plant is great. Rather than humans being the energy
source, they are a giant Beowulf cluster. Maybe Beowulf (the
hero) was the first Beowulf after all.
I thought Entering and Exiting the Matrix was interesting, but I
didn't find the arguments as compelling in this section for some
reason. There just seem to be too many special exceptions for
my taste.
Overall this article has some real potential, and definately
helps with the suspension of disbelief process that is so
crucial to any story telling. A bit of a warning though, it's
long, really long.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
Looks like taking down the matrix wasn't so hard at all.
Three comments and already Slashdotted? Damn.
Here's the Google cache.
Anything matrix related is good by me. I've been reading a lot more of the philosophy section of the website lately, and I've also been reading any posts like the one above regarding the theory and science behind the movies/plot/story.
To be honest, I had no idea "how deep the rabbit hole" really went. The Wachowski brothers are brilliant IMHO, and have one of the most immersive universes I've ever seen. The movies aside, and franchisements out the window, this stands to be one of the most engrossing and amazing "thresholds" of our timeframe.
And although the naysayers might argue, the Matrix is to me, and many of my friends/family/colleauges, as Star Wars was to the generation two decades ago.
And here I thought that they didn't know what chicken tasted like... hence it tasting like everything. Makes you wonder if someone was paying attention or not...
/.-ed already (doh!).
And no, I can't RTFA... it's
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/matrix.html
Carousel is a lie!
Sorry guys, the Agents got to this one first.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
Please mod me up, I need to work on my karma.
GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
by Peter B. Lloyd
Why, exactly, do the rebels have to enter the Matrix via the phone system (which after all doesn't physically exist)? And what really happens when Neo takes the red pill (which also doesn't really exist)? And how does the Matrix know what fried chicken tastes like? Technologist and philosopher Peter Lloyd answers these questions and more.
To be published in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix (Ben Bella Books, April 2003). Published on KurzweilAI.net March 3, 2003.
As the essays throughout this book demonstrate, the Wachowski Brothers designed The Matrix to work at many levels. They carefully thought through the film's philosophical underpinnings, religious symbolism, and scientific speculations. But there are a few riddles in The Matrix, aspects of the film that seem nonsensical or defy the laws of science. These apparent glitches include:
The Bioport--how can a socket in your head control your senses? How can it be inserted without killing you?
The Red Pill--since the pill is virtual, how can it throw Neo out of the Matrix?
The Power Plant--can people really be an energy source?
Entering and Exiting the Matrix--why do the rebels need telephones to come and go?
The Bugbot--what's the purpose of the bugbot?
Perceptions in the Matrix--how do the machines know what fried chicken tastes like?
Neo's Mastery of the Avatar--how can Neo fly?
Consciousness and the Matrix--are the machines in the Matrix alive and conscious? Or are they only machines, intelligent but mindless?
This essay addresses these questions and shows how these seeming glitches can be resolved.
THE BIOPORT
Can the machines really create a virtual world through a bioport? And how does it work? The bioport is a way of giving the Matrix computers full access to the information channels of the brain. It is located at the back of the neck--probably between the occipital bone at the base of the skull, and the first neck vertebra. Wiring would best enter through the soft cartilage that cushions the skull on the spinal column, and pass up through the natural opening that lets the spinal cord into the skull. This avoids drilling through bone, and maintains the mechanical and biological integrity of the skull's protection. A baby fitted with a bioport can easily survive the operation.
The bioport terminates in a forest of electrodes spanning the volume of the brain. In a newborn, the sheathed mass of wire filaments is pushed into the head through the bioport. On reaching the skull cavity, the sheath would be released, and the filaments spread out like a dandelion, gently permeating the developing cortex. Nested sheaths would release a branching structure of filamentary electrodes. As each sheathed wire approaches the surface of the brain, it releases thousands of smaller electrodes. In the neonate, brain cells have few synaptic connections, so the slender electrodes can penetrate harmlessly.
With its electrodes distributed throughout the brain, the Matrix could deliver its sensory signals in either of two places: at the sensory portals or deep inside the brain's labyrinth. For example, vision could be driven by electrodes on the optic nerves where they enter the brain. Artificial signals would then pass into the visual cortex at the back of the brain, which would handle them as if they had come from the eyes. Correspondingly, outgoing motor nerves would also have electrodes at the boundary of brain and skull. This simple design mirrors the natural state of the brain most closely. It is not, however, the only possibility. Electrodes could alternatively be attached in the depths of the brain, beyond the first stages of the visual cortex. This would greatly simplify the data processing. In normal perception, most of the incoming information isn't processed; information you aren't paying a
If you want to read the article you can go here,
but beware my server isn't too beefy.
www.dailystatic.com/Matrix.html
You can read the article, but none of the links inside of it work.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
If it's anything like "
The Physics of Star Trek" then I'll pass. Can you say "fiction?"
Oh, and if it's been slashdotted, here are some mirrors:
Link 1
Link 2
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
How the hell is a human neural system supposed to react faster than software in a computer system? That's what really bugs me. That, and the blatant disregard for the Laws of Thermodynamics. And Keanu Reeves.
The part about the human power plant is making me wonder. Why are they keeping the humans around if they are only using them for "parallel computing" and for managing the power plants? If I understand correctly, humans are pretty inefficient. We need to be fed, and the machines have to create the Matrix and regulate us in it.
Also, one would assume that a lot of machines can process information faster than a lot of human brains.
So my question is, why are the machines taking the risk of keeping the humans around? why not just kill us off.
This guy has too much time on his hands.
Basically he takes the movie he liked, the ideals and the perceptions, and he fills in the blanks.
Why do they use telephones?
Answer: It's a movie.
His Answer: They put network addresses on all data points along the matrix and blah blah blah
How does the blue/red pills work?
Answer: It's a movie.
His Answer: "the avatar's software module must be able to accept instructions to cancel out any given sensory input."
And, lastly, my favorite:
What/How does the Bugbot do/work?
Answer: It's a fucking movie.
His Answer: "Trinity says that Neo is "dangerous" to them before he is cleaned. We can infer that the bugbot is actually a munition, probably a semtex device that will detonate when it hears Morpheus's voice, killing both Neo and Morpheus and everyone else in the room."
This guy is just making shit up. Yet you know somewhere somebody is going to really put some thought and invest some time into thinking about this bullshit. Jeez. Where's Penn and Teller when you need em?
Or perhaps YOU need to get off your high horse, realize that things mean different things to different people. You find it offensive, others find it the most entertaining and engrossing movie they've ever watched. No need to cut people down for enjoying something just because you make a hobby of being condescending and rude.
It is interesting that the W brothers chose to let the human body transcend The Matrix. If the they really wanted to blow my mind, Neo would have awoken to a reality where nothing but the cognitive functions of his brain translated into the next world, where the causalities of the environment we live in (gravity, seeing the inside of a building instead of the outside when we walk into it, etc.) were all in question, where Neo would have had to learn how to use a body completely alien to himself and interact in a universe that functioned under different rules.
The paradox of Neo "freeing" people from the Matrix is that real freedom only exists within the simulation. Those who have been enlightened have the power and will to function outside of normal environmental limitations in the "real" world. Everyone else is just a peasant.
Morpheous: The matrix is everywhere. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church...when you pay your taxes....
Neo: Oh! Shit! My TAXES. TRINITY! HELP!
heh.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
"willful suspension of disbelief" uncommon? How many times a day do we already do this, and why?
IMHO, it's a lot more common than many people are willing to admit; and the mental/philosophical "construct" we use every day is every bit as large and fascinating as the "construct" used in the movie.
Classical examples from science: At one time, the Earth was substantially flat. It also revolved around the Sun. QED.
It will be interesting to see if science per se can make anything of this, let alone go beyond its own limits. All I'm saying is that maybe the limits of science are actually the limits of the mind, given a material form.
C|N>K
I always just figured that they planted an exploit that allows them to hook their equipment into the simulation in the code that simulates the phone system, and the 'getting in/out through the phone system that doesn't exist' was just how it manifested itelf within the simulation.
:)
No big deal.
Code or be coded.
By "THE NEED", I mean every geek's need to explain everything and make sure nothing in the movie violates any of the known laws of physics, rather than just enjoying a movie?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I think that he has fallen into the same trap as many philosophers in saying that human can have consciousness because their brains are made of neurons, and machines cannot because they are just software. Well, I think he's wrong. Neurons are a lot more deterministic than he thinks, and code can be very non-deterministic, especially when it's massively parallel and asynchronous. He is foolish to dismiss emergent properties out of hand, because they are a real phenomenon. For example, it is possible to construct a very detailed model of a neuron, but that won't tell you much about the human brain. Any sufficiently complex system will have properties that are not readily seen from the properties of its constituents
As for artificial intelligence, I think that it has not come yet for two reasons: First, the difficulty of the task was severely underestimated, and we simply don't have powerful enough computers working on it. Second, the machines that we have are deterministic, since we want to know what they're doing, but at the same time we want them to do something new and unexpected. Finally, I think that one of the hallmarks of consciousness is creating an internal model of the world and using it to predict what will happen. When machines can do this, they will have at least some consciousness.
That needs explanation? Okay, I'll break it down for you:
- Trinity's breasts
- Guns. Lots of Guns.
- Gratuitous kung-fu scenes
- Trinity's breasts
- Pseudo-science which is readily comprehensible lets the hard-of-thinking think that they are intelligent.
- Pseudo-philosophy which is readily comprehensible lets the hard-of-thinking think that they are intelligent.
- Trinity's breasts
- ???
- Profit (Profit more once sequels released)
See? It had everything you need for mass marked appeal, and none of that 'having to think' crap that makes films unpopular.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
We all know (don't we?) that The Matrix is basically a somewhat mismashed version of the Perennial Philosophy. Life is a dream, God is real, Synchronicity is normal. The Matrix (like Stranger in a Strange Land) adds some SF tropes, and does a better job than most of presenting the material in an interesting way, by picking up the gnostic tropes of the Demiurge, an evil creator god who runs the system.
The interesting thing is how powerfully The Matrix affects people who watch it. Much like ritual theater has done through the ages, some kind of genuine awakening (not in the Buddhist sense, necessarily) seems to often occur.
One question is, of course, how to maintain the awakening. How to stay aware that, in some sense, life is real-and-unreal.
Another is the status of the "demiurge" - the thread (or blanket) of evil which we find in the world around us. It's not for nothing that Agents look like people from the government; there has ever been the conciet that government somehow causes spiritual enslavement, rather than being the mere result of it.
Of course, for what it's worth, I recon that the people are sleeping because it is night-time.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
mr. Lloyd that The Matrix is actually a movie and not a documentary ;-)
Some thoughts on the whole idea that keeping a bunch of humans alive to use them as an energy source doesn't make any sense, becuase conservation of energy demands you'd put more energy into keeping the humans alive than you could get out:
Question: Isn't it true that a nuclear fusion reaction, if you can figure out how to make one, takes an absolutely fantastic amount of energy to initiate and maintain? I know nothing about nuclear physics, but what i've read seems to indicate that the point of fusion is that you put a fantastic amount of energy in and you get a fantastic amount of energy back. The problem so far is that no one has figured out how to get out more energy than you put in.
So wouldn't it be logical to say that the huge mass of humans *are*, in fact, a net energy drain because energy is needed to create whatever protein the humans use for IV foodstuffs, but they are needed and maintained becuase they can at any time desired be used briefly as a massive source to pull energy from? Note that Morpheus doesn't say that humans are used as generators; he says they're used as batteries. Wouldn't it make sense to suppose that perhaps the human race encased in the Matrix is just there in case the sustained fusion reaction the machines are actually using to generate their power ever goes out and has to be restarted, or in case the machines need to start up a new reactor? Meaning basically, the Matrix is nothing more than a giant UPS? Does this make any sense at all?
None of this, of course, explains why the machines, given a level of technology that would make it possible to build both Zion and the Matrix, wouldn't just harness tidal energy as a power source! Did the americans finally blow up the moon or something?
Anyway, as far as the article's parallell processing thing goes, that seems really silly to me. If the machines have figured out how to use human brains as processors, wouldn't they build the machines themselves using human brains as processors to run the AIs on? You could claim "how do you know they aren't", but i'll tell you how i know they aren't: if they can control biological material to that extent, then they can make machines that the EMP blasts are useless against. I do, however, really like the article author's insinuation that Morpheus actually has no idea what the Matrix is for, and erroneously believes it's a power plant.
(One totally non-power-related possibility of what the Matrix could be used for: possibly the machines really just don't like the idea of making the human race extinct. They don't want the humans running around in the real world and working against the machines' designs, but they're for whatever reason not okay with just wiping the humans out; maybe they don't actually hate the humans, they just don't want the humans to be a threat. Maybe the Matrix is just a means of preservation of the human race, one that the machines get nothing positive out of except as a memento of their creators. (Hitler's original plans for the holocaust apparently stated, after everything was done, the world was conquered, and the holocaust was complete, that one single village of Jews should be left alive, sealed off from the outside world, and allowed to simply live on their lives. In Hitler's warped mind this was supposed to be some kind of preserved-in-amber cultural museum of a dead race, just so future aryan generations could know they existed. I cannot remember the exact details of this and may be partially misremembering it in that there wouldn't actually be any living people in this preserved-in-amber village. Does anyone know what i'm referring to? Anyway, possibly the Matrix is something of that sort.). Or, possibly, the machines actually believe they are working in the humans service and they put the humans into the matrix "for their own good", as some kind of highly warped overzealous implementation of Asimov's zeroth law, on the logic if the humans are trapped in a digital fantasyworld, if they knock themselves out with nuclear holoca
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
(continued where the parent got cut off) ... On the other hand, a creature might be profoundly stupid and still have subjective experiences.
Agent Smith is an example of a machine that manifests humanlike behavior--which, if you witnessed such words and gestures in a human, you would immediately regard them as showing conscious emotions and volitions. Indeed, it is the immediacy of the interpretation that is deceptive. When you see someone laugh with joy, or scream in pain, you do not knowingly infer the person's mental state from those outward signs. Rather, it is as if you see the emotions directly. Yet, we know from accomplished actors that these signs of emotions can be faked. Therefore, you are indeed making an inference, albeit an automatic one. It is a job of philosophy to scrutinize such automatic inference. When you see another human being emoting, your inference is not based wholly on what you see, but also on background information (such as whether the person is acting on the stage). More fundamentally, you are relying on the reasonable assumption that the person's behavior arises from a biological brain just as yours does. Whenever those premises are undermined, you inevitably revise any inferences you have made from the emoting. If the emoting stops and people around you clap, you realize it was a piece of street theatre, and the person was only acting out those emotions. Or, if the person has a nasty car accident that breaks open his head, revealing electronic circuitry instead of a brain, you realize that it was only an android and you may conclude that it was only simulating emotions.
A key step in the inference is the premise that the emotion plays a role in the causal loop that produces the outward words and gestures. If, instead, we have established that the observed words and gestures are wholly explained in some other way, without involving those emotions--then the inference collapses. The exterior emoting behavior then ceases to count as evidence for an interior emotional experience. If we know that an actor's words and gestures are scripted, then we cease to regard them as evidence for an inward mental state. Likewise, if we know that the words and gestures of an android or avatar are programmed, then they too cease to support any inference of a mental state.
In an android, or in a software simulation of a human such as an agent, words and gestures are produced by millions of lines of programmed software. The software advances from instruction to instruction in a deterministic manner. Some instructions move pieces of information around inside memory, others execute calculations, others send motor signals to actuators in the body. Each line of code references objective memory locations and ports in the physical hardware. It may do so symbolically, and it may do so via sophisticated data structures, for example, using the tag "vision-field" to reference the stabilized and edge-enhanced data from the eye cams. Nevertheless, nowhere in the software suite does the code break out of that objective environment and refer to the enigmatic contents of consciousness. Nor could the programmer ever do so, since she would need an objective, third-person pointer to the conscious experience--which, being a subjective, first-person thing, cannot be labeled with such a pointer.
Everything that the android says and does is fully accounted for by its software. There is no explanatory gap left for machine consciousness to fill. When the android says, "I see colors and feel emotions just as humans do," we know that those words are produced by deterministic lines of software that functions perfectly well without any involvement of consciousness. It is because of this that the android's emoting does not provide an iota of evidence for any interior mental life. All the outward signs are faked, and the programmer knows in comprehensive detail how they are faked.
This point is systematically ignored by the mathematicians and engineers who enthuse about artif
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The whole idea can fall apart, if at the end of the 3rd Matrix movie Neo will wake up once again in his bed, late for work. Then he will describe all this crazy 2.9 movie long dream in his blog, where Morpheus, Trinity and other friends with familiar nicknames will comment vividly, suggesting crazy interpretations and hinting at "too much stress", as Neo's co-workers get laid off one by one by a reputable software company. His medically educated friend will point out that all knowing Oracle is a reference to a well know database product, for which Neo writes stored procedures, constantly having problems with number of DB Agents, he sometimes referrs to "Smith". Lady in Red is a secretary of his boss.
:) :)
But then you'll say...
Hyperom.com
I think this guy put way too much thinking into a movie. I prefer the simple solutions for it, some :-)
:-)
of them matching his though...BTW, I've only
skimmed the article, don't have that much time
I agree with him on much of it, but wow, talk
about detail!
The Bioport--how can a socket in your head control your senses? How can it be inserted without killing you?
Easy enough. It fits with the massively parallel computer theory later. They need to figure out the
data transfer to and from brain, so this would be
the next step beyond that, control of the brain
to receive and send specific signals.
The Red Pill--since the pill is virtual, how can it throw Neo out of the Matrix?
This "red pill" meant to me that you are ready to
wake up from complete control. Sort of like you
were in hypnosis, now the fingers are snapped and
you're awake!
The Power Plant--can people really be an energy source?
Yes and no. I too thought of the brain power
theory. It seems to fit and makes for interesting
theories. (ie. does the Matrix run on human brains
for power and computing power as well? So humans
are feeding their own minds?)
Entering and Exiting the Matrix--why do the rebels need telephones to come and go?
This too I figured was a navagational issue. It
seems to be easier to send data around, so if you
knew of a data point, you could get to it. Why
certain ones? Perhaps so you don't go hunting
for that cordless between the cushions?
The Bugbot--what's the purpose of the bugbot?
Bugbot tells Agents where it is. Perhaps it's just
an identifier, a certain string? Look for that
string, and you've got him. Sort of how virus
scanners work?
Perceptions in the Matrix--how do the machines know what fried chicken tastes like?
Completely made up and arbitrary. Does it matter?
Neo's Mastery of the Avatar--how can Neo fly?
Neo can fly because he's mastered the Matrix. I
thought of it more as he can now reshape the
Matrix near him to do what he wants. Kind of like
a virus, or bug.
Consciousness and the Matrix--are the machines in the Matrix alive and conscious? Or are they only machines, intelligent but mindless?
Both. Give it kind of a Terminator scenario,
except keep the humans, their brains and body
come in handy. The machines are just overthrowing
the people that built them, perhaps they
got out of hand too.
Vip
...how such a terrible film like The Matrix can be such a big thing to so many people? The plot is terrible (on top of cliche and overdone), the acting is sub-par, the exposition is awkward ("EMP? What's that?" - "AI? You mean Artificial Intelligence") and the whole concept just stinks.
i can't agree with you here. i'm going to try to pick apart your argument with the intention of determining whether the movie really is terrible, or whether you just didn't like it (a perfectly valid opinion, but an opinion nonetheless.)
first point, plot. you call it terrible and cliche, and i've got to tell you, *every* plot is cliche. there are only two basic story formats in the world, as far as i've seen. "a man goes on a journey" and "a stranger comes to town." think about it. citizen kane: a man goes on a (psychological) journey. star wars: a stranger (luke) comes to town (to the rescue). mary poppins is the best example of a stranger comes to town that i can think of. so in terms of originality, i'd say the concept of the whole world being a simulation is pretty good, and certainly original in the context of mainstream cinema. star wars was entirely based (deliberately) on a plethora of old world myths, many greek and roman, and many chinese and japanese. the power of a story re-told is no lesser thatn the power of a story told.
second point, acting. you're right. the acting is sub par. so is the acting in a great deal of the films we know and love. the important thing is to consider the conext. mark hamill was awful in star wars, but he was genuine and that's what mattered. none of the kids in goonies are any good as actors, but they were so much fun that it didn't matter. keanu was hired to stand there and look cool, and let's be honest, he did that pretty well.
as i've said, context. was the matrix the next casablanca? no, of course not. but everything has its place. it took a giant step forward in the realm of visual film production, and not just with the bullet time effects. the costuming style, the modern film noir references... it was a huge contributor. it also filled a niche, imho, that star wars filled in the seventies, which was a well known film with a story about truth versus lies, right versus wrong, and a good solid non-denominational look at opression of the little people by the ruling class. that is a universal set of issues which every generation needs to have a version of, and many people feel like the matrix is ours. surely, there isn't a better example in the last five years.
in the end, you might not like it, but there's no denying that the matrix was a well made film. the fact that so many people feel so passionately about it means that there's something there which speaks to people on a fairly broad level. so before trashing it, consider whether you're just having a reaction to its popularity (like me with forrest gump: never seen it, don't want to.), or whether you just don't like it yourself. but to call it a terrible film is just unfair. especially considering that there are movies out there (like ballistic) that really deserve to be alone in the terrible film category...
there can be hours between the so and the what of the so.
In fact, Smith gives himself away when he says about the human world, "It's the smell, if there is such a thing . . . I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it." Smith's own logical integrity obliges him to doubt the existence of that noncomputable quality that humans talk about: the conscious experience of smell. When Smith says, ". . . the smell, if there is such a thing," he is exhibiting the mark of the automaton. This is corroborated when he then tells Morpheus that he can "taste your stink," revealing that Smith simply does not understand the differentiation of senses in the human mind. For a computer, data are interchangeable, but for a human, tastes, smells, colors, sounds, and feels, are irreducibly different. This fact eludes Agent Smith.
Seems that the author lacks the perspective to get this last one right. Agent Smith comes from another world completely, and is trying to express emotions and concepts that are completely alien. What must it feel like to be a noncorporeal entity that usually resides in abstract softwareland, that once in awhile has to interact in a simulation so complex that it must be mapped to its own abstract reality-experience? I mean, here you are trying to explain to Morpheus your disgust (which you do somewhat well at) over a sensory experience that has no exact analog in the simulation? If a human could feel this, would it seem more like a taste, more like a smell? A combination of the two? He is doing this best to bridge a gap that none will ever do... Morpheus can hardly go to software-land to see what it feels like there. If he did, and tried to communicate, would the evil AI's be convinced that he isn't truly sentient, because he fails to completely understand their alien and unnameable sensory experiences, of which he himself interprets as something similar to smell/taste, or sight/hearing? The "sight/hearing" experience might actually be 7 distinct sensory experiences, which the human mind confuses as a single concept.
I for one do believe that emergent properties in a complex or chaotic system can produce our much overhyped "consciousness". But even if they can't, the author himself suggests that the machines may be based on a technology that would allow it to happen. I can only assume that he is biased toward his own species, to biology... maybe that's not such a bad thing. But maybe if we had shown a little more tolerance, given a little more benefit of the doubt to Skynet, it would have decided it didn't have to nuke every damn one of us to survive.
PS On the other hand, maybe we should build a manual kill switch into every candidate computer that isn't part of the blueprints or any electronically accessible record...
He says that the reason Neo (and the others) have superhuman powers in the matrix is because they figure out ways to use their interface in unpredicted ways and use otherwise agent-only APIs to the avatar software.
That makes sense for Morpheus, Trinity, et al. They have superhuman powers that are comparable to the agents. However, it is said that the agents, finally, are limited by certain physical rules, and the reason that Neo is special is that he is not limited by those same rules. He can rewrite the matrix.
There are ten million different perfectly acceptable software-design explanations for these mechanics. However, the author has described none of them. If he's using special APIs, then the agents would be able to do the same shit.
Perhaps he can change code in the virtual machine (hehe. pun.). Perhaps he can change source. Perhaps he realized that the matrix was using strcpy() for a root-level process. Like I said, there are ten million different ways to explain this. But the author is wrong, and exhibits a simple failure to understand the actual movie.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Didn't Neo steal some guy's cell phone while trying to escape the Matrix, yet was able to use it to communicate with the Nebuchadnezzar? Didn't Cypher use his cell phone to dial a traceable number within the Matrix to tip off the Agents to their location?
I think a better explanation would be that cell phones can't be used because they are portable. Therefore, they cannot be "attached" to a specific volume of space. Moving al the information for an avatar from one network node to another as they move from room to room would be ridculously prohibitive, so the node that stores the information for a specific volume of space would not necessarily include portable objects like cell phones, or avatars.
Instead, the node containing the volume would contain references or identifiers to the objects within that space.
Therefore, cell phones cannot be used reliably to associate the node containing the volume with the node containing the avatar, since the cell phone itself may be on a third node all by itself. A hard line, however, would be a permanent fixture (or semi-permanent if the machines practice refactoring), so the node containing the volume of space would be gauranteed to be be the one that references the avatar.
The cell phone would not directly reference the avatar because it is not a volume of space (it would be like trying to find out what hotel you're staying in by asking, say, one of your shoelaces).
While I'm sure that explanation has its own set of holes, it makes more sense (to me, at least) than the one in the essay.
In a case of good timing, I just happened to put the one copy I had up on eBay at:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Hey, don't knock it. Do you know how much easier it is to explain philospical concepts to my friends when I can start by saying, "Remember that scene in the Matrix? It's like that except..." ?
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
He failed to explain how people got hooked to the Matrix in the first place. However, I do the story. It came about that the machines were to having to draw people into connecting this plug into their head. Looking for the gullible of the human species, they bought AOL.
With the largest number of customers in the world, they quickly assimilated them with offer's of DSL for $5.95 a month and said that they were phasing out dial-up service. All you needed was this chip in the back of your head. So while most people were discouraged because of the lack of dial-up they were too lazy to change their email addresses so they were the first. Next where the techies, and /.ers. While wary of giant companies the draw for cheap DSL access was too much and it was like lambs to the slaughter. Eventually with other service providers going out of business the Matrix bought them all up and integrated their clients too. The dream of world domination at hand.
The holdouts were the 20% of people who declared that they "Would never need access." They were the one's that went on to establish Zion. They had to dig deep to escape the piles of AOL CD's that were being put into their mailboxes. It was the only way to preserve their sanity, or so the legend goes.
So now you have the complete story, oh and I hire that one of the new agents in the movie is called Mr. Case, coincidence? I think not!
Actually, it's more of a Gnostic theme than a Orthodox Christianity theme. He's not Yeshua per say, but a normal human who have achieved gnosis via death and then rebirth (when he realizes he didn't really die, because it wasn't real in the first place). Jesus didn't really achieve gnosis in that way, it was a pre-planned end-run around the Blind One by Sophia. He achieved it when he was baptized (i.e. the "dove" descending on him). If you notice, he didn't start his major teachings until after that.
The Matrix also closely follows Philip K. Dick's VALIS. Read that book if you find the ideas in the Matrix interesting...it has much more "source" material (like where various ideas in the book actually come from in antiquity), and it's parallels to The Matrix are rather obvious.
If you find it REALLY interesting, check out sites like The Odyssey of Gnosis and so on.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Q. Can humans really be an energy source?
A. It's just a film.
Q. How does the Matrix know what fried chicken taste like?
A. It's just a film.
Q. Why do the rebels have to enter and exit the Matrix via a telephone system (that doesn't actually exist)?
A. It's just a film.
These films are not about some possible future. Like all SF, they're about the here-and-now, but masked. What kind of power do the machine masters get from the duped people? Political power. What are these machines, descended from human constructions? Corporations.
The whole thing is a metaphor for the world you, personally, are living in right now. You are duped by years of schooling and television to limit yourself to being what amounts to a popsicle in a jar. The corporations still need your votes, so they use the media apparatus they own to mess with your perceptions of reality so much that you actually vote for their automatons.
Cut yourself off from the media feed, and meditate to still the yammering voices, and you may reprogram your own perceptual reality, as Neo does, and discover endless possibilities inconceivable to the dupes and pink boys.
Simple, albeit not easy.
These films are not about some possible future. Like all SF, they're about the here-and-now, but masked. What kind of power do the machine masters get from the duped people? Political power. What are these machines, descended from human constructions? Corporations.
The movies are a metaphor for the world you, personally, are living in right now. You are duped by years of schooling and television to limit yourself to being what amounts to a popsicle in a jar. The corporations still need your votes, so they use the media apparatus they own to mess with your perceptions of reality so much that you actually vote for their automatons.
Cut yourself off from the media feed, and meditate to still the yammering voices, and you may reprogram your own perceptual reality, as Neo does, and discover endless possibilities inconceivable to the dupes and pink boys.
Simple, albeit not easy.
Trinity's breasts?. Dude, what version are you watching? ;)
;) ) aren't that revealing. We never see any skin, let alone cleavage. The other interesting thing about her is that she was fairly old (by action movie action actress standards) when she made this movie (32).
I mean, I like quite a bit Carrie Anne Moss, but the first word that comes to mind when I think of her is not "stacked". She's what? A "B" cup? Maybe? The outfits she wears (although they're extremely tight
I think the reason she connects so well is because she simply kicks ASS. The first time I saw the Matrix, I knew nothing about it going in I was absolutely and completely blown away by the solid ASS KICKING Trinity delivers in the first 10 minutes. I was completely sold on the movie.
It seems like Sci Fi is more open to the idea of the ass kicking lead chick. Check out Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver for more proof. I wonder why this is so much more common in Sci Fi movies than in general release action movies, which tend to be all-male affairs?
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
The allegory is only the first step of the Neo's adventure. Once he realized that the 'real world' is a model playing out in his brain (which is correct), he flips out (following white rabbit, like Alice in Wonderland) and descends into a paranoid schizophrenia. This is similar to Terminator story (or Alices' story), except that in the Terminator, the madness of the female hero (also inhereted by her son) is more explicit.
The tip-off that it is a madness are the difficulties in maintaining plausibility and logical coherence of the 'reality' the hero believes in. His limited knowledge of sciences, history and almost everything else, limits his psychotic model to the domain he is most familiar with -- a model by programmer has the computer as the basis of his scheme of the world. The rest, which he doesn't understand, is incoherently patched up (like humans as the energy source). His upbringing in the college PeeCee brainwash shows through the role of the ecology and the predictable multicultural racial and gender stereotyping in his model (which is the two parameter function, where one axis is skin/hair pigment, the other axis is testosterone -- increasing levels of skin/hair pigment and/or lower testosterone imply greater intelligence, wisdom, goodness,... lower pigment and/or larger testosterone imply dumber, more machine-like and more evil).
This is common thematic in many cyberspace stories.
:)
;)
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ie. the physical body dies when the mental projection experiences something nasty.
This used to bug me sometimes while reading fiction
Best "explanation" I came up with is that advanced cyberspaces actually replicate part of the persons mind with some hardware somewhere. (This would kind of eliminate lag as we know it
Then the function of the cranial plug or whatever
is to keep the natural counterpart in sync with the simulation.
(Inaccurate or partial simulation also requires information the other way.)
Now we can explain those "body can't live without the mind" statements. The mind is actually away in some sense and the "natural" mind is not functioning normally. When the connection to the simulation is terminated without proper protocol, the natural mind is unable to resume where the simulation left off.
Amazing what you can come up with when your imagination hit's a snag. I'm slightly proud
of my self for getting this improbable idea