The Matrix: What's the Deal with That?

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In summary: but eventually they will realize that this premise doesn't make any sense and will just try to make the best of things.
  • #1
KillaMarcilla
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So what's the deal with that? How can people act as efficient batteries?

It seems like by the first law of thermodynamics, if you're just using the people to give off heat, you'd be better off killing them all and burning them, and then just burning any food you were going to feed them from then on

I'm thinking that they'll realize that the premise their Kung-Fu vs Robots doesn't make any sense, and eventually they'll just say that the robots were hard-coded to be unable to destroy the human race, so have decided to just make the best of things

Hey, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the matrix set in the middle ages or so, so as to make the people completely baffled by reality if they saw it? Because the average Joe or Jane today would see crazy metal things hovering around and think they're in some sort of crazy sci-fi world they could figure out, but the average Joseph or Janet from medieval England would just think he/she's in some sort of crazy Heaven/Hell/Purgatory, and be much more likely to be submissive
 
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  • #2
Originally posted by KillaMarcilla
So what's the deal with that? How can people act as efficient batteries?

Watch the movie...

It seems like by the first law of thermodynamics, if you're just using the people to give off heat, you'd be better off killing them all and burning them, and then just burning any food you were going to feed them from then on

80 years or so of energy or one burning of them? How is this more efficient? Also, once they die in the real world they are then fed to the living in the real world, burning them wouldn't allow for this process.

I'm thinking that they'll realize that the premise their Kung-Fu vs Robots doesn't make any sense, and eventually they'll just say that the robots were hard-coded to be unable to destroy the human race, so have decided to just make the best of things

For a time this wasn't enough, as the humans are now being grown, so the robots were able to destroy humans.


Hey, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the matrix set in the middle ages or so, so as to make the people completely baffled by reality if they saw it? Because the average Joe or Jane today would see crazy metal things hovering around and think they're in some sort of crazy sci-fi world they could figure out, but the average Joseph or Janet from medieval England would just think he/she's in some sort of crazy Heaven/Hell/Purgatory, and be much more likely to be submissive

When they are inside the 'real world' they cannot see...

NEO: "Why do my eyes hurt?"
MORPHEUS: "You've never used them before."

...

so they don't see the "crazy metal things hovering around". It wouldn't make sense to have it set in the Middle Ages either, because how could we create AI so long ago? Which is a main point of the movie.
 
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  • #3
Woah, woah, woah, reel yourself in there, d00d

The movie never explained how people can be efficient batteries, as I recall. It just said they are

80 years or so of energy or one burning of them? How is this more efficient? Also, once they die in the real world they are then fed to the living in the real world, burning them wouldn't allow for this process.

There's a certain amount of chemical energy stored in the food they feed someone. You can liberate that energy in the form of heat by either feeding it to someone and letting them turn most of it into heat and a little bit into fat/muscle/whatever, or you can just burn it and get all of the energy out immediately

If you have however many millions of people hooked up to the Matrix, you'd be getting enough energy that you'd be better off with a few power plants than a million people, since a power plant could put out anything from a megawatt to a gigawatt, whereas a person usually puts out about 70 watts of power.

If you just had one person, it might be easier to keep him/her around than to make a 70 W fire that turns a turbine. If you had a million people, though, you'd be better off with a single 70 megawatt power plant, since it'd be easier to keep running and it wouldn't revolt against you

You could grow whatever cheap crop you want if you were just burning the plants in an efficient engine, instead of having to grow some fancy stuff that'll provide people with whatever balanced diet they need

For a time this wasn't enough, as the humans are now being grown, so the robots were able to destroy humans.

What?

The robots could obviously destroy everyone they have hooked up at any time, if they could get a better power source, UNLESS they were hard-wired to be unable to do so

When they are inside the 'real world' they cannot see...

NEO: "Why do my eyes hurt?"
MORPHEUS: "You've never used them before."

...

so they don't see the "crazy metal things hovering around". It wouldn't make sense to have it set in the Middle Ages either, because how could we create AI so long ago? Which is a main point of the movie.

Once again: What?

What the heck?

Did you even think before you responded? Jesus, man

If the Matrix's virtual reality is set so that everyone thinks they're in the middle ages, if someone happened to come across the real world, they'd be way more disoriented than they would if they'd been living in the age of sci-fi

Do you understand?

Sorry if I have a bit of a bad attitude, but damn, man, you oughtta give things a smidge of thought before you say them

Unless you just aren't familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, in which case it's not as much your fault
 
  • #4
Originally posted by KillaMarcilla
Sorry if I have a bit of a bad attitude, but damn, man, you oughtta give things a smidge of thought before you say them.
Well that's just plain unAmerican. :wink:
 
  • #5
Originally posted by KillaMarcilla
Once again: What?

What the heck?

Did you even think before you responded? Jesus, man

If the Matrix's virtual reality is set so that everyone thinks they're in the middle ages, if someone happened to come across the real world, they'd be way more disoriented than they would if they'd been living in the age of sci-fi

Do you understand?

Sorry if I have a bit of a bad attitude, but damn, man, you oughtta give things a smidge of thought before you say them

Unless you just aren't familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, in which case it's not as much your fault

Maybe you should take this advice from Mystery Science Theater 3000:

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
:smile:
 
  • #6
ha ha ha

Yeah, I have to admit that the movie wasn't bad even though the premise didn't make much sense

Although I don't know if I really like the way they kill so many people in cold blood.. man, it's so messed up that when they showed it on Fox, they took out the line where the security guard sees Neo's coat full of weapons and he says "Holy ****!", but they left in the part where Neo and the girl kill like a dozen guards for no good reason

I don't know about you, but I'd rather my children see someone saying a word, no matter what word it is, than see the heroes of a movie killing people like that..
 
  • #7
Originally posted by KillaMarcilla
The movie never explained how people can be efficient batteries, as I recall. It just said they are

There's a certain amount of chemical energy stored in the food they feed someone. You can liberate that energy in the form of heat by either feeding it to someone and letting them turn most of it into heat and a little bit into fat/muscle/whatever, or you can just burn it and get all of the energy out immediately

If you have however many millions of people hooked up to the Matrix, you'd be getting enough energy that you'd be better off with a few power plants than a million people, since a power plant could put out anything from a megawatt to a gigawatt, whereas a person usually puts out about 70 watts of power.

If you just had one person, it might be easier to keep him/her around than to make a 70 W fire that turns a turbine. If you had a million people, though, you'd be better off with a single 70 megawatt power plant, since it'd be easier to keep running and it wouldn't revolt against you

MORPHEUS: "The human body generates more bio- electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 B.T.U.'s of body heat."
it then goes into slightly more detail of how it is done.

It's still just a movie, it doesn't have to make logical sense, although, we don't know how machines operate. Perhaps burning wouldn't work because of the machines makeup and how they use energy?

I'm not sure about your logic, if it would be better to keep one person alive as a battery then it would be to burn them, wouldn't it also hold that in larger proportions it would be more efficient to keep them? Also, how, if you burned them, would you keep the process going, the people, after they die, are fed to the living, so the process will never end? Why change a process that works also, wether one way would be more efficient, if it works how it is there is no need to change.

What?

The robots could obviously destroy everyone they have hooked up at any time, if they could get a better power source, UNLESS they were hard-wired to be unable to do so[/b

Just a misunderstanding. Why would they destroy everything in the first place? If you have bugs in your crop do you destroy the whole crop to keep the bugs from ruining some of it?

Once again: What?

What the heck?

Did you even think before you responded? Jesus, man

If the Matrix's virtual reality is set so that everyone thinks they're in the middle ages, if someone happened to come across the real world, they'd be way more disoriented than they would if they'd been living in the age of sci-fi

Do you understand?

Sorry if I have a bit of a bad attitude, but damn, man, you oughtta give things a smidge of thought before you say them

Unless you just aren't familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, in which case it's not as much your fault

There is no reason for insulting, it won't help in future posts if you insult people who don't understand what you are saying.

You made it appear as, why isn't the matrix MOVIE set in the middle ages, not simply the matrix [as a reality]. In the movie it is said that a man was put in the matrix to change it how he wants, he freed the first of them. There is no "stumbling" upon the matrix, you are freed and you realize.
 
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  • #8
KillaMarcilla, they didn't kill the guards for no reason. They were after Morpheus, who would have otherwise been killed by the Agents.
 
  • #9
Originally posted by Mentat
KillaMarcilla, they didn't kill the guards for no reason. They were after Morpheus, who would have otherwise been killed by the Agents.

Yes, and only after he had given up the codes to get into Zion!
 
  • #10
STOP GIVING PLOT SPOILERS!
 
  • #11
There is a given amount of energy on planet earth. There is no way to make energy appear. So what matters is how efficiently this energy can be harnessed. The human body transforms the potential energy in food plus oxygen to produce heat. That heat could be harnessed to turn turbines or perhaps absorbed in some other way, kind of like the photoelectric effect, to produce electricity etc.

The question is, how efficient is that? I'm not entirely sure. However, burning food is essentially the same as burning coal, as we do. So, when you burn something, do you release more energy than the biological processes would? If not, than keep them as they are, reproducing etc.
 
  • #12
Whoa! Hold on there, you mean to tell me that the Matrix wasn't a documentary?

Well great, so now I've been wasting the past few weeks learning tossy old Kung Fu and getting beaten up when finding it's of negligeable use in a good old fashioned street fight for nothing!

Well, at least I have my DeLorean still, unless someone wants to tell me that Back to the Future is a load of old rubbish as well.
 
  • #13
You must believe!

I believe the human body produces a 100W of heat and from what i recall from the movie they were not batteries. Our bodies give off heat which the machines converted to electrical energy from what i remember but anything is possible. I can recall when before Voltas death he had the knowledge to light every house in the us/world with his amazing electrical principles but unfortuately that died with him in 1826.

So much one man posses its a shame all that knowledge died with him; life with AC would had been quite interesting i'd say.

Later,
Dx :wink:
BTW...I loved the movie and can't wait till M2
 
  • #14
Originally posted by FZ+
STOP GIVING PLOT SPOILERS!

We're talking about the first Matrix, you silly goose.
 
  • #15
You mean there's two of those movies?

Originally posted by Tom
We're talking about the first Matrix, you silly goose.
Thanks for the tip, I haven't seen that one either!
 
  • #16
Since we lost track of the topic, has anybody read the original script? It is very different than the movie! I think if you are serious about the movie you should read the script, it fills in some not-so-important gaps.
 
  • #17


Originally posted by BoulderHead
Thanks for the tip, I haven't seen that one either!
Case in point.
 
  • #18
It's 4 years old!
 
  • #19
Time is relative. Don't you learn anything from your relativity classes?
 
  • #20


Originally posted by FZ+
Case in point.

I'll stay out of this thread and rely on my lack of memory so I won’t remember what’s supposed to happen when I watch it.

I see it is four years old , good grief, I'm really behind the times !
 
  • #21
if you remember early on when neo meets morpheus, morpheus shows neo the real planet, which is a wasteland. i believe he said "the machines torched the sky" as taking away the capability to grow food would severly cramp the humans' ability to survive. and i figure the machines used up all of the Earth's natural resources before they turned to growing humans on the farms.

i always wondered how morpheus and folks got in and detached neo from his pod.
 
  • #22
Originally posted by jb
if you remember early on when neo meets morpheus, morpheus shows neo the real planet, which is a wasteland. i believe he said "the machines torched the sky" as taking away the capability to grow food would severly cramp the humans' ability to survive.

Oi, veh.

Morpheus said, "We don't know who struck first, but we know it was us that scorched the sky."

That was because the machines were reliant on solar power. It was thought they couldn't survive without it, but they found a new source of energy in humans themselves.

i always wondered how morpheus and folks got in and detached neo from his pod.

Remember the "red pill"? Morpheus said it was part of a trace program to find Neo's location in the Matrix. Once they found him, they hacked into have him removed and dumped in the sewer where the Nebucadnezzar would pick him up.

"Welcome...to the real world."

Two more days! Boo-yahh!
 
  • #23
Originally posted by jb
i always wondered how morpheus and folks got in and detached neo from his pod.

Originally, there was a man put in the matrix, the first person, that freed the first person, to allow them to be freed. Morpheus is able to get in because it is just the world, as WE know it today, that the pods are in. Tom answered you, but I realized you may have meant how did they actually get into the place Neo was being grown in.

Two days?! Poor Tom:smile: I'm going tomorrow (the 14th)!

In the words of TANK:

"...this is an exciting time."

I have heard the end of M2 leaves you hanging:frown:
 
  • #24
Originally posted by kyle_soule
I have heard the end of M2 leaves you hanging:frown:

Not for long, because M3 is out this November.
 
  • #25
Originally posted by Tom

Morpheus said, "We don't know who struck first, but we know it was us that scorched the sky."

That was because the machines were reliant on solar power. It was thought they couldn't survive without it, but they found a new source of energy in humans themselves.

my mistake, it's been a while.

Remember the "red pill"? Morpheus said it was part of a trace program to find Neo's location in the Matrix. Once they found him, they hacked into have him removed and dumped in the sewer where the Nebucadnezzar would pick him up.
[/B]

yes, but wouldn't the nebucadnezzar run the risk of running into sentries there? you'd think there would be some kind of security system to protect against that. especially since the agents knew they wanted neo, the machines should have bumped up security around his pod.
 
  • #26
Originally posted by jb
yes, but wouldn't the nebucadnezzar run the risk of running into sentries there? you'd think there would be some kind of security system to protect against that. especially since the agents knew they wanted neo, the machines should have bumped up security around his pod.

You're making me strain to remember now, but I think the agents wanted Morpheus to get Neo, because that was how they planned to get Morpheus. They knew that Morpheus had contacted Neo and they tried to get Neo to make a deal to turn Morpheus in. Since Neo refused, they put a tracking bug in Neo. Then, Trinity took it out of him, but we don't know if the agents knew that.

I think their plan was to let Neo go, and then find Morpheus that way.
 
  • #27
Originally posted by jb
my mistake, it's been a while.



yes, but wouldn't the nebucadnezzar run the risk of running into sentries there? you'd think there would be some kind of security system to protect against that. especially since the agents knew they wanted neo, the machines should have bumped up security around his pod.

The Agents are hardwired to the matrix, they aren't actually helpers of the machines, I don't think so at least. You must deploy sentinels, they don't just hover around to protect, also, the Nebuchadnezzar wasn't actually doing the dirty work of getting Neo from inside the robots 'lair'.
 
  • #28
Maybe they already made the alliance with the guy whose name I forgot, and so thought they could get him back anyway? ie. they didn't want to attack the ship, as they wished to capture Morpheus inside the matrix...
 
  • #29
Originally posted by FZ+
Maybe they already made the alliance with the guy whose name I forgot, and so thought they could get him back anyway? ie. they didn't want to attack the ship, as they wished to capture Morpheus inside the matrix...

Good point. Cypher and Agent Smith had been plotting this before they discovered the plan to free Neo's mind (first scene of the movie). The agents are ONLY inside the matrix, so they have no choice but to capture Morpheus there also.
 
  • #30
Originally posted by Tom
Yes, and only after he had given up the codes to get into Zion!

Yeah, and another point is that these people were slaves, without any chance of being liberated (and, on top of that, they were all potential agents!).
 
  • #31
Originally posted by jb
my mistake, it's been a while.



yes, but wouldn't the nebucadnezzar run the risk of running into sentries there? you'd think there would be some kind of security system to protect against that. especially since the agents knew they wanted neo, the machines should have bumped up security around his pod.

They had to be in and out quick, as their only defense against the machines is the EMP device on the ship.
 
  • #32
oh God.. thread.. out of control.. too long to read... ABORT

ABORT
 
  • #33
Originally posted by KillaMarcilla
So what's the deal with that? How can people act as efficient batteries?

even if they are efficient bateries (or heaters, whatever...) there's still a problem with that system. The food for the people in the "battery status" was liquified dead peple (as I remember ). So it uses humans to feed humans so that they can reproduce.. doesn't that sound a bit like perpetuum mobile ?
 
  • #34
Ok, I'll begin a vain attempt to patch up the shoddy science behind the power generator idea.

Morpheus et al were lied to. Perhaps by the oracle, I dunno. The humans were not trapped for power at all - instead, the machines use highly efficient fusion power generators. However, the humans are required because the Matrix represents the ultimate computer. By the networking of so many minds, the machines achieve a level of complexity and intuition that would have taken thousands of years to evolve. That's why the humans are kept conscious, and that explains the state of the Matrix. The matrix is not in fact created by the machines, but is in fact a collective dream of mankind. Hence as different people dream differently, Neo can effect the matrix. Morpheus et al wanted to believe in a reason to leave the matrix. They wanted to think of themselves as slaves to the machines, when they control the machines themselves. Hence they dream up the idea, and the matrix feeds it back to them.
 

1. What is "The Matrix"?

"The Matrix" is a science fiction movie released in 1999 that follows the main character, Neo, as he discovers the truth about his reality and becomes a part of a rebellion against oppressive machines that control humanity.

2. Is "The Matrix" based on a true story?

No, "The Matrix" is a work of fiction and not based on a true story. It was written and directed by the Wachowski siblings.

3. What is the concept of the Matrix in the movie?

The Matrix is a simulated reality created by machines to control and manipulate human minds, keeping them docile while using their bodies as an energy source.

4. Why is the movie called "The Matrix"?

The word "matrix" refers to a complex system or structure that contains and supports something else. In the movie, the Matrix is the simulated reality that contains and supports the enslaved human population.

5. Are there any sequels to "The Matrix"?

Yes, "The Matrix" has two sequels: "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", both released in 2003. These movies continue the story of Neo and the rebellion against the machines.

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