this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Human CPU originally, but the directors thought people were too stupid to know what that meant at the time (which might have been right, nobody I knew had a computer at that time) and changed the human brain neural network into “you’re all batteries actuallly”
That makes way more sense. Whenever I watched it I always thought that there must be way more efficient sources of electricity.
It makes way, way more sense in my opinion.
Humans are terrible batteries, but the processing power of our brain on the other hand is amazing.
Based on the FLOPS (Floating point operations per second) today's supercomputer powered by a nuclear power station does not match the processing power of a single brain, powered by a few potatoes.
It has to be potatoes though. That's very important.
I had 7 large ones yesterday. So basically I am a potatoprocessor
It also makes the plot a bit more meta, where the simulation they're all in is simulated using the brains of the people inside it.
It even explains why the agents can jump between people. They are already running on their brains.
Even checks out on the allegorical level. The matrix is the capitalist system we're stuck in.
A super computer performs independently of its power source. Power is power.
I think the point was more about the quantity of power required to achieve results, rather than the specific sources given. IE: you can run a brain on a few potatoes, but you can't run a super computer on the same due to a lack of sufficient power output.
Consequently you can't really run a human brain on nuclear power either, though that's probably due to radiation poisoning moreso than a lack of required power generated.
What if you use the nuclear plant to power grow lights in a hydroponic potato farm?
I like it, if we can look to harness all of the potatoes processing power, which I'm sure alone is not much (but according to the physics in portal 2, is enough to power a minor AI instance), we can do away with both having to incubate and feed the pesky human processors as well as having to run a matrix at all. I presume a potato is content with its life regardless of manipulation.
Would've made the films far less interesting though.
Power: aight I'm out
Computer: fucking dies
Yea, that's akin to a perpetual movement machine : you can't get more out of the system than what you put in ! So the squid's power grid would be in deficit. And they would have to borrow from GERMANY because THEY invested in renewables
We thought that to but turned out no it's humans.
To be fair, I have no idea what a CPU is
They could've dumbed down the CPU explanation into something as simple as "the human mind is creative enough to make connections robots can't conceive of, so the machines need us to build new patterns to sustain the matrix" and that would've been enough. At least it wouldn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Also I heard it wasn't the Wachowskis who wanted the change, but they got pressured from some suit who said it was too complicated.
They didn't even have to use the term, just say the machines use human brains to process data or something.
Ok I could have grasped that
I was told it's rocks talking to other rocks.