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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Probably one of the most famous examples, but the robots in The Matrix originally kept humans around as wetware CPUs using their spare brainpower. Studio execs forced the Wachowskis to change it to them using humans as batteries, even though that makes no sense. Agent Smith possessing someone in the real world in the sequels would have made a ton more sense with the original explanation.
Also instead of Neo Jesus, when he kills the squiddies outside of the matrix, that should've been because they were still in there but Zion and co didn't realise there was another layer to go.
Instead we got Revolutions.
This is what I thought was going to happen at the end of 2 and was so excited I had to watch 3 right away. I was disappointed.
Disagree, the "another layer" thing would be extremely lazy writing.
Depends on how it's done. What little EU there was for The Matrix does have it as a thing that a small percentage of redpills go crazy, thinking that Zion is just another layer of the matrix. The Oracle being another part of the system of control would also be on brand for the machines and would work well with the Architect's bit about how if he's the father of the matrix then she is its mother.
I kinda just assumed that was how it was meant to be interpreted and the other stuff was just crappy writing. The mention that Zion had been destroyed multiple times kinda implied it was just another matrix.
Unless... there is always another layer because different people require different illusions... and therefore there is no escape from the Matrix...
And "Neo has actual superpowers for no reason" wasn't?
What do you mean "no reason"? IMO it was executed and explained well.
Neo having super powers in the matrix was explained. Not how he had them in "real life".
It was because he's connected to the machine network and he has some limited interfacing with them. He could trigger their destroy sequence or whatever.
At least that's what I remember, haven't seen it for a while.
It's easier to explain, he had WiFi connection to the matrix/machines.
Man that does work so much better....
I've seen this posted a few times but I could never find a source. I think this is just what people want to believe!
Here's a source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211007003509/https://www.reddit.com/r/matrix/comments/q2xefs/batteries_not_processors/
Bottom line, original is batteries
I love the explanation. "Human body heat combined with a firm of fusion generates electricity."
So they have Fusion, and yet they're relying on body heat. Yeah, makes a lot of sense everyone knows the human body is several hundred thousand degrees.
That doesn't really work either. Human brains are not great at computing unless you are looking for "good enough," results, and only on some pretty narrow fields, facial/speech recognition, some physics interactions, etc. But worse than that... we're kind of using them. If they wanted us to compute, the whole function of the Matrix is just taking up run cycles. And you can't just coopt them during sleep, we need the rest periods ,or we literally die. Only one answer makes sense to me, it's a nature preserve. They didn't want to be responsible for destroying their creators, and the only other sapient species known to exist. So they build the Matrix to keep us docile. Then, the energy reclamation actually makes some sense. They're never going to be net positive, but assuming they are having difficulty keeping their society powered, they would be incentivesed to reclaim every watt of power they could from us to reduce our burden on their grid.
Humans are great computers, we're just not digital. Our brains are definitely analogue computers, where closer neurons or stronger synapse connections can mean higher voltage signals from one cell to another. This is a very powerful and nuanced form of computing. It's not great for exact calculation of numbers, but it is great for interpreting data, even extremely large data sets. Human brains (many animal brains really) are also really fantastic at image processing in particular.
If it's worthwhile to have a dedicated video card in your pc, then likewise, it would probably be worthwhile to have human brains in your evil robot hivemind. It would make some kids of processing much more efficient.
Human brains are excellent at computing certain things that are almost impossible for a regular computer. Having worked for years on computer vision I can tell you how hard it is to make computers realize simple stuff, heck, you need massive server farms just to do a basic object recognition that any 3 years old can already do. Sure, you can train a simple AI to recognize some objects, but it will never (currently) be as many objects or as precise as a person can instantly recognize.
The truth is human brains are excellent at what they evolved to do, i.e. pattern recognition. So much so that when trying to figure out data it's usually easier to plot the data in many different ways to see if something shows up. In fact usually when you try to do cluster analysis the first machine result is, let's say not great, but you can see that things are wrong and adjust the parameters.
As for your other point your brain does this automatically, they can just put a billboard with the thing they want analyzed and your brain (and millions of others) will give them the answer. Or they could use our dreams, even during sleep our brains are still active, and they could run any scenarios then. There are many other ideas, e.g. people playing videogames inside the matrix are actually controlling robots, or people working in forklifts are actually piloting construction robots in the real world, etc.
The original CPU idea was excellent, but computers weren't so ubiquitous back then, and the producers thought that the audience wouldn't understand it.
Humans solving CAPTCHA for the machines
Well, they could co-opt our brains in various ways.
That asinine stuff at an office? Maybe it's work the computers weren't good at.
Doing manual labor? Maybe it's controlling some robot doing a real world analog.
Some unskippable ad that you passively thought about? Maybe it represented work being done.
Maybe it is intruding on "spare" brainpower and if the balance glitches in some weird way? Reset you with "just a dream".
I think there's enough room for a "wetware" computing explanation. However I could see it being more than audiences were really prepared to think through. I think your "we need the humans safely out of the way of harming us, but we don't hate them and we'll keep them alive and engaged in a safe way" probably would have worked well, but they wanted the AIs to be cartoonishly bad in the first movie, and that would have been "too nice".
The best way to have it would be that there was a directive that they couldn't kill humans. Of course you need to deal with the issue of the agents taking bodies over and then getting them killed. But the matrix never made much sense in that regard anyway since neo and co killed so many innocent people it's ridiculous.
What was the reason for the change?
The execs thought audiences wouldn't understand using human brains for processing power.
Same kind of change was made in the Three Body Problem series. Instead of the cosmic microwave background radiation flickering for a character who is viewing it through a device, all the stars in the night sky flickered for all of humanity. Lots of yadda yaddaing the science as well in that show.
I, uh... Okay? Admittedly I was already using PCs at the time that movie came out, but I feel that's still easier to understand than using humans as batteries. I think both concepts are somewhat abstract but the brain as a bio processor is still something I can grasp more easily than trying to think of where exactly we even store out "energy" and how they'd use that. I would've been curious how normies from that time period would've seen this though.
Yeah, when the story got out (true or not) a few years after release the general consensus was that it was a bad call.
Probably also a matter of agency. Being used as a battery where you’re still in control of your mind goes over better than “we’re gonna hijack this persons mind and constantly make use of it”. It also then makes things like agents taking over people in the matrix or Smith getting out that much more impactful.
From my view, I feel it would've kinda made more sense in explaining the Matrix itself even. If it was computed by our brains, then a good portion of how we perceive it would likely just be part of our own brain processes. Like a dream. It's often weird but when we're dreaming we usually don't perceive it as weird. They wouldn't have to recreate a complete digital simulation, they just would have to hook up into our brains and let it do the world building.
Using brainpower to power the matrix makes sense, but it sounded like OP was initially just saying for spare computing period, whether for the matrix or anything else even if it wasn’t related.
"Using their spare brainpower" sounds more like them using the remaining parts of someone's brain that is not used for whatever they do use to run their consciousness within the Matrix.
I guess they've never hard of the borg...
I thought this was partially coveref when neo asks for a physics book, and they tell him one doesn't exist.