The Matrix

[phantom000]

In some of the other material they try to justify the machines using humans as energy as a way to catalyze a fusion reaction. A fusion reaction releases a huge amount of energy but needs a lot of energy to get it started, which is the main hurdle we face as we try to create a viable fusion reactor. I have heard that there are a few functional fusion reactors but they require so much energy to start the process that they can't function as a commercial power plant. So the machines need humans to start the process but they run on fusion power, like how your car runs on gasoline but you still need a battery to start it.

One might say that them using humans for this is a sign of just how screwed up the planet really is. With the sun permanently blocked out most species, plant and animal, would die off and if the surface cooled enough most of the water would freeze solid. If fossil fuels have been exhausted, you are not left with a lot of options. Except if the human city can run on geo-thermal power why not the machines?

[PerrySimm]

It's a fair nitpick. On any energy balance perspective, Morpheus' explanation for why the machines keep humans around doesn't really work - so the bit where he holds up a battery should be taken to be mere propaganda.

As for what other power sources are out there, well I don't see how a hovership like the Nebuchadnezzar runs on anything less than a fission power source. Right now all our human fusion power concepts are gigantic buildings, but perhaps advanced AI could cram it into a floating tentacle-sphere.

[ScreamingDoom]

A fusion reaction releases a huge amount of energy but needs a lot of energy to get it started, which is the main hurdle we face as we try to create a viable fusion reactor. I have heard that there are a few functional fusion reactors but they require so much energy to start the process that they can't function as a commercial power plant. So the machines need humans to start the process but they run on fusion power, like how your car runs on gasoline but you still need a battery to start it.

That's not really true at all. The reason there are no commercial fusion reactors is because it takes more energy to maintain the plasma reaction than you'd get out of it. Starting one up is fairly easy. Hell, anyone with high-school level skill can build a functioning fusor. It's just that you always end up putting more energy into the thing to maintain the fusion reaction than you get out of it.

The start up energy is pretty mild for most types of fusion (one possible exception being laser ignition fusion).

Even if they did need an initial energy boost, why then maintain the life support systems and the Matrix? After the initiation, all further energy -- including that to ignite more fusion reactors -- can come from the initial seed reactor. It'd be in an easier to get format, need far less infrastructure and maintenance, and produce many orders of magnitude more power.

One might say that them using humans for this is a sign of just how screwed up the planet really is. With the sun permanently blocked out most species, plant and animal, would die off and if the surface cooled enough most of the water would freeze solid. If fossil fuels have been exhausted, you are not left with a lot of options. Except if the human city can run on geo-thermal power why not the machines?

Yeah, and there's also standard nuclear power. If you build thorium reactors, you don't even need to build enrichment chambers (outside of an initial one to get some U-233 to start the breeding reaction) and thorium is about as prevalent as lead is in the Earth's crust.

And there's still nothing preventing the machines from just putting some solar satellites up (the Nebuchadnezzar easily gets above the cloud cover at one point, so it'd be pretty easy for the machines to do the same) and beaming down microwaves or infrared or something. Or, hell, just physically transferring batteries from orbit to ground if the clouds somehow block all electromagnetic radiation (which should result in the Earth being a frozen wasteland as opposed to just a barren one, so that's unlikely to be the case).

[Madner Kami]

Yeah, and there's also standard nuclear power. If you build thorium reactors, you don't even need to build enrichment chambers (outside of an initial one to get some U-233 to start the breeding reaction) and thorium is about as prevalent as lead is in the Earth's crust.

Just because something is abundant as sand in a (sand-) desert, doesn't mean it can be used as easily. You'd still need to mine/extract the stuff and concentrate it to use it in reactors and that needs to be both energetically and commercially viable. The basic point is correct though, humans as batteries for anything is stupid. At least within the movie's universe you can explain it away with propaganda, because humans don't know any better, due to the disconnect between pre-machine-uprising and post-uprising humanity and it actually stands to reason, that this propaganda is created by the machines themselves, to keep their little scheme going. After all, some human had to be the first to disconnect from the Matrix and how did he 1) disconnect 2) found the information 3) survived at all without any help or prior knowledge?

And there's still nothing preventing the machines from just putting some solar satellites up (the Nebuchadnezzar easily gets above the cloud cover at one point, so it'd be pretty easy for the machines to do the same) and beaming down microwaves or infrared or something. Or, hell, just physically transferring batteries from orbit to ground if the clouds somehow block all electromagnetic radiation (which should result in the Earth being a frozen wasteland as opposed to just a barren one, so that's unlikely to be the case).

Earth actually heats itself up, due to the nuclear reactions going on inside, as well as the friction caused by all that shit down there moving around. Earth could feasibly keep being relatively warm for quite a while, if the clouds blocking the sun's radiation are as effective at keeping the (infrared) radiation inside, as they are at keeping the radiation outside. Mentining those clouds, they must create a metric arseload of static charge, the machines could probably harvest that even...

[ScreamingDoom]

Just because something is abundant as sand in a (sand-) desert, doesn't mean it can be used as easily. You'd still need to mine/extract the stuff and concentrate it to use it in reactors and that needs to be both energetically and commercially viable.

True, though thorium ore is easily extracted using standard mining techniques and the refining process, while specialized, is very old chemical engineering technology (literally two centuries old). Neither of these should provide a challenge to future science robots and the energy cost for extraction and refinement is infinitesimal compared to the energy output of a thorium reactor.

The basic point is correct though, humans as batteries for anything is stupid. At least within the movie's universe you can explain it away with propaganda, because humans don't know any better, due to the disconnect between pre-machine-uprising and post-uprising humanity and it actually stands to reason, that this propaganda is created by the machines themselves, to keep their little scheme going. After all, some human had to be the first to disconnect from the Matrix and how did he 1) disconnect 2) found the information 3) survived at all without any help or prior knowledge?

Good point, actually. Unless Zion and all its life support technology was created by a wizard, how did the first human manage to survive? Building an entire underground city complete with life support without any tools in a hostile environment while (supposedly) being pursued by enemies would be difficult.

Earth actually heats itself up, due to the nuclear reactions going on inside, as well as the friction caused by all that shit down there moving around. Earth could feasibly keep being relatively warm for quite a while, if the clouds blocking the sun's radiation are as effective at keeping the (infrared) radiation inside, as they are at keeping the radiation outside. Mentining those clouds, they must create a metric arseload of static charge, the machines could probably harvest that even...

Possible, I suppose, though I'd think it'd still be more likely you'd end up with a snowball earth. Eventually, the ground itself will equalize the temperatures as a heat sink and there is unlikely to be enough thermal energy being radiated by the earth's core to keep it even close to temperate. I mean, the earth has had global cooling episodes millions of years in the past when there was a lot more fissionable material in the core and crust than there is now. I have no idea how much thermal energy radiates away from the planet currently, but I doubt it'd be enough to keep the surface temperature temperate for very long even with an electromagnetic blanket-cloud capable of blocking 100% of radiation. Might be interesting to try and calculate, though.

The static charge thing is an interesting idea. I get this amusing. image of the squids flying around with bumper-car antennas strapped to them.

And I believe the Daleks utilized static electricity as an energy source in their very first appearance, too.

[Darth Wedgius]

In some of the other material they try to justify the machines using humans as energy as a way to catalyze a fusion reaction. A fusion reaction releases a huge amount of energy but needs a lot of energy to get it started

It'd still be all kinds of messed up. You need to feed humans, who then convert the chemical energy of the food into heat. You might as well just burn the food. Also, without a sun, where is the food coming from? If they have energy to put into the food, either to power lights for plants or something more direct, why not just hook the computers running the AIs up to *that* energy source.

Anyway, IMHO this was executive meddling gone awry in a small way. Using human brains as storage makes a bit more sense, but I doubt this problem bothered a big percentage of the audience.

[Madner Kami]

Anyway, IMHO this was executive meddling gone awry in a small way. Using human brains as storage makes a bit more sense, but I doubt this problem bothered a big percentage of the audience.

Was that the original intend? Storage, not battery? I mean, that'd still be several levels of stupid, but at least it would sell well with a majority audience that thinks we don't use 90% of our brains. On the other hand, people who buy into that would buy into the battery-thing as well, because you need to have a basic understanding of biology and chemistry to see the glaringly obvious flaws in the first place.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I haven't looked into production history so I could be wrong, but I feel like they were just trying to come up with something to explain why the machines would actually bother to keep the humans around. In the first film, they don't spend a lot of time reflecting on this, they give their answer and move on.

I can see why they went with the idea of "human as battery." Humans as a disposable resource fits the story they wanted to tell, and it works well with the film's mood and philosophical themes they wanted to explore. Unfortunately no, humans as batteries do not make sense.

Frankly, if I think of how I would have done the story differently, no obvious solution comes to mind for me either. The best I can think of is leaving it as a mystery- let the fans speculate, at least until the sequel. In a sequel you could find a more specific or compelling answer.

[bronnt]

At least within the movie's universe you can explain it away with propaganda, because humans don't know any better, due to the disconnect between pre-machine-uprising and post-uprising humanity and it actually stands to reason, that this propaganda is created by the machines themselves, to keep their little scheme going. After all, some human had to be the first to disconnect from the Matrix and how did he 1) disconnect 2) found the information 3) survived at all without any help or prior knowledge?

Good point, actually. Unless Zion and all its life support technology was created by a wizard, how did the first human manage to survive? Building an entire underground city complete with life support without any tools in a hostile environment while (supposedly) being pursued by enemies would be difficult.

The implication is that not all of the humans came out of the Matrix. From the first movie, the survivors of humanity were forced underground and began construction on Zion, while many others were captured and eventually bred for the purposes of the machines. The migration underground along with the devastation of war probably cost them a great deal of their history, which is why there's some confusion about how the war precisely began.

I honestly think it makes a bit more sense if the Matrix is just about using the human brains as a network for extra computing power, rather than using human bodies as batteries. As programs gain sentience and want to propagate, they'll probably extensive server space, and you can at least imagine the number of neural connections in the human brain allows them to run programs through the human subconscious. That would also explain why the Matrix is networked, so to speak, with humans interacting with other humans within it, rather than every individual human having chemicals manipulating their dreams to keep them perpetually asleep.

The sequels actually gave us the answer that Zion itself was created by the machines using a breeding pool of human slaves from the Matrix, which explains the gaps in their history. That's where the propaganda comes in, i suppose. The machines need the Matrix for whatever reason, though it's going to break after 10 generations or so, so they keep up the pretense of the war so they can just kill all the humans again and force a new batch of humans out of the Matrix to reset the cycle. Or something-I don't understand why they actually need to keep Zion around every time they need to reset the operating system. The sequels provide answers to small question that only serve to create much bigger questions.

As an aside, one thing I really like about the Matrix is that it's established very early on that Neo chose his own name, and the implication is that everyone on the Nebuchadnezzar also chose their own names. It keeps the symbolism from being overwhelming because it's like they chose code-names corresponding to their roles: Morpheus delivers messages from the heavens, Cypher can make random cryptic comments, Trinity can be simultaneously wrathful and nurturing, Switch has an undetermined sexuality and gender, etc.

[Darth Wedgius]

Was that the original intend? Storage, not battery? I mean, that'd still be several levels of stupid, but at least it would sell well with a majority audience that thinks we don't use 90% of our brains.

My understanding is that human brains were to be used for storage, but studio execs didn't think that audiences would understand it. There's some decent storage there (about 2.5 petabytes according to a few minutes' search on Google), but explaining why that doesn't interfere with our memories... yeah. Maybe they just use those bits we would otherwise use to keep track of our car keys.

They figured using humans as batteries was easier to understand. The down side is it makes it easier to understand how stupid it is, too.