How hard of sci-fi is The Matrix?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

So by “hard” are we talking strictly scientific accuracy or indulging in heavy philosophical concepts? I don’t think anyone could actually claim it’s “scientifically accurate”, but it certainly has a ton of ideas to play with more than your average sci-fi actioner.

When we're talking about the mind here, there's going to be a lot of gaps in contemporary scientific understanding. That might be where the most interesting sci-fi parameter is, and yeah we're not going to get into signal processes that the brain interprets to speculate on the rationale.

The whole general issue of what is sci-fi was kinda how I approached this thread too, so yeah it's a good question when you involve the philosophical aspect or something. With Sci-fi I feel like I expect some sort of transformative landscape with what you're riding on, and there's probably just enough of that with everything surrounding the Matrix itself.

Well, funnily enough, the temperature rises fairly linearly from the surface all the way through the lithosphere (about 410km/254mi down) by 25–30°C/km or 77-87°F/mi. Once you reached the depth of 410km, there's a sharp drop in the increase of temperature per distance down, but well... You can see it gets pretty uncomfortably warm by just 1 mile down already and it just gets worse from there, with pretty dire implications for human life before you even reached 2 mile mark.

A mile lol

[Riedquat]

The Matrix is actually exploring the concpets and consequences it raises - it's not just using a high-tech setting to tell a story that could be told in any setting, and it tries to do so by basing it off the world it's established. Where it falls down from the hard sci-fi perspective, as others have pointed out, is that a lot of its world-building is weak to nonsensical.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The Matrix is actually exploring the concpets and consequences it raises - it's not just using a high-tech setting to tell a story that could be told in any setting, and it tries to do so by basing it off the world it's established. Where it falls down from the hard sci-fi perspective, as others have pointed out, is that a lot of its world-building is weak to nonsensical.

It's possible though.