DRE
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Doom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:57 AM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: Matrix Question
> 1) The machines have a "soft spot" for humans in that we created them.
They
> may not want to see humans exterminated, just controlled. They may not
have
> meant to generate power in the first place, but after centuries (or
> millennia) of keeping us alive and controlled they decided (as any good
> machine would) to make use of the obvious resources until finally we were
> their only resource for power.
That was *totally* not what I got out of the movie. Of course, it's
been a while since I watched the first one, but I was under the
impression that they didn't have so much a "soft spot" for us as it was
a combination of revenge motive and (from the last one) an efficiency
issue. I also seem to recall that after humans "scorched the sky" the
machines turned to us as a source of energy. This was toward the end of
the Machine War.
> 2) Although all we've seen in the power-generation aspects of the farms it
> may also be that the human mind is also used as a data storage and
> processing device. Lower organisms wouldn't work as well in this regard.
> You could also say that dreaming is actually the by product of the mind at
> rest running program packets for the machines like an idle desktop running
> "seti at home". It would be interesting (although too late in the movies)
> to find out that "unplugged" humans never dream.
One wonders if the data processing ability that could be harvested
during sleep would really balance the amount required to maintain the
Matrix(es).
> 3) Since the power plants weren't constructed until much later, after the
> war ("we burned the sky" in the movie - presumably a reference to nuclear
> winter) we might assume that animal life had become more than a little
> scarce. Maybe electric eels (and pretty much everything else) were just
> simply extinct.
Except the "much later" bit, this I agree with.
> 4) Even if there were electric eels around there's still basic science to
> consider. The electricity generated by an eel isn't really suitable to
our
> (or presumably the machines) purposes, its direct current and packs a
jolt,
> but is extremely quick and may not be useful to actually power something
> (it's so fast that it really couldn't, for example, be used to charge a
> battery). Slow and steady may win the race with the "special type of
> fusion" developed by the machines (remember it's not the human body per se
> that generates the power but rather the bodies power that does something
to
> allow these fusion reactors to work).
Hmm. Humans as fusion enablers isn't something that I recall, but I
don't recall a counterexample either, so I'll stipulate.
> Also there's still entropy to consider - the eels would have to eat
> voraciously to create the charges, perhaps more than the equivalent in
> humans would have to eat. You never can get more energy that you put in.
> Also much of an eels body is dedicated to the electrical organs which just
> aren't good eating - recycling the eels bodies for food for the others may
> not be as practical as with humans.
Of course, this is all a crock without the assumption that enslaving
humans makes the special fusion work (which doesn't really make sense,
anyway). Thermodynamics tells us that any energy processing system
(people, internal combustion engines, the gerbil in my PC) waste energy.
Therefore, the machines would be better off finding a way to directly
convert whatever it was they were feeding us to energy, rather than
using humans (which are pretty inefficient anyway).
> How's that for over thinking a joke? ;^)
Clearly not enough for me. :->
--benD
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