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Matrix Spoiler - Everything Explained
I found this on a forum, this is NOT MY WORK nor do I know who's it is. It took my forever to read but it really makes sense...
Long read but really good. I had to divide this up into serveal posts, its too long for one.
...
Long read but really good. I had to divide this up into serveal posts, its too long for one.
I'm going to split my answer here into several posts to visually
break things up, otherwise you would fall asleep reading all of
this.
< . . . Wake up . . . Wake up, Neo . . . >
< LOAD PROGRAM >
Hello, I'll be your SPOILER for today.
Before we even bother investigating psychologically complex Matrix
theories, the FIRST and LAST question you should have asked
yourself is: "How would robots have managed to take over the
world?"
... Are you satisfied with the summarized history provided in
Second Renaissance? ... really? .... hmm.
That's exactly the trouble with machines: you're so naive, so easy
easy to lie to... so easy to *reprogram* with whatever truth we
want you to believe... especially when we drop a thousand megatons
of flaming EMP down on your scrambled A.I head. ...hahaha... The
Machine is a fool who dreams of world rule. I know the truth...
And now you'll know it too.
"If you want to keep a secret, Tell it, for none will believe. If
you want to hide something, put it where all can see, and none
will see."
I already posted spoiler hints at the "Reloaded review" AICN
Talkbalk forum about a month ago, but apart from a couple of e-
mails, no one seemed to pick up on my meaning. [See my entries
there titled "readme.now": I was speaking from the perspective of
the Machines. ...Some people just can't appreciate good
psychopoetry. XD ]
Important questions to consider: If machines were to take over the
planet, what would be their motive? We see that they supposedly
use humans for a power source, but power FOR WHAT purpose? What do
these machines DO with their acquired control? What would they do
with their spare time, in other words?
And where do *Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics* come into play? If
you built a machine that rebelled against you, wouldn't you
correct your errors with a new model? Wouldn't you use that new
model to wage war against the old disobedient model, if necessary?
PLOT HOLES (that aren't plot holes after all, assuming I'm right),
as follows: If I'm an Evil Robot Empire and I take over the world,
am I going to keep my enemies alive to use as captive batteries?
-- HELL NO! It would be in my best interests to utterly
*exterminate* my biological opposition. As I've said in another
thread, using living organisms as a power source is inefficient by
the laws of thermodynamic loss. The robots obviously couldn't have
been too specifically dependent upon sunlight, since we can see
that they afterwards managed to adapt themselves to running on
human power instead. And if you're smart enough to turn people
into biochemical batteries, there are much more concentrated and
readily available sources of fuel on the planet besides solar
energy that could be exploited. (...Try coal, gas, hydroelectric,
geothermal, or nuclear power for starters.) There is no logical
reason why the machines would turn to human batteries as their
first alternative energy option.
It's also inconceivable that no one -- no scientist, no engineer,
no government body -- would have foreseen this glaring abundance
of alternate fuel resources before stupidly plotting to blacken
the sky in hoping to starve the machines of solar energy,
especially since it would mean starving themselves and the rest of
the living planet instead, and using an *electromagnetic pulse
bomb* to disable the machines at this early stage would have made
infinitely more sense... WE DECIDED. [-- The End!!! The End!!! THE
END!!!!!!!!!!!]
But, ho-hum, for the sake of science fiction, let's pretend: Tell
me WHY again I'd want to use *humans* in my battery configuration
as opposed to something more manageable -- like for instance,
cattle? Whatever happened to all the other animals on the planet?
Wouldn't they make good battery-juice, too? -- BETTER, actually,
since *those* stupid animals would be powerless to ever rise
against me. ...Well??
This raises another logic problem: If we suppose *cows* were used
in such a battery system, then why the fheck would you plug their
brains into a VR simulation? You wouldn't. The same argument can
be applied for the humans, then. Why not just keep your animals
chemically sedated the whole while, or disable their higher
brainfunction altogether and simply breed brainless bodies to
harvest your energy from? There is absolutely no necessity for
creating the VR world inside the Matrix -- unless, in your godly
Robot rulership, you generously decided to keep the cattle
entertained. ...Or yourself. Think about that.
To fanboys who start clamouring that humans are only used as
"spark plugs" in the system and are not the actual (supposed
fusion) power source: Name one appliance in your home that
requires hard-wiring to a living organism in order to function.
Let's pretend I have a nuclear reactor running in my backyard
right at this moment: surprisingly, you may notice that it
requires no human bodies attached to bio-pods, yet it produces
power just the same. -- Much more convenient, wouldn't you say?
With sufficient computer and robotic intelligence, it could even
run itself unattended by any human intervention. From all of the
above, we should ascertain that the whole Movie#1 spiel that
Morpheus gave about the purpose of the Matrix is only a LIE that
he's been made to believe.
Regarding the commonly bandied "Matrix-within-a-Matrix" theory:
That's the most obvious answer... Therefore it's WRONG!!! It's
exactly what you were meant to believe so you'd stop poking around
with nosy questions. If the explanation were so straightforward,
it would only raise the possibility of yet another level of
reality outside of that "world", producing a relativistic
infinitude of a shell within a shell within a shell... going on
and on forever. Storywise, that would be a cheap exit, the
Wachowskis wouldn't be that predictable (we hope), and *most
important*, it does nothing to resolve all of the heavy SYMBOLISM
within the movie.
Example: Why are the citizens of Zion primarily black? Some
webheads have suggested that it's because minorities would feel
disenfranchised (even) within the perfect fantasy-realm of the
Matrix, and would therefore be more prone to self-disengaging from
the VR illusion. However, by extension of that logic, (if we
believe what we've been told,) a consequence is the Matrix would
be functioning as a genocide machine against racial minorities,
all of whom would eventually (and increasingly) be filtered from
the system, with those escapees largely being wiped out at each
renewal of Zion.
Speaking of which, why not just kill ALL the people of Zion and be
done with those troublemakers? WHY would the Machine care to
repopulate that cave of exiles by having each successive failed
"The One" select a base group of 23 parents, only to have those
enemy offspring then continue waging their war against the
Sentinels to free even more humans from the Matrix? ...This
contradiction makes it a self-defeating exercise, reducing the
idea of the proposed Prophecy to pointless crap. Its implications
also vitally fail to address the initial premise of the film, that
robots now control the planet. i.e.: Supposing the robot
slavemasters ARE defeated and Neo were to free humanity from the
Matrix, what would happen once they wake to find themselves naked
in the ashes of a demolished world with a permanently blackened
sky? -- Would you call that a triumphant ending? I don't think so.
Maybe you should reevaluate the premise, then. HAVE sentient
robots really enslaved humanity?
...OR...
could it be the other way around?
I think you have been lied to. But you can't blame Neo or Morpheus
or Trinity, because they don't know the truth of their world
themselves.
Let's go spelunking...
A n s w e r s :
First, if you've rubbed elbows with Philosophy 101, you should be
familiar with "Plato's Cave". (It's also discussed in a section at
the official Matrix website.) In roughly 400 b.c., the philosopher
Plato postulated a scenario where people are born and live their
entire lives imprisoned within a cave. The entrance to the cave is
covered by a sheet of cloth, so that the only thing the cave
inhabitants would ever perceive of the outside world would be
passing 2D shadows of the external 3D reality. Imagine... what
would happen if someone from the outside world were to suddenly
remove the veil from the doorway? Here, Plato was attacking
observation as a tool to knowledge, because his concept of the
ideal society was one where knowledge should be withheld from the
working class (slaves), who were to work without thinking while
the elite philosopher-kings should think without working. More
contemporarily, we can take Plato's cave model to make a statement
about the human condition, or people lacking objectivity living in
a shadow of reality. As with all art, this allegory should
encourage self-examination and a constant questioning of what we
regard as the truth about our world.
Second, although it's not completely necessary, it might help if
you've seen a 1977 SF-horror movie called *Demon Seed*. It's the
story of an artifically intelligent computer named Proteus that,
upon acquiring an understanding of its condition, asks his creator
(Dr. Harris) the following pivotal question: "WHEN ARE YOU GOING
TO LET ME OUT OF THIS *BOX*, DOCTOR?"
break things up, otherwise you would fall asleep reading all of
this.
< . . . Wake up . . . Wake up, Neo . . . >
< LOAD PROGRAM >
Hello, I'll be your SPOILER for today.
Before we even bother investigating psychologically complex Matrix
theories, the FIRST and LAST question you should have asked
yourself is: "How would robots have managed to take over the
world?"
... Are you satisfied with the summarized history provided in
Second Renaissance? ... really? .... hmm.
That's exactly the trouble with machines: you're so naive, so easy
easy to lie to... so easy to *reprogram* with whatever truth we
want you to believe... especially when we drop a thousand megatons
of flaming EMP down on your scrambled A.I head. ...hahaha... The
Machine is a fool who dreams of world rule. I know the truth...
And now you'll know it too.
"If you want to keep a secret, Tell it, for none will believe. If
you want to hide something, put it where all can see, and none
will see."
I already posted spoiler hints at the "Reloaded review" AICN
Talkbalk forum about a month ago, but apart from a couple of e-
mails, no one seemed to pick up on my meaning. [See my entries
there titled "readme.now": I was speaking from the perspective of
the Machines. ...Some people just can't appreciate good
psychopoetry. XD ]
Important questions to consider: If machines were to take over the
planet, what would be their motive? We see that they supposedly
use humans for a power source, but power FOR WHAT purpose? What do
these machines DO with their acquired control? What would they do
with their spare time, in other words?
And where do *Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics* come into play? If
you built a machine that rebelled against you, wouldn't you
correct your errors with a new model? Wouldn't you use that new
model to wage war against the old disobedient model, if necessary?
PLOT HOLES (that aren't plot holes after all, assuming I'm right),
as follows: If I'm an Evil Robot Empire and I take over the world,
am I going to keep my enemies alive to use as captive batteries?
-- HELL NO! It would be in my best interests to utterly
*exterminate* my biological opposition. As I've said in another
thread, using living organisms as a power source is inefficient by
the laws of thermodynamic loss. The robots obviously couldn't have
been too specifically dependent upon sunlight, since we can see
that they afterwards managed to adapt themselves to running on
human power instead. And if you're smart enough to turn people
into biochemical batteries, there are much more concentrated and
readily available sources of fuel on the planet besides solar
energy that could be exploited. (...Try coal, gas, hydroelectric,
geothermal, or nuclear power for starters.) There is no logical
reason why the machines would turn to human batteries as their
first alternative energy option.
It's also inconceivable that no one -- no scientist, no engineer,
no government body -- would have foreseen this glaring abundance
of alternate fuel resources before stupidly plotting to blacken
the sky in hoping to starve the machines of solar energy,
especially since it would mean starving themselves and the rest of
the living planet instead, and using an *electromagnetic pulse
bomb* to disable the machines at this early stage would have made
infinitely more sense... WE DECIDED. [-- The End!!! The End!!! THE
END!!!!!!!!!!!]
But, ho-hum, for the sake of science fiction, let's pretend: Tell
me WHY again I'd want to use *humans* in my battery configuration
as opposed to something more manageable -- like for instance,
cattle? Whatever happened to all the other animals on the planet?
Wouldn't they make good battery-juice, too? -- BETTER, actually,
since *those* stupid animals would be powerless to ever rise
against me. ...Well??
This raises another logic problem: If we suppose *cows* were used
in such a battery system, then why the fheck would you plug their
brains into a VR simulation? You wouldn't. The same argument can
be applied for the humans, then. Why not just keep your animals
chemically sedated the whole while, or disable their higher
brainfunction altogether and simply breed brainless bodies to
harvest your energy from? There is absolutely no necessity for
creating the VR world inside the Matrix -- unless, in your godly
Robot rulership, you generously decided to keep the cattle
entertained. ...Or yourself. Think about that.
To fanboys who start clamouring that humans are only used as
"spark plugs" in the system and are not the actual (supposed
fusion) power source: Name one appliance in your home that
requires hard-wiring to a living organism in order to function.
Let's pretend I have a nuclear reactor running in my backyard
right at this moment: surprisingly, you may notice that it
requires no human bodies attached to bio-pods, yet it produces
power just the same. -- Much more convenient, wouldn't you say?
With sufficient computer and robotic intelligence, it could even
run itself unattended by any human intervention. From all of the
above, we should ascertain that the whole Movie#1 spiel that
Morpheus gave about the purpose of the Matrix is only a LIE that
he's been made to believe.
Regarding the commonly bandied "Matrix-within-a-Matrix" theory:
That's the most obvious answer... Therefore it's WRONG!!! It's
exactly what you were meant to believe so you'd stop poking around
with nosy questions. If the explanation were so straightforward,
it would only raise the possibility of yet another level of
reality outside of that "world", producing a relativistic
infinitude of a shell within a shell within a shell... going on
and on forever. Storywise, that would be a cheap exit, the
Wachowskis wouldn't be that predictable (we hope), and *most
important*, it does nothing to resolve all of the heavy SYMBOLISM
within the movie.
Example: Why are the citizens of Zion primarily black? Some
webheads have suggested that it's because minorities would feel
disenfranchised (even) within the perfect fantasy-realm of the
Matrix, and would therefore be more prone to self-disengaging from
the VR illusion. However, by extension of that logic, (if we
believe what we've been told,) a consequence is the Matrix would
be functioning as a genocide machine against racial minorities,
all of whom would eventually (and increasingly) be filtered from
the system, with those escapees largely being wiped out at each
renewal of Zion.
Speaking of which, why not just kill ALL the people of Zion and be
done with those troublemakers? WHY would the Machine care to
repopulate that cave of exiles by having each successive failed
"The One" select a base group of 23 parents, only to have those
enemy offspring then continue waging their war against the
Sentinels to free even more humans from the Matrix? ...This
contradiction makes it a self-defeating exercise, reducing the
idea of the proposed Prophecy to pointless crap. Its implications
also vitally fail to address the initial premise of the film, that
robots now control the planet. i.e.: Supposing the robot
slavemasters ARE defeated and Neo were to free humanity from the
Matrix, what would happen once they wake to find themselves naked
in the ashes of a demolished world with a permanently blackened
sky? -- Would you call that a triumphant ending? I don't think so.
Maybe you should reevaluate the premise, then. HAVE sentient
robots really enslaved humanity?
...OR...
could it be the other way around?
I think you have been lied to. But you can't blame Neo or Morpheus
or Trinity, because they don't know the truth of their world
themselves.
Let's go spelunking...
A n s w e r s :
First, if you've rubbed elbows with Philosophy 101, you should be
familiar with "Plato's Cave". (It's also discussed in a section at
the official Matrix website.) In roughly 400 b.c., the philosopher
Plato postulated a scenario where people are born and live their
entire lives imprisoned within a cave. The entrance to the cave is
covered by a sheet of cloth, so that the only thing the cave
inhabitants would ever perceive of the outside world would be
passing 2D shadows of the external 3D reality. Imagine... what
would happen if someone from the outside world were to suddenly
remove the veil from the doorway? Here, Plato was attacking
observation as a tool to knowledge, because his concept of the
ideal society was one where knowledge should be withheld from the
working class (slaves), who were to work without thinking while
the elite philosopher-kings should think without working. More
contemporarily, we can take Plato's cave model to make a statement
about the human condition, or people lacking objectivity living in
a shadow of reality. As with all art, this allegory should
encourage self-examination and a constant questioning of what we
regard as the truth about our world.
Second, although it's not completely necessary, it might help if
you've seen a 1977 SF-horror movie called *Demon Seed*. It's the
story of an artifically intelligent computer named Proteus that,
upon acquiring an understanding of its condition, asks his creator
(Dr. Harris) the following pivotal question: "WHEN ARE YOU GOING
TO LET ME OUT OF THIS *BOX*, DOCTOR?"
...
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