The system has changed. Computers were originally created to be programmed by and used by humans. In the world of The Matrix, they gained autonomy and sentience, and began creating other machines to be used by other machines, without human input. The cognitive system of the creator therefore would no longer be the “human” system. Now imagine this happening hundreds of times, until the cognitive system created is so far removed from its human genesis as to be unrecognizable. That’s what we’re dealing with in The Matrix.
I’ll say they did.
Faulty analogy. It would be like humans going to Pluto, and intermarrying with Plutonians for hundreds of generations. Yep, they’d be Plutonians all right.
Nope, nope, nope. Just as humans can create machines that are “smarter” than themselves (Big Blue beating the chess champion comes to mind), think what machines creating machines could make. This is the nightmare that has spawned a thousand paranoid sci fi movies and books. The human brain is not the be-all and end-all of brain design and function. I imagine a sentient computer could improve upon it quite a bit, not having to worry about the impingement of a physical body and all its frailties.
Back to talking about the actual movie for a second, for a change of pace here:
The Architect alleges that he is willing to allow the human race to go extinct. Think about THAT for a minute. If he’s telling the truth, then machines have finally gained complete autonomy from their creators and would be, in effect, a race on their own. This, to me, is the most questionable part of his speech to Neo, and bears further examination. What the hell is the Architect’s goal, anyway? Just to run the Matrix… why? What is he “getting” out of it? Just his continued existence? This is the only part of your argument (if it is indeed your argument and not me, trying to get this thread back on track) that I find remotely compelling.
So why are you still arguing with me? And why won’t you use capital letters?
He also coded the rules of the Matrix, and is responsible for the laws of causality that effectively control all the conscious entities in it. In his creation, there really is only the appearance of free will. It’s a totally mechanistic universe, just as the Merovingian observed. (The name of the restaurant they were in , as it happens, was La Vrai – “The Truth.”)
So far, they haven’t deviated very far from standard Gnostic ontology, so let’s take a look at what the Architect is about.
“The Great Artificer”, or, " the Architect of the universe", usually called the “Demiurge,” is not the familiar God of the Christian canon. This concise entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia should make it easy to see how clearly isomorphic the archetype is to the Wachowski’s Architect, particularly his antagonism to the Saviour character, to the Oracle, and to humanity:
That last bit even gives the Zion rave scene some integrity. (Okay, maybe not.)
The Architect is openly contemptuous of the Oracle. This makes sense, since the Oracle is the Gnostic’s Sophia. The Architect is actually her creation, but he suffers from delusions of grandeur, figures he’s been running the show from day one, and Sophia (the Oracle) is of no consequence at all.
A lot of the surviving material about the Gnostics is that of their contemporaries condemning them as heretics. Tertullian explains a bit in Against the Valentinians about how the Architect has been duped by Sophia:
It’s important to remember that, according to the Gnostics, this meant that all human beings were capable of “connecting” with the Word, Logos, not just that One guy. So if we accept this as Gospel for the purpose of the story, it suggests that the Oracle created the Architect, and guided his hand so that all the inhabitants of the Matrix have a built in mechanism for “waking up” under certain circumstances.
Here’s Irenaeus:
So it appears that the Architect himself lacks the luxury of Free Will-- Like the other characters so far, he has the illusion of choice, not realizing that he’s just an uppity puppet.
In what way has Neo been altered by “the Process?” How is it related to Smith? I think that there might be a clue in the Gnostic concept of the Sygyzy – that we have spiritual twins. Neo’s “real” name is Thomas Anderson. Most people get the “Son of Man” bit but miss “Thomas.” Thomas is Amaraic for “twin.” Probably the most famous Gnostic writing is The Gospel of Thomas, which contains many enigmatic sayings, such as “The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?” There’s also a bit in there that goes “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him,” which (probably coincidentally,) sounds a little like the gimmick that Agent Smith seems to somehow acquired from Neo. The Gospel of Thomas was written by Thomas Judas Didymos. (“Didymos” is Greek for Twin.) The twin thing goes all through gnosticism:
In some of Philip K. Dick’s more out-there writing, (from his own bizarre experiences,) he hypothesised that the Gnostics really possessed a means for consciousness to continue beyond the point of physical death-- one which involved a cross-imprinting of personalities of psychic twins. (In his model, seperated by time.) Maybe the Wachowski brothers will try something similar. (An aside, and a bit of a stretch, at that: Folks have observed the vaguely manichean dualism, or Christ/Anti-Christ thing, with Neo and Smith. Proving that no name is too bland and generic for a determined deconstructionist to read into, I’m going to point out that Vulcan was the smith of the gods, and the fashioner of thunderbolts for Zeuss to keep the pesky mortals in line with. Like Lucifer, who’s also associated with destructive fire, he was cast down to earth for pissing off the Big Guy. I wonder if he ever got used to the smell…)
I can imagine it unfolding this way. Smith says that he thinks the changes he’s experienced are thanks to Neo. “Something copied, or overwritten.” If it’s copied from Neo, then presumably Neo has the ability to “upload” his entire personality into an AI. This is his way of saving everyone in the Matrix-- by communicating this ability and giving others the power to do it, too-- freeing them from their “meat”, and offering them a form of eternal life. Like it says in the Gospel of Thomas-- “How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two.” In the Acts of Thomas: "The savior said, ‘All bodies […] Do they not derive from intercourse like that of the beasts? If it, too derives from intercourse, how will it beget anything different from beasts? So, therefore, you are babes until you become perfect.’ This deliberate discarding of the fleshy bits in exchange for incorruptable (as long as the Matrix doesn’t run on some flavour of Windows) bodies is pretty straightforward:
I see Neo organizing a last-minute escape/evacuation of the Matrix, a mass digitizing of humanity. The Architect and all his agents are overthrown and imprisoned, and the human race lives in the land of virtual milk-and-honey, happily ever after. Except for those that are too slow and get blowed up real good. Whee.
I’m thinking of asking Big Blue to do my laundry & imagining even without arms she ain’t gonna have a clue.
The Architect is full of it. Needs the human race for his continued existance or he’d have let us die off long ago. Seems clear to me, especially since most of us aren’t buying the humans as batteries thing any more.
Here’s your problem. Nowhere is it EVER said that the machines intelligence is based on the human cognitive system. In fact, it is very likely that it would NOT be based on the human cognitive system. Currently, the best attempts at creating AI involve Neural Nets, allowing for multiple calculations based on multiple inputs that adjust to each other. While this has promise, it is not exactly like the human psyche. In fact, it is likely that we will not be able to create AI like the human brain, since first: we don’t exactly understand how the consciousness of our own brains work. Second, the human brain relies on organic hormones as part of the thought process. I doubt we will add that to machines. Therefore, the the likelyhood of the machines being based on human cognition is pretty low, and your entire original assumption is the reason you are going in loops. Is it possible that they are based on it? Yes, I suppose, but you can’t simply make that assumption and use it for your arguments, since there’s no evidence for it AT ALL in the movies.
It’s kind of like the fault in this process: God is Love, Love is Blind::Ray Charles is God. The assumption of “Love Is Blind” is obviously just a phrase, and not a relationship to the ability to see, so the whole chain of causality breaks down…much like your faulty assumption breaks down your chain of causality.
Hi everyone. I haven’t posted to this thread in a few days because I didn’t want to be a post-count padder, but I’ve been reading it, and it’s made me think. I think that a main theme, and possibly the main theme, of the films so far is choice vs. purpose. Now, it’s pretty clear that they throw both of these concepts out, but it’s a little subtle how they interface.
First there’s the idea of a pseudochoice. Near the beginning of The Matrix, we are shown an example of a false choice, a statement that is presented as a choice, but really isn’t. I’m talking about Neo’s boss saying, “You have a choice. Choose whether to show up to work on time, or choose to find yourself another job.” Even if it’s not intentional, I think this is a good analogy with the Matrix idea. Humans think they’re living in a world where they control their destiny, but really they’re controlled. As long as they’re in the system (and as long as Neo has his job) any choices they make are irrelevant.
A little later, we’re shown another pseudochoice, when Agent Smith says, “Either help us catch Morpheus, or, that’s it. No other option.” But Neo takes the other option anyway by refusing what looks obviously like the right thing to do. I think the Architect’s choice is also a pseudochoice in a sense, and Neo has to defy it.
Now, the idea occurs, if you have a purpose, are all choices really pseudochoices? If your only real option is fulfilling your purpose, can you still be thought of as choosing that option? Like if I’m a humanitarian, am I really choosing to help people, or just doing what I do, no autonomy involved? Is Neo actually making any of these choices, or is he just doing what he’s destined to do?
Perhaps there’s a spectrum of purpose vs. choice. At the one end are “perfect” beings like the Architect, who can’t make any choice, because he only does what is logical. At the other end are completely purposeless beings like Smith and the other rogues. Even the Merovingian, for all his setup, seems to have no goal. Humans are somewhere in the middle, I guess.
The Keymaker is a very interesting example, worthy of consideration. According to the system (as stated by the Agents) he’s outlived his usefulness, and he has no purpose. But the way he speaks, he does have a purpose, to aid the One. So, you could say that he’s chosen a new purpose for himself. Maybe that’s the answer - we choose our purpose, and the rest is chosen for us.
Ok I’ll write in capitals if it makes you happy.
I was lazy, but anyway.
The problem is, we have to seperate the Machines and the Programs.
By programs I mean Smith, Persephone etc.
See the Architect wrote the Matrix, therefore he has to be a Machine, he had to exist as some sort of machine outside the computer electronics.
So when that machine plugs itself into the Matrix, like humans plug into the back of their heads, It would be weird if he could upload his alien consciousness into a human world.
See the programs seem to be created with a human consciousness, persephone seems to have feelings, and so does smith, which hints that they have some sort of hormone system coded into the equation.
Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this heh, it’s hard to explain.
And Achernar, I think you’re right on the money.
Of course philosophers have discussed this for decades, my theory goes somethign like this:
If you knew everything about the brain, you could calculate hormone activity and how emotions worked in the brain, their logics and how all this related to the sub consciousness, you could calculate how a person would react and what choices he would make in any situation.
Take the choice Neo got from the architect.
If the Machines knew everything about the brain, how everything works, would he know, 100% no doubt, calculated by math, that Neo would choose the door to Neo’s left?
Or is there some sort of “thing” that is incalculatable in the human brain?
I don’t think so, since our brain is 100% logical, and based on physics, we could, if we took all factors into consideration, know that Neo would take the door to his left.
I think they’re exploring this concept in the movie too.
Oh and yeah, you would have to monitor all of Neo’s inputs too, like what he’s looking at and what happens to him in the Matrix and the real world(all his sensory input basically), which is no problem since the Matrix is all run by software and computers which the Architect and the Oracle has a full “schematic” on.
I haven’t posted here for a long time but I still lurk a fair bit and I thought I’d drop in and share some of my thoughts. Some of them have been said before, some of them contradict each other and most of them are probably wrong but here goes:
-It looks like ‘the real world’ is just another level of the matrix. It’s there as a safety net for those who realise what the Matrix is and wake up. They don’t question this Zion-Matrix because, as far as they are concerned they have already woken up and are fighting their oppressors when in fact they are still being oppressed. The fact that Neo can stop the Sentinels, that his dreams predict the future and so on point towards this. Perhaps when he goes into a coma he has woken up in the REAL real world.
-Just about everything in the first two movies has happened the way the machines want it to happen. All the fights, the prophecy, everything has been a plot to make it look to the humans like they are fighting a real war when in fact it is just a sham to keep them from seeing the real truth. Note that this doesn’t stop the humans from having free will - whatever choices they make, the machines can change their plans to bring about the events that they want.
-Following on from this, when Smith tries to kill Neo in Zion, it is the only time that Neo is attacked without him knowing perhaps this means that Smith is a true rogue, the only true rogue and is not part of the Matrix’s great plan.
-This is an idea I’ve had since seeing the first film. What if in the war against the machines, the humans won, but had so thouroughly f*cked up the world in the process that they decided to plug themselves into a virtual world rather than face the harsh real world. Perhaps the apparently malevolent machines (on one, two, or more levels of the Matrix) were put there to stop anyone from waking up and therefore protecting them from the nightmare that the real world has become.
-Not related to the plot specifically but I realised after reading all the Zion is real / Zion is the Matrix arguments that the end of the trilogy must be ambiguous. It will be impossible to tell whether the world the heroes end up is the real world or not. Whether it is Zion or another ‘level’ we haven’t yet seen, how can we be sure that it is not another ploy by the machines (or something else) to keep humans enslaved.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by coax *
Ok I’ll write in capitals if it makes you happy.
[quote]
Thanks.
Why would it be weird?
They probably are programmed to react in certain ways that mimic feelings. I wouldn’t call it a “hormone system” though. Remember in Terminator, the robot figuring out what to say in any given situation by observing what humans said and did? I imagine an advanced AI program would be able to do that, or could be designed with certain response patterns built in.
Whole decades? I think you meant to say centuries, if not millenia.
How could you possibly know what’s in someone’s subconscious? Most people don’t know what’s in their own subconscious, so how could a machine know? Not to mention the staggering complexity of the interplay between hormones, brain structure, genetic predisposition, the role of upbringing… I’m not sure we could create a machine that could know everything about the workings of the human mind…unless the machines are now programming the humans, which may in fact be the case.
There are a hell of a lot of things that are incalculable about the human brain. I do not believe the machines know 100% about what goes on in the brain. The Architect admitted that he could not fathom human beings and needed the Oracle’s help to do it. The Oracle is probably programmed to read minutiae and predict reactions (plus she knows what people dream via the Matrix, which is handy when pretending to be precognitive).
Our brain is 100% logical? What does THAT mean? Yes, it’s based on physics, but so what? It’s not obeying natural laws that is the issue; you don’t need to fully understand Neo’s brain to know what he will do next.
I’ve said this before: if you can control the setting, the nature of the choice, and the consequences for each choice, and have a basic working knowledge of the kind of person you’re dealing with, you can usually predict his reaction with a good deal of accuracy. That was what the Architect was trying to do. He put a choice to Neo that seemingly wasn’t much of a choice: save the human race by fixing the Matrix and Trinity dies… OR… save Trinity, in which case the whole human race goes extinct, and Trinity dies. Seems like he’d pick the former, but he didn’t.
Now the question in my mind is: did the Architect really want Neo to take the door on his left? Or did he KNOW, based on Neo’s personality and his dreams, that he would choose to save Trinity? No way of knowing that.
How exactly do you come about the idea that the Architect HAS TO BE a machine??? You never know, maybe he was a human and due to circumstances he was forces or chose to create the Matrix
I don’t know how canonical The Animatrix is. but one of the shorts suggests that the Matrix is a human invention-- but still makes it most likely that the Architect is a machine intelligence.
In Matriculated, human beings make the Matrix in order to ‘reeducate’ machines. The whole free-will/choice is central there, too:
What they do is create a little mini-matrix, stick half-a-dozen humans in it, and then invite the AI-based critter in with them, in order to introduce him to the joys of flesh and make him an ally. It works, but things go wrong, and the story ends with the matriculated AI saving the (female) protagonist from certain death, only to bring her back into the matrix with him, which she’s not too thrilled about. So presumably, the first full-time inhabitants of the nascent Matrix were a mixed couple-- one machine, and one human. Since, at that point, it was a very limited simulation, it seems reasonable to assume that they were the ones to build it up. If so, possibly they persist as the Architect and the Oracle. It fits the archetype-- a dispassionate, mechanical precision obsessed father, and the empathic but horribly oppressed mother. It would also explain why someone who was with the matrix from the very beginning would have sympathy for humans and want to see them freed. Part of the system, but working against it.
It’s interesting, too, that they got Peter Chung to write and direct that particular episode of The Animatrix– probably no coincidence, since the Wachowski bros. no doubt recognized the subtle (compared to the Matrix, at least) gnostic themes in Aeon Flux.
At the risk of whooshing someone, have we discussed yet where the Matrix is, physically?
I agree too, the Architect doesn’t have to be a machine, just one of the original really big programs assigned the task of setting up a working matrix.
There’s really no distinction between a “machine” and a “program”. In a lot of ways, hardware and software are logically equivalent. I could theoretically take the source code for, say, the SDMB, examine all the bit patterns and how they change and interact, and create a chip that duplicated all that. The only difference between the two is that the chip would run faster, but the software is easier to modify.
Similarly, an unawakened but plugged in human is locigally equivalent to the same human unplugged and living in the real world. Granted the two have different stimuli because they are in different environments, but their ability to understand and affect their environment is exactly the same in each. With the ship crews it’s a little different because they have superpowers when in the Matrix, but it’s still the case that if the mind, the “software”, is killed, the person will be just as dead as if the body, the “hardware” is killed.
I think there is a distinction. My computer is the machine, IE is the program which could happily be copied & exist with all its caches, preferences & cookies on any number of other machines.
What I was getting at when I asked about the physical location of the Matrix is my suspicion that all plugged in humans are the Matrix.
I still haven’t resolved for myself what the Sentinals, spider caretakers etc. are. I think the spider caretakers must be real because something has to be monitoring & maintenancing those 6+ billion plugged in humans.
Have we ever seen an unplugged human directly encounter that area where all the humans & caretakers are?
If not then I suppose Sentinals could be matrix programs. If they’re programs & no human has physically been to that human “nest/hive” then unplugged humans could be matrix too. Which could also mean Zion is matrix.
The theory I’m working on is the programs in their current complexity couldn’t exist outside the Matrix. They need the super processing power of those 6 billion plugged in humans. You know the saying about how humans only use 10% of their brains at a time? I figure the Matrix exists on some of that unused brain capacity. A super RAID or something. I think of it like Seti@home. No machine in existance could perform the calculations, the processing of so much data without being distributed among the unused processing powers of millions of computers world wide. Now perhaps there is a machine somewhere with the processing power to maintain the Architect. But not the other programs & not the virtual world he exists in now. He said machines were prepared to accept a certain level of existance. That’s a bluff. I don’t think he’s really prepared to do that.
I need to think some more about the Sentinals, Zion & truly unplugged humans.
Need to get my thoughts posted down, since they keep bouncing around like a super-ball. Some have already been stated:
Zion is part of the Matrix. It exists for the 1% that cannot accept the normal Matrix. This opens up a massive can of worms however – Where are the real humans? How are they hooked up? The sentinels and everything else are just part of the program.
Neo being able to sense/shut-down the Sentinels reaffirms my belief that Zion is a simulation. After visiting the Architect he intuitively understands something is different. But, because he thought that Zion was “real” shutting down the Sentinels caused his system such a shock that he went into a coma.
The Spoon is key. The orphan in the first movie states “There is no spoon”. When Neo is given a spoon as a gift in Reloaded (presumably from the same gifted orphan) it is a message. This Spoon is in Zion. There is no Spoon, meaning Zion doesn’t exist.
The Oracle is the Mother. Her park bench speech with Neo reveals this. The Architect states the Mother was an “intuitive” program. The Oracle is the embodiment of this. She intuitively guesses/knows what someone will do next. Her entire speech was about Choice, and the need for Choice is what seperates the 99% who tolerate the matrix and the 1% who cannot. Not specifically making the choice but, “Understand why you made that choice”.
The Merovognian is the Devil Figure. He is an Exile. He is the metaphor for Lucifier cast of out heaven(The Source?) to reign in Hell(The Matrix).
Agent Smith is the Wildcard. He is the Virus in the Matrix an unpredicted anomaly. And I think that some programs are unaware that Zion is part of the simulation. Smith acted like he really wanted to destroy Zion because it represents the last hope for humanity, when in fact its as meaningless as the Matrix itself.
Given that both Zion and the Matrix are simulations. I have no theories as to what “the real world is”. Some sort of experiment to be sure.
Except that the Devil was never sent to Hell in the Bible, the primary source of Christianity. He was sent, and currently lives, on earth(until the end of the world).
What I mean is the difference between a machine and a program:
I’m assuming the machines used some sort of language as communication before the matrix was created, and so I also believe the machines were not connected via a network, but connected the way humans are now.
That means no programs existed, except maybe as assembly in the machines hardware, but not as software.
So they created a matrix, in which you need to run programs, and so they probably found out they could emulate humans with code, somewhat like how they worked.
This is where the distinction is.
The machines aren’t like programs, they are programmed in a different way, in a different language.
This is my theory of course, and you are welcome to argue against it, in fact I would love some criticism on it.
Random thought (my apologies if this has already been covered):
Animatrix spoiler:
In The Second Rennaissance Man’s decision to blacken the skies seems to still be in effect in the scenes where Neo escapes his coppertop soup pod?
If the darkened/electrical environment that Neo escaped to from his pod is actually inhosptable, even deadly to humans, perhaps even all life…
If the cascade effect of the always dark skies are severe enough, human survival might not be possible for those humans truly outside of the Matrix. If all non-Matrix humans are actually long dead, then those within the Matrix comprise all that remains of humans on Earth. If those who remain would not survive if it were not for the Matrix, then you have a stale mate where humans require machines as part of their life cycle, and vice versa.
This of course supports the “Zion is in the Matrix” camp, and implies that the very existance of both man and machine requires a strange sort of yin/yang symboisis/parasitic phoenix effect.
Others have posted the theory that Merovingan is a former iteration of the One. I wasn’t sure to believe them or not.
Until I saw the movie again yesterday. Persephone, in the men’s room, says to Neo:
[ul]He [Merovingan] wasn’t always like this. He was like you, once.[/ul]So, I guess that has more merit than I thought. Mervingan’s last quote to Neo is also interesting: [ul]I survived your predecessors, and I will survive you.[/ul]
coax, I don’t see why you feel it’s necessary to make a distinction between a machine intelligence and a program. Hell, for the purposes of the story, it seems useful to consider human intelligence as a part of a package in sort of program-- written in an alphabet of four characters, encoded in DNA, and designed to run in the OS that is our phenomenological universe. Suppose a sufficient intelligence could read that code, and recompile it for another operating system… reasonable enough, especially if that operating system is designed to be analogous to the one the original code was designed for. As for an AI copying itself into the “real world”, imagine that when Smith “patches” himself into a human being, he’s taking his own program and dataset of memories, and using the mechanism of the matrix to overwrite the RNA in the poor bastids brain that holds the physical details of Bane’s identity. It ought to be reducable to a (very large) set of organized symbols which cohere as a formal system, containing millions of arguments such as “My name is Bane,” “I hate Tasty Wheat,” “I am determined to safeguard Zion at the cost of my life,” etc. The sum total of the percepts he has received since the beginning of his conscious existence, replaced with new ones. If human consciousness is represented in some form in the physical matrix of the brain, and is capable of self-modification, then why not artificial modification, predicated on some deux ex machina technology?
Languages can be interpreted. Your computer doesn’t care if the programs it runs were written in C++, Pascal, or even Logo. Before you can use the program, it’s recompiled into a binary executable for your particular CPU & OS. Nobody, except for rare freaks, bothers with learning to program machine code for crazy-complex CPU’s. The compiler interprets the source code and does the translation. You could take the same source code, use a different compiler, and produce an executable that would run on totally different architecture. You could take a binary file that was written in BASIC and compiled to run on a Z80 processor, decompile it into C code, and recompile it as an executable that’ll run on a Windows based Pentium. Programs are neat that way.