# Question about the Matrix **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 7, 2003, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511 "2003-02-07T18:02:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pantone\_Swatchbook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/cc9497/32.png) [@Pantone\_Swatchbook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantone_Swatchbook)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/1 "2003-02-07T18:02:29Z")
What is the reason for the robots to use humans as an energy source? Its a highly inefficient way to produce power; it would require more energy to feed and maintain the human bodies than what they would generate in return. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/2 "2003-02-07T18:05:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Pantone Swatchbook \* > \*\*What is the reason for the robots to use humans as an energy source? Its a highly inefficient way to produce power; it would require more energy to feed and maintain the human bodies than what they would generate in return. \*\* According to the movie it was because humans carry electricity and seeing as the sun was blotted out, they need some source. I suppose the real answer is, they used humans because _it was convient for the plot._ ---
**Author:** ![SC\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@SC\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SC_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/3 "2003-02-07T18:10:38Z")
There’s a widespread sentiment among Matrix fans that hopes the next two movies somehow debunk the “Humans as powersource” theory. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/4 "2003-02-07T18:11:16Z")
It was a highly efficient way to come up with an excuse to have a big virtual reality video game that everyone’s a part of. The plot, technically, is absolute baloney. It’s just a way to have the characters do amazing, physically impossible kung fu. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/5 "2003-02-07T19:52:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Pantone Swatchbook \* > Its a highly inefficient way to produce power; it would require more energy to feed and maintain the human bodies than what they would generate in return. Right, well, I admit that it’s a rather contrived way to get what you want out of the plot, but it’s not all that bad. Every living being and machine on earth utilizes inefficient means of gaining energy, and the more complex the being or machine, the more inefficient it is. ---
**Author:** ![Riptor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@Riptor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riptor)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/6 "2003-02-07T19:58:01Z")
Also, I believe Morpheus mentions that the machines use the energy humans generate “combined with a form of nuclear fusion”. This leaves a nice grey area in which we can just say that the form of fusion they’re using _somehow_ depends upon human beings. Plus, they liquify dead bodies and feed them to the living ones. That’s actually a pretty efficient way of producing food. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/7 "2003-02-07T20:04:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Riptor \* > \*\* > Plus, they liquify dead bodies and feed them to the living ones. That’s actually a pretty efficient way of producing food. \*\* Except for the fact that it’s thermodynamically impossible. You lose some energy in every reaction, so you’ll get less energy out of a body than you put into it. There would have to be some other source of energy supplementing it. But, as has been said, the whole thing is ludicrous anyway. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/8 "2003-02-07T20:08:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Riptor \* > \*\*Also, I believe Morpheus mentions that the machines use the energy humans generate “combined with a form of nuclear fusion”. This leaves a nice grey area in which we can just say that the form of fusion they’re using _somehow_ depends upon human beings. > > Plus, they liquify dead bodies and feed them to the living ones. That’s actually a pretty efficient way of producing food. \*\* Not particularly. Say you eat, on average, two pounds of food a day. Say the average human weighs around 200 pounds. That would require about 3.5 dead humans a year to feed a single person. Granted, if you are stuck in a pod all the time, you aren’t using much energy. Of course, you probably don’t weigh 200 punds, either, so that probably balances out, more or less. Clearly, there needs to be a significant additional source of nutrition. – Justin ---
**Author:** ![skaterboarder87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@skaterboarder87](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skaterboarder87)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/9 "2003-02-07T20:17:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Smeghead \* > \*\*Except for the fact that it’s thermodynamically impossible. You lose some energy in every reaction, so you’ll get less energy out of a body than you put into it. There would have to be some other source of energy supplementing it. > \*\* Unless they’re using currently expelled energy, such as excessive heat to liquid the bodies. Not unlike a car’s exhaust powering a turbo. I would also like to add these machines are using technology far more sophisticated than we can even fathom at this point in time. Of course, this doesn’t mean they are able to ignore physics, but I have little reason to believe The Matrix presented any such scenarios (except in the Matrix world itself, haha). ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/10 "2003-02-07T21:51:13Z")
It’s like a cereal commercial, where they say Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are “part of a balanced breakfast.” Yeah? So is the spoon. Doesn’t mean you get much nutrition from it. What if the power-generation story is bunk, and there’s some other reason why they’re keeping people on tap, like, say, the reason it was supposed to have started in the first place? What if the humans have made up the copper-top thing as a paranoid delusion, just to justify breaking people loose so they can be free in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/11 "2003-02-07T21:56:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ethilrist \* > **…Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs…** Oh man, has it been awhile since I heard a Calvin & Hobbes reference! -LA ---
**Author:** ![skaterboarder87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@skaterboarder87](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skaterboarder87)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/12 "2003-02-07T21:59:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ethilrist \* > \*\*What if the power-generation story is bunk, and there’s some other reason why they’re keeping people on tap, like, say, the reason it was supposed to have started in the first place? What if the humans have made up the copper-top thing as a paranoid delusion, just to justify breaking people loose so they can be free in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? \*\* This is exactly why I love The Matrix; because it poses questions such as these. The movie is a lot deeper than many give it credit for. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/13 "2003-02-07T22:36:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by skaterboarder87 \* > \*\*Unless they’re using currently expelled energy, such as excessive heat to liquid the bodies. Not unlike a car’s exhaust powering a turbo. > \*\* No. The laws of thermodynamics state that you will ALWAYS lose some energy. The turbo analogy indicates that some processes lose less than other processes - the turbo recovers energy that would normally be lost - but you will always lose some. The idea of feeding humans off dead humans’ bodies is analogous to a perpetual motion machine, which is impossible. Assuming, of course, that the number of humans is kept constant. It could be done if you reduced the number of humans each generation, but then they’d die out pretty quickly. ---
**Author:** ![skaterboarder87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@skaterboarder87](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skaterboarder87)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/14 "2003-02-07T22:48:19Z")
That much is obvious; who’s to say the machines aren’t using another resourse to compensate for the slight difference? ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/15 "2003-02-07T22:50:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by skaterboarder87 \* > \*\*That much is obvious; who’s to say the machines aren’t using another resourse to compensate for the slight difference? \*\* That’s exactly what I said in my first post: > [@](#): > > **There would have to be some other source of energy supplementing it.** Of course, Morpheus says that they use human power “combined with a form of fusion power”, which is kind of like saying, “We won the war with our BB guns, supplemented with our nuclear weapons.” ---
**Author:** ![TheeGrumpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/16 "2003-02-07T23:05:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Ethilrist** > What if the humans have made up the copper-top thing as a paranoid delusion, just to justify breaking people loose so they can be free in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? If they did this, then my modest appreciation for the Wachowski Bros. would increase tenfold. Not only is this an interesting idea in its own right (I thought it was just me, but **SC\_Wolf** calls it "widespread sentiment), but it would retroactively improve the first movie. It’s not unheard of for a sequel to fix the sins of a predecessor. SW Ep. 2, for example, featured a diminished role for Jar Jar, by popular demand. And it attempted a CYA of the whole “parsec” business, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2003, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/17 "2003-02-07T23:18:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SC\_Wolf \* > \*\*There’s a widespread sentiment among Matrix fans that hopes the next two movies somehow debunk the “Humans as powersource” theory. \*\* How can that be? Morpheus said it was true, so the only way that can make sense is if Morpheus was mistaken or lying. That’s possible, I suppose, but I got the impression that Morpheus is never wrong. :dubious: Also, whatever human cells have that can produce the machines’ energy could just as easily be present in any other organism, couldn’t it? If you got the energy from, say, broccoli, then the matrix wouldn’t need to exist. Then there would be no fancy kung-fu moves, or indeed, any people at all in the entire movie. ---
**Author:** ![Royal\_Nonesuch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@Royal\_Nonesuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Royal_Nonesuch)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/18 "2003-02-08T00:32:57Z")
It would have been more interesting (if not more logical) to make humanity serve as biological computers instead of energy sources for the Matrix. The Matrix could have orginated as a recreational VR universe that colonized its users’ mental processes; an agent would be a process that ran in parallel in the subconscious of several hundred human hosts. Another thing that bugs me, how do they keep everyone in the 1990’s? Do they roll over at 1999 using new minds, or do they wipe the existing minds and reuse them? ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/19 "2003-02-08T01:59:46Z")
I’m with Royal Nonesuch… I’ve always been of the opinion that they should discover that the Matrix is used to collect the rough equivalent of “clock cycles” that the human brain wastes. Keep the human mind occupied so it doesn’t shut down, and then the “unused” time can be utilized to run the machine collective. This, I think, would be far more horrible of a discovery than the “battery” thing, which could, simply, be conjecture on Morpheus’s part. On the other hand, the battery explanation can simply be a matter of the machines thinking, “Hey, since we’ve got all these bodies hooked up, why don’t we collect stray energy from their electrical impulses? It won’t be much power, but it’ll offset the requirements on our fusion generators by a little bit.” Collecting waste energy, don’tcha know. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511/20 "2003-02-08T03:35:26Z")
Maybe they can explain why the bumpy-headed humans at the end of the movie don’t resemble the smooth-headed humans at the beginning. Speaking seriously for a moment, how does Neo pull of his final escape, anyway? At the beginning of the movie, Trinity is trapped in room 302 of the Heart o’ the City Hotel. The land line has been cut, forcing her to run to a distant phone booth. Then, at the end, Neo is directed to this _very same room_ (even Agent Smith recognizes the location, which is how he gets ahead of Neo) and manages to punch out. Do the free humans run missions into the Matrix to repair damaged hard lines? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-matrix/153511.md?page=2)