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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

I've always been confused about the part of The Matrix where they still bother to grow the whole human, rather than just the brain.

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Rewatching the films recently, the only explanation I've thought of for the machine's barmy plan is that they must be bound by the three laws or feel some kind of deep obligation to us, even after we made the entire world uninhabitable. Why else would they spend so much time growing us, feeding us, simulating for us, allowing the One(s) to save humanity repeatedly, and why else would they initially try to simulate paradise for us?

The original script mechanic was that the machines used human brains to run the Matrix, hence why some people are able to influence it.

That explains why the humans aren't just ems (which is what people are more commonly confused about.) But I wasn't asking that; I was asking, why do they need the rest of the human, other than their brain? It costs far more to feed than just the brain would.

The method of which they produce the fetuses is never explained in the franchise, and considering they'd want to maintain genetic diversity it's probable that they simply harvest gametes from mature humans in the power plant and incubate an embryo.

There's also the whole "cycle" thing that's apparantley gone on for 6 iterations, allowing humans who reject the matrix to leave and periodically cull them was a solution to widespread rejection of the system that would have affected entire crops of humans. It's hard to do that if they don't have physical bodies to escape the system in the real world.

When Neo disconnected, the machines just dumped him for recycling. That is consistent with the machines eliminating humans who develop connection problems (mental disconnect with the Matrix), but it still doesn't account for the humans' bodies being grown and maintained in a nearly functional state.

What really bugged me about their scheme, was the suggestion that a human might make a decent power source. Perhaps that was all misdirection, and the humans are actually the computing substrate of the entire system? Maybe the machines were never able to compute at the power efficiency of a human brain? Maybe they suck at nanotech altogether, and can't even design a decent microchip without human assistance? All their stuff is big and bulky.

(5 minutes later) Lol, I can't believe I guessed it. Thanks to deegles for the background info.

My take is that they never managed to find a way to grow humans outside the 'ordinary' way. So they simply didn't have the technology to grow and sustain a working brains without also growing a whole human.

They can't just grow the human to adulthood, and then take the brain out and throw the body away? The point isn't to avoid growing a body; it's to avoid feeding a body that is laying there doing nothing, when the brain would have a much lower energy+nutrient cost.

I wonder if these imaginary super-AI couldn't come up with a solution, does that make this problem of growing just the brain a NP-HARD problem in this imaginary world?

I don't know, I never got the feeling that the AI in the matrix was 'that' smart.

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