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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

I do love it, don't get me wrong. But I wish that they'd explained how humans were basically used in computing clusters. For running the Matrix. Not as "batteries", for producing power.

Because, after all, they'd need to be "fed", and wouldn't produce any net energy. That was in the original screenplay. But they decided that most people just wouldn't get it. So we got what we got.

Stuff like that ruins (for me) most films that ~rely on ~hard science. Explosions, for example. They are typically far too slow, with far too much dancing flame. In reality, they're virtually instantaneous at scales much less than kilometers. Saving Private Ryan is a notable exception.

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I remember reading on Stack Overflow that the writers originally wanted for the human minds to be critical to a neural network, not actually used as a power source, but Hollywood executive producers didn’t think cinema audience could understand this concept:

“The original story had the brains of the humans being used as part of a neural network for additional computing power. But the suits thought that was too hard for people to understand.” [0]

[0] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executiv...

That's probably where I read it.

> But I wish that they'd explained how humans were basically used in computing clusters. For running the Matrix. Not as "batteries", for producing power.

From what I recall, that was actually what was originally scripted, though the explanation in the script was changed after test audiences for the first film responded poorly to it.

But it's also pretty clearly the underlying mechanics in the film, that guide how everything in the Matrix actually works, even after they made the explanation given in character more appealing to test audiences. (And, actually, I think given what we find out about “free” humanity being a system of control itself, having them adhering as an article of faith to a fairly transparently false explanation that they've clearly been fed actually fits the theme fairly well.)

Try: ..we live in a dystopia, confined to our coffins, fed with wifi and ethernet, and Mark Zuckerberg is Agent Smith constructing the Matrix on our metaData

Zion and Neo are control mechanisms in the Matrix, they are used to control the one called Smith. They are in the Matrix when they think they have left. The human batteries story is just a b/s narrative. The best proof of this is Neo's ability to control the machines outside of the Matrix in the supposed real world.

Or they're so 1337 they're DDOSing the CnC server during the fight.

Either that or Neo is not human but a machine with admin rights - no inception required :)

Right, it's turtles all the way down.

You (ok well Neil Tyson really) are the motivation for this curated content

https://mobile.twitter.com/hardscifimovies

I'm not sure which are funnier. The satires of films, or the satires of reality.

I don't want TV or movies often (About 150 hrs a year total consumption), but when I do I actively suppress the skeptic inside in order to enjoy the narrative and special effects.

I cant let the producers making a minor script change like that ruin the movie for me. it doesnt make the movie any less good that the human farm breaks thermodynamics laws. im already suspending my disbelief enough in other parts of the movie.

You know what, this is the first I'd heard this. That makes so much more sense than the battery thing which always left me shaking my head. I agree, and I think the execs underestimated their audiences.

> Hard science

Of course, this is "hard science" that you learned in The Matrix...

Computing cluster vs battery is pretty basic.

Transistor is basically a battery.

More like a resister, I think. A variable resister. The gate is the knob.

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