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Comment by isolay | Hacker News Reader

Seeing people work tirelessly to make The Matrix a reality is great. I can't wait!

The movie that doesn't get enough credit at predicting the future, or what is now the present, is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. DOGE, Palantir, Larry Ellison's vision of nonstop AI surveillance, and all the data-sucking tech companies swearing fealty to the orange authoritarian are bringing the plot of that movie directly into reality, and I'm always surprised that it never gets mentioned.

I'm surprised there's no startup building a helicarrier

On the other hand, Helicarrier (YC class of 2018) went under this spring.

Ha. That's the most outlandish part of the plot. In terms of enforcement and control, Black Mirror's Metalhead episode seems the more likely vision, where the robotic dogs are comparable to drones.

I hate to break it to you, but Palantir was founded 11 years before Winter Soldier came out. It was commentary on the current world and near Sci-Fi, not a far off warning. We've been operating under surveillance capitalism for over 2 decades now. Which is probably why it doesn't get mentioned. People had already acclimated to it being the unacceptable yet inevitable future while doing their best to perpetuate it while voicing disdain.

I hate to break it to you, but I'm well aware of surveillance capitalism and when Palantir was founded. And I didn't say Winter Soldier was a "far off warning". Maybe you need to check your reading comprehension skills.

The unification of government data on citizens under DOGE and the push to use AI for surveillance under an authoritarian government bring us far closer to the plot of Winter Soldier than the bread and butter surveillance capitalism we'd already been living under. I regret that I had to spell that out for you.

  > The unification of government data on citizens under DOGE and the push to use AI for surveillance under an authoritarian government bring us far closer to the plot of Winter Soldier than the bread and butter surveillance capitalism we'd already been living under.

I never disagreed with this point.

My comment was only about the point that Winter Soldier "doesn't get enough credit." My point was that setting was not just "not novel" but already common place. Meaning Winter Soldier does not stand out as a unique representation. I want to stress "not a unique representation" != "not a representation".

It sounds like you're saying the setting was already commonplace in fictional media? But you don't reference such representations in your prior comment at all.

At any rate, while themes of technological surveillance and authoritarianism certainly predate Winter Soldier, I'm not aware of anything in popular culture prior to 2014 that really matches the moment _to the degree_ Winter Soldier does. And if you simply meant the actual state of America circa 2014, sure, Palantir existed, but DOGE and an authoritarian-controlled US military institution did not. ML, yes, but not the quasi-AGI of today that's a much closer match for the computerized Arnim Zola.

Metal Gear Solid 2 was talking about and predicted this 15 years before your example.

When I ask 20-somethings whether they’ve seen the matrix the answer is ‘no’ usually. They have little idea what they’re working towards, but are happy to be doing it so they have something to eat.

Yet they have seen Black Mirror and the likes, which also portray the future we’re heading towards. I’d argue even better because matrix is still far off.

But also, it’s not the 20-somethings building this people making decisions are in their 40’s and 50’s.

The Matrix was inspired by the Gnostic schools of thought. The authors obviously knew loads about esoteric spirituality and the occult sciences. People have been suggesting that we are trapped in a simulacrum / matrix for over two-thousand years. I personally believe The Matrix was somewhat of a documentary. I'm curious - why do you think a concept such as presented in The Matrix, is still far off?

As the siblings said.

I think we are close to Wally or Fifteen Million Credits, maybe even almost at the Oasis (as seen by IOI). But we have made little progress in direct brain stimulation of senses. We are also extremely far from robots that can do unsupervised complex work (work that requires a modicum of improvisation).

Of course we might already be in matrix or a simulation, but if that’s the case it doesn’t really change much.

Fifteen Million Credits is already here.

The difference is that we don't have credits the way the characters do in Brooker's universe; we have social clout in the form of upvotes, likes, hearts, retweets, streaming subs, etc. most of which are monetised in some form or are otherwise a path to a sponsorship deal.

The popularity contest this all culminates in is, in reality, much larger in scale than what was imagined in Black Mirror. The platform itself is the popularity contest.

  > We are also extremely far from robots that can do unsupervised complex work

Don't worry, they'll just sell teleoperated robots[0]. I'm absolutely positive this definitively 100% won't get outsourced and result in you getting a s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶ s̶e̶r̶v̶a̶n̶t̶ low cost helper from a third world country. The dehumanization is a feature!

[0] I'm not joking, they are openly stating this...

Some would argue that most stories in Western societies are echoing the Bible. The Matrix is in many ways the story of Jesus (Morpheus is John the Baptist).

I thought the Wachowskis even said so explicitly. Might be mixing it with deus ex where it is right on the nose.

Brain/computer interface that completely simulates inputs which drive perceptions which are indistinguishable from reality. At least, that’s what is portrayed in the movie. I’m not OP but this to me seems far off.

Fair point and thank you for sharing it! It definitely does feel far off in that aspect. I suppose though, that if we are all trapped in a false reality it is impossible to know (without escaping the false reality) how advanced base reality actually is. I always interpreted the whole jacking into the Matrix thing, metaphorically, but with a literal interpretation the OP's comment makes much more sense to me. Thanks again!

Matrix was a direct rip off of ghost in the shell series which did a much better job at capturing the essence of the issue in depth (the writers almost admit to it and there are videos out there that does scene by scene comparison). Ghost in the shell is majorly influenced by Buddhism. While there are obvious overlaps between platonism (that forms the core of gnostism - salvation through knowledge to the real world, and the current world ~= suffering and not real), it wouldn't be correct to attribute gnostism as the influence behind The Matrix.

I haven't watched Black Mirror but Silo is the next best thing I've seen after Matrix and the scenario doesn't seems far off too.

I enjoyed Silo, but I think in the real world, completely destroying the world's ecosystem and a fraction of mankind surviving in tiny isolated bunkers for generations is more fantasy than scifi...

To be fair, the matrix as presented in the films is pretty much unarguably way better than the real world in the films.

Isn't that kind of the point though? The machine are sort of doing it because they love/envy us?

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