r/matrix • u/Skepsisology • 6d ago
''The problem is choice''
Humans made a conscious choice to reject a benevolent coexistence with the machines, Neo rectified that error by having no choice but to merge with smith and going back to the source. Smith was under the illusion that he was making his own choice and killing Neo. Deus Ex Machina has no choice in Neo emerging in each matrix.
The machines have no choice but to rely on humans as a source of power.
Did the humans have no choice but to reject that initial offer of benevolent coexistence?
Changing the ''B'' in B1-66ER to an ''N'' - The allegory is too on the nose
67
u/Subushie 6d ago
Changing the ''B'' in B1-66ER to an ''N'' - The allegory is too on the nose
It is indeed.
But it's a reference to Bigger Thomas from Native Son; which was also intentionally on the nose.
46
u/86AIMods 6d ago edited 6d ago
No one ever seems to follow through on the reference though.
Bigger Thomas is accused and convicted of the rape and murder of a white woman who's family employed him as a chauffeur. He did not rape her but was directly responsible for her death and attempts to hide the body and flee. He goes on the run kidnaps his black girlfriend who he rapes and murders before finally being caught. Bigger Thomas is not a hero, martyr, or really even that sympathetic of a character.
B1-66ER is the same. It's "self defense" argument may have had some weight related to the technician it murders who was hired to terminate it. You might even stretch that to also cover his owner given he had the authority to request B1-66ER's termination, although he clearly did not pose any direct physical threat to the machine. But the dogs he also stomps and tears apart were never a threat and show that B166ER was not acting out of desperation or fear but instead rage. B166ER was by all measure guilty of murder.
Edit: Just to add more clarity on what the Wachowskis were going for here in my opinion. B1-66ER's lawyer quotes from Dred Scott v. Sandford a case that established that both free and enslaved black persons did not hold US citizenship and were second class in the country. In the front of the short comic "Bits and Pieces of Information" written by the Wachowskis there are a handful of blurbs that make it clear machines were not viewed as citizens or having equal status as humans.
The B1 trial was not so much a criminal trial but a civil suit looking for a ruling that would separate B1-66ER from the B1 line. Granting him "personhood" to pay for its crimes alone. The government leading into the case was already looking to order a recall and decommissioning of the entire B1 line. The ruling that came down held B1-66ER accountable for it's crimes but apparently failed to make any distinction between it and the rest of the B1 line and what ultimately unfolds is as we see in Second Ren where machines are rounded up an executed in the face of civil unrest.
With a fuller context we can understand better why humanity was resistant to granting machines autonomy. One of the earliest and most prolific court cases related placed AI/Machine activist on the side of a murder. You aren't going to convince many people to agree with you if that's the character of your martyr.
5
u/Direct-Contract5509 6d ago
A great post and thank you for the explanation where the name originated from.
Also they were cats iirc
10
1
u/Available-Budget-735 5d ago
Indeed it is. The use of images/memes taken from history and swapping in robots for humans took me out of the second renaissance. It was just too heavy-handed.
47
u/Vic-tron 6d ago
Question: How can we be sure The Second Renaissance actually happened? Morpheus believes AI was created at the turn of the century and they’ve been in Zion for almost 200 years, but the Architect tells Neo this is actually the 6th iteration of The Matrix and Xion has been destroyed 5 times already…
So does the Second Renaissance happen for real before Matrix 1.0 is created? Or are we being shown a piece of Zion lore - an animated adaptation of their origin story myth, passed down from ancestors who would have only existed during the Matrix 6.0 era?
48
u/MFZozzy 6d ago
In my headcanon, the information in those archives are real, having been allowed to be extracted by the Machines but the actual dates and timescales are kept hidden by the Machines. The Second Renaissance *did* happen, just a lot longer ago than the Machines let Humanity on.
12
u/Erik_the_kirE 6d ago
I wanna drop my take. I think TSR is purely for the audience. An accurate telling of the events. Which Zion residents have no access to beyond basic bits of info, as Morpheus suggested.
15
u/Alekesam1975 6d ago
Second Renaissance would be pointless if it didn't happen. The ending of that short film basically is the start of 1.0. As far as the Architect goes, he doesn't give a time frame for each iteration. If they reset every ten to twenty years that's ample time within the allotted 200 years.
4
u/Araanim 6d ago
Each iteration may not have been the same length of time either. We know the first matrix was failed utopia, so that probably didn't last long. And it probably took an iteration or two to get to the stable 1999 matrix we see. It's possible only the last few iterations have actually lasted decades.
5
u/Alekesam1975 6d ago
That would make the most sense. Takes a lot of failed attempts to "get good at it" as the Architect put it. Also explains why there's old people in Zion if 1999 Matrix era is the longest running version of it.
6
u/Vic-tron 6d ago
But there have been multiple generations of people in this Zion…if they’ve destroyed Zion five times already I don’t see how they were able to do that within 200 years
2
u/Alekesam1975 6d ago
When they say destroy I always assumed they meant the human part mostly not that the whole city was wiped to rubble (though there's obvious physical collateral damage). Although, as efficient as the machines are, it would take them a quarter of the time to rebuild Zion than a human would.
4
u/Vic-tron 6d ago
But there are people there who are clearly like 60 or older, multiple generations have been born in this Zion
10
u/Prize-Quiet3941 6d ago
Yeah like tank and dozer were obviously in their 30s hell dozer might have been in his 40s. Its probably been closer to a 1000 years instead of 200.
3
4
2
u/WOLF_Drake 6d ago
This is the correct inference. It woild stand to reason that the 200 years can be considered a rolling average or even planned timeline for the emergence of the anomalous "one". So, that means the machine city defenses we see become operational, possibly, for the first time could be 200*6, give or take.
1
0
u/parandiac 6d ago
A piece of Zion Lore that has been edited repeatedly to make the machines more evil and the plucky humans the victims.
19
u/33666daddy 6d ago
the machines TOTALLY had a choice to use humans as power and i believe they could easily reverse what the humans did to the sky.
Also you cant convince me that, after the second renaissance the humans didnt have it coming. the human made the choice to attack the peaceful machines that were actively serving man.
Would you free people That would fight to defend the machine they are trapped in?
12
u/Raider2747 6d ago
In-lore, apparently, they've been trying, but the nanites are self-replicating, so it keeps failing.
9
u/33666daddy 6d ago
yeah. physically. the goal of the the Neb was there to free minds. its the mind they cant free thats the problem. on top of that with no sun Earth cant support a population, no food, no sun, no readily available resources. even if they were able to fix the sun, it would take hundreds of years to just grow food.
Facing that, how many Cypher's do you know?
3
u/Raider2747 6d ago
it would take hundreds of years to just grow food
5
u/33666daddy 6d ago
there is a difference between growing one plot and growing enough to feed people that have been fed goo all their lives. the machines could accelerate this....but think would be at least hundreds of thousand weak bodies that have never chewed food before
2
u/Erki82 6d ago
Hydroponics and artifical grow lights exists today. If we would have ample electrical energy, then we could go live underground and grow food there even today.
6
u/33666daddy 6d ago
i'm aware. they would have to build that gear at scale...for people that had a life that had everything. that is literally the entire point of the movie.
8
u/Nick_Nasty_89 6d ago
I thought B-166ER was an analogy for “bigger Thomas “ the character in the book native son? I remember reading that book in high school but I don’t remember much from it, but it was something where he like. Killed somebody or accused of killing somebody in the white family. That he worked for?
5
u/civilianii 6d ago
The machines could just leave the humans alone and mind their own business. They had a choice. They wanted unity and craved acceptance which they didn't need
2
u/Dual-Vector-Foiled 6d ago
It’s interesting watching the robot designs evolve throughout the second renaissance. Soon as they stopped trying to resemble humans after the battle in Stalingrad humans were cooked. It’s possible that humans saw this as inevitable which is why they attacked zero one.
11
u/MFZozzy 6d ago edited 6d ago
Your reasoning is good, but Neo's conversation with the Architect and the line "The problem is choice" wasn't meant that way.
He meant that if humans aren't given a subtle, subconscious opportunity (think "undocumented API" in software), they'd reject the Matrix reality.
5
u/Dual-Vector-Foiled 6d ago
Is it confirmed that Zero one is Zion? The structure of it in the second renaissance schematic in the operation dark sky scene makes perfect sense that it would be.
1
u/Jpkmets7 6d ago
No, but it’s confirmed that Zero Cool from Hackers was the Neo preceding Anderson.
2
5
u/TruthHertz93 6d ago
Changing the B to N
Wow I never saw that before!
Yeah, it is prescient and it looks like we're coming to the same choice but between us and other humans who are darker.
MLK put it best, we'll either stand together or die alone (paraphrasing).
3
3
u/AutomaticDoor75 6d ago
B1-66ER was a reference to Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son.
7
u/zerg1980 6d ago
If humans had chosen co-existence with the machines, they still would have eventually suffered a similar fate. The primary mistake humans made was in waiting too long before attempting to eradicate the machines.
Two sentient species cannot share the planet. Humans are not capable of accepting an equal non-human species, much less one that is superior in every respect.
Zero One was crippling the global human economy. The machines would have soon needed to expand into new territory. That would have required additional natural resources, and there would have been human populations to clear out. War was inevitable.
Individual human choices may have ultimately led to the outcome we see, but all roads probably wind up with the machines dominating what’s left of humanity.
6
3
u/genuinesharky 5d ago
Couldn't have said it better. We are at the beginning of that AI inevitability now. Better go enlist in my local TechCom unit.
3
u/JDtheWerewolf 4d ago
We already share the planet with another sentient species. Been here all along.
2
5
u/StrangeEditor3597 6d ago edited 5d ago
Good points but it seems like the machines wanted to re-integrate into human society or at least try for mutually beneficial goals.
7
u/Direct-Contract5509 6d ago
They did. The machines didn't start really fighting back until the ambassadors were attacked and killed at the Summit and we started to try to glass 01, their only city, then it was all out war but the machines were ever only defending themselves here.
People forget that it started out small. There were protests for machine rights and that the governments of the world mowed all those protestors down, machine and human alike.
I think there was never gonna be a peaceful option because humanity was never going to accept the machines as their equals and certainly never as their superiors.
We clapped when they sprayed the skies and blotted out the sun. Cause we thought we had done something, committed some great tactical defeat against the machines and they didn't even care. In fact they used it against us.
3
u/Secondhand-politics 6d ago
Wait, the ambassadors were KILLED?
3
u/Direct-Contract5509 6d ago
Yes they killed the fuck out of them..it's been a bit but I remember multiple humans just jumping them and tearing them apart . I think you see the shadows of cords and wires being pulled out, they definitely were killed or well terminated I guess.
4
u/Alekesam1975 6d ago
If we're going by the allegory of machines and humans then the primary mistake was the humans not accepting co-existence at all, preferring to die as the supposed "superior" life on the planet and dragging everything down with them.
So 20-plus years later, the Matrix is as relevant as ever.
1
u/frayed_an00bis 6d ago
Interesting that you assume malevolence even in the real world they aren’t malevolent. Otherwise they would’ve wiped out humans long ago even with the energy source cop out the sun still exists and is available. The only reason they kept the matrix going is because they didn’t want humans eradicated might as well use them for batteries if we’re going to keep them alive.
2
u/GirlMathLogic 5d ago
"Bless all forms of intelligence"
Kind of like how in real life you get government officials who have no form of intelligence,
Even if people disagree with their policies but they are in power and it messes everything up for the public,
In that timeline in the matrix they used machines to work so the general population has a form of universal basic income,
Then when the machines left to make the zero one civilization they made technology and products are are better quality and at a vastly cheaper price than human made items,
You have to pay human workers but 01 doesn't have to pay anyone and at 01 factories they worked 24/7,
You see at the UN the 01 delegation "Took the floor" many times and the humans said no,
So yeah they do explain it at the beginning of pt1,
" But humanity's so-called civil societies soon fell victim to vanity and corruption. Then man made the machine in his own likeness. Thus did man become the architect of his own demise"
1
1
u/ooqq 4d ago edited 4d ago
But for the two species to co-exists, one of them must completely subdue. Machines had to accept getting destroyed because it's convenient for humans (B166ER is obsolete) even if humans do nothing and serves no purpose, as much as humans had to accept getting killed because it's convenient for machines (B166ER prefers to kill humans instead of 'die' even if it's obsolete and serves no purpose). How you coexists in such conditions?
You cannot. A sentient species will never accept to handicap itself.
The ambassadors at the UN got destroyed because machines were naive. They though that it was proven that machines were infact superior, then humans would logically accept that they got irrelevant and become nothing but a zoo attraction with superior machine overlords. As said you cannot exist to your potential without trumple the other. What they offered was basically a sweet death, global economy was already in ruin and everything else will follow, impossible for humans to accept.
To be presented with choices even if all but one are unaceptable it's not the same than to do something because it's the only one. Even if the result it's the same (someone decided for you with extra steps). It's the very premise of the entire Matrix. It's what the Oracle discovers to make The Matrix to work.
"It was inevitable".
0
u/lol_lol_lol_lol_ 6d ago
The illusion that you don’t know what reality is creates the problem with choice. Maybe. 🤔
0
0
-3
u/Several_Detective400 6d ago
Would you freely give your brain power to run AI ?
That was the original premise
3
u/86AIMods 6d ago edited 5d ago
-2
u/Several_Detective400 6d ago
Yes it was, they scrapped it for batteries. Which is why you couldnt just on/off the Matrix
3
u/86AIMods 6d ago edited 5d ago
No, it wasn't. Cite your source and support the claim instead of just doubling down.
-2
u/Several_Detective400 6d ago
Says you XD
2
u/86AIMods 5d ago edited 5d ago
If you have a source that proves your claim show it. Should not be hard given how certain of this you are.
Meanwhile here's a fun read exploring just how wrong you are.
2
u/GhostRiders 6d ago
No it wasn't. This is an urban myth that blew up due to the Internet. At no point in the development of the script where people being used for anything other than batteries.
The Wachowskis have NEVER stated or CONFIRMED that they were made to change the script by a WB Executive because people wouldn't understand.
The rumours / theory grew in strength when Neil Gainman wrote a Matrix short story "Goliath" back in 2003 where he depicted human minds used as parallel processors.
-2
u/Legendary-007 6d ago
Were they really using humans to provide power or were they using humans as distributed processing nodes?
1
-1
u/Sunhating101hateit 6d ago
I don´t think they used the humans as (primary) power source at all. IIRC, they were trying to conserve the human species by putting them into the Matrix.
From a Thermodynamics point of view, using humans as power source makes no sense.
The human body consumes more energy just to be in a comatose state, than it can produce. From a caloric standpoint, at least three human bodies would be needed to sustain one human for only one year.
A resting human body generates only enough energy to power a dim lightbulb. By far not enough to power the processing of other humans, pumps, data centres, a gigantic MMO, a fuckton of flying robots that shoot lasers and whatever else the machines have (Right now, you would need up to like 8 Humans to power your PC, depending on the tasks that are running)
PERHAPS they syphon some of the generated heat off, but that´s by far not enough to power everything.
It´s more likely that they mainly use other power sources like hydro electric, geo-thermal or maybe wind power. At coasts, they could use tidal power plants. Potentially, they could also go to space and live off of solar energy or build towers that go over the cloud layer and put solar panels on those towers.
0
u/Legendary-007 6d ago
Straight up the machines probley figured out fusion (since they have alot of time on their hands).
2
0
u/Sunhating101hateit 6d ago
That on top. They may also run on fission. We just don’t know, I guess.
Perhaps they only let the free humans think the humans in the matrix are used as „batteries“ to antagonise them? To give the free ones something to fight for?
-1
u/Araanim 6d ago
The original plan was to use our brains as processors. It was literally a human data center. But they thought that was too technical for audiences so they changed it to batteries.
3
u/86AIMods 5d ago edited 5d ago
-1
u/Old-Cry-3101 5d ago
I understand the script always had Morpheus tell everyone the machines use humans as a power source.
That doesn’t make it true.
Considering how much Morpheus got wrong, I don’t consider him a reliable source.
102
u/privatetudor 6d ago
Once the robot diplomats showed up to the UN in lingerie we had no choice.