this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] Blue_Morpho 144 points 1 month ago (8 children)

That makes as much sense as The Matrix using people for energy. You can't feed people to keep them alive and get more energy out than just digesting (or in the Matrix burning) that food for energy.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I could be wrong, but I think the original idea for the matrix was that they were using human brains for processing power and not energy. But someone in the movie making process decided people wouldn't understand that and instead went with the battery analogy.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Studio executives made the decision, you know… because there hasn’t be a long list of projects they’ve fucked over the years with their notes. 🙄

[–] finitebanjo 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I feel so bad for the people who remade The Thing because the studio executives literally forced them to make everything CGI.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

And IIRC it was after they had made a bunch of practical effects, so it's not like it was saving them money or anything. The execs literally just said "re-do these parts but worse".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sort of a remake, sort of a prequel.

[–] SuperIce 4 points 1 month ago
[–] GraniteM 34 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Morpheus is the only one we ever hear the battery analogy from anyway. He might well be wrong about that interpretation, and the brain processors are what's really going on.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My headcanon is that he tried the more technical and correct explanation, but most people he told it to started to go a bit glassy-eyed during that part, so he simplified his pitch.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

The showing of the battery is a good visual to sell the explanation too, regardless of it not making sense "realistically"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I believe Switch refers to Neo as coppertop at some point which would be the battery analogy as well too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They've probably all heard the speech at some point. Except those born at Zion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Also there's plenty of precedent for everyone being wrong about something big, like everything revolving around Earth.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

The real reason is the machines are using all the human brains to fake generative AI responses to keep share prices going up in line with their original programming.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The humans blocked out the sun, and probably dashed all other power sources available to the Machines. What you have left are self-replicating humans. Makes sense to keep them alive and farm them just enough to tide you over before their next breeding cycle

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

How do you farm anything without the sun?

[–] sandbox 3 points 1 month ago

They just eat the other humans remains, duh!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

that's what they did, I guess got food from indoor farms?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That takes a ton of electricity. How do you power the indoor farms?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well they scorched the sky which created lots of wind and lightning storms. Maybe they harnessed those sources, or this being the future, used the scant antimatter generated from each strike?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So they do have energy sources after all! So tell me again why do they need to farm humans?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Mmm I'm beginning to see. Even in their own lore, Operation Dark Storm was a failure that crippled humanity and only temporarily halted the machines.

[–] GraniteM 44 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Maybe you get "digested" in the sense that you get incorporated into the sarlacc's body, like it's using you in a parasitic sense. It makes you one of its internal organs, and it keeps you alive as it slowly uses you up over the course of a thousand years (assuming we take that phrase literally). I think acting as a gall bladder for an underground sand monster sounds like a fate worse than death.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Isn't that basically the mechanism of how early complex cells formed millions of years ago.

First it was just basic cells ... they fed off one another and at one point ... one cell became incorporated into the other and essentially evolved into an organ of the cell ... like mitochondria inside the cell, isn't it basically thought that it was one it's own organism at one point and just evolved into an organ inside other cells.

Same with the human body. I think the estimate is that we are only about 50% of our own generated cells and the rest is just other beneficial cooperative bacteria our body has evolved to take advantage of.

So the Sarlac taking you in is just incorporating you into it's body for some function and keeping you alive to fulfill that role ..... you just happen to be conscious of it and unable to escape the entire time over a thousand years.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

It could be that their prey's bodies are used for chemical reactions that their own body is incapable of.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Could be it’s using you for nutrients it can’t get normally, so it keeps you alive to milk you for your calcium or whatever for as long as it can.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Like mitochondria

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I thought it also used them for neural CPU cycles but maybe I'm misremembering

[–] FinalRemix 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, that's exactly the original thing. "Wetware", basically... But test audiences got upset and confused, so it was changed to "batteries."

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

The batteries things was also Morpheus's explanation, and not necessarily a definitive fact of the fictive universe. Morpheus could have been talking out of his ass, or deliberately over-simplifying for the benefit of Neo, who he knew was kind of a dumbass.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I think that was the original idea but they changed it to energy because they thought the audience wouldn't understand the CPU stuff.

[–] JusticeForPorygon 5 points 1 month ago

You also can't choke people with your mind so idk what your point is

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The sarlaac isn’t eating your body; it’s eating your mind.

[–] CitizenKong 1 points 4 weeks ago

The original script for the Matrix had the machines use human brains for data processing, but the Wachowskis were told by the studio to simplify it.