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"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one woul

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization." - Agent Smith

projektir 10y ago
Friendly reminder that this is a quote from a work of fiction. One that doesn't exactly have a lot of rigor in terms of the science/philosophy involved, really. > But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. Actually, nature had a patent on that one long before humans showed up. It's the author of that "primitive cerebrum", too. We've been spending the past however many thousands of years to try undo this reality. But we're really new to this party. These AI's also sound awfully like humans. And they're motivated to create lots of humans (regardless of happiness of thereof) and collect them as batteries. Surely we should trust these ones to create a best world for us, and they have no reason to lie to us. I'm sure people resisted this in the Matrix because they disliked happy worlds. Not, you know, because having your entire reality be controlled by some other entity is worrying.
- woodruffw 10y ago
  The Matrix borrows heavily from Plato's Allegory of the Cave [1], a very famous philosophical thought experiment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
  - projektir 10y ago
    The conclusions about whether or not there is a happy utopia for humans to live in is not part of the Allegory of the Cave.
    - woodruffw 10y ago
      I don't think I said that it was. Apart from its rhetorical value, the allegory is interesting because of it raises questions concerning life-as-suffering and painful knowledge/blissful ignorance. The Matrix does a decent job of relaying both of those concepts to a mass audience. Personally, I'm not certain that humans can create a meaningful utopia. Empirically, we seem to be very bad at personally gauging our absolute welfares[1]. [1]: http://faculty.som.yale.edu/ShaneFrederick/HedonicTreadmill.pdf http://faculty.som.yale.edu/ShaneFrederick/HedonicTreadmill....
      - projektir 10y ago
        My issue with it is that it takes certain stances on those questions and then tries to answer them. I would prefer for the audience to be a bit more critical of those answers. The Hedonic Treadmill for me gets about the same treatment as Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs - it's too simplistic and the conclusions it makes are biased by the beliefs of the culture it originated in. It's fairly easy to find many questions to ask and many holes to poke. A lot of "happiness" studies sadly tend to tap directly into cultural norms and expectations and are very difficult to untangle. Including the cultural norm of giving "happiness" a high value, higher than the painful knowledge you mention, for instance. One objective I would have for a utopia is that knowledge would cease to be painful. Until then, it's a lie either way, and a true utopia is not a lie. Not to mention, if the Hedonic Treadmill is true, it's highly likely to be genetic, which is should not be an obstacle give or take a few centuries. I would recommend against throwing out the utopian idea based on social science theories. The Hedonic Treadmill is maybe 40 years old, utopias are probably many k years in the future.
        bendbro 10y ago
        Uncontacted native tribes emerge naked and starving from the woods. The males hunt and kill, and the women stick to domestic tasks. They like clothes, they like shoes, and they like shelter. Their behaviors and expectations are hardly that removed from ours. There is nothing wrong with subscribing to long running historical norms until they no longer satisfy you or are otherwise proven harmful.
- fierycatnet 10y ago
  It is a work of fiction but it's fairly dense. One of my philosophy classes used the first Matrix to explore some philosophical themes. It's been a while for concrete examples, one of the users pointed out Plato already. And this particular quote "human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." made me think of Dostoevsky's literature for some reason.
  - projektir 10y ago
    And I don't disagree! There's nothing wrong with that device as far as fiction writing goes, it's an interesting one. I'm just pointing out that while certain events unfolded there, we should always remember that it's a work of fiction, which means it, in and of itself, is not evidence that those events would unfold that way.
  - WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
    .. and zizek has used anything from Alien to Hitchcock to illustrate his concepts often enough. Hardly makes either a work of any particular philosophical depth - merely something one may illustrate notions with on a pop-cultural or introductory-educational level.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  Also the same character said that mammals (excluding humans) instinctively find a balance with their surroundings, which is laughable.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > Also the same character said that mammals (excluding humans) instinctively find a balance with their surroundings, which is laughable. How exactly is this laughable? it is generally true as shown by the predator-prey cycle - a form of balance. The exception to this cycle is usually invasive species that do not have a natural predator, these populations grow until they exhaust their food source and the population collapses.
    - aidenn0 10y ago
      The exception is also all of the mammals that have gone extinct over the last several million years due to not reaching a balance. Also by the predator-prey cycle argument, humans just haven't reached the balance yet. We have an abundance of food currently, so we are still growing to the balance point.
logfromblammo 10y ago
Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the script to turn the people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but it was a really bad idea to do so. So now I am imagining row after row of mice in little mouse chairs, wearing tiny VR helmets, organizing for a raid on the MegaMechaCat boss in the Mousecraft MMORPG. It would be interesting to see if escapist recreation is necessary for a healthy high-density society. Purely for self-rationalization of my own gaming activity, you understand. Any scientific benefits would be purely accidental.
- projektir 10y ago
  > Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? That's really nifty, and there are a lot of interesting directions that could have gone it. But it would have driven it closer to more hard sci-fi, and I don't know how well that sells.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the script to turn the people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but it was a really bad idea to do so. They probably did it because test audiences (or maybe studio execs) didn't get the computation thing. If you watch the films, they really only changed it superficially to account for that, and lots of it only makes sense with the computation explanation, which even before I knew it was the original concept I assumed was the real thing going on, and that "batteries" was a faulty conclusion reached by the free humans.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    > a faulty conclusion reached by the free humans I dislike that interpretation because it's really insulting to the intelligence of those humans. (Specifically the idea that they would conclude that as a group, with years of consideration. I'm not disparaging any individual that would find it plausible.)

projektir 10y ago

Friendly reminder that this is a quote from a work of fiction. One that doesn't exactly have a lot of rigor in terms of the science/philosophy involved, really. > But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. Actually, nature had a patent on that one long before humans showed up. It's the author of that "primitive cerebrum", too. We've been spending the past however many thousands of years to try undo this reality. But we're really new to this party. These AI's also sound awfully like humans. And they're motivated to create lots of humans (regardless of happiness of thereof) and collect them as batteries. Surely we should trust these ones to create a best world for us, and they have no reason to lie to us. I'm sure people resisted this in the Matrix because they disliked happy worlds. Not, you know, because having your entire reality be controlled by some other entity is worrying.

woodruffw 10y ago
The Matrix borrows heavily from Plato's Allegory of the Cave [1], a very famous philosophical thought experiment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
- projektir 10y ago
  The conclusions about whether or not there is a happy utopia for humans to live in is not part of the Allegory of the Cave.
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    I don't think I said that it was. Apart from its rhetorical value, the allegory is interesting because of it raises questions concerning life-as-suffering and painful knowledge/blissful ignorance. The Matrix does a decent job of relaying both of those concepts to a mass audience. Personally, I'm not certain that humans can create a meaningful utopia. Empirically, we seem to be very bad at personally gauging our absolute welfares[1]. [1]: http://faculty.som.yale.edu/ShaneFrederick/HedonicTreadmill.pdf http://faculty.som.yale.edu/ShaneFrederick/HedonicTreadmill....
    - projektir 10y ago
      My issue with it is that it takes certain stances on those questions and then tries to answer them. I would prefer for the audience to be a bit more critical of those answers. The Hedonic Treadmill for me gets about the same treatment as Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs - it's too simplistic and the conclusions it makes are biased by the beliefs of the culture it originated in. It's fairly easy to find many questions to ask and many holes to poke. A lot of "happiness" studies sadly tend to tap directly into cultural norms and expectations and are very difficult to untangle. Including the cultural norm of giving "happiness" a high value, higher than the painful knowledge you mention, for instance. One objective I would have for a utopia is that knowledge would cease to be painful. Until then, it's a lie either way, and a true utopia is not a lie. Not to mention, if the Hedonic Treadmill is true, it's highly likely to be genetic, which is should not be an obstacle give or take a few centuries. I would recommend against throwing out the utopian idea based on social science theories. The Hedonic Treadmill is maybe 40 years old, utopias are probably many k years in the future.
      - bendbro 10y ago
        Uncontacted native tribes emerge naked and starving from the woods. The males hunt and kill, and the women stick to domestic tasks. They like clothes, they like shoes, and they like shelter. Their behaviors and expectations are hardly that removed from ours. There is nothing wrong with subscribing to long running historical norms until they no longer satisfy you or are otherwise proven harmful.
fierycatnet 10y ago
It is a work of fiction but it's fairly dense. One of my philosophy classes used the first Matrix to explore some philosophical themes. It's been a while for concrete examples, one of the users pointed out Plato already. And this particular quote "human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." made me think of Dostoevsky's literature for some reason.
- projektir 10y ago
  And I don't disagree! There's nothing wrong with that device as far as fiction writing goes, it's an interesting one. I'm just pointing out that while certain events unfolded there, we should always remember that it's a work of fiction, which means it, in and of itself, is not evidence that those events would unfold that way.
- WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
  .. and zizek has used anything from Alien to Hitchcock to illustrate his concepts often enough. Hardly makes either a work of any particular philosophical depth - merely something one may illustrate notions with on a pop-cultural or introductory-educational level.
aidenn0 10y ago
Also the same character said that mammals (excluding humans) instinctively find a balance with their surroundings, which is laughable.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > Also the same character said that mammals (excluding humans) instinctively find a balance with their surroundings, which is laughable. How exactly is this laughable? it is generally true as shown by the predator-prey cycle - a form of balance. The exception to this cycle is usually invasive species that do not have a natural predator, these populations grow until they exhaust their food source and the population collapses.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    The exception is also all of the mammals that have gone extinct over the last several million years due to not reaching a balance. Also by the predator-prey cycle argument, humans just haven't reached the balance yet. We have an abundance of food currently, so we are still growing to the balance point.

logfromblammo 10y ago

Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the script to turn the people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but it was a really bad idea to do so. So now I am imagining row after row of mice in little mouse chairs, wearing tiny VR helmets, organizing for a raid on the MegaMechaCat boss in the Mousecraft MMORPG. It would be interesting to see if escapist recreation is necessary for a healthy high-density society. Purely for self-rationalization of my own gaming activity, you understand. Any scientific benefits would be purely accidental.

projektir 10y ago
> Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? That's really nifty, and there are a lot of interesting directions that could have gone it. But it would have driven it closer to more hard sci-fi, and I don't know how well that sells.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the script to turn the people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but it was a really bad idea to do so. They probably did it because test audiences (or maybe studio execs) didn't get the computation thing. If you watch the films, they really only changed it superficially to account for that, and lots of it only makes sense with the computation explanation, which even before I knew it was the original concept I assumed was the real thing going on, and that "batteries" was a faulty conclusion reached by the free humans.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > a faulty conclusion reached by the free humans I dislike that interpretation because it's really insulting to the intelligence of those humans. (Specifically the idea that they would conclude that as a group, with years of consideration. I'm not disparaging any individual that would find it plausible.)