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In the Matrix humanity is enslaved to use them as an energy source. But the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that any energy harvested would be, by definitio

In the Matrix humanity is enslaved to use them as an energy source. But the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that any energy harvested would be, by definition, less than the energy of the food required to sustain their bodies. Therefore the plot makes no sense, because they should just shovel the food directly into the computer and skip the humans.

peter422 3y ago
Modern industrial farming "wastes" tons of energy to get their desired outputs. It's possible that the machines were advanced at some things but something that human bodies produced was something they couldn't directly synthesize.
- SilasX 3y ago
  Right but that still means they need to pick literally any other human output besides “energy”. At the very least it would have to be some very specific form of energy that humans emit. Just like it would make no sense to explain the purpose of animal agriculture in human society as “extracting the animals’ energy”. Like you said, it’s the different form of energy (plus nutrients) that they can provide, not energy simpliciter.
ballenf 3y ago
I always interpreted "battery" to be lazy shorthand for using the humans as data storage or computation. Like an external hard drive or compute cluster. But I knew I was amending the story so I could stay invested in it.
thriftwy 3y ago
This one is super easy. We're getting this story from a band of lunatics. Of course their understanding of the situation is limited by the framework they exist in.
wCxV8HzziQBb 3y ago
that's just because they're mining for what computers need to function: RLHF data.
dsr_ 3y ago
The Doylist explanation is that of course the human brains are being used as computing substrates; the energy explanation is a symptom of how little the Zion people actually know about the world.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Neil Gaiman wrote a short story set in the Matrix universe that sticks to this premise: https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Specifically, IIRC, it was in test cuts of the film, and identified as baffling by test audiences. I don't think anything substantive in the films is inconsistent with it (and the behavior of the agents throughout the films is suggestive of it), just the in-character exposition. Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of the “free” humans to do so, so that (as part of the system of control it is established that Zion is) instead they were fed the “battery” story.
    - dilyevsky 3y ago
      Yeah it's a shame because it was such a cool Philip K Dick-esque kind of plot point. > Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of the “free” humans to do so, so that (as part of the system of control it is established that Zion is) instead they were fed the “battery” story. Yeah and the original was already meta being a postmodern critique of society so it's a "yo dawg I heard you like meta..."
karmakaze 3y ago
The same thing annoyed me too but not that much--the premise is a bit like a macguffin where the 'why' isn't important. Pretty much anything to do with physics, especially in sci-fi/space stories. Now I see everything as a typical human emotional drama with a science/space backdrop. Actual sci-fi where the plot directly ties into it is rare, and good ones rarer. It was actually better when sci-fi was niche and what there was, was trying to be good. Even worse for me these days than this plumbers effect is bad acting. Once my mind gets into the reality of actors doing a job, getting this filmed, and played for me, it's hard to get back into the storyline even if it might be great, like trying to return to a dream when fully woken.
dmurray 3y ago
We use cows for the same purpose - we eat them instead of shoveling grass straight into our mouths, even though in some strict sense the grass contains more caloric energy. Or, we eat vegetables even though the energy in them is less than all the solar energy that falls on them. But of course the calories in grass and sunlight aren't accessible to us. It's not impossible to imagine some parallel situation where human biology - perhaps genetically modified - is useful to transform some source of energy into a more usable form.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Carnivores are essentially thieves - stealing the energy concentrated by plants instead of doing the work ourselves.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Herbivores just hate plants.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Synthetic organisms would have a very different opinion of consumption than we do. Sustenance is much more than calories for us. Not so much for them.
  - dmurray 3y ago
    Use your imagination. Maybe some biological process in genetically engineered humans can sort uranium isotopes more efficiently than a centrifuge. That would make them a net producer of "energy" by a reasonable definition.
- nottorp 3y ago
  For meat you could argue that the energy density is much higher than in veggies, so the cows do the job of concentrating it for you.
Strilanc 3y ago
> NEO: Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics? > MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo? > (Pause.) > NEO: ...in the Matrix. > MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies. Paraphrased from https://hpmor.com/chapter/64 https://hpmor.com/chapter/64
xigoi 3y ago
The Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits” is the same. And in fact, it directly shows humans being used to generate electricity, so it can't be explained away.

peter422 3y ago

Modern industrial farming "wastes" tons of energy to get their desired outputs. It's possible that the machines were advanced at some things but something that human bodies produced was something they couldn't directly synthesize.

SilasX 3y ago
Right but that still means they need to pick literally any other human output besides “energy”. At the very least it would have to be some very specific form of energy that humans emit. Just like it would make no sense to explain the purpose of animal agriculture in human society as “extracting the animals’ energy”. Like you said, it’s the different form of energy (plus nutrients) that they can provide, not energy simpliciter.

ballenf 3y ago

I always interpreted "battery" to be lazy shorthand for using the humans as data storage or computation. Like an external hard drive or compute cluster. But I knew I was amending the story so I could stay invested in it.

thriftwy 3y ago

This one is super easy. We're getting this story from a band of lunatics. Of course their understanding of the situation is limited by the framework they exist in.

wCxV8HzziQBb 3y ago

that's just because they're mining for what computers need to function: RLHF data.

dsr_ 3y ago

The Doylist explanation is that of course the human brains are being used as computing substrates; the energy explanation is a symptom of how little the Zion people actually know about the world.

dilyevsky 3y ago
Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Neil Gaiman wrote a short story set in the Matrix universe that sticks to this premise: https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Specifically, IIRC, it was in test cuts of the film, and identified as baffling by test audiences. I don't think anything substantive in the films is inconsistent with it (and the behavior of the agents throughout the films is suggestive of it), just the in-character exposition. Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of the “free” humans to do so, so that (as part of the system of control it is established that Zion is) instead they were fed the “battery” story.
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    Yeah it's a shame because it was such a cool Philip K Dick-esque kind of plot point. > Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of the “free” humans to do so, so that (as part of the system of control it is established that Zion is) instead they were fed the “battery” story. Yeah and the original was already meta being a postmodern critique of society so it's a "yo dawg I heard you like meta..."

karmakaze 3y ago

The same thing annoyed me too but not that much--the premise is a bit like a macguffin where the 'why' isn't important. Pretty much anything to do with physics, especially in sci-fi/space stories. Now I see everything as a typical human emotional drama with a science/space backdrop. Actual sci-fi where the plot directly ties into it is rare, and good ones rarer. It was actually better when sci-fi was niche and what there was, was trying to be good. Even worse for me these days than this plumbers effect is bad acting. Once my mind gets into the reality of actors doing a job, getting this filmed, and played for me, it's hard to get back into the storyline even if it might be great, like trying to return to a dream when fully woken.

dmurray 3y ago

We use cows for the same purpose - we eat them instead of shoveling grass straight into our mouths, even though in some strict sense the grass contains more caloric energy. Or, we eat vegetables even though the energy in them is less than all the solar energy that falls on them. But of course the calories in grass and sunlight aren't accessible to us. It's not impossible to imagine some parallel situation where human biology - perhaps genetically modified - is useful to transform some source of energy into a more usable form.

WalterBright 3y ago
Carnivores are essentially thieves - stealing the energy concentrated by plants instead of doing the work ourselves.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Herbivores just hate plants.
hinkley 3y ago
Synthetic organisms would have a very different opinion of consumption than we do. Sustenance is much more than calories for us. Not so much for them.
- dmurray 3y ago
  Use your imagination. Maybe some biological process in genetically engineered humans can sort uranium isotopes more efficiently than a centrifuge. That would make them a net producer of "energy" by a reasonable definition.
nottorp 3y ago
For meat you could argue that the energy density is much higher than in veggies, so the cows do the job of concentrating it for you.

Strilanc 3y ago

> NEO: Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics? > MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo? > (Pause.) > NEO: ...in the Matrix. > MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies. Paraphrased from https://hpmor.com/chapter/64 https://hpmor.com/chapter/64

xigoi 3y ago

The Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits” is the same. And in fact, it directly shows humans being used to generate electricity, so it can't be explained away.