Matrix - Is it a reality

Regarding your point of energy from humans, well that's debatable. It really needs be seen how much energy can be extracted over a human's body lifetime, but if its usable in any terms, then humans surely provide a good source of energy. You ca control their numbers at will, and the energy is renewable (meaning if machines are controlling humans, artificial reproduction of humans can easily be achieved to have a continuous source of energy for the machines).

I will like to come back to your point on why should anyone make something soo complicated like the Matrix. Well, we all are a part of creating the Matrix. In our capability, each one of us is creating things more complicated than the ones that exist (whether you are in IT, construction, engineering, travelling, financial or any other business, try to figure out how are you helping make things transition to a more involved state). And this includes me too, I acknowledge that I am a part of the entire process (I even consider that Matrices can be nested, with higher level Matrix owners allowing their subjects to create nested Matrices at their own levels, if all this makes some sense ;))

Hi Junto, real apologies for replying sooo late.. Just did not get time to sit back, think and answer your points..

Well, I agree with many of your points, like Matrix is conceivable as long as we can assure that machines do not feel, like we want others to know we did something etc.

But there are other points where I disagree/have divergent points.

To start with, I did not necessarily mean that Matrix would be created accidently. My feeling is it can be created either ways, by someone explicitly and knowingly to use Matrix as a means of achiveving own (selfish??) ends, or implicitly as a process of humans moving towards more and more mechanization and higher levels of artifical inteliigence for machines.

Next, I again insist that intelligence for the most part is sum of your experiences, and in smaller parts gets affected by other things (what other??). You cannot be Mozart, Einstein or Newton because you cannot share their experiences, you cannot take birth/grow up in the conditions they did, you are not constrained by the same environemnt that any other person on the planet has. You have to agree, that even twins being brought up identically by their parents tend to have deivergent environemtns after some time (friends, thoughts etc.). I do not think you can share experiences of any other person on this planet, and hence can not assume intelligence of any other person (unless you have a time-machine to go back and substitute yourself for the other person, time machines are another topic I am very much interested in discussing).

You said Matrix should not be created to eliminate unforeseeable risk to humans. But you know, humans have a tendency to create things that they know would endanger themselves. Didn't the creators of atomic weapons knew the have the potential to wipe-up the entire human race? Didn't the creators of the most primitive weapons could have imagined that humans would use the same weapons to fight between themselves?

There are many reasons humans create things that threaten themselves (glory, money, control others etc. etc.).

I will not debate the point of extracting energy from humans further because I too am not any expert on the matter, but I surely believe humans ca produce good energy. You said humans need to consume food for producing energy, but that is essentially true for any form of energy production (in coal plants, hydel plants etc.). You would recall energy can't be created or destroyed, it can simply be transformed between various forms. The point is how efficient humans are at transforming energy from food, and I believe we are pretty efficient.

And then, our food grows within weeks (months atmost), which we consume and instantly translate into usable energy. But our primary sources of energy today (coal, petroleum derivatives) take millions of years to form.

The pint regarding the benefit of controlling people in digital world is solid, and yes the owner would get bored playing god pretty soon. But you know, the owner would realize it after having created it. Matrix sounds very exciting when you are creating it, its only when you settle afterwards does the reality starts descedning on you :)

Greetings from India too buddy.. Yupp, our topics seem far close than the physical distances between our countries...

Hi John, good points from your side too. I just quickly went through the link you posted, did not have the time to div into details.

To answer your points, I am not actually debating the intent (allegory or whatever) of Matrix creators, but the reality that are we already in a Matrix, or are we actually in the process of creating one. I am not sure that we are in a Matrix or not, but I see things moving in the direction of actually creating one Matrix for ourselves as debated in my points in the original post and in the comments.

Your point regarding planting subconcious opinions is so true, and I subscribe to it.

Hi Marita, well although I agree that humans generally (and specifically their thoughts and brain) are not limited to space or time (and we generally tend to walk across multiple strands here, often in quick succession one after the other, but sometimes simultaneously), how would you justify that "our true selves are not limited to a single body" (or maybe elaborate on that statement).

Hmmm.. whther the Matirx would clamp down or filter our experience across a "single thread", that is debatable. Matrix would certainly like to keep its subjects submissive to it, but if the subjects are given independent freedom of through or expression even on a "single thread", someone (and most probably many of them), would certainly think out-of-the-box that Matrix would not like.

Beta-wave logical thought - well that was a pretty technical term to use on a blog. In any case, how would you associate these brain waves with thinking along a single path as you have suggested.

It surely must have been enjoyable (and interesting) to be in the state of "expanded consciousness" and I am sure most people have it at one point or the other in their lives.