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It seems as if war/death/etc is just as common in the Matrix as it is in real life outside of the movie. When someone dies in the Matrix, they die in their pod, do they not? = Loss of a battery. That is a whole lot of wasted batteries. Why do the machines allow a world with so much death?

Hans Olo
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user113769
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    There is no war inside the Matrix, as far as I'm aware. There are certainly a vanishingly small number of terrorists, but that's not the same thing – Valorum Apr 06 '19 at 08:17
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    then why the military helicopter and military complex? this means there is war. the world in the matrix (1990's) looks just like the real 1990's. Guns and gangs and drugs to boot. Why would the machines allow this? – user113769 Apr 06 '19 at 08:25
  • You have to remember that Zion is a gigantic honeypot for malcontents and that The Matrix is designed to provide them with a series of escalating challenges ranging from local security, the police, the military and then finally Agents. It's only when The One arises that military buildings become accessible to the Zionese rebels. – Valorum Apr 06 '19 at 08:37
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    user113769 Because active military defense is one of the ways you prevent wars. – Misha R Apr 06 '19 at 14:55
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    Death is "allowed" in the Matrix because, simply, the Matrix is meant to be like the real world. It has gravity, sound, pain, heat, light, etc etc just like the real world. Obviously if there was a massive change ("all of a sudden, nobody's dying!") it would be obvious something weird is going on. – Fattie Apr 07 '19 at 16:16
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    Interestingly, the original concept was for humans to provide computing power, not energy. Not only does this have the benefit of not violating basic thermodynamics, but it also nicely explains why the humans are provided with an illusory reality rather then left brain dead, beyond just the generosity of the machines who didn't really want to kill all humans. Pain and suffering does permanent damage to our cognitive abilities, so unless you live in a perfect reality (which the machines claim to have tried), you'll lose your usefulness over time. – Luaan Apr 08 '19 at 07:09
  • One would assume that as people age they become less effective batteries (that is, if we can apply any logic what so ever to the 'people are batteries' premise). They'd also want to let people reproduce, so they'd be constantly replacing people with other people. – AJFaraday Apr 08 '19 at 08:46
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    "It seems as if war/death/etc is just as common in the Matrix as it is in real life outside", what do you mean "outside"? When have you been outside? – akostadinov Apr 08 '19 at 10:28

5 Answers5

54

People wear out

Bodies are bodies; they decline after a certain age and eventually fail for some reason or another. The machines can't change that, and given humans' relatively fecund nature, they have no driving reason to.

Maybe being sealed into a support coffin slightly lowers life expectancy. Maybe is increases it. But the humans are going to die eventually no matter what.

To run with the battery analogy, batteries wear out. After some number of recharges, their ability to hold a charge gets less, and your four-year-old cell phone has half the battery life that it had when new. Time to recycle!

People would notice, and be bothered by, the lack of death

The architect describes the Paradise Matrix:

[it] simulated a perfect world with no suffering to try to pacify their minds, but the human minds did not accept this version. Many of those connected died, and a Nightmare Matrix was designed in its place that tried to correct its flaws.

Accordingly, even if there was no need for War, the Nightmare Matrix that we see must have War, and Famine, and Conquest, and especially Death. Humans would notice. Humans would be uneasy. Humans would fail.

Men... Men are weak.

gowenfawr
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  • The analogy to batteries doesn't fit that well, because a) the machines do feed the humans with nutritients (which of course doesn't make sense), so they act more like a fuel cell than a battery b) biological systems are in principle able to self-repair almost indefinitely, only, most lifeforms don't do that because it's actually an evolutionary advantage if you die at some point. – leftaroundabout Apr 07 '19 at 12:55
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    @leftaroundabout true, but the machines have zero reason to correct that evolutionary advantage. But I like the fuel cell analogy... And I've seen estimates that fuel cells last 5k-10k hours before wearing out :) – gowenfawr Apr 07 '19 at 13:45
  • @leftaroundabout Biological systems are awful at self-repair. We have no code for e.g. "growing a new arm", and even developing one artificially would be an incredible feat (which is why our current efforts try to grow ready limbs on other animals, rather than "fixing" our own code). Even for cell-level damage (which is much better handled, thanks to our evolutionary ancestry), any large damage simply means the cell dies. Biological systems lose function over time rather quickly. The exceptions are just that - exceptions. In some niches, self-repair is a huge advantage. – Luaan Apr 08 '19 at 07:03
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    @Luaan how would you lose an arm whilst strapped in a sheltering hive? Biological systems self-repair all the time on the micro-level – yes, in part by simply killing off and replacing damaged cells, about which the human doesn't notice anything. As I said, whether or not a system actually does that depends on whether it's evolutionary advantageous. My point was that the wearing out of humans isn't at all analogous to the wearing out of batteries. – leftaroundabout Apr 08 '19 at 07:59
  • @leftaroundabout Of course the human does notice - it just takes a while, because the changes are usually gradual, especially if you avoid any serious trauma (it's hard to ignore scarring or a missing arm, for example). It's called aging, and it happens to rechargeable batteries as well. You claimed that wearing out of humans isn't analogous to wearing out of batteries, but you didn't actually point out any difference. Your only argument is that it's possible to have perfect self-repair in principle; but the same can be said of batteries. – Luaan Apr 08 '19 at 11:18
  • @Luaan no, I was pointing out that humans do in practice self-repair (albeit imperfectly, by evolutionary-design), whereas batteries can in principle not self-repair (because of the lack of DNA-based “construction backups”). Unless you want to invoke self-replicating nanorobots. – leftaroundabout Apr 08 '19 at 11:29
  • @leftaroundabout apparently in practice batteries can self repair. "The resulting material breaks easily, but the broken ends are chemically drawn to each other and quickly link up again, mimicking the process that allows biological molecules such as DNA to assemble, rearrange and break down." – gowenfawr Apr 08 '19 at 11:46
  • @gowenfawr that's really cool, but this isn't at all what you meant when making the analogy to batteries, is it? – leftaroundabout Apr 08 '19 at 11:51
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    @leftaroundabout well, it suggests more affinity of human==battery. It extends the batteries life, just as good nutrition and avoiding smoking prolongs the average human's life. But both of them degrade over time, despite self-repair, and so must be decommissioned and replaced. – gowenfawr Apr 08 '19 at 11:55
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    Actually the entire battery thing in the matrix is complete garbage. We are as reliant on light as the machines would be--we don't create energy out of thin air, we consume energy placed into the food chain by plants. Non-plants cannot produce energy any more than the machines can, eventually you have to bring new energy into the system and that, for the most part, only comes from photosynthesis. Loved the movies but that's always bugged me, trying to analyze the battery thing much beyond the abstract levels in the movie is going to lead to disappointment. – Bill K Apr 08 '19 at 16:43
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The first matrix did not allow that.

First quote is from Smith, second from Architect.

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 that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.

The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect; it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equalled only by its monumental failure.

However, since large number of batteries rejected the program, it was redesigned not to be perfect.

The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being. Thus I redesigned it, based on your history, to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature.

Human nature, according to the architect, has grotesqueries that includes war and loss. After his approach failed, the Oracle was created to better understand human nature. However, even the Oracle did not remove war and loss. While there is no direct quotation to support it, it is immediately deducible that Oracle find these aspects useful as well.

Long story short, Matrix was redesigned in a way that most of the batteries accepted the program. Loss of a few crops was acceptable as long as the majority did not revolt against it.

  • Plus, what's to stop there being a second layer to the Matrix: If you die in the Matrix-proper (i.e. a Machine pod, not a Resistance jack-in chair), perhaps you are instead shunted to a "hellscape". Everyone in the main Matrix thinks you're dead. You think you're dead. The machine still get their harvest. – Chronocidal Aug 16 '19 at 10:09
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While the other two answers correctly address the point about the need for an "imperfect" world stated in the movies, I think there might be a different approach related to your question: you say that dying in the Matrix means dying in the real world...

It's true the other way around, too

The machines need to consume humans to live; this means disconnecting them from the Matrix and swallowing them whole (as shown in one scene in the first movie I believe); this means killing them both in the real world AND inside the Matrix.

So, when the machines need energy, they need to disconnect as much humans as needed. They just "translate" it to the Matrix as those humans dying by whatever means necessary.

Having a perfect world where no one suffers doesn't necessarily means no one dies. It might just mean everybody gets whatever they want whenever they want it, or maybe when someone died they were just replaced by someone else. With an imperfect world, you have just more normal, natural ways of dying. Need a battery? Make someone sick or have an accident or just old. Need thousands of batteries? Cause a war or a terrorist attack here and there and cover your real worlds needs inside the simulation.

NathanS
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Josh Part
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3

"The problem is choice..."

The occurrence of death, or even the choice of death gives the human batteries the impression that they do not have to live in the Matrix if they wish to leave. If they jumped off of skyscrapers and bounced back up from the ground, unable to pass, they would reject the program, knowing they are trapped in some immutable prison beyond their control or will.

NathanS
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user113862
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1

They do not die

This is a concept I've been thinking about regarding a sequel to the series.

In the Matrix, Neo learns how to manipulate the matrix around him because it is not actually real, now in one specific scene..

In one specific scene, Neo uses the power of the matrix while he is outside the matrix, He stops a robot from exploding and killing the 3 of them.

When he stops the Sentinels, he collapses to the ground and the scene ends. In the next scene he wakes up in a hospital type bed. However nothing is ever said about the fact that he can use the power outside the matrix.

This only has one conclusion in my opinion,

They never made it out of the matrix in the first place, They're still in the matrix, A matrix inside a matrix..

The fact that this is never addressed in the movie again, and he never uses the power outside the matrix ever again tells me that maybe the writer left an opening for a script that was never written.

This means, the battery's and pod's (people) are actually inside a matrix, The people and battery's are also in another matrix!

It is a quarantine for the matrix, therefore I don't believe they ever do die at all!

NathanS
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Empire of E
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