Why not use cows?

Detrius_MXO

LOL, you have issues!

Uljhar Quamlas

this is a bit of supposition on my part, but i think it's simply because by the end of the war, and therefore when the machines began their experiments that lead up to the creation of the matrix, all other life on the planet had been destroyed through whatever humanity did to the atmosphere/the apparently highly destructive war between humanity and the machine species.

so the answer is, perhaps... that there were no more bovines.

-uljhar

Viscidos

One of the things that was brought up on a previous thread along these
lines was that perhaps the Machines are Asimovian(3 laws) in nature.
The big hole in this being that they killed loads of humans in the war.
However, the treatment of humans after the war gives weight to the
argument. Why weren't humans just put out to pasture and set to eat
tastee wheat from a trough in a matrix-like construct?

Perhaps the machines were trying to save humanity from eradicating
itself in the war. Energy could be just a byproduct of the process.

Message Edited by Viscidos on 11-10-2005 06:58 PM
Message edited by Viscidos on 11/10/2005 18:58:47.

**king**

Expanding on an earlier post in which the machines connection to the creators was a contributing factor, I've always thought along the lines that machines are as capable of emotive judgement and behaviour as humans are - after all, for them to become sentient would require them to develop a mind, one which it is possible to assume is able to form basic emotions.

I believe that their 'emotions' were very primative and even infantile prior to them conducting further study of the human brain - similair to the bond a child has with its mother. From that, I feel that a large factor in 'enslaving' humans was merely the fact that they wanted to preserve humanity in as logical a fashion as they were able.

Given that their intellects are beyond out comprehension - it isn't far-fetched to assume that they could devise a much simpler and more efficient way of creating energy other than to harvest it from neuro-kinetics, and that fact that they choose to do the latter could be taken to support their desire to sustain the race who created them.

Another factor which could support this, is the fact that, initially, the machines attempted to present us with a Utopic world, a paradise of our own. There are far more negative emotions than there are positive ones, and therefore the logical step, if all they wanted was to farm us for energy, would be to present us with a world full of pain, misery and torment.

Considering that, as someone else mentioned, we had already scorched the sky, and demonstrated the insane lengths we would go to in order to maintain our position as the dominant species, it would only be a matter of time before we caused our own extinction for no other reason that foolish pride. The machines prevented that - and are probably the only reason humanity still exists within the world of the Matrix.

Or perhaps, as someone else mentioned, its because the movies would suck with Cowanu Reeves in the title role :smileyvery-happy:

Message Edited by kingcaw on 11-11-2005 03:00 AM
Message edited by king on 11/10/2005 19:00:55.

**Trex9**

I don't think a cow could generate quite the same amount of body heat...

..I mean, how much stimui is there in a field full of grass?

Detrius_MXO

Very Good reply kingcaw, I'll have to read that a few times.

[CoZ]LostProphet

I once came up with another idea for the Matrix and its usefulness. The
idea was discounted fairly quickly but I believe it poses a nice
solution to what is somewhat of a plot hole.

The human brain is more advanced than any computer, at least until the AI came along and then redesigned itself over and over.

Great things can be achieved with a supercomputer at this point in time. Thousands of processors linked together.

Firstly, imagine BILLIONS of modern day processors linked in a massive
supercomputer, and what kind of calculations this thing could carry out.

Then replace the modern day processors with the human brain, thousands of times faster and smarter.

The Matrix is the biggest distributed computing system in the history
of the world. If you think about it it makes perfect sense.

The machines create a planet for us to inhabit, and we all wander
around doing humdrum, mundane things, whilst the untapped portions of
our brains are free for their use. They engineer humans now, is it so
hard to believe that with their huge understanding of the human body
and mind that they could use us as processing units?

That would explain why they can't just use cows or other animals, and
it would explain why they are so desperate to keep the Matrix alive. If
they wanted they could get through the scorched sky. Humans hundreds of
years ago figured out how to scorch it, and nobody can seriously tell
me that after hundreds of years, sentient beings that are far more
intelligent than even the brightest humans can't figure out how to undo
it.

They use the Matrix to further their knowledge and understanding of the
universe - it is much more important to them than we have been led to
believe.

**Vaico**

I've always wondered why the Machines dont simply go to another planet or move to the moon. Anything to have access to the Sun and rid themselves of Humans, or for the matter just try and fix the sky. But something makes them stay and try to keep us alive as a species.

**Wendigo**

Great posts many of the above! I first found this question and the answer to it here.

To get a fuller understanding of the Matrix in general I would read the essays that this e-mail was a comment to. Here.

For those too lazy to follow a link and receive their information directly, the writer basically agrees with Viscidos:

One
of the things that was brought up on a previous thread along these
lines was that perhaps the Machines are Asimovian(3 laws) in nature.
The big hole in this being that they killed loads of humans in the war.

The
difference is the Asimovian laws (Machines cant hurt people, Machines
must obey people, Machines should perserve themselves, in that order of
priority) have not changed, that is impossible because they are a base
part of the Machines' programming, and Machines only do "what they are
progammed to do". There is no big hole, because the Laws have
evolved such that the Machines no longer consider humans as
individuals, much as we consider them a mass-consciousness.
Judged on the scale of the species, the Machines have not hurt or
injured us at all, and may have considerably prolonged our existance.

The
essays I linked to above suggest that the Machines need far more from
us than power. They are static creatures, unable to truly learn
or grow emotionally. Humans do it naturally, and we created
them. It goes without saying that they would turn to us to show
them how to overcome, what would be an insurmountable evolutionary
hurdle without our help. The Machines are making progress - Sati
is evidence of this. There are no other "program children", the
other programs manifest fully-formed. Sati is the new way, a
Machine that will learn, grow, and mature in the human style.

The
writer also implies that the Machines have only been giving us what we
want all along. We responded to their ambassors' call for peace
by attacking them. The Machines took that to mean we wanted
war, so it was war they gave us. When it was all over, the
Machines had not changed, they adapted to the task we put them to i.e.
warfare, and bested us at it.

They sought to give us the
happiness we had denied ourselves. They created the first Matrix
as a utopian paradise with angelic protectors. kingcaw is also
right:

Another factor which could support this, is
the fact that, initially, the machines attempted to present us with a
Utopic world, a paradise of our own. There are far more negative
emotions than there are positive ones, and therefore the logical step,
if all they wanted was to farm us for energy, would be to present us
with a world full of pain, misery and torment.

They
tried the pain, misery and torment angle too, but only hoping that we
would accept something and settle down. Many humans died in the
crash of the first Matrix, and another failure like that might mean the
extinction of the species as a whole, whether the Machines wanted it or
not.

This is not to say that all Machines are pro-human.
Many of the A.I.s birthed since the official defeat of humanity carry
with them an inherent contempt for humanity that permeates the whole of
their being (Smith, The Merovingian), though the purpose of the core
system at The Source remains unchanged. Yes, that is why the
Architect can be trusted at his word: Though he is a part of the old
way, he too knows that the Machines must move forward in evolution, and
as the Oracle says "the way forward is together".

Neo's
sacrifice showed the Machines that humanity was ready to cease it
struggles. They were truly done with war. That is why the
truce holds, and that is why we were not exterminated in favor of
cows. The Machines can't and won't kill us. Not all of us.

CrimsonV - Digital Philosopher and Captain of the Mighty Wendigo

Message Edited by The_Wendigo on 11-11-200510:41 AM

Message Edited by The_Wendigo on 11-11-2005 10:41 AM
Message edited by Wendigo on 11/11/2005 10:41:46.

RainKingX

Detrius_MXO wrote:

Why not put cows in pods instead of humans?

i don' t think milk is on the top of the machine list of needs. however, there's no telling what they put in non-organic milk. muahahhaahhhah...cough.

**EndlessVoid**

The reason the Machines cannot leave Earth is the same reason they cannot simply build solar towers above the cloud layer. The dark storm effect blighting the world is exactly that - a storm. It has an EMP effect on any bit of technology that gets caught in it. Thus, the reason why the Logos shorted out when it passed through the cloud layer on its way to Zero-One.

As for the cows... It is not Machinery's job to serve the cows. It is Machinery's job to serve Man. Not any specific number of men, as RainKingX says, but rather the human race as a whole. Like it or not, the Matrix allows humanity to survive where it would otherwise have perished at its own hands. It's a classic case of symbiosis.

The Machines need us to survive in order to retain their purpose. Likewise, we need the Machines in order to continue living. This is true both in the fundamental (Councilor Hamaan remarks about the machine that recycles Zion's water supply: "I have no idea how it works. But I know why it works.") and in the supplemental (fighting the Machines gives US purpose, as inherently warlike creatures).

- Void

phaydren

Good point but i have another theory why the machines kept humans "enslaved"

think of it this way - a humans brain is theoretically 4.2 terabytes of unused storage space and also a processing center.

Now wouldn't it be easier for the machines to store a small part of the matrix code in a humans brain

like you store a file in a computers hard disk. if you spread out the data between 6 billion people then you have one massive hard disk, and in the movies has anybody seen anything that remotely looks like a storage unit (bar onboard the Zion ships)

Maybe this is why the machines got so freaked out by the setting free of blue pills because it was loosing data and also processing power however small.

Gothique

I will tell you why they don't use cows, simply because there are no
cows left. After the humans darkened the skies the outside world died
so the only creatures left were humans. Maybe they used nukes in the
war=nuclear winter=no more cows.

or simply thant the Machines wanted to preserve the human life to reuse
them as workers to help rebuild the outside world in the future?

ooopps sorry was said earlier my bad..i shall read all posts next time SMILEY

Message Edited by gothique on 11-11-2005 06:52 PM
Message edited by Gothique on 11/11/2005 18:52:22.

Detrius_MXO

I read an essay on using the humans as processing power and that the energy harvasted is basically a bonus since they could probably easily resort to other resources such as nuclear or what not. So The whole brian processing theory as mention above kinda answers the question.

Hail The Cows!

**Tefnut**

Elephants woulda been better... or blue whales