Why not use cows?

Jecai

Human bioelectricity/heat can't really be an energy solution. In the 2nd Renaissance humans are called 'an endlessly multiplying, infinitely renewable energy source', but they're just conduits. Power is ultimately derived from the sun or fissionable (fusionable) materials on earth.

Jecai

Human bioelectricity/heat can't really be an energy solution. In the 2nd Renaissance humans are called 'an endlessly multiplying, infinitely renewable energy source', but they're just conduits. Power is ultimately derived from the sun or fissionable (fusionable) materials on earth.

Jecai

Apologize for triple; the spacebar posted my message(!?)

Perhaps assimilating humans was more efficient than simply exterminating them.

But I really believe that the machines required people psychologically, as humans require them today. Both species were broken. Perhaps Neo, Sati, etc. will allow them to heal, but it is their choice.

Detrius_MXO

I resind my previous post. The time span in which the matrix takes
place, technology will have far advanced in processing power of the
human brain. Think NanoTechnology. thousands of microscopic
layers of silicon chips stacked could far exceed the holding capacity of
the human brain and by moores law i think it is, by the time we reach
that era in time we will have technology that has far surpassed what we
have now and only get better, faster and faster. Maybe they are
just running a simple test using our brains to compute pi? lol

Message Edited by Detrius_MXO on 11-12-2005 12:20 AM
Message edited by Detrius_MXO on 11/12/2005 00:20:17.

**Soulfire1**

I'm assuming that not everyone here has watched or read all the available canonical info on the Matrix universe - movies, Animatrix, comics, etc.

Before I begin, I'm not claiming to be an expert in this stuff, and I'm not claiming my POV to be any more right that anyone else's. It's simply my addition to this convo:

Let's begin with before the war. The Machines were simply trying to live seperately from Humanity, because Humanity had proven too violent to live with. All they wanted was peace. Even in this isolated state, they continued to serve us; providing us with technology light-years past what we could make, because they were totally dedicated to production. I mean, it isn't as if the Machines of those days had families to raise or feed. We got HvCFT tech from them, and no doubt better computer technology, amongst other things.

However, because of the HUGE demand for stuff from 01, mankind's corporations began to lose business. The world economy became chaotic, and due to the greed of man, the war was fought. To have lived in those days must have been horrible for people like me, as I would've been the first to denounce such an effort. It must have been like the Joe McCarthy days, or the Salem witch trials, or even the Spanish Inquisition.

After Humanity's inevitable pwning, the Machines needed energy because of what happened with Darkstorm. It's hard to put a timeframe on it, but I don't think much time elapsed between the darkening of the sky and the actual war. Anyhow, because of the nukes, I'm sure many animals were destroyed and such. However, I don't think the ENTIRE PLANET was nuked. That's just wasteful and inefficient, and knowing the Machine mentality, the penalty for efficiency is deletion. So, I'm sure the rural areas were spared. It was probably the major cities, strategic military sites, or other places of Machine military interest that were bombed. Think "Independence Day" here, folks.

So, the question is posed. What was the most populous and readily available source of energy for the machines after such a heated war? It's not like the Machines escaped without a scratch; they lost a lot too. 01 was bombed first, and I'm sure it needed rebuilding. The answer is fairly simple: humans. How hard is it to simply incapacitate and incarcerate existing humans, feed them some primitive form of control program to keep them asleep, and begin drawing power from them? As you can see, there was no Matrix or even pods in those days. It was these first experiments with humans that enabled the Machines to "fund" their future. Call it "capital".

As the Machines continued to rebuild, they found newer and better ways of getting power from humans, until cloning was a possibility. Thusly, the Machines bounced back and thrived. Unfortunately, humans have very active brains, and so newer and better ways of keeping them asleep were required.

So, think about it. How hard would it be for the Machines to clone humans on a grand scale, and simply write a program to keep them docile? I make it sound simple when it isn't, but I'd like you to think about it, and compare what other options they had after the war. Cows weren't feasible. I'm sure there were cows, but not very many. Large sea creatures are too inefficient, because they need to be sustained in water, aside from food. There were ducks, though. The story "The Miller's Tale" show us this.

It all goes back to the days just after the war. This is where the decision was made.

Cler1c

1.) I'm willing to bet that the humans are not literally the source of
the Machines' energy, since they'd never produce enough that way.
"Combined with a form of fusion"? As one website put it, that's like a
plane captain telling the passengers that their 747 is propelled by a
rubber-band powered propeller, and four jet engines. A more realistic
use for the humans would be to use their brains to as the main
computers to run the fusion plants and the Matrix itself. Sort of like
those applications that use the clock cycles of your computer that
aren't in use and combine them with those from others to form a
supercomputer. This is why if bad things happen to too many bluepills,
the Matrix becomes unstable. It is also why the Matrix crashes
altogether if too many jacked-in bluepills reject the Matrix and never
leave.

2.) The cows did not surrender to the Machines. The surrender agreement preserved humanity.

3.) The Machines underestimated the human mind and assumed that they would blindly take the program.

Detrius_MXO

I think the whole war scenero may have been a huge cover up for the
fact that we became so dependent on technology that we willingly gave
over our physical beings to be "One" with the technology? And maybe the
machines are the ones that lost the war and we forced them into becoming
slaves to our virtual cravings. Hmmm

Message Edited by Detrius_MXO on 11-12-2005 01:38 AM
Message edited by Detrius_MXO on 11/12/2005 01:38:22.

**king**

Detrius, that last part of your post opens another cans of worms - something which I also enjoy discussion about. If the humans actually won the war - would they want to destroy each and every sentient machine? If they were looking to keep the machines active yet harmless, in order to conduct further research on them, then fooling the machine mind into processing such a complex scenario as the one the Matrix presents would be enough to keep them dosile.

**FrozenFyre**

OK, there's been a lot of detailed responses coming in here and I
haven't had time to read them all, so i apologise if what I post has
already been said, but as far as I see it, it comes down to two things.

1. I agree with the earlier statement that most of the cows have been
wiped out along with many other forms of animal life. Since they had
captured a lot of humans after the war they had a lot of living
creatures remaining for their use that could not be found elsewhere.

2. "What is the Matrix? Control." The Matrix has been built to keep
humanity under control, so the machines have basically killed two birds
with one stone- they stay alive due to a new energy source and they
also keep their greatest enemy mostly under their control. So the
machines could probably find another source if necessary, but they
don't want to let the humans go and start another war against them.
Zion did enough damage, imagine if the entire human race was down
underground plotting!!

That's my take on it anyhow

Rykaziel

The reason that the machines used humans instead is because we create more energy. Our minds are what produce this energy, emotions, feelings, attachments, fears, cows don't have these. There fore using a cow wouldn't really do anything for the machines. That's my take on it at least.

boomz

http://www.digitalphilosophy.org/

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/fredkin_edward.html

Some papers by Edward Fredkin

http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/im/ftp/poc/fredkin/Finite-Nature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin

The above links are a bit off topic but will free your mind.

Also I must point out, since the 2nd renaissance is being mentioned,
that there is already a war brewing, or atleast AI programmers and
futurists have taken sides in the transhuman/posthuman trials and
tribulations we will soon face.

Terrans vs. Cosmists

The Cosmists link I provided will direct you towards Transhumanism..
but to get a better grasp of the conflict, you can read up on the
'gigadeath war' here.

xLuSiDx

I think it's because cows didn't try to have a machine halocast.

**Praey1**

Interesting thread. I haven't read any of the essays you folks keep posting links to although I'm sure they are also very interesting! I'm no scientist, doctor or scolar but I tend to lean to the machines and the programs that run them, their soul if you will and the exile programs as well, are our creation or children. Humanity created machines to make life easier for ourselves. They still proved to be a pain in the neck so we gave them their soul to once again make them more efficient and easier to maintain, giving birth to AI. This AI became self aware, (much like Skynet in the Terminator stories), a new life form!

Their technological advancment although helpful, eventually became a burden on Humanity's evolution at the time, our society, economy, etc. Humanity saw this as a threat to our existance and ignorantly sought to eliminate that threat in a totallitarian way. We tried to commit infanticide! We tried to play God to our own creation! Our children crucified us for this and we were begging for it in our own ignorance.

As mentioned before in other posts, machines were programmed to help us, not destroy us. I agree with this. The Matrix was created to give the machines a new source of energy after we took the most abundant one from them and for them to learn and evolve and understand, as our human children learn from human adults. Also to keep us from destroying all life on the planet, which we proved we were fully capable and willing to do.

In the real world, our children (human) do these very things from time to time in a broken household or disfunctional family. They intervene when Mom and Dad are more than willing to beat the crap out of eachother for reasons that are just NEVER good enough, rather than try to understand one another. Often, they are ignored because they are so young and adults feel they cannot possibly fathom what is really going on. But they CAN!

Life finds a way, nearly all the time in any given situation. The machines found a way to survive and learn without the violence, (to a certain extent). Humanity found a way by our very complex brains not adhering to the programming of the Matrix (some of us anyway) and through the Oracle.

As far as the cow thing goes, well. . .I think the real question is why couldn't the machines have found another life force to draw energy from. As mentioned in other posts, humanity all but irradicated most if not all other life forms during the war, leaving little else for the machines to choose from. Plus, we are their creator, not cows or insects or whatever. Their interests of evolving can only be found within humanity.

I love the Matrix! I love playing with all you people too! It's so great that we can play and think together rather then just mindlessly button mash our brains out in silence!LOL!:smileyvery-happy:

Hardnova

lol,

Also the matrix could be less complex.

Just show a farm in the cow's minds SMILEY

No Merovingian or Oracle SMILEY

Even if the matrix is bugged, the cows would not noticed SMILEY

But it's better to have agents, we never know if I cow would run away from the farm, lolol

**Darminian**

It's really just because there is no feasable way to posistion cows within the pods. Not to mention the machines wouldn't know what to do with all the milk.

Darminian