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Science and Science Fiction: Humans as Batteries in The Matrix
March 18th, 2009
The Matrix is a pretty cool movie, a modern classic with an interesting premise and innovative special effects. I always had a problem with it, related to the premise. Some spoilers may follow. Here’s my problem scene:
I’m not going to question the information about how much electricity or heat a human being can generate. I am alive and know I get hot, that my brain uses electrical impulses. What I am going to question is the idea that this makes humans a good way to generate or store energy.
This is classic biology and physics. Classic bad biology and physics.
There’s no sunlight left, so the machines raise humans for energy. “All the energy they will every need.” And they feed them dead humans.
Huh?
Without sunlight, I don’t know why the world isn’t frozen, or at least cool at surface level, and I don’t know how plants can be grown to feed the humans. And if you can grow plants then you can get energy straight from them (e.g., ethanol, alcohol, wood fuels) without taking the hit by using inefficient humans to convert that material into energy.
I’m taking this aside, because if you’re only using dead humans to feed live humans, you run out of humans. To keep the population level, each human would only be able to eat one human in its lifetime. Well, let’s call that 100 pounds of meat. Even on a starvation diet, you go through that pretty quickly.
So either the whole thing is ridiculous, or the machines have a better energy source.
There is a phrase about “a form of fusion” that is probably a science patch. Someone made the same objections I’m making and simply suggested adding an energy source so it wouldn’t be a closed system. But if there’s enough fusion to grow food for the humans, there’s more energy available just using the fusion directly rather than using the humans.
And humans as batteries? We don’t store much energy. We release heat all the time, and then it’s gone. At best our bodies are fuel in a pinch, but the dead get fed to the living…
Anyway, cool movie, dumb idea. A decent writer could come up with a more interesting and reasonable justification, but I’m sure someone was wedded to the idea of an easy-to-grasp image: Morpheus holding up a battery. Or maybe it was product placement.
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Not to mention, the level of technology displayed by the Matrix would probably allow them to grow selected biological organisms (ranging from normal cows to genetically designed shapeless blobs) who would generate as much energy, without all the inconvenients of having to keep their brain working in a virtual world, or dealing with rebellions.
I always figured (even the first time I saw it in a theatre) that Morpheus was using an analogy, or was just wrong, and that the truth was that the AIs were using the processing power of the human brain. Using human beings as a power source is just silly.
Unfortunately you are putting way, wayyyyy too much thought into this when the Warschowkis obviously did not , the proof of the pudding is the two dire, dire sequels.
The batteries bunkum is not the only problem, why is the late twentieth century considered the pinacle of human civilization ? Especially the fact that Morpheus’s ship appears to wander the remains of a vast network of the ruined cities sewers.
I won’t even go into the whole scorched earth policy..or as Nomadz pointed out if you are going to breed Humans why not breed humans without higher brain functions , thus avoiding all those annoying rebels.the simple truth is that the Matrix is not that well written.
What JV says. Me, I hated that movie, like few before or since. Probably because it sold itself prior to release as having some level of philosophical depth (and it kind of does for about ten seconds with the blue pill/red pill choice, but after that it gets buried deep below the whole look-at-me-I’m-a-goth-with-a-gun visual aesthetic); instead I found myself watching a comic-book kung-fu movie. Which is okay, if you’re expecting that, but I wasn’t. When it got to the bit about human batteries, I nearly walked out.
Perhaps humans are batteries in the sense that they provide mental energy for the machines. A creative spark the machine intelligences couldn’t otherwise generate on their own. This would fit into the idea that all a computer can do is what it’s told to do through its programming and explain why they need so many humans as a resource pool that doesn’t change.
You could almost say the machines need the Matrix more than the humans. Utopia didn’t work because it stifled creativity. The faults within the Matrix that allow people like Neo to develop and rebel/control the Matrix need to get put down because destroying the Matrix and freeing humanity would offers the possibility that the machines would lose the pool of originality they’re able to sample and mimic and call their own.
I know I’m reading too much into this, but that’s what intellectual exercises are for. They keep the muse happy and original. If I can make an argument that Agent Smith represents Lucifer, railing against the Heaven which the Matrix represents for the machines, I can make an argument for anything. The only thing up for grabs is whether it would take me the length of a short story or a novel to develop the idea. 😉
[…] Hard SF author Mike Brotherton pokes holes in The Matrix […]
I agree with pretty much all of these additional criticisms, and didn’t see the point of keeping humans around at all, either for energy or in the Matrix, not as written. I wanted it revised along the lines of needing the humans for something else, definitely, and additional specialized computing power or some other purpose was one better option.
Also wanted to add that vegetarians make this sound argument, too, that growing animals for food (energy) is much less efficient than plants. Every change in the form of energy loses some of it, usually a large fraction. Land for crops feeds a lot more people than land for cattle. Now if only we could grow cows in vats, and somehow keep their minds occupied so they wouldn’t rebel…
Now if only we could grow cows in vats, and somehow keep their minds occupied so they wouldn’t rebel…
Hmm … now that’s an interesting concept.
The Mootrix
The Mootrix Reloaded
and The Mootrix Revolutions
i was going to ask how you would have rewritten it. what compelling reasons would machines have to keep people around if they have some energy source that appears to be near infinite?
My Matrix rewrite. Originally, just for an alternate computing device. There are potentially a number of problems that humans are good at solving, especially in parallel, that might be not be so easy with machine processing. For the first movie, enough to say, “we don’t know what they’re trying to do.” Then use that as the basis for sequels, where they’re trying to figure out an alternate history that lets man and machine live in peace together.
I like the suggestion above that the machines have no creativity or purpose without guidance from people and need us for that, as well.
Steve, apparently The Mootrix has been done:
http://www.funnyjunk.com/movies/568/The+Mootrix/
I know its not about the Matrix, but its on the subject of bad movie science…
has anyone noticed on the movie Watchmen the HUGE size of Phobos and Deimos on the martian sky? Its like if the director/art director/whatever researched and discovered Mars has two moons. And never gave care about how big and distant from Mars they were. He just included two big balls on the Martian sky… supposedly, about the size of our own moon…
Yeah, I noticed that. Wrote a story set on Mars once and wanted to get this right.
Just remembered the other pointlessly useless aspect of the movie: the earth’s core has cooled, apparently, sometime in the next few centuries. Really? I mean, really? Gah. (storms off)
Consider that this premise was presented from the limited perspective of Morpheus’ knowledge, which we know to be largely false based on information later revealed elsewhere. So, at this point, pretty much all interpretations are fair game. I’m a fan of this mental energy thesis.
I took the “energy source” thing to be some sort of cheesy allegory about political power … at first. Later, I decided that it is just an off-the-cuff “I’m going to give you the dumbest imaginable answer so you’ll stop asking questions”. They can get away with that sort of thing because this is the video game generation, and it’s exactly analogous to the limitations on video game activities.
Since, as we find out later, nothing is real, and everything that happens is supposed to be some sort of computed simulation, no sort of scientific reasoning applies, or can apply. Shit happens in video games and you just watch it and see what you can make happen by pushing the buttons. In this case, nothing, ’cause it’s a movie and there are no buttons.
If i get the opportunity, i would prefer the blue pill, lol..
I have a good reason why the machines did this too the humans…pretty simple. There is no logical way to determine how an AI would act such as the one in “The Matrix”,considering the fact that it is make believe, and a real one that has taken over man does not exist as of yet. The machines did it because obviously they have some sort of superiority complex, and at this stage in their evolution they are not going for effiency at all. They are using us as batteries just because they can. They may have other power sources, those aren’t mentioned, but there is no reason to assume that they don’t exist. There, your movie makes sense again, all fixed.
That’s actually a good point. But to elaborate on the idea that I think a good idea would have been for the Martix to be incapable of conscious thought, in other words it is bound by determinism and cannot make any choices of free will. On a quantum level, humans brains have developed to use quantum processes in their calculations and therefore escape the normal boundaries of determinism in a single layered universe. This is what gives rise to our consciousness and free will which the machine is programmed to attempt to incorporate into its computational mechanism because it sees it as a development and advancement.
However, the energy crisis / climate story was more topical at the time (and still is), and is easier to grasp than quantum physics, quantum computation and the quantum theory of the multiverse.
I thought the real reason was pretty simple: the AI can kill A human–but it cannot kill humanity. In other words, it can kill to survive but the idea of genocide violates its fundamental programming. Humans simply must be preserved as a species.
Saying the AI ultimately has positive–if not good–intentions does not make a great battle slogan. Remember, this is information given to a newbie crew member. Morpheus is trying to persuade Neo and so he invents this nonsense about human batteries figuring Neo is a computer geek, not a science geek, and it will do for now. Neo has lots of other stuff to think about.
It’s the kind of argument that would win a no-prize in Marvel comics… It’s extremely easy to explain virtually anything logically in science fiction and fantasy. Which makes the human battery idea particularly repugnant since its just lazy thinking.
A mention of a Marvel No-prize in this context should win a yes prize! Excelsior!
This has always stuck in my throat, because the Matrix tries very hard to appear serious, and this is just boneheaded disregard for science.
It’s not just another disposable action film.
Even if you had 100 billion humans in these cocons, they don’t produce much power, regardless of BTU’s over a lifetime. The base metabolism of a human produces 100 watts, so 100 billion will give 10 Terawatts, the output of human civilisation in 1982,, but some of that wattage goes into keeping the organs and circulatory system functioning, plus the muscles are atrophied, so output is even less. Then there are aforemntioned energy costs to reprocess the dead to nutrients. The type of fusion would’ve made any attempt to harness human body heat completely redundant, and if the machines can drill down to Zion they could use Geothermal energy.
”On a quantum level, humans brains have developed to use quantum processes in their calculations”
That’s only a hypothesis that is generally regarded with skepticism by most scientists because the wave function decoheres too easily in a macro-scale structure like the brain. A few people like Roger Penrose have been advocating quantum consciousness, because Quantum phenomena and consciousness are both still mysterious and it’s a well-meaning attempt to see if there’s a link, but it’s not gone anywhere beyond popular science ruminations.
Excellent comments, Tom!
Yeah, machines would just create or use other machines for sources of energy. It is nice to know that as long as you have a cool concept, you can entertain the masses. And that’s just what this is; entertainment.
I always thought the battery theory was more like Morpheus’ own wild guessing.
crrbrearley wrote:
“I thought the real reason was pretty simple: the AI can kill A human–but it cannot kill humanity. In other words, it can kill to survive but the idea of genocide violates its fundamental programming. Humans simply must be preserved as a species. ”
I agree. Maybe AI had made its decision based on the warmongering human nature. We couldn’t save ourselves so maybe AI can.
horror…
[…]Science and Science Fiction: Humans as Batteries in The Matrix[…]…
Actually there are quite a few plant like materials which grow in The complete absence of sunlight.
Should have been an Intel chip. 100 Peta flops, 100 TB. Chip fabs destroyed in an massive amp attack that scorched the sky. Using 90% of unconscious. “Combined with an advanced interneural network the machines had found all the processing power they would ever need.”
My rewrite
“…scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on silicon technology and it was believed that they would be unable to survive a global electro magnetic pulse.”
“…fate it seems…”
“The human brain processes information at a rate of one exaflop and is capable of accessing over one hundred terra bytes of data. Combined with an advanced inter neural network the machines had found all the computational power they would ever need. There are fields…”
Yes, that would be better in my opinion, Bill.
Hello Mike,
Your problem scene is one of the best scene. Many people have now woken up.
As Robert A. Monroe wrote, our emotional energies may support the cosmic food chain.
Check out this : http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/human-farm-human-energy-loosh/
Cheers