Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> My main problem really is that the 'big' explanations are hogwash. 
> Mainly, the machines' dependence on humans - power is a ridiculous 
> excuse, and even if you accept that there's still no need for the Matrix 
> whatsoever. And why would the machines have been dependent on solar 
> power? Just a slim excuse to provide a wrecked world as the future setting.

  If 200 years ago you would have told someone that today we take sand and
build machines from it which can make calculations millions of times faster
than humans can, you would have been labeled a madman.

  Just because we can't imagine humans as sources of power now doesn't mean
that it wouldn't at least he *plausible* that maybe hundreds of years from
now machines invent a way to actually get enormous amounts of energy from
humans through a process we can't even imagine right now (exactly in the
same way as 200 years ago people couldn't even imagine the process by which
sand could be used to perform billions of calculations per second).

  Far-fetched? Maybe. Plausible? Yes.

> Although I dislike cliched plot devices like restricted 
> exit/entry points and dying IRL if you get capped in the Matrix.

  Well, their brain was directly connected to the Matrix after all.
It's plausible that the wrong feedback could kill the person connected
to it.

  As for the restricted entry points, they were, after all, hacking
themselves into the system in a way that they avoided detection. In other
words, they had to find security holes and backdoors.

> And I 
> still think the agents would be more deadly.  They can dodge bullets 
> most of the time, but fists, only sometimes.

  Different physics in play. It's plausible that an awakened firing a
gun can't control the bullet, which is 100% simulated by the Matrix,
and thus agents have full data about it. However, if they punch with
their fist, they can tamper with the physics routines of the Matrix and
the agents have hard time following. IOW, they can't predict where the
fist is going to be in the next 0.1 seconds while they can predict the
bullet because they have the full physics data related to it at their
disposal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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