The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post)
 

Well most of you out there know that I am a fanatic about the Matrix. Alot of people were disgusted with the third movie, except for the extreme special effects during the fight in Zion. But there is alot more _deeper_ meaning to these films that I think alot of people have missed.

So in order to waste space and to keep myself from being bored I am going to write out some of my theories about the philosophy of matrixology.

I just recently wrote my final thesis paper for my english 122 class on how close we actually are to being able to artificially stimulate the neurons of the brain and cause us to see or do things without control.

For instance, at Stanford they have been installing miniature electrodes into rat brains and with the simple push of a button attached to the rats back they can cause them to freak out by thinking that their whiskers are rubbing against something, or make them want to eat, or can even make them fall asleep. Just by sending specific electrical impulses to certain neurons in their brains - how long do you think it will be till they do this on man?

Well they already are... I am sure someone here has heard of synthetic optics. But basically people are having wires strung through the back of their head into a special set of eyes that digitally convert imagery into the brains signal, allowing a blind person to see.

There are also chips being installed on the brains of Parkinson's disease victims which when activated can cause them to stop "twitching" by silencing that part of the brain.

We have already decoded or rather, been able to "digitize" imagery (so our sense of vision is mastered), digitize sound (audial sensory), digitze touch (electro-therapy sensory), and have even figured a way to turn a smell into an electronic signal that can be measured (England is using a robot to replace dogs in order to find contraband on humans). The last thing to "emulate" is the sense of taste, which I am sure we will get to in the next couple of years.

What does this all mean? My hypothesis was that eventually they will be able to implant during infancy they will implant a network of cables to each section of the brain and some sort of device (very similar to what was in the Matrix) that will allow them to either by wire or wirelessly stimulate actions in the brain. While at first this may be done to help cure problems such as blindness, or deafness, or paralysis it will eventually happen as the ultimate form of entertainment as well - the next step is to use it as a system of control.

This may not make sense, so ask questions if you need to to understand better what I said - even my professor said she had a harder time understanding my concepts but I seemed to explain my thesis pretty well (after all I got a 98% on it).

But this stuff gets even better, http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Logically it is entirely possible that we are already being manipulated in this way.

This also brings us to the point of our we even human or could we be simulations (programs) designed to act as humans in some sort of a simulated reality? No one can definitely answer but the arguments given by those professors are extremely strong - and irrefutable.

Now, on to the next point. The movies themselves, I enjoyed all three not so much for the special effects or for Keanu's piss poor acting but for the symbolism and ideaology behind the movies.

Take for instance that idea of balance, this is a truth in our world. For every positive, there is a negative. What the final movie showed us is that when Neo descended from being the positive to being the neutral (when he let Smith convert into himself) he destroyed the balance of the equation and therefore both beings ceased to exist.

Some of the other important aspects are the dealings with metaphysical free will and causality. I fit in a philosphical category known as compatablism. Where I believe that we are in fact determined, but that the complexities of our lives and reality make it impossible to predict our out comes and thus in the sense of only language we are free.

The hard determinist, feels that all things are determined and that there is an unescapable cause and effect chain - that choice is only an illusion (as our dear friend the Merovingian had told us).

And then the libertarians, who believe that all choices are made from the inside.

The reason I feel that we are in an unescapable causality chain is that in order to ever make a choice you have to arrive at a scenario, and every moment previous to that scenario will have ultimately caused your decision. For example, my posting this very message. Had I not just re-watched the entire trilogy I wouldn't have been inspired to write down about it on these boards. In turn this will lead to another event, probably me getting up and taking a shower (damn stinky ass). And in turn another event, so on and so on just as you will be lead into a string of causal events from regarding this jargon.

The aspects of choice in the movie were interesting, in that we had the ability to choose but at an unconcious level. If we understood the choice we made then we could see the future unfold before us (as Neo was able to predict the fall of Trinity). This is very deeply tied into ancient practices of monks who would meditate to attempt to reach a focus in their mind so that they could predict the movements of the future in fighting (they could essentially sense an attack before it happened and counter). Though none of us can probably predict the rest of our lives, I am sure that based upon the majority of choices made in our pasts we can predict our futures. For me for instance, I am always going to struggle with this drug problem - for other people they will be raising children, and working jobs they hate for some people they may delve deeper into living a life they enjoy. Irregardless can you see the point I am making about causality? It is a strange concept and the most bizarre line in all the movies is...
"So you're telling me I have to choose whether Trinity lives or dies?"
"No, you have already made the choice."
"No, I wont let it happen."
"You didn't come here to make the choice. You're here to understand why you made it." (this may be slightly off)

That last line is what gets me... to understand why we do what we do. The merovingian looks at it in an almost utterly opposite view saying that we are a part of this causal chain and that we are unable to control any factor outside of it, in essence we are living in an artificial anarchy of our minds because we have no real idea of whats going on.

Well this is all I can think of right now.

There are alot of confusing things that happen in the movies, but I have done alot of research and reviewing of other peoples thoughts and I would be more then happy to answer any of the questions people have - because there are answers to why things happened the way they do in the movies, and the rabbit hole does go further.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

the matrix has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with god.

think about it. its all about god.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

How is it about God?

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

There is certainly alot of Gnositic references in the movie and other ancient religious names mentioned, and of course Neo is symbolical of Christ being a savior. Serraph has been associated as being the "good angel" who guards the holy grail, while the Merovingian is the evil angel that forbids people to use the holy grail.

But aside from that I do not see how this is related to God.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

omg this post is way too long chacko

i think u gave me ADD with it

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

My intent was to stir up conversation since, it seems like most of the posts on here these days are just stupid crap related to porn.

Tell me your thoughts, your feelings on the movie.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

HAHAHA god, god is a fallicy. there is no "god". i'll tell you what "god" is, god is something that we create in our brains to make ourselves feel secure about the things we do not know. HAHA god. If you belive in god you are blinding yourself to the things we do not know.... and about the matrix, i think movies have some truth to them, the are there to "entertain" the public because its all made up, right? Or could it be there to make us think its made up therefore we dont believe that it could happen or is happening.

A circle is the answer to everything.. just think about it and you'll realize it too,
our world is a circle, tires are a circle, everything is a circle....Also plants and trees that grow from the earth(or circle) try to emulate where it came from, such as an apple tree, its apples are circles..but not perfect for some reason, the same goes with all things without brains.... i believe anything with a brain has escaped being a circle. but a circle is the answer to everything

with a circle comes pi, a number that never ends? but how is that possible? a number that never ends? and why does it have to deal with a circle? not a square or some other shape? yep a circle is the answer.... and im a genuis. or maybe in just insane who knows.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

what about agent smith? the devil?? hm... what about rinity and morpheaous and others? the deciples?

think about it. its all about the one, the savior.

wasnt it obvious that in the end the lighted cross in neo?

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

I told you that Neo was symbolical of the savior. But in truth he was more Buddhist than christian.

He descended from being the God of Light to the God of nothing by letting smith (The God of Darkness) absorb him. In the universe when the two forces are combined, they neutralize each other and cease to exist. Its like matter and antimatter colliding.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

The trinity (the divine 3) were Morpheus, Neo and Trinity (woot name games). Morpheus was the dream master (after all he was named after the God of Dreams) and Neo was the new revolution, whilst Trinity has always been symbolical of a holy trinity (mind, body, and soul).

What I wonder about though is what was morpheus opposition to balance out his equation? Has anyone thought of this?

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

I thought the Matrix was just something you watched while you were high.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Thats the irony of the movie... it only entertained certain people but to others it unplugged them.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

DUDE! you need to get out of the basement for a bit. Its just 2 guys vision of a possible future. People read way too much into ----! Thats why the bible became so big. Someone writes a story and then people turn it into a religion. No God, just death. People believe to gain comfort. I'm with Scottsi.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

yep, im the genuis here. movies may have some truth to it but there is no god, and there is no after life, there is ONLY THE CIRCLE. and as humans we are obsessed with the circle.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

im athiest, but the movie is about god.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

yeah it is about god. but pi and the circle are the reasons for all of it, ---- its the reason for everything that you can think of. i'll figure it out one day watch.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

im watching and waiting. i figured it all out by the seccond movie.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

i suppose i am an atheist, i believe in nothing but the circle. It owns us, it owns anything you can think of, government, money, religion, everything, cars and plants too

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

one question, who honestly gives a damn besides chacko and kain in my opinion it was jsut a movie and had no connection to anything. Chacko, your ideas are kinda cool when you step back and look but still how can you argue that the movie relates to being more Buddhist then christian. Who cares. church boy, keep it quiet, introducing religion into this will only make it more confusing

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

What is the circle?

Hey jackass, I believe religion was already introduced in this article, if you took the time to read it. Try and read before you speak, noob.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

chacko, you should read some of the stuff by John Searle he has some pretty good arguments against the possibility of strong AI.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

The movie is somewhat Christian. In the first one: Neo was Jesus (He is the savior and will free the human race/Jesus is our savior and freed us by showing us the truth of God) Trinity was God (She was with Neo EVERYWHERE and brought him back to life/God is everywhere and resurrected Jesus) Morpheus was John the baptist (Waiting for Neo and Making sure Neo always knew about his path/John the Baptist awaited Jesus and carved a path for him) The only contradicting thing is that Jesus never had doubt, he always knew he was the one, Neo had many doubts.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Oh I forgot... Amen ;)

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

I question reality everyday and iam an athiest. Life is much easier when u dont believe in ANYTHING.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

the matrix might just be an insight toward one set of ideas that one might come up with for a god. thoughts and ideas like this make you think about ----. for instance, what if chacko's right, you can't see the future, therefore you can't say "you're and idiot" or "this is a stupid idea". our race will ultimately destroy itself, its inevitable, no way around it.

do the disbelievers, can you prove to me that there is god?
no, it's impossible.

can you prove to me that the matrix is not real? or even prove that we could be in "the matrix" right now?
no, if life as you knkow it was a computer program, controlled by others, there is no way you would ever know.

think about it for a while...

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

i can prove there is not a god but YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Professors remark: "Chacko, I am quite impressed with your progress. Please keep up the good work. One piece of advice, please stay off those drugs when you are trying to work on a paper for me. Thanks." --Professor B16Drag
;)

Someone has too much time!

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

its impossible to prove to me that there is no god.

try this one, prove to me that there is no such thing as air. impossible to do, but you know that it's there

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

the things we dont know we cant prove, you dont know there is no god, you can only say that because you feel it, i feel there is no god, and how do you prove where we as humans came from? you cant. BUT if you can prove it id like to see HAH taht would be interesting.

oh yeah and the circle, if you dont get it you arent ready to understand it. read my earlier post. about how there shouldnt be a number that doesnt end(pi), and that it messes up our number system, but yet this pi number dictates the circumference of a circle. the number that we do not know the end to because there IS no end dictates the circumference of the shape we cannot explain. I believe in the circle, the never ending circle. How can we explain the circle? it dictates everything we do, how our cars run, how our turbo works, everything has to do with the number we cant figure out and never ends(pi), and the shape we cant figure out(circle) oh yeah one more time, im a genuis

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

prove to me that there is air. just because you can't see something doesn't mean that it isn't there. that's all i'm stating. you have the right to believe whatever you want, as do i

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Alright Alright I'm going to end all this bullshit about there not being a God right now. Fine, I confess there is a God and its me. There, is everybody happy now. Now that the cats out of the bag can everybody stop bitching to me about your problems cause I'm too old and too rich to give a ----.


Please make more donations to your church or burn in hell.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

But there is such thing as air and it's evident, because it takes up space.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Religion was created to explain things that people didn't understand. Religion was than used to create order in society. By making people feel guilty and having them believe that good deeds will get rewarded when you die creates an order in society.






Pi is a number that doesn't end becuase it describes a circle. Pi is simply a unit of measurement. A circle does end it just repeats itself. You can determine the circumfrence of a circle and that will tell you from a point where that circle ends. There's a difference between a circle and a cycle. I can explain how a turbo works becuase of science, its a simple Brayton Cycle. I can explain how an engine works becuase of science, its a simple Otto Cycle.


The only thing that doesn't go in a cycle is Entropy. This is something that can never be reversed. Its the only thing that we know of that goes in one direction. In order for entropy to be reversed, the universe would have to collapse on itself, and without entropy life wouldn't exist.


As you can tell I believe in science and science can be used to explain many things. There definitely is an afterlife becuase energy can neither be created nor destroyed so something happens. If you want to know what happens, go kill yourself and find out. I believe you go to another dimension. Yeah it sounds funny but its more mathematically possible than there being a God. What I'm talking about is the String Theory which says the universe is a series of membranes (dimensions) If you really want to blow your mind and think a little bit differently, do a search on String Theory. Once its proven true, It'll be the biggest discovery in history.



Sorry for the long post which nobody will probably read but this is what I think.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

there is too much to read here, and since it's about the matrix i don't care to read it, you all need to get girlfriends.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

It's difficult to do sometimes but I believe in both science and god, they can be corelated. Maybe God is a strong concentration of sentient energy

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Spenser, you wish you get as much ----- as I do. Look who's talking, its a Saturday night that your spending in front of your computer. The only reason I'm here is becuase I have finals on Monday, whats your excuse besides you live in Canada?

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

You can go ahead and suck on an extremely large penis. If you don't care to read it, then uuuhhhhh.... don't read it!

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

there are many things that can't be proven and many diseases that can't be cured. one thing that can never be taken from us is our beliefs. i can beleive in god , and you can make up ---- about a circle. i personally dont have any doubts ive thought logically for years and came to my conclusion. and thats what i would advise everyone to do.

the watowski brothers made a kick ass movie. it took them forever to pack it with that much symbolism. i remember the first movie a long time ago. i think their main goal was to help everbody wise up to their actions. causality, psycology, whatever; we're still overpopulated with ignorant people. if people can learn to understand themselves and everybody else, we'll live in utopia.
yeah right

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

I have read Searle's chinese room argument - and I don't accept it because intelligence is just a word.

Wittgenstein wrote an entire series of books about language games - when we use words we are associating some sort of symbolical aspect to a word. Language is always only on the surface, it can never unvail anything below the surface (or whats going on inside).

We had a very interesting debate over the idea of "understanding".

And to the people telling me that I was making religious statements, I was not trying to enforce religion. Rather I was trying to impress that the Wachowski brothers (who HAVE admitted these names were intentional) were bringing symbolism in it to bring eastern and western philosophy in a medium that American's could be entertained by.

I was trying to explore the connections since they wont directly come out with it.

And yes, it did start as a "vision of the future" but it became alot more then that. There are stories, comics, and other literature regarding the idea.

Along with that in the real world, artificial intelligence has been making some incredible advancements.

Has anyone signed on to talk with that program that will actually carry on a conversation with you... its pretty hard to tell that it isn't a human at times.

There are also EPOs (Evolving Program Objects) that are a recent development. They basically with each iteration generate new code to make themselves more efficient, and to run more powerfully (depending on what their application is). For instance you could develop an EPO that wants to develop the perfect "human" genetic model, it will start with what the programmer sets it forth and then start compiling and recompiling over and over and over until it reaches a point that the programmer would never have expected.

There are some interesting things to read about AI, Code Soup (artificial life forms) and hyper-reality.

Re:The Matrix - Could It Be? Will it Be? All you could want to know (long post
 

Here is an essay I wrote and had published in a philosophy journal at CSU.

Is there some particular reason that for the majority of humans they must rely upon an outer force in order to find purpose with in the world? Perhaps it is above my own perception of this universe, but I do not see the reason for creating Gods and Goddesses to explain the phenomenon of our world; especially in the 21st century.
Our very existence does not have to rely on the necessity of a God; if you found out tomorrow that God was in fact a mere invention (like Santa Claus!) then would you cease to exist? No, you’ll still be an entity in this universe of questions; you’ll just have one less thing to worry about. For some reason it is an innate human response to try and rationalize everything that we experience – if you suddenly became weightless for several minutes and were floating around in the room, I’m sure amidst the first of your thoughts would be “how is this possible?” and dependant upon your own life prior to this moment, you may or may not believe it to be the will of some divine creature. While this is an inevitable fact of all humans, it is quite contradictory to how a lot of the religious people deal with the reality of this universe.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched this stupid show on FOX that comes on around 2 in the morning called “Jack Van Impe Presents” that is mere Christian propaganda (for some diabolical purpose I’m sure!) where this old fart rants about current events in the world and how they were all predicted by the Bible. Well this is all good and well to have faith in your God, but why are you trying to rationalize your faith to the world? A bunch of suicide bombers in the middle east, is not directly wrote into the Bible, it just seems to be a coincidence that with some good twists of the ole’ English tongue can be harbored into making it sound like revelations. If you believe in God, and you truly have this faith in your soul, then why do you need to make rationality of this belief to the world?
Ah because it is our inevitable response to everything that we experience. We want to make some sort of justification for such an event to happen, so that it has some deeper significance to us. I can’t explain why this is human behavior, only that it is human behavior. Perhaps faith is just an excuse for inferior science; I can understand cave men worshipping the Gods of animals in order to yield them with more satisfying prey, or perhaps Indians worshipping a rain God – but how can we still, with our modern science, today take these leaps of faith where we attempt to justify the present by inventing (or in this case, by holding onto) entities of divine power in order to make some sort of un-objective truth about the world?
I guess I just don’t understand how we can continue to use faith as an excuse for not wanting to seek a more definitive explanation to an event. As the example I gave of suicide bombers, perhaps cutting out the idea of revelations and looking at the suggestion that we are really pissing some one off in the Middle East and maybe we should stop!
But oh well, life will go on; we will continue to hold on to these ludicrous values and use them as excuses for being ignorant of the real rational world underneath.


I can go on to play the language game of God.