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Roy42
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The Matrix
« on: Aug 13th, 2006, 11:54pm » |
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In the first of the Matrix trilogy movies, when Neo knocks over the vase at the Oracle's while looking for it when she had said don't worry about the vase, she says that what will really cook his brain is would he have still knocked it over if she hadn't have said anything.
And I'm wondering, would he?
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #2 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 2:10am » |
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Well, my thought is that she knew it would happen if she said it and that since she saw it, if she didn't say anything and he didn't knock the vase over, it would prove that we have control over our own futures, even the oracle......i think that's what it is.
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towr
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #3 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 2:35am » |
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It wouldn't actually prove anything, because you can't compare actual alternative 'futures'. You can always only take one path.
If she had said nothing, she could not be sure that if she had said something he would actually have knocked the vase over. You'll always be left with uncertainty about the path untaken. Unless you already know the answer you want, before you try to find it.
Besides which, if she knows what will happen in either case, then obviously Neo doesn't have control of his own future. At least not to the extend he can prevent it from happening.
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #4 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 3:52am » |
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The future she saw, apparently, Neo knocking the vase over, was one possible future, but not definate unless you actually get that future, so if she has that future in her head, she can know that that is a possible future and makes the choice that puts her in control of her future, whether to say something and make her vision come true, or to not say anything and leave the future to chance, but even if Neo were to knock the vase over in both instances, the two futures are different because in one she doesn't say anything and in the other she tells him about the vase.
But that's what i think. I don't know everything, no one does. Not even God. but that's another story.
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towr
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #5 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 4:07am » |
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But Neo might also not have knocked the vase over in either case. He happened to do as she predicted. But it wasn't necessarily inevitable.
The bigger problem is that if she's in control of her future, then she's in control of Neo's future (in as far as he is part of her's), which means he isn't in control. Either that, or 'control' should be interpreted much weaker, i.e. as 'influence'.
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rmsgrey
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #6 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 5:08am » |
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The answer given later in the trilogy is that what the sight shows you is absolutely what will happen - that everyone has already made all the choices that lead there and it's just a matter of playing it out (like a chess end-game where both players know exactly how it's going to play out)
What limits the sight is that you can't see past a choice you don't understand (there's an implication that it's a choice of your own that you don't understand, but I might be misreading it) - generally because there's something you don't know or don't "get" until the moment of decision comes... In a game of chess it would be your opponent making an unexpected move, or you spotting a line you'd overlooked. Either way, at that point, foresight ends...
There's a scene in Revolutions where another character is grappling with the idea of the Oracle's sight, picks up a fresh batch of cookies and throws them to the floor: "Maybe you knew I was going to do that, maybe you didn't. If you did, that means you baked those cookies and set that plate right there deliberately, purposefully." The Wachowski Brothers made room for free will, not at the moment of action, but far in advance - more like playing Diplomacy than Chess - everyone's choices are made in advance, and then you act out the consequences together.
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Icarus
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #7 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 6:04pm » |
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The important thing to remember here is that the whole thing is fiction. That means that your question is only answerable within the context of that movie series. Any answer obtained tells you nothing about the real world.
In order to answer the real world equivalent, you would need to do real world experiments to see how the universe behaves. Further, it has to be a current oracle, so that you have the choice of withholding the remark or not. It has to be a fairly reliable oracle, so that you can get meaningful data and not just noise.
And there is the rub. I don't know of a single reliable means of predicting the future that is applicable to this problem.
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #8 on: Aug 14th, 2006, 8:51pm » |
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Yeah, only in the trilogy, i was just thinking about it
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Grimbal
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #9 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 3:17am » |
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Considering that it is a movie with a scenario, isn't it true that all the choices have been made?
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towr
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #10 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 4:20am » |
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on Aug 15th, 2006, 3:17am, Grimbal wrote:| Considering that it is a movie with a scenario, isn't it true that all the choices have been made? |
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They may usually improvise a little bit. But that's just details, not the big picture.
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rmsgrey
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #11 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 6:33am » |
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on Aug 15th, 2006, 3:17am, Grimbal wrote:| Considering that it is a movie with a scenario, isn't it true that all the choices have been made? |
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By the time the cameras start rolling, the choices (for a given scene) have generally been made. In most cases, the scenes are shot out of order anyway, so our timeline means very little to the internal chronology of the Matrix universe - and vice versa...
Memento is a good example of how our time and time internal to a movie may not go in the same direction - for those who haven't seen it, much of the film consists of individual scenes in which time goes forward, played out in reverse order overall - so each scene ends with the start of the previous scene and begins just after the next scene...
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #12 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 3:16pm » |
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True, but if the Matrix came true one day, that'd be somthing to talk about, huh?
But how do we know that we're not in a Matrix?
And if we we're, what do you think chicken really would taste like?
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Sameer
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #13 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 3:24pm » |
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There is a whole forum on Matrix discussing things like these and theological/scientific/parallels discussions.. i read those very dilligently 3 years ago  you might want to google for it.. good read some of the posts..
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #14 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 3:47pm » |
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Thanks, the chicken thing puzzles me because when i travelled europe, i had soup almost every day and when i had any flavor but tomato, it would taste like chicken and in the matrix, the guy says something like, "the computers might not have known what chicken tasted like, so they made it taste like everything" 
Thanks though.
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Icarus
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #15 on: Aug 15th, 2006, 5:57pm » |
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The only way you could tell you are in some sort of "simulation" is if the simulation has a flaw: either it is possible to "see" out of it somehow (such as outside influence, as happens in The Matrix), or it is inconsistent with itself in some way (which could at least lead you to postulate about some "outer" universe, but would not reveal to you anything useful concerning it).
Without evidence such as this, the simulation IS your universe, so in a very real sense, anything outside the simulation is just the mechanics that makes your universe run.
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"Pi goes on and on and on ...
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towr
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #16 on: Aug 16th, 2006, 1:20am » |
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on Aug 15th, 2006, 5:57pm, Icarus wrote:| or it is inconsistent with itself in some way |
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Like machines using humans for a powersource.. (because really, we make terrible generators)
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rmsgrey
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #17 on: Aug 16th, 2006, 8:20am » |
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on Aug 16th, 2006, 1:20am, towr wrote:
Like machines using humans for a powersource.. (because really, we make terrible generators)
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Combined with a form of fusion, let's not forget...
Of course, all Zion knows about the origins of the Matrix is what they got from the One last time he was around, or what the machines told them...
Anyone want to try calculating the rate at which the human population would decline if the only form of nourishment available were the corpses of the previous generation?
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towr
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #18 on: Aug 16th, 2006, 8:27am » |
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on Aug 16th, 2006, 8:20am, rmsgrey wrote:| Anyone want to try calculating the rate at which the human population would decline if the only form of nourishment available were the corpses of the previous generation? |
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hmm, well, let's say a person need .5 kg of food each day, that's roughly two people each year, for say 25 years. So you'd loose about 98% each generation. Very roughly.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 16th, 2006, 8:28am by towr » |
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rmsgrey
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #19 on: Aug 16th, 2006, 8:41am » |
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on Aug 16th, 2006, 8:27am, towr wrote:
hmm, well, let's say a person need .5 kg of food each day, that's roughly two people each year, for say 25 years. So you'd loose about 98% each generation. Very roughly.
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So to have any members of the sixth generation, you'd need the first generation to be over 0.3 billion. Considering that the first generation is supposed to come out of a war of extinction fought using weapons that can render a human body useless for nutritional purposes, getting as much as a century out of the Matrix seems pretty incredible, never mind still having a thriving population...
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Roy42
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Re: The Matrix
« Reply #20 on: Aug 28th, 2006, 1:03am » |
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Whether that was true or not, i wouldn't post that in the Matrix thread. And it wasn't Super Mario, it was Paper Mario.
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