• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    That makes as much sense as The Matrix using people for energy. You can’t feed people to keep them alive and get more energy out than just digesting (or in the Matrix burning) that food for energy.

    • BlueLineBae@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      I could be wrong, but I think the original idea for the matrix was that they were using human brains for processing power and not energy. But someone in the movie making process decided people wouldn’t understand that and instead went with the battery analogy.

      • RustyShackleford@literature.cafe
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        2 months ago

        Studio executives made the decision, you know… because there hasn’t be a long list of projects they’ve fucked over the years with their notes. 🙄

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I feel so bad for the people who remade The Thing because the studio executives literally forced them to make everything CGI.

          • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            And IIRC it was after they had made a bunch of practical effects, so it’s not like it was saving them money or anything. The execs literally just said “re-do these parts but worse”.

      • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Morpheus is the only one we ever hear the battery analogy from anyway. He might well be wrong about that interpretation, and the brain processors are what’s really going on.

        • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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          2 months ago

          My headcanon is that he tried the more technical and correct explanation, but most people he told it to started to go a bit glassy-eyed during that part, so he simplified his pitch.

          • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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            2 months ago

            The showing of the battery is a good visual to sell the explanation too, regardless of it not making sense “realistically”

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          I believe Switch refers to Neo as coppertop at some point which would be the battery analogy as well too.

          • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            They’ve probably all heard the speech at some point. Except those born at Zion.

            • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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              2 months ago

              Also there’s plenty of precedent for everyone being wrong about something big, like everything revolving around Earth.

      • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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        2 months ago

        The real reason is the machines are using all the human brains to fake generative AI responses to keep share prices going up in line with their original programming.

      • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        The humans blocked out the sun, and probably dashed all other power sources available to the Machines. What you have left are self-replicating humans. Makes sense to keep them alive and farm them just enough to tide you over before their next breeding cycle

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Maybe you get “digested” in the sense that you get incorporated into the sarlacc’s body, like it’s using you in a parasitic sense. It makes you one of its internal organs, and it keeps you alive as it slowly uses you up over the course of a thousand years (assuming we take that phrase literally). I think acting as a gall bladder for an underground sand monster sounds like a fate worse than death.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Isn’t that basically the mechanism of how early complex cells formed millions of years ago.

        First it was just basic cells … they fed off one another and at one point … one cell became incorporated into the other and essentially evolved into an organ of the cell … like mitochondria inside the cell, isn’t it basically thought that it was one it’s own organism at one point and just evolved into an organ inside other cells.

        Same with the human body. I think the estimate is that we are only about 50% of our own generated cells and the rest is just other beneficial cooperative bacteria our body has evolved to take advantage of.

        So the Sarlac taking you in is just incorporating you into it’s body for some function and keeping you alive to fulfill that role … you just happen to be conscious of it and unable to escape the entire time over a thousand years.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      It could be that their prey’s bodies are used for chemical reactions that their own body is incapable of.

    • Rolder@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      Could be it’s using you for nutrients it can’t get normally, so it keeps you alive to milk you for your calcium or whatever for as long as it can.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I thought it also used them for neural CPU cycles but maybe I’m misremembering

      • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        No, that’s exactly the original thing. “Wetware”, basically… But test audiences got upset and confused, so it was changed to “batteries.”

        • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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          2 months ago

          The batteries things was also Morpheus’s explanation, and not necessarily a definitive fact of the fictive universe. Morpheus could have been talking out of his ass, or deliberately over-simplifying for the benefit of Neo, who he knew was kind of a dumbass.

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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        2 months ago

        I think that was the original idea but they changed it to energy because they thought the audience wouldn’t understand the CPU stuff.

    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The original script for the Matrix had the machines use human brains for data processing, but the Wachowskis were told by the studio to simplify it.