I just watched this film the other day, and its really good. Has anyone else seen it, and if so what did u think of the simulation? Do you think anything like that will ever be possible? G Coates ------------------------------------------------------------
Gavin Coates
Co-Founder
http://www.multiplayercentral.co.uk

Well it was entertaining but in the end it was just another Matrix ripoff. (Well actually I don''t really know if this movie was before the Matrix or after. Just that there are many movies with the same idea. Existenz, for instance and some other of which I don''t know the name anymore)

It boils down to an old philosofical question: "Do we live ''inside'' another world?" (or something like it. I don''t quite have the power of language to state it effectively)
This was actually my original belief when I heard there were going to be a Matrix 2 and 3. For the AI, it would be smart to build more worlds inside worlds. The humans would be too busy to fight themselves into the ''real'' world underlying the Matrix world we live in that they wouldn''t think about a world which underlies the underlying world etc etc.
The creators of the movie could then also easily correct their mistakes (The major one being: where does the energy come from for the humans if the sun''s blocked out?) since the world was fake anyway.
Maybe the Matrix 2/3 will indeed be based on this idea, maybe not.

But back to your question if it''s possible? I think so. Why wouldn''t it be possible to get your brain plugged into a system so you think it''s all real? I don''t know how it works with hypnosis, but if you can tell a person he''s dying, he''ll probably believe it and die. If this is indeed possible with hypnosis (and much is possible!), it will surely be possible by telling your brain it is so by electrical impulses.
One thing I didn''t like about the movie is that at some point, an AI is uploaded into the real person''s brain. This is probably not possible. I don''t think your brain has exactly the same amount of cells and because of this we couldn''t swap consciousness.
But the AI''s in the computerworld might be realised one day. It''s probably a better idea to simulate a computer world and have an AI live in there than to have the computer as a whole interact with this world. Could both be possible, but the simulated world just is more intuitively to me somehow.

---
Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

yea i thought that was a bit daft too, although in a way it did make sense.

Basically when u entered the system it loaded the mind of the person you were taking over into your mind, then when you exited it restored your true mind back. However because he died in the simulation, the connection was dropped before it restored his mind.

I couldnt help but feel it was similar to the matrix too, but this film was made in 1999, and i think the matrix was too. Therefore the script was probably written at the same time, and it is unlikely that it was based on the matrix or vice versa. With regards to existenz im sure i saw that mentioned somewhere in The Thirteenth Floor, i have a feeling that the film was based on existenze, ill check when i get back to my room.

With regards to the matrix i see your point about the humans existance without the sun, and that is a very good point. Perhaps humans have been genetically engineered by the robots so that they do not rely on the sun? Anyway all the neutrition they need is provided by the slime stuff that they are submerged in. All they really need is food to stay alive, as they never move, therefore not requiring energy.

G Coates
------------------------------------------------------------

Gavin Coates

Co-Founder

http://www.multiplayercentral.co.uk

actually, sun or no sun, the whole using-humans-for-batteries thing wouldn''t work... it is true that human bodies produce so much heat and some electrical energy, but that is only because they eat more than that amount of energy in their food (or slime if you like)... energy cannot be created or destroyed (even nuclear energy is not created, but rather released by the fusion or fission of matter), so the evil robots would have to use more energy feeding the humans than they could get out of them. thus, they would be better off not using the people. only a percentage of the energy in the food we eat comes back out as heat and whatnot; the rest is "lost" (not destroyed) within the body, for building/rebuilding cells, metabolic processes, et cetera.
don''t get me wrong; i loved the matrix. it was a fun movie. it just wasn''t very good sci-fi. luckily the kung-fu made up for that

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

(After several attempts of rephrasing... I almost gave up trying to express this )

Let "Our world" = The world we see
Let "Outside world" = The "real" world which we are supposedly contained by

Now, our world is governed by laws which reside in the outside world. The laws of gravity and all that would be defined in that outside world. If I were to then write a computer program which defined more rules for a world inside of it, those rules obviously would not need to apply to our world. So, in the same way, the outside world, does not need to have rules similar to our world. So while it may not seem likely to us that there could exist a world where rules are totally different, The Matrix (and I''m assuming the 13th floor too, but I''ve never seen it) does have one, and possibly the most confusing aspect is its similarity to our world.

(and why does the spell checker insist that I spelt 13th wrong... suggested replacements are 1st, nth, ATh, HTH, Utah, etch, itch, I''ho, other, Ethan, Ethel, ether, ethic, ethos, ethyl.... spell checking AI has a long way to go )

Trying is the first step towards failure.

Ragonastick> Allright very true, so the outside world could be completely different than ours, maybe even without gravity and such.
But the agent Smiths said such a different computer generated world was unbelievable for the humans so they broke out. Then again, if a newborn would be plugged in to a system like this it wouldn''t know any different and just accept it as ''the real thing''. Then the only thing the computers had to do was kill everybody. This could be achived by simple means: biological and nuclear warfare.
But this is just digressing and we can only hope the next movies will be as good as the first one.
But I wonder what your point is precisely? Because I somehow see this as just an observation and a little bit strange as to how it fits in the discussion. Maybe it''s just me though...
(no insult intended)

About the energy preserving thing: Well all energy must somehow be recycled, but this is so difficult even solar systems as a whole can''t pull it off. The sun will eventually burn up and then there will be no more energy left in the whole system.
Where does all energy come from is the really interesting question here? Maybe the energy just gets bounced back and forth, just like the galaxy expanding and shrinking (which is just a theory, mind you). So it emits energy (expands) and then when the energy source (center of universe) is used up, it starts absorbing that energy again, somehow attracting it all back (shrinking of universe) then emitting again etc.
BTW does a sun turn into a black hole when it''s burn up? I wouldn''t know myself but it would be quite logical to have it suck energy to create a new solar system from scratch.
(planets are then like a battery, energy which created it stored in it to have it extracted again when they''re destroyed)

Hmm I guess this is more like philosofating (is that good English?) than anything else.

---
Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

quote:Original post by Timkin
Actually, it''s more a question of efficient energy conversion. We use energy in many ways in our lives, not just to keep us alive. Basically, the machines in ''The Matrix'' couldn''t go around digesting organic matter to convert it to energy, but they could feed the organic matter to humans kept in pods and extract from them some of the electrical energy produced by the battery (our body).

energy is lost during transfer, in every case in the universe. this is one of the laws of thermodynamics. the "slime" would need energy to grow. the amount of energy stored in the slime (the amount of energy available to the humans to digest) would be less than the amount of energy put into the slime when it was growing (no system is 100% efficient). then, the energy the humans got from the slime would be less than was available, and the energy the robots could get from the humans would be less than that. at every step, energy is lost. this is just a fact of life.

quote:Much the same way we burn coal to heat water to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity to fuel our heaters (if we don''t have a fireplace in which to burn the coal for ourselves!).

a lot of energy is lost this way also. thus, if the only way to GET coal is to use the energy produced by humans, it would eventually all slip away in the transfers. similiarly, if the robots had to produce the slime (remember there was no sun, so they must have), then the energy they got back after it going from slime to human to electricity would be significantly less than they put into the system in the first place.

quote:Original post by Airhead Zoom
About the energy preserving thing: Well all energy must somehow be recycled, but this is so difficult even solar systems as a whole can''t pull it off. The sun will eventually burn up and then there will be no more energy left in the whole system.
Where does all energy come from is the really interesting question here? Maybe the energy just gets bounced back and forth, just like the galaxy expanding and shrinking (which is just a theory, mind you). So it emits energy (expands) and then when the energy source (center of universe) is used up, it starts absorbing that energy again, somehow attracting it all back (shrinking of universe) then emitting again etc.

i read that some astronomers and physicists calculated the mass of the universe, and the speed at which it is expanding, and they said there wasn''t enough mass to cause a re-collapse when the energy is gone. that is, the galaxies could have been slowed down and reversed in direction, so everything would eventually meet again at the center; they said it wouldn''t. this looks like a job for isaac asimov...

quote:BTW does a sun turn into a black hole when it''s burn up? I wouldn''t know myself but it would be quite logical to have it suck energy to create a new solar system from scratch.
(planets are then like a battery, energy which created it stored in it to have it extracted again when they''re destroyed)

nah they either get less hot and smaller, turning into a dwarf star and then just burn out, or in the case of suns big enough (like ours), they collapse and explode, causing a red giant (which not only would toast all the planets up to mars or so, but would also eventually shrink down into a red dwarf and then burn out). of course all this happens over the course of millions of years.

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)