scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2dycc5.md

The Culture has some objections to virtual hells, and the construct known as 'The Matrix' certainly qualifies...

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• u/None:

  I find it hard to say much other than: "LOL, the Culture, messing up people's perfectly good genocidal wars by being all enlightened and shit."
  
  EDIT: Upon finishing the story, WAIT HOLY SHIT DID YOU JUST SHIP A CULTURE MIND WITH AGENT SMITH?
  

  • u/pedanterrific:

    He was shipped *With Muffled Oars*, yes. 
    
    Edit: sorry, couldn't resist. Anyway! Isn't the later claim by the Mind that Neo and everyone else but Smith were nonsentient subroutines directly contradicted by the third-person-omniscient narrative access we have to Neo's thoughts? There's a section from Neo's point of view, he doesn't sound nonsentient.
    

• u/Prezombie:

  Neat.
  
  It depresses me a little that after several decades and the author's unfairly early death, there's still more canon volumes of The Culture series than fanfics.
  
  The Culture should not be left to die.
  

• u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer:

  *edit after actually RTFF:
  
  I admit it: I've been nerdbaited. Though not, I think, the way this post was meant to. And it was a success, as I actually read the story.
  
  So. This is *The Matrix* In Name Only. Dirty pool. Tag that shit AU.
  
  But still, well written. I'm not wrong, though. It wasn't a good tagline. And it clearly tried to play on a widely-held, and mistaken, view of the subject to generate interest.
  
  It would have been far better just to have used a line from the summary:
  
  >When powerful alien AIs discover the Matrix, whose side will they be on? And why? [Culture x The Matrix]
  
  But noooo, OP had to sex it up and-
  
  Okay. Fine.
  
  http://i.imgur.com/qmhc10v.jpg
  
  Still, keeping the rest of this here because it remains accurate, and because OP should be ashamed.
  
  ---
  
  > The construct known as 'The Matrix' certainly qualifies.
  
  This is not obviously true. The Matrix's functionality, for the VAST majority of "users" (hundreds of thousands, maybe millions -- most likely not billions) is simply an imitation of late 20th century urban life. Boredom is the worst we're ever shown, other than a terrorist (Morpheus) going around killing people. Like Neo does in the lobby scene. And that's hardly the machines' fault.
  
  As we learn in the extended pieces, The Matrix was created after a failed human global genocide of AIs, followed by an overwhelming machine intelligence counterattack. In the aftermath, they potted survivors in a virtual world, for what can easily be seen as *literally* humanitarian purposes. The Earth was no longer anything but a smoking ruin, but instead of finishing the job, they kept humanity alive and safely contained. According to Agent Smith, they even tried to give them perfect virtual utopias first, beforing settling on the grey, boring Matrix seen in the movies. As for the canon human battery "explanation," that is given during a rushed recruitment drive by a religious zealot who might not know an amp from his ass. It certainly doesn't make any sense from a physics standpoint.
  
  But in any case, the canon Matrix is hardly a virtual hell. It isn't even clear that any crimes are taking place in this world, or that there is any unnecessary human suffering at all. It is bad, really bad, that people are stuck in a system of control like that, but it isn't exactly the most evil thing around, and certainly doesn't compare to Banks' Culture novel virtual hells.
  
  So 7/10 for pithy tag lines, 2/10 for ~~rational analysis~~ nerdbaiting.
  

  • u/MadScientist14159:

    Actually, the *second* gen matrix *was* a simulated hell.
    
    That's where the phasing agents in white suits in the sequels come from.
    
    The current Matrix is the *third* gen.
    

    • u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer:

      >That's where the phasing agents in white suits in the sequels come from.
      
      Don't be silly. They never made a sequel, let alone *sequels*. Can you imagine how bad those would have been, what with big budget action movie studio pressures, and without the fresh, indie artistic vision of the Wachowskis? Some even say, partially *stolen* vision, which only makes The Matrix more out there and edgy. But that wouldn't, couldn't be allowed to continue in sequels.
      
      Everyone would know this going in. And yet, everyone would have felt compelled to see them anyway. The Wachowskis themselves would have become part of a system of control, to turn a joyful fanbase into just another series of box office ticket sales.
      
      That would have been the real virtual hell. And only something extreme, like a series of separately released, collaborative animated shorts and short stories by several creative geniuses, working directly from the original Wachowski vision, would have saved anything of the IP after something like that.
      
      *Especially* if the final sequel was just one big infodump, adding new things to the series that *didn't make any fucking sense at all*.
      

• u/Empiricist_or_not:

  Well done.  Smith doesn't get enough sympathy for the hell he/it is in.
  

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