the matrix is solved

[LMNO]

I'll start a new thread.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Whole deal with matrix bashing is intellectual snobbery. Put quite simply a lot of people say "it's beneath me"

fine and dandy but it's above the vast majority of biological matter on this planet. Either you want this homo sapiens crap to evolve, in which case the film is a damned good eye opener (think sesame street for ages 30 and up) or you wish the bastards would just die out, in which case you're a fucking nazi and just haven't realised it yet.

Ask yourself this - what would you rather your kids were doing - watching Mel Gibson's Thrashing of the christ or The Matrix?

Now get this into your thick, highbrow skull - next to people like us the vast majority of the human race are "the kids"

[AFK]

Ask yourself this - what would you rather your kids were doing - watching Mel Gibson's Thrashing of the christ or The Matrix?

Neither.  I'd rather my kid turned off the tube and went out to figure out the world using their own images and imagination, not someone else's. 

[LMNO]

Silly, the entire premise is a centuries old philisophical debate.  

And "The Matrix" movies don't offer a solution, or even a way forward.  It says this:

"What if your entire reality was an illusion?  Guess what?  It is!  Now go fight mechanical squid!"


PKD movies are much more interesting.  They say:

"What if your entire reality was an illusion?  It might be.  What are you gonna do now, sucker?"




I hold that the latter is more educational than the former.

[P3nT4gR4m]

1) A centuries old philosophical debate that no one had heard of before the movie came out

2) I'm sure if you put enough great minds together you could come up with a movie that would explain absolutely everything you needed to explain, to absolutely everyone and bring about global enlightenment. Or maybe not.

3) Matrix was highly popular and introduced a centuries old philosophical debate into the collective psyche, overnight, more successfully than centuries of philosophers ever managed.

And you want to quibble about the ending? In terms of small steps the matrix was quite a big one.

[LMNO]

The matrix dismissed the question.  It turned the philisophical debate into an "alternate reality" adventure, and into a dualistic reality.

At no point did a character say, "so, how do i know that this "existence as a Duracell" is actually what's going on?"

Hell, even Total Recall, for all it's explosions and pace-shitting, had the final line of the movie questioning whether or not it was real.  The Matrix never did.  And that came nine years earlier.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I still maintain it delivered the meme. Conclusions aren't necessary. Story, plot, character development - irrelevant. Action, pace and special effects eye candy - absolutely necessary - the only way to maintain primitive monkey attention span. There are now millions and millions of people who's primitive minds have a frame of reference to question reality in a way they simply couldn't before.

And it's working. I've spoken to people who have brought it up in conversation. People whom I'm pretty certain wouldn't have gotten there on their own.

My whole issue with intellectual snobbery in this instance is that some people would throw the baby out with the bathwater. "Make them read some Descartes instead" Sounds great until you take into account the fact the majority of these monkeys can't read words with more than two syllables and stuggle to understand even those.

Compare the box if you don't believe me - films like bladerunner and total recall aren't in the same ballpark as the matrix, most of those audiences (by demographic) would prolly have gotten the ideas already.

compare qty of people educated by TR and Bladerunner to qty of people educated by matrix (by educated I mean - took on board a fundamental metaphysical concept)

My bet is Matrix will turn out to be vastly more educational, in the sense that it actually educated.

[AFK]

There are now millions and millions of people who's primitive minds have a frame of reference to question reality in a way they simply couldn't before.

Please tell me this was a purposeful exageration. 

[tyrannosaurus vex]

i want to agree with SC.

but we're dealing with humans here.

it's an eye-opening movie if you're the kind of person who's looking for that sort of thing.  but then, if you're that kind of person, you'll find it somewhere.  if you're not, you'll just look at all the dazzling effects and then go home and wank until SpiderMan 3 comes out.  and then you'll do it again, etc.

<lavey>
people in general are morons who barely deserve to survive.
</lavey>

[P3nT4gR4m]

Released        Movie Name        1st Weekend        US Gross        Worldwide Gross        Budget   

3/31/1999     The Matrix     $27,788,331     $171,479,930     $456,500,000     $65,000,000

Number is how many people understood the concept, minus how many understood before they saw the movie. I'm guessing millions and millions. (conservative estimate)

[P3nT4gR4m]

<lavey>
people in general are morons who barely deserve to survive.
</lavey>

you got me there 

[Jenne]

Silly, the entire premise is a centuries old philisophical debate.  

Troof!  Kafka did this meme well, as did Asimov.

But I still think SC has a point.

[LMNO]

Also, let's not forget that the philisophical premise is bullshit.

Yes, the sensations we percieve are not direct experience.

Yes, it is entirely possible that all of this is an illusion.

Yes, this could mean that all of the intricate physics we have derived from scientific experimentation could be bogus.


BUT SO FUCKING WHAT?  DOES KNOWING THAT WHAT I CONSIDER REALITY TO BE MIGHT BE ENTIRELY FALSE HELP ME IN SURVIVING ON THIS BACKWARDS MUDBALL FILLED WITH PSYCHOPATHIC MONKEYS?


No.




It doesn't.


Because there is no red pill anywhere.

[Jenne]

i want to agree with SC.

but we're dealing with humans here.

it's an eye-opening movie if you're the kind of person who's looking for that sort of thing.  but then, if you're that kind of person, you'll find it somewhere.  if you're not, you'll just look at all the dazzling effects and then go home and wank until SpiderMan 3 comes out.  and then you'll do it again, etc.

<lavey>
people in general are morons who barely deserve to survive.
</lavey>

Pretty much troof for the majority of those who saw the movie, imho.

[Jenne]

Also, let's not forget that the philisophical premise is bullshit.

Yes, the sensations we percieve are not direct experience.

Yes, it is entirely possible that all of this is an illusion.

Yes, this could mean that all of the intricate physics we have derived from scientific experimentation could be bogus.


BUT SO FUCKING WHAT?  DOES KNOWING THAT WHAT I CONSIDER REALITY TO BE MIGHT BE ENTIRELY FALSE HELP ME IN SURVIVING ON THIS BACKWARDS MUDBALL FILLED WITH PSYCHOPATHIC MONKEYS?


No.




It doesn't.


Because there is no red pill anywhere.

Eh, but the red pill issue is a, well, red herring.  Sometimes it's enough to be aware...the solution may not be reachable, may not EXIST even (defeatism ftl), but still.  Going that much further out of oblivion is sometimes just enough.