Comments on: X-Men – Legacy #209: A Medical Review

By: Jayunderscorezero

Jayunderscorezero — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:06:06 +0000

Bad: With regards to The Matrix, I think the film-makers were sacrificing actual scientific feasibility in favour of the metaphor that they were trying to communicate: a sort of mix of the “brains in vats” theory in epistemology and some neo-Marxist stuff (the system running on the blood/energy of the workers, etc); as well as a few other things as well, obviously. Thinking too literally about the whole thing may be detrimental to one’s enjoyment.

By: Kerlyssa

Kerlyssa — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:57:04 +0000

I always substituted processing power for electrical power when watching those movies. Made it so much more satisfying to watch, and made a stab at explaining why Neo could alter his surroundings. (Really now, if they were in a virtual reality that was run on processors entirely separate from their own brains, how could they magically change the programming just by thinking about it? I can only suspend my disbelief so much.)

By: Bad

Bad — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:46:58 +0000

It isn’t even remotely sensible as an energy source. Simple thermodynamics would suggest that whatever they are feeding the humans on would be more efficient fuel to create energy directly than by feeding it to a human and then somehow collecting excess “energy” from that (and what sort of energy anyway: heat? electrical impulses?) Even if human beings didn’t expend energy on all sorts of cellular and organ processes that all constitute energy used up.

Think of someone in a hospital on life support. Keeping a person alive is not a way to MAKE energy, it’s a way to EXPEND energy.

The movie never really even explains why it needs to hook humans up to some vast inner world in which it must fool them into staying “asleep”… just to use them as fuel. Why not simply lobotomize them and be done with it?

By: Anders Sandberg

Anders Sandberg — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:15:07 +0000

Human brains are energy hogs, accounting for about 20% of the resting metabolism, on the order of 20 W. Most of this is due to ion pumps maintaining the -70 mV resting potential. We do not have that much extra synapses compared to other mammalian brains, the number of synapses per neuron remains fairly constant (~8000) regardless of brain size.

The only remotely plausible explanation for the “batteries” is that the system uses human brains as coprocessors and that Morpheus mixes up electric power with computing power. It is a big background process: Matrix@home!

By: ScienceGiant

ScienceGiant — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:00:22 +0000

Hey, Doc. I’m curious for your opinion on a related matter. I show my physics students the part of “The Matrix” where Morpheus talks about using the human body as a battery, and we talk about if its fesible. Certainly if it was just thermal generation (combined with a source of fusion of unknown efficiency), you could hook any large mammal and burn calories. So other than story telling, is there a reason the Matrix isn’t run on cows. Or lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!)?

Is it based on our prodigious production of brain lightning? Humans making more electrical discharges per synapse?