Were the machines right?

[Sinfire Titan]

During my Physics class today we covered Electrical Work and Energy. During the topic, we dicussed the efficiency of a battery.

Six degrees of seperation dictated my mind to convert from the topic at hand to a related topic. The Matrix. When he shifted from Work to Efficiency of a Battery, I got this unusual idea in my head:

"Humans are the most effecient battery in terms of lifespan and energy produced".

I want to know the general concensus on how valid this statement could be. Were the Machines right? Are people really the best energy source for the long-haul?

[Bauglir]

This should be informative.

If you don't feel like clicking, you should know that it's physically impossible for humans to be more efficient than whatever they're feeding them with. You'll always get more energy the further down the food chain you go. A good rule of thumb is that you lose 90% of the energy every time you up a stage in the food chain; so you'll get only 10% of the energy from eating a steak that you would for eating the same mass of corn.

EDIT: Actually, that's wrong. I just realized. I guess I should say that you'll have to expend ten times as much energy in corn as you would get from the cow in order to get the cow to adulthood so you can kill and eat it.

[Sinfire Titan]

This should be informative.

If you don't feel like clicking, you should know that it's physically impossible for humans to be more efficient than whatever they're feeding them with. You'll always get more energy the further down the food chain you go. A good rule of thumb is that you lose 90% of the energy every time you up a stage in the food chain; so you'll get only 10% of the energy from eating a steak that you would for eating the same mass of corn.

I'm aware of that. I'm talking in Work/Lifetime. If we cut out all of the irrelevant wants and supply just the needs (enough to motivate a human to work), then are they not the most effective battery?

[Bauglir]

Well, ok. Humans spend their entire lifetimes in tanks connected to the matrix, until whenever it's convenient for the machines to consume them for energy. They're going to consume energy on building body structure, brain matter, metabolism (even if kept heavily sedated, etc, they're still going to burn some calories), etc. Much of that energy is pretty effectively lost. As an energy storage medium, it'd be more effective, thermodynamically speaking, just to burn whatever they're feeding the humans with, because it wouldn't need to go through all of those reactions. That assumes that whatever it is doesn't spoil with time in a sterile environment. If, for some reason, it does, the machines could easily genetically engineer some bacteria to convert it into pure glucose or something and then store that. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you have to use organic life, then I don't know. But there's no reason you should ever need to.

[Sinfire Titan]

Well, ok. Humans spend their entire lifetimes in tanks connected to the matrix, until whenever it's convenient for the machines to consume them for energy. They're going to consume energy on building body structure, brain matter, metabolism (even if kept heavily sedated, etc, they're still going to burn some calories), etc. Much of that energy is pretty effectively lost. As an energy storage medium, it'd be more effective, thermodynamically speaking, just to burn whatever they're feeding the humans with, because it wouldn't need to go through all of those reactions. That assumes that whatever it is doesn't spoil with time in a sterile environment. If, for some reason, it does, the machines could easily genetically engineer some bacteria to convert it into pure glucose or something and then store that. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you have to use organic life, then I don't know. But there's no reason you should ever need to.

Point made.

[Bauglir]

Sorry if I was a bit heavy-handed with that. Bio major. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not too far along yet. Also, factors such as entertainment value probably make human society priceless, which may factor into it. And if the machines actually use human brains to run things, then everything I just said goes out the window, because human brains may well be more efficient than machine brains to produce.

So... Case A: They just burn humans for energy. Not an effective power source. Case B: They use human organs as machine parts, and burn whatever's left. In this case, good times, because now we need to work out just how the Machine society actually runs in order to figure out what they need, what they don't, and what the most effective way to get it would be. Someone more familiar with the Matrix than I would be better qualified to do this, so I defer to superior knowledge.

[Chemus]

Preface to my comments: I have only watched, or even looked at the plot of, the first Matrix movie. (The ending of the first was enough for me)

Now, how I understand it, the Machines are supposed to be using the body heat, or possibly the bio-electricity, of humans metabolizing the food as a heat/energy source. If that is the case, they are only slowly burning what they could burn more completely in another furnace. The humans just seem to dampen the resource usage, odd as that may seem. It's not efficient, considering all the possible ways to produce energy. Using something other than humans would very likely produce better results, but humans are ready-made, and the machines should not be very creative.

As science, it's sub-par IMO. As a pretty original story, I found it rather fun.

[Prime32]

Originally, fusion supplied all the Machines' energy needs, and the humans' brains were linked together to form a supercomputer. But they didn't think the audience would understand that, so they changed it.

[Omen of Peace]

the humans' brains were linked together to form a supercomputer

For some reason I thought that was the case. Shows again that I have a terrible memory for movies.

[PhaedrusXY]

Fuck no. That was the stupidest thing in that entire series to anyone who has the slightest clue about thermodynamics. If you're not inputing energy, everything grinds to a halt due to the 2nd law. And if you're inputing energy, why waste part of it on upkeep for all the humans, instead of just using it directly?

Originally, fusion supplied all the Machines' energy needs, and the humans' brains were linked together to form a supercomputer. But they didn't think the audience would understand that, so they changed it.

Now THAT would have been awesome. Too bad they dumbed it down.

[altpersona]

i am not an expert in any related field.

but i would tend to believe if your going to use a bio battery that a microbial thing would be best.

[JaronK]

Yeah, that idea (that humans could work as a battery) was the one thing I really hated about the first movie... it makes no sense at all.  The supercomputer thing would work a lot better.

JaronK

[altpersona]

i actually prefer that battery vs. the supercomputer.

if you 'woke up' a person from the system they would be useless.

not that we would make efficient batteries..

the thing that makes sense to me as far as batteries go would be drop the humans and tap the geothermal... assuming an infinite / free work force and the time to work it.

[X-Codes]

From what I know about the movie, they used the humans' bodies for thermal and bio-electrical energy, and when they died they were processed into the pink goo that fed the next generation of humans.

Thinking about them as a battery isn't really a good way to go about it.  They're basically using the humans to "burn" other humans for fuel, which from what I know about energy conversion would be a lot more efficient than any mechanical generator we've invented to date, and it would also be more sustainable than even Fission power (although if they had Fusion generators it would be silly to use humans as "batteries").

[Bauglir]

The trouble with that is that you still need to input energy. Since each person is giving off energy while growing, each subsequent round of goo-processing (which will, of course, take energy itself) will result in a smaller amount of energy in the goo unless you add energy to it somehow.

[X-Codes]

The trouble with that is that you still need to input energy. Since each person is giving off energy while growing, each subsequent round of goo-processing (which will, of course, take energy itself) will result in a smaller amount of energy in the goo unless you add energy to it somehow.

Who said the machines didn't?  Morpheus dumbed it down a lot when he explained it to Neo, and if the Fission power + Supercomputer angle was too complex for movie watchers to digest then the intricacies of the law of conservation of energy wouldn't be A-list hollywood material, either.  IC reason and Metagame reason to just skip the whole thing and cut to the fighting.

[Bauglir]

This much is true. Doesn't make it a sustainable energy source, as far as I can tell, though. Only really works if they need humans for structural reasons (like our complex, likely difficult to manufacture but easy to breed, brains). Sapping off energy would just be a way to minimize the energy they have to put in to keep humans alive (and run that massive computer simulation).

[The_Mad_Linguist]

The trouble with that is that you still need to input energy. Since each person is giving off energy while growing, each subsequent round of goo-processing (which will, of course, take energy itself) will result in a smaller amount of energy in the goo unless you add energy to it somehow.

Who said the machines didn't?  Morpheus dumbed it down a lot when he explained it to Neo, and if the Fission power + Supercomputer angle was too complex for movie watchers to digest then the intricacies of the law of conservation of energy wouldn't be A-list hollywood material, either.  IC reason and Metagame reason to just skip the whole thing and cut to the fighting.

Or maybe Morpheus didn't know.  Wouldn't be the first time the resistance dudes completely misunderstood something.

[PhaedrusXY]

From what I know about the movie, they used the humans' bodies for thermal and bio-electrical energy, and when they died they were processed into the pink goo that fed the next generation of humans.

Thinking about them as a battery isn't really a good way to go about it.  They're basically using the humans to "burn" other humans for fuel, which from what I know about energy conversion would be a lot more efficient than any mechanical generator we've invented to date, and it would also be more sustainable than even Fission power (although if they had Fusion generators it would be silly to use humans as "batteries").

I have a PhD in Biophysics, and study bio-energetics. In order to create ordered systems from disordered parts (i.e. build humans), you have to input energy. That's what the 2nd law of thermodynamics says. The 1st law is about conservation of energy. That's not the problem. The problem is things tend to go naturally from ordered states to disordered states (Entropy increases). If you want to go the other way, you need energy. That's why you can't just grind up the old humans and feed them to the new ones. You're not getting any energy input there. If you could do that sustainably, you could build a perpetual motion machine, because that's exactly what this system would be.

So, not only would the humans not produce extra energy, they wouldn't even be able to sustain themselves from one generation to the next by eating the old humans. You would have fewer numbers each generation, and quickly run out of "food" for the new batches. That's why we eat plants. Plants absorb energy, and convert it to a form we can use. Or we eat animals that eat plants. Regardless, our continued existence depends on input of energy from the sun. If you don't input energy, things just get more and more disordered until you reach equilibrium.

So no, it is not possible, it is not logical, and it doesn't make sense. It is just some hollywood tripe, like phasers, photon torpedoes, and "midichlorions",  except even dumber if that is possible because it is an obvious violation of one of the basic laws of physics, and it wasn't even addressed as a problem in the movie because they probably didn't even know it was a problem. It disgusted me because it was just another obvious symptom of the complete ignorance of most people to the very basic laws of physics, even though we live in a world filled with technological wonders which most people just take for granted.

[X-Codes]

I don't think I'm getting my point across; this is a square peg, round hole type of deal.  Humans were an easily controlled processing plant far more efficient than any of today's machines (machines some odd number of years in the future?  who knows, the movies didn't go into detail).  If the machines had a lot of energy the humans could process, but not a lot they themselves could process, then it would make perfect sense to use the humans to convert the energy the humans could process into energy the machines could process.