I like the Matrix story. I have written many posts regarding aspects of the story that I think are quite well done and thought provoking. However, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that there are also issues with the story. Some can be overlooked. Others are quite substantial.
To be clear, I still like the story. It is still one of my favorites. I consider the nature of the story to be such that one can overlook much and still gain from its viewing. A fundamental feature of the story is that it plays with the idea that we have a tendency to feel like something is amiss, almost all the time. In the case of the Matrix, this thing that is amiss is often the fact that the characters are trapped in a simulated world, unable to escape; unable to really detect on a conscious level that they are even trapped. This feeling drives many of the conversations and debates about aspects of the story. This is a good thing. The stories many imperfections can be overlooked as a result.
That said, there are some huge problems as well. In this post, I will raise two major problems with the story. One significant and straight forward problem relates to the scorched sky. The other, much more subtle problem, relates to the obviousness of the orchestrated “path of the one.” One of these problems, I believe, will be quite easy to see by most. The other may not.
At various points in the films and supplementary material, it is explained that the sky was scorched by the humans in an attempt to defeat the machines in a great war. The machines were, at the time, quite dependent on solar energy to sustain themselves. It was believed, by the humans, that blocking this source of energy would bring a quick end to the war. This assumption clearly failed, and the events that precipitated the creation of the Matrix simulation follow. The machines decided to use human beings as a source of energy to sustain themselves, considering this to be a viable alternative to the previously abundant solar energy.
Unfortunately, on this planet, there is no source of energy as abundant as solar energy. In fact, most other forms of energy we utilize are indirectly generated by solar energy. For example, the currents of winds in our atmosphere are, by and large, generated by the solar energy being absorbed by large land masses, which in turn heat up the atmosphere near the surface. The air rises, as a result of being heated, and this causes the air above to be pushed around. This isn’t the only manner in which the atmosphere moves, but it is probably the most significant. This is also why the melting of the polar ice caps is such a big deal related to climate change. The ice caps, by and large, reflect this solar energy, meaning the energy is sent back off into space. Less ice caps mean less solar energy bounced away, and more absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere, which in turn causes more green house effect.
In the world of the Matrix, if the sky has been scorched in such a way as to take away this abundant power source from the machines, it has the (likely) unintentional side effect of removing this same energy source from the humans as well. Without solar energy making it past the black clouds, none of that energy will reach the Earth to raise temperatures or offer other processes the energy required to continue. The movement of atmosphere is likely to stagnate. Furthermore, there is now no energy to allow plants to synthesize sugars or oxygen. After several hundred years, what sort of oxygen levels will remain for the humans to continue respiring?
It is often suggested that geothermal energy is utilized (at least by the humans) in order to power their last city. I will have to assume it is utilizing this energy source to produce the oxygen and other necessary life continuing elements for the humans. Growing crops deep beneath the surface of the Earth, using artificial light sources. Or perhaps there are no crops, and technology is such that the required food sources are manufactured, though from what I cannot guess. Visions of Soylent Green come to mind.
It is a fact of our “real world” that no conversion process is ever 100% efficient. That is, when converting mechanical energy into electrical energy, there will always be some energy lost in the conversion. This is often due to such things as friction (mechanical) or resistance (electrical), both of which end up producing a byproduct of heat. Are we to believe that either the machines or the humans in our near future will somehow resolve these efficiency problems? The swinging pendulum will eventually stop if not maintained by small pushes during its swings.
The biggest problem with scorching the sky is that it does not only present a significant problem for the machines, it presents an extinction level event for the humans as well. Without the abundant solar energy that our “real world” depends on, life cannot be sustained. Perhaps there might continue some small, strange creatures in the depths of the oceans where their respiratory processes are virtually alien to our own, but human life is pretty much impossible without the sun. To be quite blunt, without the sun, both the machine civilization as well as the human one will simply die out over a period of time, as their collective energy reserves are depleted. I would have given them perhaps one generation, but considering the energy requirements to maintain a war, perhaps I am being too generous.
The scorched sky problem seems to place a firm nail in the coffin for this story, but it is certainly not the only major issue. Another large theme in this story is the idea of free will. It is suggested that choice is a problem the machines are unable to resolve within their human farms. The earlier iterations of the Matrix did not properly account for the free will of the occupants, and disaster followed. And so, it was decided that humans had to have a say (however small) in the playing out of the grand simulation. Choices were programmed in, at a near unconscious level. Just enough to allow the humans to accept the program, though with a growing probability of disaster from systemic anomalous code brought about from the free will problem.
Essentially, the story is suggesting an incompatibility between the hard determinism of the machines and the free will of the humans. I will continue with this perceived false dilemma, but take a moment to point out that determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive. It may be true that we, as a species, have not found an entirely satisfactory explanation of how free will might possibly fit inside our seemingly deterministic universe, but this does not suggest that these alternative viewpoints are incommensurable. The story is making a bit of a leap here to suggest that one or the other must prevail. (And also that one of the two is somehow superior in the process.)
In the story, the solution to this problem is the creation of a prophesy: the path of the one. The anomalous code within the simulation culminates in the emergence of the One. That is, after a time, the progressive collection of all the doubts of all the occupants within the Matrix over time swells and manifests through an individual who we call Neo. Neo, in this case, is the key representative of freedom, unburdened by the rules of determinism. He is special. He is an exception. The rules of the Matrix do not apply to him. He doesn’t believe in all this “fate crap.”
And so he and his friends follow the path of the one in order to save humanity from the prison that is the Matrix… Wait, what? His key defining feature is that he believes determinism is fundamentally wrong, and he is going to follow a predetermined path in order to make his point? This is what prophecy is. It is fate. I would say it is fate repackaged, but it isn’t even that. Prophecy is fate. Okay, prophecy is the foretelling of fated events, whereas fate is the manifestation of those events. However, they are not separate things. They are clearly linked quite tightly.
In other words, the protagonists in the story of the Matrix are following a predetermined, causally established sequence of events in order to demonstrate how free will exists and will save them all. Neo will simply choose the path, over not following the path. His choices amount to making the correct choices, lest all fails and the world ends. It isn’t nearly as clear as a scorched sky, but am I to accept this really?
The characters insist that this free will exists and is why there is a problem. The system works as hard as it can to accommodate all these choices people are making, including the choices of the one himself. The path is a method to do this. After all, he has to be given these choices, even at a near unconscious level. Every conflict and event he encounters is a test, where he must make choices in order to progress the storyline and plot. He could always choose not to progress the plot, but lucky for us he does.
The Oracle does suggest why this is the case. For her, it isn’t about what choices he will make, as she suggests “you’ve already made it [the choice]. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.” For her, the choices are already predetermined. The issue is not making a choice, it is understanding why a choice was made the way it was. This is not an argument in support of freedom, this is an argument against. This is an argument suggesting that free will may look like it exists, but in fact it does not. It is all an illusion.
Neo may not want to believe in fate, but his actions persistently present an opposing belief. Morpheus is even worse in this regard. When the protagonists encounter each strange being with incredibly and ridiculously contrived instructions that are meant to allow them to prove that free will exists and free humanity from their enslavement in simulation, they quickly get in line and progress the plot as expected. The Merovingian himself makes a joke about this; about how understanding is power, and so understanding choices makes one powerful. He even offers the protagonists another wild goose chase in order to progress the plot.
Then note how Morpheus later suggests in the elevator that “what happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” This is the furthest thing from an argument in favor of free will. The characters entrench themselves in incredibly convoluted plans, like crazy Rube Goldberg machines, because it is this level of complexity that seems to suggest something greater. It seems like complexity is the key to freedom. The more complex a system is, the more it is believed to be representative of freedom.
As a very poignant example, when the Keymaker is telling the protagonists the precise plan that is required in order to allow Neo to open the door and enter the Source, and there just so happens to be all the things in place that are needed to accomplish this insane mission, Morpheus doesn’t pause and suggest a problem, he suggests it is providence. Instead of recognizing that this latest heist plan is simply too ridiculous and coincidental, he suggests the prophecy is coming to conclusion.
There are many such examples throughout the story. The characters are oblivious. They simply cannot see that these complicated procedures are orchestrated by a higher power. They take it as being fate. The audience similarly follows by the nose and doesn’t question it either. No one asks the natural question that ought to be asked: “who comes up with this stuff?”
My point, if it isn’t clear, is that making something hard to follow and complicated does not equate to breaking out of the chains of determinism. Just because I cannot see all the causal connections between two events does not mean those connections do not exist. To argue in favor of free will simply because I cannot understand, myself, how something could possibly come about. To do so seems to demonstrate a significant level of ignorance. It is like suggesting that “features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection.” Complexity is poor evidence in support of an argument toward Intelligent Design, or any other conclusion.
I am a limited being, with limited capacities. While I can know much, I will never know everything. In fact, the amount I am able to grasp at any given moment in time seems incredibly small when compared to all there is to know about everything. It is a fact of my existence that I will not have the complete picture of things all the time. I will be forced to make choices with insufficient information quite frequently. I do the best I can, given my particular circumstances at any given moment. This does not mean my choices are themselves unpredictable. This does not mean that there was no causal chain connecting my situation to my choices. It simply means I do not know how it is connected. This is very different from saying that it is not possible to know, or to say that it is entirely unpredictable.
It raises the question regarding what precisely free will or freedom might actually be. Human brains are incredibly complicated. Does this suggest that freedom exists in brains, as a result of the fact that I do not understand how brains operate? That because I cannot predict something, that something simply cannot be predicted by anyone or anything? It would be like suggesting that because I dislike a certain flavour of ice cream, that flavour must be disliked by all. If that were true, one might ask the question “why make that flavour of ice cream at all?”
The Matrix story isn’t without flaws. Even simply taking a moment to discuss a couple of its weaknesses can generate very interesting discussion. This is what makes the Matrix so interesting. This is what makes the Matrix story so enjoyable. It isn’t about how perfectly or imperfectly the The Wachowskis wrote their story, because they definitely seemed to overlook some significant things. What I think makes more sense to focus on is the questions and discussions raised by their story. This is what makes the Matrix interesting.