Random Thoughts XII - Floccinaucinihilipilification

[Kyriakos]

I wonder how much energy the machines in the Matrix had to spend per day, to make up for the loss of energy from using humans as "batteries".
And that's not even counting the energy needed to keep the Matrix itself running, since likely that one is at least an order of magnitude smaller.
At least in I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream, the computer only had to sustain five (iirc) humans, and it was done explicitly so as to torture them forever.

 

[Takhisis]

Spoilers ahead!

Actually the original proposal was that what humans were really providing the machines was our incredible brainpower and the machines were using humanity as a collective computer to run their software on and keep the humans safely distracted in the dreamworld aptly called the Matrix, but the producers decided against that (and against the character Switch not being the same gender in the Matrix as offline) so the Wachowski duo had to come up with some technobabble on the go.

It actually kindof works because, as Morpheus says, nobody really knows what happened, except that at some point there was a Neo in the past (there were six, actually) and that the Oracle is a programme working for the system is, at the time, a complete shock. Same for the Architect actually being depicted (indirectly) in the first film already.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, I guess as a scenario (scifi) it might work, to somehow use human brains (and not just brains, any bio material) as the provider of random feed for a computer program, for some reason. But in the movies the humans were there to provide energy, which clearly doesn't work at all (the human - or parts of the human - would need energy put in to do any work, and can't produce more energy than what was fed in the first place).
Furthermore, afaik humans aren't particularly energy efficient either, so the largest part of any provided energy would be lost => "using humans as batteries" means you start with x energy and end up with 1/4 of it, while also having to maintain a matrix to keep your energy reduction function usable.
No wonder the machines hated humans. But they should first of all hate their own self for being braindead ^_^

 

[Takhisis]

I know! That's why I say that the intrusion of the judgement-lacking producers' ‘criterion’ actually works out better because it's part of the Orwellian world in which the Matrix inhabitants live: even the ‘free’ ones don't know all the truth, even the part where they are actually part of the system to help the machines reboot the system on which they run their civilisation.

 

[Kyriakos]

10.000 words in the new lit seminar.
This won't cut it. I need to produce faster.

 

[amadeus]

I’ve only ever seen an anvil in cartoons.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I’ve only ever seen an anvil in cartoons.

You need to watch more westerns, then. Or more medieval-themed things. Basically anywhere that you'd have a blacksmith. I have a medieval fantasy-setting game (not the one I'm novelizing, though I have considered doing this one) that's a quest-based hidden object game. There are a couple of locations where anvils come up quite often.

 

[amadeus]

Okay, I’ve mostly ever seen anvils in cartoons. I’m sure a rerun of Gunsmoke has slipped in there. Point being, I have been anvilless my whole life and I never cared about it until today.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

There are something like 7 or 8 seasons of Bonanza uploaded to YouTube, and some episodes feature one of the Ponderosa characters doing some smithing on the ranch, or some of the action might happen at a blacksmith's place in town.

Anvils are something I'm going to do a bit of research on for two of my stories. One is the bridging material between novelizing Caverns of the Snow Witch and The Forest of Doom (both are Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that connect logically, but I wanted to write a story that shows that connection - and part of the story takes place in a blacksmith's shop).

The other is a scene in the King's Heir story I've now been working on for FOUR YEARS! It takes place in a blacksmith shop, when Sir Edmund has to quickly make a sword to put back into a stone, to release some other thing he needs... there's a lot of Hidden Object back-and-forth that I may just omit because when you try to actually turn it into prose it becomes clunky and distracts from the main goal of the story, which is to rescue the Heir, defeat the villains, and get the Heir crowned.

 

[choxorn]

Or more medieval-themed things. Basically anywhere that you'd have a blacksmith.

Yeah, play some more RPG's, smithing has gotta be an actual skill in quite a few of them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yeah, play some more RPG's, smithing has gotta be an actual skill in quite a few of them.

At some point everyone needs a new horseshoe, or a weapon made or repaired.

 

[amadeus]

Worst Jeopardy category ever: guys named Ruhollah. I’d be up the creek past the $100 question.

 

[Takhisis]

play some more RPG's

Sage words.

 

[amadeus]

There’s a company like Brinks here called Asahi Security Services, I think… but they print their initials—ASS—on the side of their van. So they ride around in a big ASS van and go around their long ASS route, and they wear these ridiculous ASS helmets even though there’s very little armed robbery in this country.

 

[Takhisis]

You're reminded me of the GTA III era where, for example, the armoured bullion vans were called ‘Gruppe Sechs’.

 

[warpus]

One time I misread fishing dock as fisting dock and it made me laugh more than it should have

 

[Takhisis]

To keep up with the GTA III era, I have to quote ‘Love Fist’.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

There’s a company like Brinks here called Asahi Security Services, I think… but they print their initials—ASS—on the side of their van. So they ride around in a big ASS van and go around their long ASS route, and they wear these ridiculous ASS helmets even though there’s very little armed robbery in this country.

Now that Danielle Smith is running for the leadership of the UCP in Alberta, everyone is reminded of her campaign bus from years ago when she campaigned for a different party. Whoever painted her image on it didn't consider where the bus wheels were situated, and the results made her look... very well-endowed. "Ridiculous" doesn't begin to cover what that looked like.

Unfortunately that's the only funny thing about her. She's basically BS!C on so many issues...

 

[Kyriakos]

Rushdie looks more alive here. (let alone Hitchens)

Nevermind what actually is going on - wth ^_^

 

[Kyriakos]

Now at the border to 15K words for the first part of the seminar, and (finally) having formed a good idea of what the presentation is.
Pretty typical, really. Of course I'd undertake examining the simple issue of presenting the colossal differences between use of natural language and something more confined, for a lit seminar. As one monocled person once said of one who quit math to write literature: "I always suspected he had too little imagination for math". But the actual problem isn't lack of imagination, but lack of a barrier that prevents the torrent of personal projection of meaning into a literary work from becoming the core of how it is understood. Other fields have built-in barriers, which is another way of saying: other fields also exist.
At least Poe's ridiculous claim that he was accurately calculating how the readers picked up works of his - like the Raven poem, he gave a lecture about that - will serve as a more easy to see introduction to the entire mess of fiction and how it is always rewritten by the reader.
There are some ways to influence a partial limitation to how the text is picked up. Similar to how you can limit if a prisoner will walk out of the cell, by amputating them - or limit the possibility that they will fly out, because they didn't have wings to begin with.

PS: I dislike Doxiades' views on (the how/why of) literature being tied to math too. But it is another firework, as all clearly written names tend to be.