Re: why a Matrix couldn't be realized in real life

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
The matrix is a fantasy about creating versimultudenous world to keep humans
busy thinking so they provide electricity.  It is waste of time, resources,
and energy to make a plausible world wide amusement park for humans to lie
around (in the movie) to participate in.  That's simple enough.  Humans have
been inventing and using artificial intelligence tools for a long time.
Written language, books, etc. are just versions of computing tools.  While
writing novels is powerful, we still have to do something in our lives to
get things moving.  That's the point of what's wrong with the matrix
conception.

The proposition is that machines can interact with humans in some kind of
symbiosis where the machines are farming humans for energy sort of like we
farm pigs for meat has a great deal to do with how little we understand a
global system and how it might work.

One might especially if one is Marxist ask these sorts of questions of
society.  Where is the egalitarianism of socialism in that?  Can even
capitalism go down this road?  A machine with intelligence would have to get
resources to continue just like other living constructs.  That is a systemic
question for them as well as us.  What's the relationship of groups,
individuals, history, material resources?
thanks,
Doyle