From: Brendan Coffey (bmc@section9.net)
Date: Thu May 29 2003 - 21:50:30 MDT
> ### But choosing 16 women and 7 men (is there some Gnostic hint in these
> numbers?) from the Matrix to leave and build a new Zion is compatible with
> physical existence of Zion.
>
> Rafal
> --------------
>
It's also compatible with the model of recursion.
I find that the model of reality in the Matrix as a recursive procedure
works well. The base case of the recursion comes in the iteration of the
Matrix in which the members of Zion and the humans remaining in the matrix
stay in equilibrium. At the point at which it becomes clear whether
the system is stable or unstable, The One is chosen (or arises), and the
decision of The One is indicative of whether or not the system is stable
in this instance. When the system's configuration reaches stability,
the recursion will return to the top of the stack, and the proper model
for the Matrix will have been realized. Otherwise, the One chooses his
playmates, and instantiations of them are passed into the next recursion.
The COOL thing, if you accept this model, is that you don't even KNOW
after Neo makes his decision WHICH decision he made. Perhaps he has been
returned to Zion to CHOOSE his companions, after which Zion will fall,
the Matrix will recurse, and it will all start over. Since the system
is outside of Neo's control, HE needn't actually remember (correctly,
at least) which decision he made. But, then, this is reaching a bit.
Entities like the Architect and the Oracle are procedures that are either
exist statically within the procedure (there is only a unique instance of
them, no matter what level of the recursion you're at), and thus they're
aware of the recursive nature of their reality. They also know a great
deal about the future WITHOUT knowing what choice the One will make.
But for entities that exist only in one level, there's no way to tell
how many recursions removed from reality they are. THIS could be the
"real" matrix, or the stack above you could be indefinitely deep.
This fits nicely with Neo's ability to destroy the Machines at the end
of the second movie, since the "reality" of Zion is just the other half
of the recursive reality. The previous Ones had, apparently, just not
realized this ability.
And Agent Smith has figured out how to overrun a buffer in a remote
procedure and cause it to exec() his own code. ;-) It all works rather
tidily, and I haven't heard anyone else offer this explanation.
I've found nothing so far that doesn't fit well in this model, but I
think it's probably somewhat rarified for a general audience. Maybe I
just do too many drugs and too much functional programming.
-bmc
---
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu May 29 2003 - 22:01:29 MDT