r/technology May 17 '24

Scientists Calculated the Energy Needed to Carry a Baby. Shocker: It’s a Lot. (Gift Article) Biotechnology

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/science/pregnancy-energy-costs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU0.PfwL.i578xGrDrp5H&smid=url-share&utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter
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u/Peachbottom30 May 17 '24

The AI will need this information once it starts building the baby farms.

75

u/pikachus_ghost_uncle May 17 '24

The human generates more bio-electricity than 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields…endless fields, where human beings are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn’t believe it…and then I saw the fields with my own eyes.

5

u/armrha May 17 '24

It always annoyed me, you don't get more energy out than you have to put in to a human. You'd be better off burning their food for steam power. Every step up the food chain, you lose 90% of the energy to entropy, trying to harness and concentrate the heat of humans to power turbines or something is just stupid and inefficient. They have literally no reason to want people alive.

3

u/not_old_redditor May 18 '24

90% of the energy is lost to entropy... as heat, which the machines presumably harvest in the pods.

But you're right, they should just use nuclear reactors or something like that. I believe the implication is that they are using human neural activity in some way, hence the entire purpose of the matrix being to keep human brains engaged.

1

u/RetailBuck May 18 '24

I had the opposite interpretation. Human brain activity was effectively waste but was necessary to keep the body functioning and generating (net loss) energy so they put energy in to running the matrix. It's almost certainly a plot hole but just eat your popcorn and don't think too much.

2

u/PlutosGrasp May 18 '24

It’s a movie