Good Lord, does ANYONE here think they made a valid deicison to leave the Matrix? Just Azrael, I guess. Gloomy lot... it's not a problem, exactly, just I am very surprised at so many Rebels assuming such a position.
I think I should ask this- are you agreeing with this line of thought because you think it fits your beliefs, or simply because you feel trapped in the logic of it?
If the latter, does anyone wish for any time to think of a way out? Because I feel honour bound to tell you that there are several ways in which you can agree that decisions in the Matrix are invalid yet still be perfectly happy that your decision to leave the Matrix was an exception to that.
Or you can just be like Azrael and be happy that Matrix decisions are valid- if you feel that admitting some of the Matrix can be true is not heresy.
(Definately feel trapped in the logic. It seems to me Meltius' line of questioning is driven toward proving all our beliefs flawwed or somehow unintelligent.
I dont really know how to refute without seeming objective because I am a freemind.)
Wait a minute though, We face invalid decisions all the time. I think what makes them valid or not is our acceptance. I refuse to accept the fact that if I ask for an orange your going to give me a pear becasue what I really want is an orange.
Same with our decision to leave the matrix it was valid because we accpeted it. We made up our own damn minds whether or not we would accept the fact that not all the facts were presented to us, because in that situation we knew there were things that we didnt know, and we accpeted that and made the choice anyway.
With the Orange Pear situation we couldnt forsee the it being a decietful question we wnet in trusting we had all the information. I think that after we saw that it wasnt true i became invalid.
I guess in short the things that determine validity are a) information abd b) acceptance of that information or lack thereof.
=)
(I got mad philosophy skillzzzzz booiiiiiii)
Melitus never claimed it was a bad thing.
However, objectively speaking, that was the defining moment of your lives, and to logically conclude that the choice was invalid DOES diminish your cause somewhat. If you are indeed worried that Melitus is trying to claim intellectual superiority, then by forcing you to concede that you made an invalid choice, that is certainly one way to play into that. As it happens, Melitus is far more complex than that but he is NEVER unhappy to unsettle your view of reality.
Castor, a quibble over the definition of valid... is actually what I tried when I was faced with this... heh... anyway, re-defining valid probably doesn't help escape the question and the point.
The logic behind the point is this: A choice is not really a choice unless it was genuine. If you are chosing between A and B but the actual results are chosing between C and D then you exercised no free will in that choice at all and so it was not really a choice, even though it seemed like one. The term we are using to define that is 'valid' and technically speaking it applies to all decisions made in the Matrix.
Now, no matter which way you cut it, either the Matrix is all false or it is not all false, or to put it another way, there is either no truth or some. If you are saying that your choice to leave the Matrix was valid because in those circumstances your choice was not deceptively based, then as you made that choice in the Matrix you therefore must conceed that some things in the Matrix can be true. There can be no in-between- you cannot have the Matrix all false AND say your choice was valid. There has to be somethnng that is true there for a valid choice to have been made.
So if you say your choice was valid, probably the best thing to do is to describe what things are not fake in the Matrix. Problem is, accepting any of the Matrix as genuine is hard for a Rebel- but the alternative is to admit you made no valid choice in leaving it yourself.
It is a basic conondrum that all of you face- you say Humanity is duped and enslaved in a false world- but you were all part of that world, so surely you were duped too?
So Melitus challenges you to pin down exactly where you stand on this. But I assure you- yes, Melitus is clearly a very intelligent being, and he does enjoy watching you people get into knots, but he is NOT doing this just to lord it over you. He (and therefore I) needs to know what you think- it should be very clear that all this is going somewhere.
"I see this is giving you trouble," says Melitus. "In that case, I would like Rade and Castor to go with Fire through a door of your choosing. What I intended to show him, I will show to all three of you."
(Heph also, if he thinks he is ok to carry on...)
The Matrix," says Melitus. "Whether you are its enemy or its friend, whether you would see it preserved or destroyed, there is no doubting the enormity of its achievement. Here a world is kept, a prison that no inmate knows is a prison, where the needs of one society are filled by the ignorant enslavement of another, but a slavery which does not restrict the day to day life of its victims. A world which, perhaps, is more important than the 'real' world without. And its operation is the major obession for every sentient being on the planet. For its inmates, to live in it. For those like me, to stay unnoticed in it. For the jailors, to maintain its operation. And for those inmates who learn the truth, to destroy it. It is all around us, looking like one thing but being another, and even when you are not in it, it occupies your thoughts more than any other consideration...
... but when you see it WITHOUT the code... it is very hard to think of all this as a lie, isn't it?"
You now note- the people you are seeing down below now are the same ones you saw on the monitorsd back at Melitus' first question.