what happens when someone removes our jack ?

I don't know how it works, but if you pull the plug while someone is
still in the Matrix it kills them in both worlds, this was used quite
heavily in the first film and has come up once or twice in the current
storyline as it is one of the few ways to kill a redpill since the
discovery of auto-jackout. Don't tell me how it works though, I guess
it just overloads the brain somehow when the needle is pulled out
prematurely. For a safe extraction, it seems that a personds mind must
have left the Matrix before the jack can be removed.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say there... yea, if someone pulls your plug, you're going to die both in the Matrix and the Real.
The way I see it, your preservation when jacked in depends on the connection between the data of yourself you send into the Matrix and the the base in your brain that controls your RSI from there. None of these can keep up on its own, because if your entire consciousness was completely in the Matrix, you would become a separate program, and if all you had was in your brain, you would simply disappear from the Matrix and awake, without taking any damage.
The RSI in the Matrix can't subsist without the feedback from your brain, and it's probably also a crucial part of your consciousness, or your program (keep in mind, redpills are a sort of cyborgs), without which your brain can't work properly, and stops maintaining vital body functions = death. The RSI in the Matrix should disappear, but system program probably projects a collapsing corpse to keep things realistic.

Although Neo's case makes it a bit more complicated: basically, it shows that a human's RSI can subsist in the Matrix on its own, aswell as the body can survive without the mind. Deducing from Maggie's diagnosis, the brain (well, we know it's rather the implanted computer than the organic brain) goes into a certain state when the mind is transferred to the Matrix -- most probably the absence of the mind. Maybe, there's a sort of backup program that can keep the brain functioning and the RSI in the Matrix subsist, but isn't activated when the plug is pulled...
right now, my thoughts on this are pretty abstract.

Message Edited by zeroone5069 on 06.23.2006 12:06 PM

Matrix - the first movie. Thats how cypher kills the other crew members.

As Morpheus said, the body can't live without the mind.

That's the interesting thing ... aren't there cases whereby a person can be braindead to all intents and purposes but still have basic functions (i.e. breathing) to keep themselves alive?

The mind is our conscious thought, but there are parts of the brain that I wouldn't necessarily consider to be the "mind", merely something that keeps our automated functions ticking over.
So when someone pulls the plug, shouldn't we just drop into a persistant vegetative state but still be alive?

Am I overthinking this?

The really guess the principle is somewhat similiar to Windows, except that, well, I usually don't get any problems if I have to shutdown my PC manually -- but it's said to be risky anyway.

Since the redpill's bodies are somewhat like Borgs and modern medicine doesn't apply really to them, it's quite easy to say that "if someone removes your jack, it kinda, sorta damages or overloads your brain computer or takes away / destroys other vital programs, or just automatically puts you in a shock, in which your mind / subconsciousness irrevocably believes it's dead, although you know that's not the case, and simply stops supporting vital functions, like you see on the example of spiting blood when getting hurt, which again could be not caused by the mind but eventually by the technical implants somehow leading to these symptomes, because that's how they work for some reason, but then again, the first possiblities would explain Neo's resurrection since he was able to overcome the belief of his subconsciousness and convince his body to live on, due to programming or technical exceptions. yadda yadda yadda... Just buy what they're showing you because we can't know for sure."

As this half-sarcastic "quote" demonstrates, there are enough plausible explanations and possibilities of which all can be led to some depth, but none of them really can't be proven to be the correct one because the movies don't provide enough info. At least not as far as I can see, because I don't know the comics or future revelations in MxO or other products.

*I really think the principle...*

Maybe the Machines designed it that way...

Illyria

When you are jacked in your conscious mind moves from your physical body to your RSI. Your primary source of sensory feedback is now from your RSI instead of your physical body (Your physical body does still have its senses, but they are now a background process)...Neo could still hear Trinity talking to him in the real world, while he was jacked in, but only because his RSI was "dead", and his real mind was able to hear Trinity speaking to him.

Now, with your brain operating in the mode of the majority of its senses and consciousness being in a remote body (your RSI), imagine what happens on each end when that connection is severed (the jack being pulled out).  Your RSI suddenly has nothing driving it, your RSI body falls to the floor, limp and lifeless.  Your physical mind, which was a moment ago expanded to a remote consciousness, now is abruptly cut off from all of that sensory and thought that was going like mad. I would imagine the effect is similar yet opposite to a sensory overload....massive sudden sensory deprivation.

The human mind is a powerful thing. There are people who can raise and lower their heart rate by simply thinking about it, and people who can actually raise welts on their skin by thought alone. There are cases of people who have "died of sadness", or "lost the will to live", where they were physically fit but their brain just decided that's it I'm going to die, and they do.

So when you are unplugged from the Matrix, your mind which was acting as the consciouness of your remote RSI, processing all of that sensory and neural input and all of the other processing your brain is doing while you are jacked in...to your mind your RSI *is* your body, *is* your consciouness. So when that is suddenly taken away, the mind assumes that death is upon you, and simply shuts down. Or more like, it stops telling your real lungs to breath, and your real heart to beat, because it was telling your RSI to do those things, and now the connection is severed, so it's hung.

Think of it like a network connection.  If you have a network connection from your computer to the internet, let's say you are using emule or some PTP client to download some files, and you disconnect the patchcable between your computer and the router.For some dozens of seconds, the computer simply waits for the connection to resume, if not, it gives up and disconnects. Meanwhile, it does nothing. Just like the unplugged mind, all it knows is that a moment ago it was talking to a remote location, and now it can't. It stops doing everything it was doing and just waits until the connection times out. For humans, we die during this wait period, because our organic bodies cannot last very long without our heart beating and lungs breathing.

When people jack out of the Matrix normally, they go through a relatively quick but steady reduction in sensory and neural feedback from their RSI. The physical mind can sense this gradual reduction and switch back to the real world's sensory input. A drastic sudden loss of all remote Input/Output however, is not handles well by our analog minds, and our mind shuts down, killing the body in the process.

Message Edited by Blazer0x on 07.07.2006 05:11 AM