Matrix Question - Was The Architect Evil?

This is something I always wondered about. As the creator of the titular Matrix, he's kinda the main bad dude until Smith starts ruining everyone's shit for both humans and machines. Yet I detected absolutely no....uh....feeling in him. Yes he is a machine but the whole point is that Matrix machines evolved to think for themselves and programs in The Matrix can obviously think, feel and evolve. They're just as sapient or sentient or whatever as the humans.

But I didn't get that impression from. He was just performing his task, his purpose if you will.

So should be considered malevolent?

Yes and no, depending on how you define evil. Since the Architect is a machine/program, even if it acknowledges the concept of morality, it can't really have one itself because it has no conscience. While the Architect may be "evil" in that it is harmful to humanity, it isn't "evil" in the sense that it is morally wrong, any more than you could say a gun or sword is morally wrong. The Architect isn't malevolent either, because a machine that has no feeling can't be malicious.

I suppose it also depends on whether you consider the machines and programs to have gained just self-awareness and sapience only or sentience also. If some of the machines actually gained sentience, they could perhaps actually have a conscience and therefore a concept of morality, but a machine becoming sentient would raise questions on just how its emotions work. The argument in the previous paragraph is based on the assumption that the Architect is not sentient, although other machines and programs (Merovingian, Persephone, the "Indian" family) did appear to be sentient.

edited 1st Jan '14 11:21:21 AM by shiro_okami

I think the only "evil" program was Smith.

It depends if we define "evil" as "taking actions that seriously harm others", or require a person to be actively malicious in order to be defined as "evil".

Which is way too philosophical for me to register an opinion on.

I would say "yes, he is evil". Its not so much his specific actions, which depending on how you interpret things might be pragmatically justifiable, or at least understandable. Its more that the Architect showed no signs of any empathy or compassion. Even if his actual motivation *was* to achieve the highest good possible, and could rationally prove his actions were in support of such? If you can do all the tragically necessary killing without batting an eye or feeling the slightest bit of regret, and you can deal with people even on an individual level without the slightest hint of sympathy? Yeah, your evil.

Note how the Oracle, by contrast, *did* evidence the ability to deal with people as people, to feel their feelings and regret when bad things happen. Even if she was complicit with the exact same overall system, I find it much more believable that for her, it was not a matter of nothing.

Not really.

Zion didn't have to exist. People who refused to accept the Matrix could have been killed instantly, if it had wanted—but instead, it let them live, and build and rebuild Zion.

99% of humanity preferred to live in the dark, with steak and natural light and plant life. The rest preferred the truth. The Architect accommodated both. What else should it have done, left all of humanity to starve?

now that i think of it, the Architect can be compared to a bear attacking you in the forest. sure, it's an antagonist to you, and its goals are contrary to your goals, but it's not necessarily evil because it's doing what it was programmed to do.

That's just it, though - I don't think he was programmed to do what he did; that is, to perpetuate Zion's existence and provide a recurring choice for the One. In a way, for the cycle to be broken, all four major players had to grow beyond their original purpose: The Oracle was designed as yet another means of control, but she starts getting cryptic so that people can come to their own conclusions; the Architect has to safeguard the Matrix's continued existence, but he leaves doorways for independent humans to find; the Agents are built only to follow orders, until one of them wishes to get out of the system, corrupting it if he has to; and the One himself was to balance the machines' equation, until he chose another, more human path.

If anything, given his literally hard-coded restrictions, the Architect was about as benevolent as he could possibly be.

I don't really see it as benevolent. The only action it really made that could be called benevolent was agreeing to let Zion alone at the end, and it only did that because of Neo's deal.

Are there any more thoughts on this? I was thinking he might qualify for Blue-and-Orange Morality.

I'm gonna throw my weight behind 'doing what it was programmed to'.

I had been noticing a certain malevolent air to Microsoft Office the other day.

Always thought that's a feature.

But yeah, one of the coolest things in Matrix lore is that the conflict is simply too complex to just distribute the black and white hats and call it a day. Are humans the initial aggressors for basically exploiting sentient machines as slaves? Are machines monsters for having Turned Against Their Masters and dishing out as good as they got?

Personally, I consider the frequently pointed out Fridge Logic issue of humans being insufficient as an energy resource to be an actual case of Fridge Brilliance, hinting at the machines' deeper morality. A throw-away line in the first film adds "a type of fusion" used for power alongside the people-pods. So I figure - maybe they didn't need humanity to survive. Maybe their real imperative was to keep humans alive after a Zeroth Law Rebellion, with all the unfortunate side-effects that would entail.

Consequently, the Architect's agenda was, in turn, to circumvent his own programming, allowing for a mutually viable exit out of the heretofore impasse. In a way, all four players got what they wanted in the end - the Architect ensured the survival of both machines and men, the Oracle got to see peace between them, Smith got a permanent end to his own purgatorial existence inside the Matrix, and Neo got to make an actual choice, on his own terms. So, they're all men of their word, save for the Oracle, who is, in fact, a woman.