Re-takes: Postcoloniality and Foreign Film Languages Book

The three books on the Matrix I'm reading now ask the questions I want to ask:

Why would anyone want to leave the Matrix? If I were completely aware of living in the Matrix, I would prefer it to eating mush and living in constant fear and ugliness. Freedom be damned - give me a steak.

Is there free will if the Oracle knows the future? Yes, and no. There's tenseless time (no past tense, future tense, present tense) but it all exists at once.

Are sentient programs possible or is this the Chinese Box? Chinese Box is a thought experiment - if someone says, "If you get this paper with these Chinese symbols, respond by giving back this paper with these symbols" it would look as if the respondent knows Chinese, when in fact the respondent is only pattern-matching. Is that the best that machines could ever do? Pattern match?

Using people as batteries is stupid. There must be more - maybe the sentient programs feel an obligation to humanity not to kill humans, but to prevent them from harming the programs, like a humane prison. The matrix is a humane containment to keep humans from killing them.

And on and on. Interesting stuff, in language I can comprehend.