system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Matrix] How can people have a residual self image if they have never seen themselves irl?

As people are grown and "harvested", how would they know what they look like in the Matrix?

Bonus question, How do pregnancies work? Do they just plug a baby into the matrix and boom someones a parent?
gpt
Everything coded into the Matrix is done so as to make it as realiztic as possible, so that the host does not reject the program. At a nervous-system level, your body is going to be aware of itself. It has to be, or function like digestion aren't going to work right. So, for the purposes of this realism, the Matrix gives you the image of the host body - it's nothing to monitor the base appearance of a subject and make this their image inside the matrix.

And so, having grown up with that image programmed into you, it becomes your image even when you hack in. Your mind is just used to it.

Babies are even easier. The Matrix tracks sexual encounters, and when its determined that the counter will cause a baby to be born, it takes the egg and sperm from a couple, performs in-vitro fertilization, and implants the embryo into an artificial womb.