system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Matrix] Words from The Architect

Please help me understand the meaning of the metaphor “your life is a sum total of the remainder of an unbalanced equation”. These words were spoke by The Architect in the second matrix movie.
gpt
The purpose of the Matrix was to keep humanity dumb and happy, allowing the machines to use them as batteries forever. 

The first Matrix, according to Smith, was a paradis, essentially heaven. It was a catastrophic failure; humanity, apparently, is hardwired to struggle, and couldn't accept the perfect world the machines created.

So they tried again, this time building a simulation of earth in the 1990s. This was much more successful, but there were still flaws. Certain people still realized that there was something wrong with the world around them, and some of these people kept waking up, kept trying to escape the Matrix.

This is the "unbalanced equation". Something about the human mind, something that the machines can't understand, just doesn't work with the Matrix.

The machines' goal is to keep the Matrix running, so the needed to do something about these people. Their answer was Zion; the machines created a place for awakened humans to go, and gave them a story to live out: they were the Resistance, trying to save their fellow humans from the tyranny of the machines.

They also created a Messiah figure for the humans to search for and follow: The One. When the instability of the Matrix becomes too great, when too many people are seeing through the machine's illusions and are threatening the continued function of the Matrix itself, the machines choose a person at random and install `The One` program in them.

This program is the "sum" of all the instabilities that the machines don't know how to account for. He or she is the ultimate awakened human being, the ultimate leader for those people who cannot accept the world of the Matrix. The One's powers, like telekinesis and flights, are given to him just to make his role as messiah more believable.

But the One's real purpose is to balance the machines' equation. He is meant to gather all of the awakened humans together, unite them under a common cause, and bring them to a common place ... so that the machines can destroy them, which will reset and rebalance the Matrix.

Neo, and the other Ones that came before him, exist only because the machines couldn't perfect the algorithm, or equation, that makes the Matrix run. Their sole purpose, as far as the machines are concerned, are to allow humans to *believe* they are rebelling, in order to better keep them slaves.