[HN Gopher] Please, enough with the dead butterflies (2017)
___________________________________________________________________
Please, enough with the dead butterflies (2017)
Author : andrelaszlo
Score : 474 points
Date : 2021-07-25 09:56 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.emilydamstra.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.emilydamstra.com)
| earlyriser wrote:
| This is an example of non-dead butterflies (even if the painting
| is about death)
| https://www.carolinegaudreault.com/fr/oeuvres/sanctuaire/
|
| Disclaimer: my partner painted it.
| oliwarner wrote:
| Yeah, fair enough.
|
| One of those posts where you see an argumentative title, get
| ready to fight it with your lifetime of experience, before
| realising that maybe the butterfly expert knows best.
|
| Quite interesting _how_ so many people have got it wrong all this
| time.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Hmmmm... you mean exactly like this very much non-dead butterfly?
| I have a feeling the author hasn't actually spent that much time
| observing butterflies.
|
| https://ibb.co/YQxprkg
|
| https://ibb.co/S33vvYs
|
| https://ibb.co/6gJDxTR
|
| Edit: To be more specific. Most butterflies hold their wings in
| this position at rest. Illustrated in 2D it looks "dead"
|
| Moths do happen to hold their wings flat and if you look at field
| guides are usually illustrated this way.
|
| People who actually spend time observing butterflies would
| directly contradict the author's assertion.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| And... immediately downvoted for sharing direct evidence that
| contradicts the narrative here.
|
| The reason field guides show butterflies this way is because
| that's how you usually see them. Butterflies hold their wings
| up most of the time, not flat as the author suggests.
|
| So when illustrated in 2D you see the wings looking "dead".
|
| Or you know... all the scientists and naturalists are just
| wrong and this artist is right.
|
| Edit: The reason this article is troublesome is because it's
| another case of spreading misinformation.
|
| If I were going to post a long article about butterfly
| physiology (which is basically what this purports to be) I
| would first do research. I'd take the hypotheses "butterflies
| are illustrated wrong" and see where the current data stands.
| If I found the data wanting, I'd at least couch the argument
| along the lines of "the current data is u unconvincing, so
| here's my theory"
|
| Instead the author cherry picked images that support her
| narrative, and failed to do any research on the subject, going
| so far as to say "In field guides and other butterfly reference
| materials, one frequently sees images of such pinned
| butterflies because, I _presume_ , it is easy to photograph a
| dead butterfly" when actually the images have been drawn from
| live butterflies.
|
| She then states this whole thing as fact rather than what it
| is, her conjecture (which when put to scrutiny can be shown
| false)
|
| Now this is a simple article about butterflies, so isn't really
| a big deal. The problem lies when this same behavior and
| thinking deals with subjects that are especially important like
| climate change, vaccines, etc. This is where misinformation
| starts. In this case Facebook, Twitter, etc could amplify
| "butterflies are illustrated wrong" just like they amplify
| "vaccines are bad" and "climate change isn't real".
| Graffur wrote:
| Yeah - the author and the responses here seem to want to
| rewrite facts. I mean.. we've all seen butterflies haven't we?
| We know they look like the artists depiction of them.
| [deleted]
| marvin wrote:
| I coincidentally discovered a similar situation yesterday, when
| attempting to identify a dazed hornet. Comparing it to specimen
| photos of presumably dead hornets, it was very hard to match
| them, as they had their wings and body arranged in a different
| way.
| throwanem wrote:
| Don't try to use the wings for identification beyond color and
| opacity; the way they're typically depicted in illustration and
| mounted specimens is a way in which the living animal only
| holds them while flying, when you can't see them clearly
| anyway. They're mounted that way because the venation can be
| diagnostic, but you won't be close enough for long enough, and
| a live wasp won't hold still enough - even I never get anything
| useful there, and I shoot wild wasps in 1:1 macro every chance
| I get. The only even marginally plausible bare-eye feature of
| the wing, beyond aforementioned color and infuscation, is the
| presence or absence of pterostigmata, and that alone isn't
| terribly useful.
|
| In general, for bare-eye identification you want to look at
| size, general conformation (eg Vespinae have a generally more
| robust build and a markedly blunt postpropodeal gaster vs
| Polistinae and solitaries, while sawflies don't have a "wasp
| waist" abdominal petiole at all), body and leg markings, and in
| some cases proportions of facial features, although that's
| often more useful in identifying a family or a genus than a
| species. With a living, active animal, many features can be
| hard to spot, so knowledge of locally common species is also
| useful in guiding identification, as is behavior - the four-
| toothed mason wasps that build nest cells in my porch stair
| rails look at a glance a lot like bald-faced yellowjackets, but
| behave totally differently, which can be enough to distinguish
| even without a chance at a close look.
|
| If you have photos or even just an accurate description and
| still want a specific (from photos) or at least familial ID, I
| might be able to give you one from them; I'm only an interested
| amateur and not as familiar with true hornets since there are
| few to be found in the Nearctic, but I've been an interested
| amateur for long enough to be both well supplied with
| references and reasonably practiced at identification. Feel
| free to email me at any of the addresses in my profile, or just
| reply here, and I'll be happy to take a look.
|
| Failing that, if you _do_ have photos, BugGuide and iNaturalist
| are good options for identification, although my experience
| with the latter suggests difficult IDs aren 't likely to find
| much traction there - that might, as some have argued, be an
| effect of the platform's gamification, but I think it may be
| more just that hymenopterologists are likely no more common
| there than elsewhere.
| empiricus wrote:
| Let's not forget about how butterfly flight is represented in
| almost all animation movies or games. So fake. Spend so much
| computation budget for realistic materials and lighting, and then
| fail so hard on this. For comparison check some real butterflies
| if you can, or some slow motion movies on youtube to see how it
| should look.
| franze wrote:
| "" <- Butterfly Emoji (stripped by HN comment system) is dead,
| too. Time to file a change request, where?
| enkid wrote:
| Seems to be a common problem. [0] (Skype's is even actively
| flapping it's wings) You can put in a request for a new emoji,
| but I don't see a way to update an existing emoji.[1] Each
| platform has it own emoji implementation, therefore should have
| a way to request changes through customer support.
|
| [0] https://emojipedia.org/butterfly/
|
| [1] https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html
| ant6n wrote:
| I think the request would be to HN to not filter this emoji
| out. Maybe they could at least allow the text version?
| Igelau wrote:
| It's one thing if the butterflies are depicted in contexts
| suggesting they're supposed to be alive.
|
| For some of these (like the pillow) its obviously just a
| decorative motif. Dead butterflies are pretty. So are cut
| flowers, mounted antlers, wood, and scrimshaw.
| Graffur wrote:
| I don't get it - the Eastern Tailed blue butterfly looks like the
| "dead" butterfly but it's not dead. This invalidates the authors
| argument completely.
| lyaa wrote:
| No, the author mentions that there are exception and the
| argument stands. The most commonly illustrated butterflies,
| such as the viceroy definitely look dead in illustrations.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Scientific illustration is different than abstract art or cubism
| or expressionism and has its own rules people. Deal with it.
|
| And by the way, yes, some people like it.
|
| But the biggest problem with the article is that even when lots
| of people blindly assume that is right, the main idea is wrong.
| It happens often when people try to use their philosophical ideas
| to explain nature. Yes, butterflies can spread their wings. If
| you try to force the wing opened in a impossible position it just
| will break.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NguiKUyP9r4
| soheil wrote:
| But what difference does it make? It seems to me the cross
| sectional area in the photo is larger if the wings are more
| spread out as in the case with dead butterflies so you end up
| seeing more of the beautiful wing patterns. What's the point of
| hiding a portion of that? After all we kill flowers all the time
| so that our dining tables look slightly more beautiful. There is
| something morbid about dead butterflies looking better than alive
| ones, but I don't think you should put all that on "artists" as
| much as it being a rather unfortunate artifact of the way nature
| designed it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hugged to death.
|
| I look forward to reading it, once it comes up for air.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210725100120/https://www.emily...
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| This is absolutely hilarious and illuminating at the same time.
| Don't think I'll be able to look at butterfly pictures without
| remembering this article.
|
| It's also a great example of what I'd consider good HN content.
| Not necessarily useful or anything, but it certainly tickled my
| curiosity.
| valine wrote:
| I saw this article years ago on HN and I can confirm I think of
| it every time I see a picture of a dead butterfly.
| Graffur wrote:
| Do you not think the Eastern Tailed blue butterfly looks like
| the "dead" ones?
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| I thought I'd remember this forever when I first read it years
| ago too. When I saw the headline on HN today, I couldn't
| remember what was unnatural about how we depict butterflies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It could be useful for UX/UI folks who have input about
| content. Or imagine making a pitch (involving nature or
| tailored to nature) to a conservation agency where someone
| might have this knowledge and having a picture of a dead
| butterfly. That might be awkward.
| eru wrote:
| Those are plausible, but pretty niche situations.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but the niche articles are usually the most
| interesting. Just look at all the AI/ML/Quantum posts on
| HN, not to mention the posts that deal with some unusual
| bug. It's a very low chance that most people will deal with
| these, yet people still read them for the information.
| efitz wrote:
| I used to race sailboats. It annoys the heck out of me when drawn
| depictions of sailboats have the sails on backwards (such as the
| spinnaker on the rear) or have the wind filling the sails from an
| impossible direction. It's clear that artists often don't
| understand their subjects.
| hkopp wrote:
| A nice example of Baudrillard's hyperreality. Reality and its
| representation blend together, so it is unclear where one ends
| and the other begins.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
| steverob wrote:
| The best Sunday content, I'd say.
| djmips wrote:
| How many people knew this already and just assumed it was common
| knowledge that butterflies are draw cartoon like. I mean a lot of
| illustrated bugs and animals and plants are stylized and look
| very little like the real thing. Look at cartoon bears for
| example.
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| something more!
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I thought this was going to be something like "please stop
| killing them just because they're pretty" and was disappointed.
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| I was expecting the same, so I was surprised when it wasn't.
| Why would you be disappointed?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Because I would hope people would not think it's ok to kill
| an animal because it's pretty. This article is totally fine
| with that, just wants you to shape the wings like it's alive
| when you draw them.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Do people still do that in any significant number?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'd file this article under, "You're enjoying this wrong!" It's
| just saying that we should stop enjoying a particular
| representation of butterflies that is less generally lifelike
| than what the author would prefer. There's nothing wrong with
| saying that sort of thing, but it's not a particularly
| interesting assertion, and it's not a very important problem.
|
| (And if you liked the article, you're probably enjoying articles
| wrong.)
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Dead butterflies look better. Live butterflies look like moths.
| eru wrote:
| There's not much difference between the two, is there?
| throwanem wrote:
| I don't know what characters even a Linnaean taxonomist would
| use to distinguish the two; my specialization is in
| hymenopterans, and I'm just an autodidact amateur anyway.
| Intuitively, though, I would assume a butterfly to be
| strikingly colored and a moth to be strikingly pubescent.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| You get very colourful moths too, [poplar] hawk moths (UK)
| are large and well coloured; some butterflies and
| fritillaries are dull hues. I've never noticed moths to be
| particularly downy though?
|
| Wing position and form is how I'd differentiate them. Moths
| have a delta form at rest and don't close their wings
| together vertically?
| throwanem wrote:
| Well, that's the thing about morphological taxonomy, yeah
| - it's possible to construct any number of axes of
| distinction, none of which is really guaranteed to
| correspond to anything in terms of descent or
| relatedness. That said, wing posture is imo a better
| intuition than mine, not least in that you actually can
| most easily tell dragonflies from damselflies by eye this
| way - the former hold their wings spread laterally at
| rest, while the latter fold them along their abdomen. I'm
| sure there are exceptions in both families, but as a
| general field rule it does work.
|
| Looking at sources, the current state of play appears to
| be that butterflies are (mostly) (sorta) monophyletic in
| Papilionoidea, and moths are paraphyletic in "Lepidoptera
| except Papilionoidea", but it's all rather messy and
| nobody's all that sure.
|
| This isn't as unusual as it might sound, actually. You
| see much the same in Hymenoptera, for example - large
| insect families just aren't all that comprehensively
| studied in the first place, not least because many of
| their members can be quite hard to find, and what prior
| taxonomic work there was has been undergoing pretty
| radical revision since the advent of (relatively)
| inexpensive genomics and the consequent feasibility of
| molecular taxonomy.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I am very happy that the children's hobby of collecting
| butterflies seems to have nearly disappeared. When I was a kid,
| other kids had butterfly collection kits that included a "killing
| jar." It struck me as a bit morbid at the time, but it was common
| so no big deal.
|
| Even if the species isn't endangered or anything, isn't that kind
| of messed up? Not a great way for a kid to learn empathy.
|
| My seven year old enjoyed taking close up photos of butterflies a
| couple days ago using my phone. All the while saying sweet things
| to them, treating them as friends that she didn't want to
| frighten. She'd be offended with the idea of catching them to
| kill them and stick a pin in them to then admire their beauty in
| all its deadness.
| samatman wrote:
| This isn't obvious at all.
|
| The best advocates for healthy duck and deer populations are
| people who enjoy killing and eating them.
|
| Butterfly populations are declining throughout the developed
| world, it seems like a safe bet to me that more amateur
| lepidopterists would serve as an advocacy group for arresting
| and reversing that decline.
|
| Any individual butterfly is not long for this world, after all.
| Killing it and mounting it isn't a threat to its species; no
| one caring if they live or die is.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| You've missed the point entirely. It's not only a matter of
| protecting a species, it's a matter of learning empathy.
| slumdev wrote:
| > Even if the species isn't endangered or anything, isn't that
| kind of messed up? Not a great way for a kid to learn empathy.
|
| I think most kids are smart enough to understand the difference
| between insects and the higher forms of life that are capable
| of experiencing suffering.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I would say that isn't the point. Bugs are perfectly fine to
| practice empathy with, as are dolls, stuffed animals, etc.
|
| Recently my daughter befriended a tiny ant while at the
| blacktop at the local rec center. She was sort of taking a
| time out from interacting with her human friends for a bit.
|
| Then one of her friends came over and squished the ant,
| thinking it was funny, saying "it's just an ant" when my
| daughter complained.
|
| It really bothered me. Not the death of the ant, obviously.
| (so what, I step on them all the time)
|
| I don't know if you have kids, but I think there was
| something a bit off about that girl and her choice to kill
| the ant. Maybe you would consider her "smart." I didn't.
| slumdev wrote:
| I do have kids.
|
| I observe a correlation between overattachment to animals
| and lack of empathy toward other humans.
|
| In other words, people with "fur babies" are far less
| likely to have well-formed consciences.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| My observation is the opposite. Maybe someone should do a
| study. I've especially noticed that dog owners and dog
| lovers tend to be kind to people. I tend to agree with
| this quote:
|
| "He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his
| dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his
| treatment of animals."
|
| -- Emmanuel Kant
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/13607-he-who-is-cruel-
| to-an...
| HorizonXP wrote:
| We're lucky to have inherited a lovely garden that we've been
| doing our best to keep up with. Ever since my son was born,
| he's spent tons of time running around and exploring every
| section of it. My mom (grandma) and him spend lots of time
| finding insects, and making friends with them (COVID limited
| human friendships). He loves snails and will run outside after
| a rainfall to find the whole snail family. He'll say hi to the
| ants, and bumblebees. We love finding butterflies, and seeing
| the variety of birds in our garden. He's always been super
| gentle and interested in everything we showed him.
|
| He's close to 3 now, so he's exploring life & death.
| Previously, if we accidentally stepped on a snail, we'd hide it
| from him. Now, we talk it through and say "Oh no, we
| accidentally stepped on the snail! Let's apologize to snail and
| say sorry snail, I didn't mean to step on you. I'll try to be
| more careful next time." I use the opportunity to explain how
| the ants & wasps will come and eat the snail now to clean it
| up. That we try not to kill any insects, plants, or animals
| unless we plan to eat it.
|
| We have close family with a 5 year old that actually takes very
| much the opposite approach, even singing a song to kill the
| ants. Internally, I was horrified, but kept my mouth shut. My
| son picked it up and was deliberately stepping on ants the next
| time we were outside. I just reaffirmed the fact that this is
| the ants' home, and that we should be kind and not hurt ants
| like that. Can we apologize to the ants please? Now the ant's
| mama and daddy are going to be sad because they'll miss him,
| etc.
|
| He's young. I just want him to grow up appreciating and
| respecting all life. I figure if we can continue being kind to
| small life, it will extend to our friends as lockdowns lift. So
| far so good.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Now the ant's mama and daddy are going to be sad because
| they'll miss him
|
| Perhaps you could try to acculturate your son without
| deliberately lying to him. The only true claim this sentence
| makes is that, when you step on an ant, the ant's mother
| exists.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Calling that a deliberate lie is not accurate, in my
| opinion. Do you think it is a lie to speak as if dolls and
| stuffed animals have feelings? (for that matter, do you
| think it is a lie to speak as if characters in a fictional
| movie have thoughts and feelings?)
|
| Pretend play is important. My seven year old understands
| the distinction between humans, bugs, and toys. But she
| still pretends, and uses the latter as "empathy practice."
| This is normal, healthy child development.
|
| There is a time and a place for reminding children that
| bugs probably don't have feelings per se, and that dolls
| and stuffies especially don't. If you remind them
| constantly, and never let them go into "pretend mode"
| without spoiling it with such reminders, let's just say I
| recommend you avoid situations that put you in much contact
| with kids.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| That's good parenting on your part, in my opinion.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Kids don't collect butterflies so much anymore because (a) most
| people live in more urbanized places than 50+ years ago and
| kids spend more time indoors or in structured activities, and
| (b) there are a lot fewer butterflies around, as they die to
| insecticides, habitat loss, and climate change.
|
| Edit: A web search turns up that butterfly populations have
| declined by more than 30% in Europe/USA in the past 25 years or
| so, and were in decline for long before that. One estimate is
| that they have declined by more than 80% in Western Europe
| since the late 19th century, with many species disappearing
| entirely.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| We live in the middle of a city (San Francisco) and there are
| lots of butterflies around. There may be less, but I stand by
| my theory that the main difference is that killing bugs as a
| hobby is not seen the same way as it used to be.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Easily capturing images of butterflies (or just downloading
| them) probably is a factor, that wasn't really possible with
| cameras children had access to 30y ago.
|
| Raising butterflies is quite a common class project in UK
| primary schools.
| brobeanz wrote:
| I agree. Butterflies are pests that must go
| Hnl1kf wrote:
| Counter-example that I took:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/25949441@N02/9377845729/
|
| But yeah, I expect I'll be seeing dead butterflies everywhere
| now.
| LostJourneyman wrote:
| That's a counter example in the same way that someone
| responding to "Stop depicting all humans as spread eagle with
| their hands over their head, they don't naturally stand like
| that!" with a picture of a basketball player's arms straight up
| would be a counter-example. Most lepidopterans are capable of
| that pose especially in active flight, but it's still
| unnatural.
| throwanem wrote:
| I wouldn't call it unnatural; a landing butterfly may well
| flap for extra lift, the same way a bird does, in order to
| make a precise and controlled landing. (Hence incidentally
| the name "flaps" for the trailing-edge extra lift devices
| that serve the same purpose, in the same regimes of flight,
| for a rigid-winged aircraft.)
|
| The larger point still stands that butterflies don't hold
| their wings this way at rest, and it's true of hymenopterans
| as well; you often see specimen wasps mounted with all four
| wings fully spread, where the living animal at rest
| invariably holds the rear wings against the front such that
| only the latter are really visible. The only time this isn't
| the case is in flight or when the wings are otherwise in use
| (eg nest fanning on a hot day), but you need a _very_ fast
| shutter to freeze that motion, and all you 'll see with your
| bare eye is a blur.
| vidarh wrote:
| This is addressed in the comments to the article.
|
| Basically: Some might get their wings into unusual position
| mid-flight, but the angle of the photo also plays in a great
| deal - the depicting addressed in the article is from directly
| above.
| Graffur wrote:
| So what is wrong with drawing butterflies with this wing
| position? Nothing! It's possible and looks good.
| vidarh wrote:
| Depends on whether you're depicting them from straight
| above or at another angle. The point remains that they
| don't typically hold their wings that far forward. It's not
| clear how far forward the one in the picture has its wings
| because of the angle.
|
| So, sure, if you're depicting a buttery in a completely
| different pose to the examples in the article, it might be
| right.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| I tried last year to model/animate a butterfly for something I
| was working on/to learn how to use Blender - found this video as
| a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7a7ZAqWBIs ...also
| this previous HN post about butterfly flight is very interesting:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25928796 ...+ quite a few
| previous articles on HN:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=butterfly+wings ...awesome bugs that
| they are! :)
| executesorder66 wrote:
| > There are exceptions, of course. It seems that some of the
| smaller butterflies may exhibit wing positions fairly close to
| that of a dead, pinned specimen
|
| I've actually seen some really large butterflies that look pretty
| much like the "pinned wings dead butterfly" when it flies. I
| tried to film it, but couldn't get a good shot.
|
| I found this article interesting when it came out, but after
| seeing living butterflies that look exactly like it says they
| shouldn't, I'm not going to spread the idea that all these
| butterfly images are wrong.
|
| I have seen thousands of butterflies in my life, and yes, most of
| them have their forewings much further back. Not that I ever paid
| too close attention, even after reading this article for the
| first time. It was just a striking image when I saw these huge
| butterflies on holiday in December 2019, and they looked like a
| stereotypical animated movie aesthetic butterflies with the
| "wrong" wings, and I thought it was amusing.
| BadOakOx wrote:
| I was just thinking about this. All the photos the author uses
| are of butterflies resting. Thanks for confirming my intuition
| that while butterflies fly they spread their wings.
| kadoban wrote:
| They do spread their wings in flight, but the few photos/vids
| I bothered to find it's still quite distinct from the
| classical pinned position (in terms of the angles fore/aft
| more than anything).
|
| I'm sure it's a _possible_ position in which to find many
| species, but it seems like at best a rare one.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Part of it is that mostly I've seen, in person, butterflies
| in flight - they rarely alight on a plant close enough to
| inspect in detail and in flight they do appear to flap like
| a book opening and closing; one doesn't really see the
| pitch changes of the wing, it looks like a simple motion.
|
| I've got some pictures of red admirals (it painted ladies,
| not sure) resting in "dead" pose on brambles somewhere that
| I took only because I'd seen this article.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > mostly I've seen, in person, butterflies in flight -
| they rarely alight on a plant close enough to inspect in
| detail and in flight they do appear to flap like a book
| opening and closing
|
| My father grows milkweed to support a population of
| monarchs. They also flap their wings open and closed
| while resting.
| dstanko wrote:
| Interesting... I have seen (more precisely noticed) maybe 2-3
| butterflies in last couple of years. I am pretty sure that none
| of those times I had a hi res slow motion camera. Certainly,
| those butterflies looked different than preserved dead ones I saw
| in illustrations.
|
| Point is that a non-butterfly expert that does not spend their
| life researching would only relate to depictions of butterflies,
| not their true form.
|
| I also find this very similar to old photos where people looked
| stiff and lifeless. As photography became more mobile and
| accessible, photos became more lifelike.
| kbutler wrote:
| It's the equivalent of T-posing humans everywhere.
|
| Not a relaxed posture reflective of nature, but does allow more
| visibility and analysis.
|
| Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man
| sqqqqrly wrote:
| What would Buffalo Bill think?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| More lotion.
| mkl wrote:
| (2017) but important enough to revisit. After seeing this article
| the first time, I can't help but see dead butterflies everywhere.
|
| Previous discussions:
|
| 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013 164 comments
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788356 28 comments
| giantg2 wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about the decline in the numbers
| and diversity of butterflies. Good article though.
| [deleted]
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Great now I am going to be checking every picture of butterflies
| that I see
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| One of those "once you see it" articles.
|
| It's a good example of art imitating art. On screen depictions of
| ER doctors zapping patients back to life with a defibrillator.
| Adrenaline shots to the heart. Gently putting bad guys to sleep
| with a concussive blow to the head.
|
| Artists' dramatic depictions become cliche, and cliche becomes
| our norm. Good to stop and ponder, on occasion, how much of our
| worldview is shaped by such fallacies.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I've always wondered how much our social interaction is defined
| by on-screen portrayals of social interactions.
|
| Actors are doing their best to portray how humans behave, but
| some subset of humans observe a large portion of what "normal"
| behavior is through a screen. At some point, did humans begin
| imitating the actors to a large degree, while the actors
| continued imitating the humans? In other words, did art begin
| imitating art?
|
| This thought was brought on by watching old movies. Either
| actors were much worse back then, or people behaved
| differently, or both. And to what degree did those actors shape
| today's behavior?
| b0rsuk wrote:
| One of my pet grievances is how love is portrayed. If you
| were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if you're
| persistent enough. Then poor young boys and men set out in
| the world showering someone else in gifts and attention.
| Girls with narcissistic tendencies become more, more and more
| narcissistic and entitled.
|
| Another very damaging myth is that kung fu will save you from
| muggers. Muggers may have no objections to stabbing you, and
| if they attack they often attack from surprise. Or really,
| that a fight looks anything like in a martial arts movie. Go
| watch a fight in a Karate or Judo championship. It's quite
| boring, contestants are quite evenly matched and move with
| respect to each other.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "If you were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if
| you're persistent enough."
|
| Anyone believing that, would also have to believe, that ANY
| woman can get YOU, if she is persistent enough. And most
| would clearly object to that, but yeah logic consistency is
| not usually a theme of movie romances or of the target
| audience.
|
| "Another very damaging myth is that kung fu will save you
| from muggers"
|
| But if you know kung fu (or any martial arts) on a high
| level, then yes, it usually will save you from muggers.
| Because martial arts at its core (unless we are talking
| only about the sports turnament situation) is about
| situational awareness ALL the time. Meaning you do not get
| close enough to a person, that might stab you, in the first
| place. You are aware of dangers. Of people posing threats.
| You check the persons and places around you for signs of
| trouble. So you are in control of the situation - so you
| can be calm. Even when there is indeed trouble. But if fear
| and anger are not controlling you, you can control the
| situation and diffuse it. (and knowing that you can take
| someone out in a moment, helps with the confidence, unless
| it feeds your ego seeking such moments)
|
| Otherwise yes, martial arts masters bleed as anyone else. I
| think some world champion of kickboxing was killed in a bar
| fight. And the mystic glorifications of kung fu and co does
| lives on in the movies, but in reality it mostly vanished
| by real bullets
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
| samatman wrote:
| My Sifu in kung fu would get asked about muggers
| frequently, by new students.
|
| He always stressed the importance of having the laces on
| your shoes tied, and practicing your wind sprints.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My Sifu
|
| This is itself an example of "art imitating art" as per
| upthread. English speakers use the word "sifu" as part of
| its own independent cultural tradition. They use it even
| in contexts where it makes no sense, surrounded by
| Mandarin references - notably in _Kung Fu Panda_ and less
| notably here: http://gowdb.com/troops/6582 - because they
| are sure it's "Chinese".
|
| But if you learned the word by studying Chinese you'd
| spell it shifu. The English word comes from exposure to
| southerners who make no distinction between "s" and "sh".
| But distinguishing those two sounds is not a problem _for
| English speakers_.
| samatman wrote:
| Shows what you know. Sifu is Cantonese, and that's how he
| spells it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm curious where you think your comment contradicts
| mine.
| [deleted]
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| High level karate or judo (or boxing or MMA or Muay Thai)
| championships are usually only tactical and boring
| _because_ they are evenly matched. They would all whip a
| ,,casual" experienced martial artist within half a minute
| in a movie-like fashion, who in turn will be able to do
| that to the man on the street.
|
| (Source: been there, done that, sparred and competed both
| against world class olympic martial artists as well as
| complete beginners.)
| b0rsuk wrote:
| "another martial artist" already assumes that you're in
| some ways evenly matched - you're using the same weapons,
| and it's 1 on 1. What there are two, one with a metal bar
| and another with a broken bottle? People like to go in
| with overwhelming odds, that's why around 80% muggings
| are men against women. And the weapons they may have may
| be in their pockets. Fancy playing russian roulette? What
| if they don't attack one at a time, like in movies?
| MikeSchurman wrote:
| Although I have no evidence to back this up, I believe many
| try to imitate film (or expect something) in their romantic
| life, which ends up with them having bad expectations and
| disappointment.
| sneak wrote:
| In movies, the phone would revert immediately back to a dial
| tone when the other party hung up.
|
| That's not how any phones ever worked even back when they used
| dial tones.
| yourenotsmart wrote:
| This probably disproves the hypothesis that consciousness
| shapes reality, because if it did, the millions of brainwashed
| people watching movies would have turned the reality into a set
| of movie tropes.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Why can't they have subtle impacts?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. Do you
| agree people are influenced by movies or not?
|
| I think we all immitate and there's very little, if any,
| truly original... thoughts/behaviours
| sethammons wrote:
| I take their meaning as a poke at those who believe that
| "if you will it, it will be." There were some who
| believe(d) if you gathered a stadium of people and told
| them all to think about the candle in the center of the
| stadium self-igniting that through the power of shared
| belief it would. If this were true, then, to op's point, a
| bunch of reality would be changing to match people's mental
| expectations as influenced through media tropes. And since
| we don't see that, then people's thoughts likely don't
| influence reality.
| [deleted]
| mushbino wrote:
| I just finished the book Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson. Much of
| our reality and especially our worldview is constructed and
| bears no resemblance to reality.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think this is actually art imitating science, but that's a
| quibble.
|
| As for the rest, I heartily agree. I've been thinking about
| that here lately, how we watch movie fights and they are
| typically highly choreographed and often visually beautiful
| forms of dance that likely have nothing at all to do with what
| real violence looks like.
|
| Not that I want to promote real violence, but I wonder what
| impact that has on human psychology and how unrealistic it
| makes some of our expectations when dealing with actual reality
| when it fails to match up to what we have fed our brains via
| various forms of media.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| However... I have an illustrates copy of "Origin of Species,"
| with Darwin's original drawings. It's quite beautiful.
| Naturalists of the day used a style of drawing. It was
| utilitarian, good for identification purposes. But, it's
| almost impossible not to see it as an artistic tradition too.
|
| Point taken though. This style originates in science, and
| they had reasons for their style.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| There's all sorts of interesting and sometimes subtle negative
| impacts on the real world that inaccurate depictions in fiction
| have. I think these mainly happen for situations people are
| likely to only see in fiction rather than reality.
|
| A mundane example is people turning up to court and behaving
| incorrectly because they're used to Hollywood depictions.
|
| Another one is people thinking someone using a command-line on
| a computer must be "hacking".
|
| More troublesome is dramatically unrealistic depictions of
| minorities.
| krisoft wrote:
| Absolutely. It is also crazy when literally conveniences
| influence people's thinking.
|
| In serialised fiction where you have a set of "cast members"
| the writers sometimes feel that they should shake things up.
| Temporarily put out of action one or the other member of the
| recurring characters to see how the new group dynamics will
| evolve. One common trope is where a member of the heroes'
| group falls into coma. Hijinks happen, the rest of the group
| copes with the missing member, and a few episodes later when
| the writers get bored of the scenario they bring back the
| person from coma. And because the whole motivation for the
| coma was a plot convenience you will get a quick recovery. A
| dramatic scene usually occurs where the patient wakes up,
| frequently due to some stimulus from a friend. You are lucky
| if you can see one cut scene of the patient recovering
| afterwards.
|
| Real life coma is nothing like this. In reality a high
| percentage of those in coma die. They can have all kind of
| involuntary movements which would confuse someone who expects
| a sleeping beauty coma. The recovery usually is a long, and
| arduous process even when someone wakes up and of course
| there are health risks even after the patient opens their
| eyes up. [1]
|
| A few weeks ago I had a discussion with my dad. He told me
| about a friend of his who had a stroke and fallen into a
| coma. At the time when we talked the friend was unable to
| breath on his own since days. My dad was super concerned that
| the friend in question doesn't have life insurance. It felt
| as if it was a foregone conclusion to him that his friend is
| going to wake up, and is going to leave the hospital. His
| only worry was what is going to happen with him after. Now,
| how much of this was an understandable psychological coping
| mechanism, and how much of it was due to incorrect
| representation of coma patients in media is hard to tell.
| Sadly later the friend passed away.
|
| Luckily my dad didn't had to make any care decisions about
| his friend. (Of course) But regular people get thrown into
| situations like that all the time, all around the world. It's
| already a very stressful situation as a baseline, and then on
| top of whatever is happening people have all kind of
| unreasonable expectations swirling in their heads as they go
| through it. And all because writers regularly run out of
| material and have a need to conveniently shake things up in
| their fictional worlds.
|
| 1: https://www.livescience.com/739-comatose-patients-falsely-
| de...
| detaro wrote:
| > _My dad was super concerned that the friend in question
| doesn 't have life insurance. It felt as if it was a
| foregone conclusion to him that his friend is going to wake
| up, and is going to leave the hospital_
|
| Wouldn't having life insurance be more relevant for the
| case where the friend _doesn 't_ wake up...?
| dhosek wrote:
| That was my thought too, but I'm guessing that the
| commenter's father was thinking that post-coma, it would
| be hard to qualify for life insurance at a reasonable
| rate.
| krisoft wrote:
| Good question.
|
| This happened in a European country (Hungary) There the
| health care is free at the point of consumption, so there
| was no question if he will be taken care of. The problem
| is if you were not paying your health insurance
| contributions prior to the illness, the tax authority
| might force you to pay the cost of your care after you
| are out of the hospital. Or at least that's how my dad
| explained to me his worry.
|
| Medical debt is not fun, but clearly tertiary to the
| problem of not breathing, in my opinion.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Ah, so you meant health insurance, not life insurance?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| This definitely clears up the original post. Had the same
| question and couldn't figure out a simple typo that made
| sense.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Sure. Also, porn, romance novels, high school social life,
| prison, mafia, war, psychotherapy...
|
| The world is full of examples where literary cliches have
| more influence on our biases and expectations than first or
| second hand experiences. We rarely observe other people
| falling in love, but we see it in movies and stories all the
| time.
|
| Hence why this article is subtly brilliant. It reminds us how
| much of our "knowledge" is actually fiction.
| dmix wrote:
| A big one is 30+ year olds writing the screenplays and
| therefore dialogue of kids and teenagers which are always
| precocious and seem adult like. Which young people think
| they should be at a similar stage of development or imitate
| them.
| [deleted]
| b0rsuk wrote:
| I like the phrase "art imitating art", but it's broader than
| that. For example people with no interest in antique, Greece or
| Sparta are fans of Spartans. In reality, Sparta was a North
| Korea of the antique world, AND it had profoundly average
| combat performance. No matter how you slice it, they were
| completely average as far as won battles go!
|
| https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
|
| If you filter out naval battles, it doesn't change anything. If
| you remove battles where they fought in a coalition with other
| Greeks, their win rate even drops slightly.
|
| There is some evidence they may have had a slight advantage in
| leadership, because they had more leaders and their units were
| a bit smaller so they could perhaps operate more independently
| and seize opportunities on a field of battle (a strategy
| perfected by Romans). But overall, their strategy was _bad_
| even by antique standards - check out the Peloponesian War
| (with Athens). Spartans just had a good PR.
|
| Dead butterflies is a _meme_ (in the old meaning of viral
| idea). Spartan military excellence is a meme too.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| One thing is clear: Spartan PR department was undefeatable.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| "Spartan" should be a popular name for marketing and PR
| agencies, not for military :-).
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'd say the spartan meme is also an example of art imitating
| art. Other greeks, and later Romans started this meme. They
| admired Sparta's dedication to conservative fanaticism,
| romanticized it and told stories about them. We still tell
| the stories, based on older stories based on older stories.
|
| Meanwhile, we have very little direct access to "reality." In
| fact, unmediated reality is pretty elusive.. when you stop to
| think about it. Win rate statistics and other such
| "objective" views into reality are a pretty sparse source of
| information.
| wnevets wrote:
| >No matter how you slice it, they were completely average as
| far as won battles go!
|
| and they absolutely surrendered!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I didn't read the article, but measuring military skill by
| how many battles you win is very tricky business.
|
| To have a battle, you need two armies. If army A is clearly
| stronger than army B, B will typically admit defeat without
| going through the unpleasant process of being slaughtered to
| the last man. At least if they have reasonable expectations
| of a life after surrender.
|
| So battles that are actually fought are normally pretty even.
| That doesn't mean every fighting force is equal to every
| other. The militarily stronger side gets their way by having
| a credible threat of settling things by force if needed.
| kleton wrote:
| Some criticism of Acoup's analysis of their combat
| performance. All of the defeats listed are either not
| infantry battles or ones where Sparta was heavily
| outnumbered. It's hardly surprising that they would lose
| battles over 500 v 1000, and no contemporary commentators
| claimed that man for man they were that much better than
| their peer poleis. If you did a "wins above replacement"
| analysis for pitched infantry battles, they would come out
| ahead, at least until the Battle of Tegyra (375), when
| Boeotians had figured out an effective infantry doctrine
| after years fighting Sparta.
|
| Plutarch on the Theban victory over Sparta at Leuctra (371).
|
| >For in all the great wars there had ever been against Greeks
| or barbarians, the Spartans were never before beaten by a
| smaller company than their own; nor, indeed, in a set battle,
| when their number was equal. Hence their courage was thought
| irresistible, and their high repute before the battle made a
| conquest already of enemies, who thought themselves no match
| for the men of Sparta even on equal terms.
|
| That battle wiped out the Spartiate class for a generation,
| killing 400 out of 700. This opened the way for Thebes to
| liberate Messenia in 370, which was the majority of the
| Lakonian helots, and it was all downhill for Sparta after
| that.
| karpierz wrote:
| I think if you're going to do an analysis of military
| strength, you have to do it in context of the political
| system that produces it. If your society results in
| supersoldiers, but also causes you to regularly fail at
| diplomacy and end up outnumbered in wars which you end up
| losing, I wouldn't say that your military record is
| successful.
| kbenson wrote:
| But this isn't really an analysis of military strength as
| much as one of unit strength, if I understand what's
| being presented.
|
| The meme isn't that Sparta was awesome, the meme is that
| spartan soldiers and units are awesome.
|
| I don't think most people think that a society that turns
| it's children out on the street to fend for themselves to
| toughen the ones that survive is good or worth any awe,
| but that doesn't mean that people can't look at the end
| result and think one specific aspect is worth respect.
| kleton wrote:
| They won the Peloponessian war (plenty of diplomacy and
| coalition building) and remained dominant until 371,
| which was the first war they lost. It was a pretty
| respectable record.
| dmix wrote:
| I'm not seeing much connection to North Korea here.
|
| They have awful diplomacy, no real coalitions (besides
| China which is more of a complete one sided economic
| dependency and a constant source of trouble), a poor
| military track record besides perfecting sabre rattling
| and a single small US ship from the 1950s as their most
| prominent war prize, no one is trying to imitate them,
| they rely heavily on raw numbers over ability in a
| defensive posture built up over generations, etc.
|
| I'm trying to think of where the analogies begin...
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Brutal dictatorship. 90% of population living in poverty
| (The Helots in Sparta were hunted for sport by
| Spartiates, particularly as a coming of age ritual).
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Did they kidnap foreigners to do research or translation?
| [deleted]
| b0rsuk wrote:
| > Some criticism of Acoup's analysis of their combat
| performance. All of the defeats listed are either not
| infantry battles or ones where Sparta was heavily
| outnumbered.
|
| It cuts both ways. Classic example is Thermopylae. The
| total number of Greeks is estimated to be between 5200 and
| 7700, but you very rarely hear any number higher than 300.
| The Spartan fame was manufactured, for example by
| historians like Herodotus.
|
| Why does one have to resort to cherry picking to prove
| Spartan military excellence? Why aren't they self-evident?
| blix wrote:
| Herotodus lists 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, and over
| 5000 Greeks. It is possible that there are two different
| numbers because they describe two very different things.
|
| Spartan military excellence is likely exaggerated, but it
| is also likely that there was a significant time period
| where their soldiers were individually superior to other
| communities, primarily as a result of better nutrition.
| Nutrition in early Greek agricultural communities is
| notoriously awful, while the severe inequality of Spartan
| society allowed them to maintain a realtively well-fed
| warrior class.
|
| Individual quality doesn't scale, however, while raw
| quantity does. The Spartans were able to demonstrate
| excellence in results on a small scale, such as the
| conquest of Messina, but as quantity became a more
| important factor they simply couldn't compete even as
| they maintained some degree of individual excellence.
|
| There are many things to dislike about Spartan society
| from a modern standpoint (such as their brutally
| oppressed slave underclass), but it is important to
| remember that this is a feature of almost all early
| agricultural societies.
| dTal wrote:
| I'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all fiction
| is essentially a lie, and therefore damaging. Your brain _does
| not distinguish_ meaningfully between truth and fiction, at an
| emotional level. Yes, you can tell stories that capture some
| sort of essential truth - but writers don 't typically hold
| themselves terribly closely to that standard, and in any case
| the time is better spent telling of things that actually
| happened. Every mutilation applied to actual events - in the
| service of making them supposedly more entertaining - clouds
| our understanding of them. And it's done on purpose!
| Inglourious Basterds is an abomination, a deliberate
| cognitohazard.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Well... If you also come around to the view that most
| nonfiction is fiction too... you might find yourself in a
| pretty nihilistic place.
|
| Those depictions of butterflies are intended to be
| nonfiction.. naturalism. A precise and true representation of
| butterflies, an artistic culture that people like Darwin were
| steeped in.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I was going to reply something similar. We dont have access
| to much thermodynamic truth and the vast majority of our
| experience is fictionalised in one way or another when it
| is later described.
| eru wrote:
| That's a good reason why archaeologists are so keen on
| digging in garbage. Garbage doesn't lie as much as the
| written word.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden
| dalbasal wrote:
| The garbage itself may not lie, but the process of
| turning garbage into history is still storytelling. It's
| very hard to escape. Most anything meaningful, to us, is
| a story.
|
| A fully empirical/popperian approach to knowledge isn't
| workable. Or rather, it's extremely sparse. You have to
| accept that you know almost nothing.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all
| fiction is essentially a lie..._
|
| This isn't just "not unpopular" but universally,
| intrinsically understood.
|
| "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes
| us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to
| understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to
| convince others of the truthfulness of his lies." -- Pablo
| Picasso
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZZBfZyJ-2s
|
| > _...and therefore damaging._
|
| This claim that "all fiction is damaging" is inconceivable to
| me. How does one develop empathy if one is incapable of
| imagining anything other than what they've directly
| experienced?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| How would you recommend exploring truths that may end up
| being too politically charged to explore except through
| fiction? For some time the only way LGBTQ+ and race relations
| explorations could only occur through fiction. (Arguably,
| exploring the trans experience can often be limited to
| exploration through fiction.)
| eru wrote:
| Perhaps look farther afield?
|
| Eg race relations were pretty bad in the US, but in the UK,
| culturally still pretty accessible, a black person could
| always use money to buy status.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I still think in the UK there was limited appetite for
| nonfiction accounts of racism of UK people. (There may
| still be limited appetite for effusively positive
| nonfiction about Travelers, or general nonfiction about
| the Troubles that may be taking "a side".)
| dTal wrote:
| >effusively positive nonfiction
|
| "Effusively positive" sounds like it would be
| deliberately distorting reality in order to present a
| point. I'm sure there's plenty of appetite for _accurate_
| documentaries about Travelers.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > "Effusively positive" sounds like it would be
| deliberately distorting reality in order to present a
| point. I'm sure there's plenty of appetite for accurate
| documentaries about Travelers.
|
| One of the Assassin's Creed games has an exploration
| mode, and if you walk by one of the outdoor "classrooms"
| the narrator will explain that while they show boys and
| girls learning together, the reality was that only boys
| were present in the schools, and that the creators here
| specifically chose to show the way it "should have been".
|
| They spent some unknown amount of money on this major
| feature that toured all around their map, tons of real
| photos and documentary about how they captured the feel,
| interviews with historians... centering on historically
| accurate, but when it came to controlling their own
| wokeness for a second, they _had_ to present the
| "effusively positive".
|
| I don't care what they do, but it was an admission that
| they didn't really care about nonfiction, and made me
| untrustful of the remaining content.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > LGBTQ+ and race relations explorations
|
| Every time I watch a fictional movie about some social
| issue I ask myself: I've just watched an imaginary story
| that never happened played by actors who actually never
| experienced it. Now what?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Consider that maybe the social issue has lived
| experiences that couldn't be safely explored in
| nonfiction, or maybe the importance such as being
| validated that your personal experience isn't a delusion
| wasn't for you.
|
| Additionally chances are that with the way progressive
| pushes are going (blackface/yellowface/white actors
| playing nonwhite characters is swiftly going out of
| style) the actors may actually experience the themes
| being explored. I'm pretty sure black people playing
| black people in movies about black race relations may
| have personal experiences with such!
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > (blackface/yellowface/white actors playing nonwhite
| characters is swiftly going out of style)
|
| We now only have to make sure the chess players are
| impersonated by real FIDE masters and Queen Elizabeth by
| someone who has at least 1/8th royal blood.
| indigo945 wrote:
| Any reason you're singling out Inglourious Basterds in
| particular?
|
| In general, though, I do not believe that this problem is at
| all limited to the kind of art that we commonly dub as
| "fiction". For example, in the 19th century, travel diaries
| of colonial "explorers" were a very popular form of
| literature consumed by the educated classes in the colonial
| metropole, and they consisted almost entirely of distortions,
| willful or accidental omissions and often outright lies. Yet,
| they helped shape the view the West has of "oriental"
| cultures and peoples, with many of these cliches persisting
| even to the current age (i.e. "Orientalism").
|
| Therefore, following your logic, all scientific works are
| damaging.
| narag wrote:
| _Any reason you 're singling out Inglourious Basterds in
| particular?_
|
| Embellishing stories has kind of a social function: to
| sugar-coat our vision of life. Reality is scary.
|
| When the author presents a blatant lie just because, it's
| only annoying. At least for me, that movie and the last one
| are a scam. Sure, there must be a "profound" explanation of
| director's intentions.
| dalbasal wrote:
| The authors stated intention was to depict a widely held,
| indulgent, sadistic fantasy.
| refenestrator wrote:
| It also enlists the audience in a brilliant way.
|
| We watch all the Germans in the movie theater, cheering
| at their guy killing allied soldiers, then the basterds
| burst in and WE are cheering for OUR guys killing the
| nazis. It's genius.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Most children quickly develop an appreciation for the
| distinction between things clearly delineated and
| presented as fiction before they hit double digits of
| age. It's quite peculiar to accuse artists of trying to
| scam you. Have you ever played a video game? What do you
| think of them?
| JTbane wrote:
| Okay, Plato, I guess we should ban poetry for corrupting the
| youth...
| kbenson wrote:
| > I'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all
| fiction is essentially a lie, and therefore damaging.
|
| Does nobody read with a critical eye? I know sometimes I have
| to give up on a story or series if the things I'm asked to
| accept pass a boundary, and they're kept _consistent_.
|
| > Every mutilation applied to actual events - in the service
| of making them supposedly more entertaining - clouds our
| understanding of them.
|
| It's impossible to convey with absolute accuracy any event. I
| would hazard that any representation no matter how accurate
| it tries to be will be riddles with inaccuracies or
| assumptions that are represented through bias.
|
| We're screwed from the outset because we're incapable of
| accepting all the possible stimuli of a situation (and so are
| recording devices), and any event is also only a part in a
| series which adds context.
|
| To that you add that it's impossible to impart your own
| experience without bias (and the imparting of personal
| experience is the only way to get details other than what we
| can record automatically), which adds quite a bit to any
| event.
|
| Everything is something we're getting through a skinner box,
| and whether marketed as fact or fiction, you have to make
| choices on what is true or not. Painting fiction with a broad
| brush as negative likely won't help in the end. All you're
| doing is taking the inputs that tell you up front they're not
| necessarily true in the sense of real events (even if they
| may try to make you think about fundamental things in ways
| you didn't consider, which is useful) and removing them to
| prioritize things that are also untrue in some way, but don't
| have the decency to own up to it.
| coopierez wrote:
| Not all fiction is attempting to tell a story and pass it off
| as realistic. A lot of fiction is deliberately and
| transparently fantasy. A lot of fiction is also metaphorical.
| croes wrote:
| >all fiction is essentially a lie
|
| That's why it's fiction.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _time is better spent telling of things that actually
| happened_
|
| How do you know what actually happened outside of your direct
| experience? Anything that occurred outside the direct
| experience of a still-living human is known only through the
| stories people at the time told each other about it:
| incomplete, imperfectly remembered, biased towards the
| accounts of survivors who lived to tell their stories or
| those powerful enough to have their voices heard, even when
| all involved have the best of intentions of an accurate
| retelling. Unless the event made a sufficient impact on the
| physical world (which is itself going to be a very incomplete
| picture of events) then events older than ~80 years are
| accessible to us only through such stories.
|
| If you think deliberate fiction is damaging because the human
| mind doesn't fully distinguish it from truth, even when it
| knows it to be fiction, then you must hate accounts of "what
| actually happened" even more: They are often incorrect and
| yet label themselves as truth, so the human mind is even more
| likely to take as "truth" something that is incorrect. If the
| human mind does not always distinguish fiction clearly, then
| it is even less capable of discerning incorrect accounts of
| what actually happened from those that are more accurate.
|
| Let's take Inglorious Bastards as an example: What is more
| damaging, a dark comedy that presents itself as a fiction
| loosely inspired by actual events? Or a selective sampling of
| events that presents itself as the truth in denying events
| like the Holocaust-- something made ever more possible as
| time passes and those with direct experience die off?
|
| Butterflies in this case are an excellent example of the
| problems of non fiction as well: The dead butterflies
| accurately depict what a butterfly looks like by using a pose
| that shows its full detail a bit better. But in providing
| that detail it loses the nuance of how a butterfly would look
| in the wild. And yet a pose from the the wild would give less
| information about its full visual detail, and no single pose
| from the wild could fully encapsulate its natural state. This
| is for one small living thing that we can observe now, today.
| How much more incomplete of a picture must we have of older
| events?
|
| If you are disregarding fiction for the reasons you gave, you
| must also disregard nearly all aspects of prior accounts of
| human events as being similarly flawed and even more
| pernicious for their claims of being the truth.
| kbenson wrote:
| Always fun to type up a 10 minute reply on my phone only to
| find after I post it that someone has said essentially the
| same core thing hours previously. ;)
| ineedasername wrote:
| We'll, we're mostly tech folks or appreciative of tech:
| we don't mind, and even encourage, a few levels of
| redundancy :)
|
| In this case you never know what will get noticed an
| upvoted to the attention of others. Some repetition for
| of various viewpoints, especially when made with
| different nuances, is a good thing.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You can come the other side and accept that all stories,
| fiction or not, are pure cultural constructions, and choose
| ones that benefit you on a daily basis.
|
| Some stories will help you overcome chalenges in your life,
| others will nurture your respect for people, others remind
| you people you love.
|
| You choose the lies you believe in, hopefully you find ones
| that help you live your life.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Inglourious Basterds is an abomination, a deliberate
| cognitohazard."
|
| I have to strongly disagree here. Since it was soo absurd, it
| was obviously a work of fiction. A surreal funny one at that.
| A gang of jews that blows up Hitler? Yes, a movie can do
| that. Anyone taking it literal, has definitely other problems
| in life.
|
| But I do have a problem with movies, that _pretend_ to be
| historical authentic - but are not. And are therefore
| effectivly rewriting history. And sadly most, if not all
| "historic" hollywood productions fall into that category.
|
| This is where I see the problem - when the lines get blurry.
| kbenson wrote:
| Thankfully, with the recent increase in the popularity of
| documentary series, people can see two separate takes of an
| event, for select events, which make it more obvious to the
| common person the liberties that are taken to make a good
| movie compared to tell an accurate story.
|
| If we're all lucky, more people will start realizing that
| it doesn't stop at Hollywood, and there's no reason to
| expect the documentary was absolutely correct and without
| bias either (in some respects documentaries can be _much_
| worse since they often purport to be unbiased and correct).
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Fiction (/well-written fiction at least) is an artform, like
| music or, um, art, or even design you know? It's a
| communication medium meant (amongst other things) to convey
| something of the human experience that is perhaps intangible
| or illogical. Fiction is normally very honest and open about
| not being factual. I take your point though that when people
| take fictions as truth, whether through the reader's
| ignorance, or the writer's misrepresentation, that can be
| extremely problematic - that is not the fault of fiction I
| would argue though, but rather of the context/audience that
| receives it/the manner in which they interpret it (I suppose
| there are exceptions like parodies/eg. 'War Of The Worlds' or
| something?). I currently read much less fiction than I used
| to when I was a kid (my mum was an English teacher), but I
| can assure you that my brain is almost always perfectly
| capable of distinguishing between the two on some level. I
| may choose to suspend my disbelief or feel feelings prompted
| by the material, but am simultaneously aware that this is not
| objective reality. I agree with your point though that much
| fiction/fictionalised material that has been interpreted as
| real has caused much damage - people really like stories
| (isn't this an inherent part of our psychology?) and tend to
| inevitably construct them around even the most dispassionate
| material (in the same way we tend to anthropomorphise stuff I
| guess?). Trick is we need some training to help us 'read'
| media with a questioning/'between the lines' sort of
| rationale/focussed attention/looking for
| bias/manipulation/being self-aware etc etc...
| hprotagonist wrote:
| I'd suggest that to understand this matter in more detail,
| watching _Rashomon_ might be useful --- but that basically
| tanks your argument.
| manachar wrote:
| Of course all fiction is a lie.
|
| All words are a lie. All narratives are built of symbols and
| cliches and agreed upon fictions in an attempt to point to
| reality. Reality is a thing we cannot touch or experience
| directly and is always filtered by our tools, experiences and
| perceptions. Even math might be merely a model, one where we
| convince ourselves integers actually exist (where does one
| thing become separate from another when reality seems to be
| built of atoms with probabilistic shells of elections and
| waves of electromagnetic interactions?)
|
| As for being harmful? Well, fiction and non-fiction
| narratives are all powerful tools for shaping how we perceive
| of our reality. They can be harmful or helpful. Some of our
| favorite fictions are things like justice, freedom, liberty,
| or any conception that we all have rights.
|
| Additionally, when we tell fictions we are crafted a world we
| can aspire to. We make gods and heroes to imagine what it
| would be like to be better. We make villains and demons to
| remind us of what we should avoid. Without these I do not
| believe we would be in a better place. One could even call
| these noble lies.
|
| Of course, this does mean fiction can be dangerous and should
| be selected carefully. Ayn Rand has a peculiarly powerful
| hold over people because her fictions are good at making a
| deep impression on people. Vacation Bible Schools and overtly
| Christian education are aimed at controlling the narrative
| young minds receive. Then there's the constant mythologizing
| of history done to legitimize modern political stances (e.g.
| Civil War was some sort of lost cause about state's rights,
| Mayflower was the first "real" colony, founding "fathers"
| were near perfect, etc.).
|
| Narratives are powerful. Worth noting Plato came to your same
| conclusion in his Republic. Essentially deeming all myth and
| plays and stories as too dangerous to be allowed.
| kbutler wrote:
| The fact that our brains can recall fantasy as reality is a
| form of "misattribution". It's only one of many ways that our
| memories are inaccurate, to speak nothing of the various
| biases and inaccuracies that are incorporated even in the
| most faithful attempts at recording or reporting factual
| stories.
|
| To paraphrase a common aphorism - all stories are false, but
| some are useful.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| I hate just dropping a wall of quotes, but I also don't want
| to say the same thing in more and worse words... so I put my
| response on pastebin as a compromise ^^
| https://pastebin.com/L18AvH13
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| The Big Brother one was jarring. Too much.
| ronenlh wrote:
| "live butterflies don't look like butterflies in pictures, you
| gotta use dead ones" is like in the Simpsons: "Cow's don't look
| like cows on film. You gotta use horses."
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm not interested in a 2A debate but I find it really
| interesting how much public misunderstanding about firearms and
| firearms law comes from movies. One of the biggest is the
| concept of the "unregistered firearm" used in a crime. There is
| no firearm registry in the US, so all firearms are
| unregistered. However, the fact that this is prolific in crime
| movies leads many to believe such a registry exists. Another is
| the "Hollywood silencer." Guns fired with a suppressor/silencer
| are still quite loud, but movies have people thinking you can
| have a shootout in a mall and no one will notice.
| NavinF wrote:
| Yep. Another silly example is bullets bouncing around the
| room in movies and in supposed "true crime" fics. A friend of
| mine was being 100% serious when he raised that as a concern
| when I was talking about indoor gun ranges vs outdoor gun
| ranges. He had never seen bullets hitting anything IRL so he
| didn't know that bullets are made of soft lead and get
| somewhat squished before falling straight down along the
| wall.
| nacs wrote:
| > Guns fired with a suppressor/silencer are still quite loud
|
| A great example of this is the scene from John Wick where
| Wick and a villain are in a crowd firing at each other with
| noone noticing.
|
| There is a video with the gun sounds recreated to be more
| realistic:
|
| https://youtu.be/ws8LAfD_3BA?t=13
| neolog wrote:
| Yup. Even educational videos like [1] are probably using
| audio compression so they don't show the real loudness.
|
| Research [2] shows suppressed small arms are still well over
| 100dB (e.g. landing airplane loud) at peak impulse.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/1VWcGwPJQfc?t=30
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-
| Murphy-18/publi...
| orthoxerox wrote:
| No amount of videos can teach you how loud a gun really is.
| Especially when you're holding it literally next to your
| ear to aim down the sights.
| neolog wrote:
| TIL
|
| > Only those firearms subject to the National Firearms Act
| (NFA) (e.g., machineguns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns,
| silencers, destructive devices, and firearms designated as
| "any other weapons") must be registered with ATF.
|
| > Firearms registration may be required by state or local
| law. Any person considering acquiring a firearm should
| contact their State Attorney General's Office to inquire
| about the laws and possible state or local restrictions.
|
| https://www.atf.gov/questions-and-answers/qa/how-does-
| person...
| [deleted]
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Here's a weird one about the NFA and "silencers." As
| previously mentioned, it's still pretty loud when you use
| one. In the US it's very restrictive to own one ($200 tax,
| 6+ month wait, registration, etc.) but in places like the
| UK it's the opposite. You're a noise polluter without one
| and relatively very simple to get even though in UK it's
| harder to get guns.
| detaro wrote:
| That's been a topic in Germany too. They are banned, but
| some argue they really should be allowed as workers
| protection and to generally reduce noise disturbances.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| We have this in the US too, the Hearing Protection Act:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-
| bill/95
|
| But because movies anti-educate people on this subject it
| probably won't go anywhere.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Another is the "Hollywood silencer." Guns fired with a
| suppressor/silencer are still quite loud, but movies have
| people thinking you can have a shootout in a mall and no one
| will notice.
|
| Note that if you _do_ want a mostly-silent, fairly-reliably-
| lethal ranged weapon, crossbows are probably a better option.
| eplanit wrote:
| There was a similar article regarding ants a couple or more years
| ago, also featured on HN. Same author, I wonder?
| ufo wrote:
| One funny example of this is that thyroids are described as being
| butterfly shaped. Maybe endrocrinologists need to talk more with
| the entomologists. :)
| darekkay wrote:
| Related posts, where experts rate the accuracy of emojis:
|
| - Entomologist rates ant emojis:
| https://www.boredpanda.com/entomologist-rates-ant-emojis/
|
| - Which emoji scissors close:
| https://wh0.github.io/2020/01/02/scissors.html
|
| - A thread of rating every horse emoji:
| https://twitter.com/jelenawoehr/status/1191872816372600832
|
| - Ranking the "Ringed Planet" emojis:
| https://twitter.com/physicsJ/status/1232662211438370817
|
| - Reviewing Steam Loco Emojis:
| https://twitter.com/BisTheFairy/status/1192557730709622790
|
| - Talk about Telescope emojis:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/BeckePhysics/status/1233414553607...
|
| - Would you survive a skydive with an emoji parachute? (my own
| post): https://darekkay.com/blog/parachute-emoji/
| [deleted]
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