[HN Gopher] Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
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Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later
Author : rntn
Score : 281 points
Date : 2023-02-05 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| imperio59 wrote:
| Most works that touch upon core issues like Gattaca does tend to
| be relevant many years later.
|
| This is why we still read greek philosophers, works from the
| Renaissance, works from the time of the American Revolution (The
| Federalist Papers, for example), etc...
| blitzar wrote:
| The works that touch on these core issues are not often as well
| executed as Gattica - sometimes you wind up with Mean Girls ...
| ok that is a bad example as that is a timeless classic as well.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's the first time I've seen someone compare Mean Girls
| with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Sistine Chapel's
| ceiling, and The Federalist Papers.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Being able to bring important academic thought to the
| masses in an entertaining way is important, hard and
| potentially lucrative though, and Mean Girls delivers!
| anderber wrote:
| Gattaca was so ahead of its time, reminds me I should re-watch it
| again.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Rewatched it not long ago, was still a great watch, the pacing,
| the characters, the narration. Not as grandiose as it used to
| feel but still touching and worth every second.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Definitely on my re-watch list, together with Idiocracy.
| skybrian wrote:
| I don't really get the love for Idiocracy. You know the
| amusement ride with the really obviously bad history? The
| whole movie is basically that. They know their audience
| doesn't know much history so they need to make mistakes dumb
| enough so everyone will get it.
|
| It's a cynical movie that knows its audience isn't so smart,
| so they need to make sure the idiots watching know who the
| real idiots are. That way the audience can enjoy watching a
| lot of really dumb stuff while feeling above it instead of
| targeted.
| Sargos wrote:
| >You know the amusement ride with the really obviously bad
| history?
|
| It feels like everyone is expected to know this but what
| are you referencing?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntAR0IT5pl4
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| Mike Judge with his Idiocracy and Office Space is almost like
| someone had a crystal ball for early 21st century.
| delecti wrote:
| I've seen Office Space twice, once before and once after a
| job I got laid off from where my job description was quite
| literally to take the requirements from the clients to the
| engineers. It really hit different after that.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Office Space is a documentary.
| mynegation wrote:
| Office Space is pure genius and I was flabbergasted not to
| see it more popular. I am glad Judge got much bigger break
| with Silicon Valley.
| fumar wrote:
| Maybe I am dating myself but Office Space was always
| popular.
| ericmcer wrote:
| How did he get away with Idiocracy? I thought it was a good
| movie and somewhat prescient, but if you peel back the
| layers it is basically advocating some kind of population
| control or eugenics policy. Or it is just a comedy, but I
| hear it frequently cited as a dramatized version of a
| plausible future.
| misnome wrote:
| > it is basically advocating some kind of population
| control or eugenics policy
|
| I think this says more about the viewer than the film.
| ericmcer wrote:
| The problem it raises is: only idiots are having kids so
| in the future everyone is an idiot.
|
| The opening scene is literally a generic portrayal of
| trailer trash having 8 kids and you didn't get that
| implication at all? Wow your a real saint.
|
| What did you think the implications of the film were?
| misnome wrote:
| That is indeed the "problem" that forms the premise of
| the film. It doesn't however go on to either propose or
| advocate a solution, instead exploring one projection to
| absurdity from it's premise.
|
| If you watched it and came away with a feeling it was
| pro-eugenics, you are absolutely projecting your own
| details onto the film.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I see it more like advocating for quality public
| education, easy access to contraception, and
| accountability of the elites in guiding our civilization.
| And as an observation that we're still just monkeys with
| transistors.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah I like this. It also showed a future where
| capitalism had driven us all the way to dumbed down and
| instantly gratifying everything.
| sangnoir wrote:
| ..and if you have been away from America for a while, the
| absurdity of greeters will be apparent. Reality is not
| too far off from "Welcome to Costco, I love you"
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Didn't get away with it, company tried to bury the film.
| recuter wrote:
| It isn't advocating for anything rather it is akin to the
| band playing as the Titanic is sinking.
| snissn wrote:
| this line lives so deep in my brain:
|
| "You want to know how I did it? I never saved anything for the
| swim back"
| losvedir wrote:
| I never understood that. I don't think the movie is clear
| exactly what happens, but he... does swim back, right? Or does
| he just flounder and rely on his brother bringing him back?
| mhb wrote:
| The one I didn't really understand was "It's too late for
| that. We're closer to the other side."
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I thought it was a large lake or inlet, and it would take
| less effort to keep swimming to the land at the other side
| than it would to turn around and swim back to the start.
| mhb wrote:
| I like this explanation:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/yuekuu/comment/i
| w9z...
| mhb wrote:
| Well that would make sense. I thought it was the Atlantic
| or Pacific Ocean. Especially since Anton seems confused
| by that also. Also if they were closer to the other side
| physically, rather than metaphorically, why turn around?
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| Also, he quite likely _does_ die in space. Which figuratively
| but very directly represents not leaving anything for the
| swim back. There is room to square the main message of the
| movie about transcending limits with Gore Vidal's line
| (something like) "No one exceeds his potential... It would
| simply mean we had failed to accurately assess it in the
| first place." Maybe he makes it back, maybe he doesn't, but
| he goes, does what he sets out to do with no consideration of
| whether he will be able to return and then tries to return.
| It's exactly equivalent to people who say they would go to
| Mars even without knowing whether it is a one-way trip at the
| outset.
| goatlover wrote:
| One message of the movie could be that there is no fixed
| measure of potential. There are too many variables. One of
| them being how badly someone wants to achieve something.
| Thus it's massively unfair to measure someone's potential
| at birth.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The movie leaves it a little vague, but his brother
| disappearing would wrap up the plot nicely, as would his
| brother finally seeing the Vincent's perspective and keeping
| his mouth shut. On a broader level it's the "burn the ships"
| strategy; nothing motivates like having no alternative.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| He is willing to die to succeed. If that meant in that moment
| to outswim his brother he had to drown then he was willing to
| do it. His brother was limited by his fear of death and his
| subconscious need to still turn around and swim back. He had
| no concern so was willing to go as long as it took. It just
| so happened that he was physically fit enough to be able to
| make the return swim as his brother quit in time.
| evan_ wrote:
| He didn't limit himself planning for the future, rather he
| found that when the time came he had strength he didn't
| realize he had.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "You want to know how I did it? I never saved anything for the
| swim back"
|
| Sure, it hits deep. But even as a kid, I remember thinking
| "That's how people drown in real life".
| abledon wrote:
| And today we're getting headlines like this:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone...
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Good movie, but according to these plots, it was better to be
| handicapped in 1023 than it is 2023. Let's say genetic
| engineering assisted human evolution became a reality and
| enhanced humans pretty much dominated exciting things like space
| exploration. To be more ethical, participation could be selected
| by neutral merit tests, but in practice enhancement would still
| end up as a dominating factor. So what? I would still rather go
| on vacation to Mars on a spaceship built by enhanced folks than
| not go at all. Just like I am not realistically smart enough to
| make a new vaccine in a year, but I still enjoy not dying of the
| diseases. If genetic engineering is available to all parents and
| has no adverse side effects, why treat it differently from
| prenatal vitamins or hiring tutors in school? Some people will
| choose to go without genetic engineering, or vitamins, or
| vaccines and that's fine - they can find their own unique role in
| society and we all benefit of having a control group for our
| various experiments. Tons of valuable science only exists because
| of Amish, and the later seem to be perfectly happy to live their
| own way, and if someone are unhappy we don't stop them from
| leaving.
| andruby wrote:
| Gattaca is my favorite movie. Brotherly feud, science, genetics,
| space. I enjoy movies when there's one theme I can relate to,
| this movie has four.
|
| The style, human spirit and perseverance are a bonus. I rewatch
| it when I need to put things and life in perspective.
| klyrs wrote:
| Your keyboard is still nasty, 25 years later.
| Frummy wrote:
| No joke, this film helped me get over really bad mental stuff.
| That the human spirit can sort of compensate for pretty much
| anything is what I find beautiful. But the bad side is the
| faustian bargain, the sacrifice.
| preommr wrote:
| Same for me. I often think about this movie along with your
| point about how some people have to pay more for their dreams.
| The way that I think about things now I think reflects the
| protagonist in the movie: In many ways it doesn't matter. The
| goal and the obsession that some people have is so all-
| consumming that they'd pay any price to achieve it.
|
| There's a scene where ethan hawke's character has to go through
| a painful bone procedure to adjust his height and he comforts
| himself by thinking he's a few inches closer to the stars.
|
| Everything is just about coming one step closer to the goal
| regardless of if it can be reached or if someone else can get
| there faster.
| Frummy wrote:
| Completely true. I found myself last year waking up every day
| saying fuck it, 5 caffeine pills to read the next book and
| same thing tomorrow, suffering is relative and sort of fake,
| it's just an experience like any other. There's only one life
| so it doesn't matter how easy someone else has it, that's
| inaccessible. Anyway I was fucked up over my brain and balls
| being fucked up from birth and losing 50% of my net worth but
| now that I am like two months away from owning a house and
| have the job that I want I've forgotten what used to bother
| me it's not even on the map anymore, call it nonattachment or
| call it positive nihilism you just grow past things. Im
| healed after surgery and walk normally, I blend in so and so
| and that's good enough
| fallingknife wrote:
| I guess I never thought it was much more than a good movie. I
| mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main
| character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded
| out of the space mission he is trying to get on. As a larger
| point about a dystopian future with discrimination based on
| genetic characteristics I don't think it works either. We
| discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just that it
| comes from random chance at birth rather than human modification,
| but really what's the difference?
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just
| that it comes from random chance at birth rather than human
| modification, but really what's the difference?
|
| What are you alluding to here?
| fallingknife wrote:
| We explicitly discriminate by intelligence, which is mostly
| genetic. How is that different than Gattaca? One must assume
| that the genetically enhanced in the movie are actually
| enhanced after all.
|
| And we implicitly discriminate by height, which shows a
| strong correlation with income. That one doesn't even have
| utility like discrimination based on intelligence does.
| naasking wrote:
| > We explicitly discriminate by intelligence, which is
| mostly genetic. How is that different than Gattaca?
|
| We discriminate on intelligence _when it 's important for
| the job at hand_. The bad kind of discrimination is the
| kind that considers irrelevant factors.
|
| I agree implicit discrimination based on height and
| attractiveness exists in our culture. This movie is a
| searing criticism of exactly that kind of discrimination.
| fallingknife wrote:
| We do our college admissions by SAT score. If we did them
| by genetic test for intelligence (Gattaca style), the
| classes would be mostly the same minus some dumb rich
| kids. And since social class and income is heavily
| determined by where you go to school, it's a similar
| situation to Gattaca.
|
| In the movie, if the genetic enhancements work, then it's
| basically meritocracy, and not that different than what
| we have today. If they don't work, like you seem to imply
| in your comment, then it's arbitrary discrimination,
| which isn't a particularly interesting or unique concept
| for a movie.
| mejutoco wrote:
| In the movie class mobility is impossible. Not
| improvable, not very difficult, but predetermined at
| birth.
|
| In reality it can be impossible for some people, but
| there are many examples of people accomplishing this,
| some with lots of effort.
|
| I believe the absolute determinism of that society is
| what makes it a nightmare. Saying that it is the same as
| reality is, IMO, an exaggeration.
| naasking wrote:
| > We do our college admissions by SAT score. If we did
| them by genetic test for intelligence (Gattaca style),
| the classes would be mostly the same minus some dumb rich
| kids.
|
| You have literally no way of rigourously making that
| claim given our incomplete understanding of genetics and
| intelligence. In any case, it's immaterial to my point as
| I already acknowledged that our culture discriminates for
| irrelevant reasons, and this movie is a harsh critique of
| that practice.
|
| > In the movie, if the genetic enhancements work, then
| it's basically meritocracy
|
| No, it's the complete opposite. The people who were
| rewarded didn't actually _do anything to earn those
| rewards_ , so it's the exact opposite of a meritocracy,
| it's genetic cronyism, no different than awarding a
| promotion based on someone's skin colour.
|
| > If they don't work, like you seem to imply in your
| comment, then it's arbitrary discrimination, which isn't
| a particularly interesting or unique concept for a movie.
|
| The whole point of the movie is to elevate the notion of
| meritocracy based on _actual achievements_ , and to
| criticize discrimination and generalizations based on
| some nebulous notion of statistical "potential".
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I feel like you're actually getting to the deep,
| important questions explored in the movie, as you try to
| explain why it's just a good movie :)
|
| I think the big take-away is that it's not a foregone
| conclussion that they "always work, always better". The
| question is should we remove the possibility from those
| without perfect genetic markers because the odds say so,
| or give them a chance and evaluate in some other way? Or
| are the markers both less conclusive than believed and/or
| less causal? We could find lots of trivial markers that
| have nothing to do with meaningful outcomes; does the
| world explored in Gattaca take this to the extreme?
| naasking wrote:
| > I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the
| main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be
| weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on.
|
| Why? Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect. Space
| travel is clearly quite routine in this future, so to put it in
| today's terms, would you forbid people with heart conditions
| from driving cars or trucks?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect
|
| we don't know that because the movie stops before we can
| figure that out. I went to school with a guy who had a
| medical condition that put him at risk of passing out, albeit
| rarely. but he could legally drive. Ended up having an
| episode and veering into the oncoming traffic and his 19 year
| old girlfriend ended up dead.
|
| There's a potential less romantic ending to the movie where
| Vincent strokes out on the rocket and gets someone killed.
| The allegedly positive message of the film is that someone's
| self image is more important than even justified standards
| that exist to protect other people. Mind you in the film he
| even fakes his heart rate during a test and collapses
| afterwards, suggesting this is not some abstract form of
| discrimination.
| naasking wrote:
| > we don't know that because the movie stops before we can
| figure that out
|
| We do know they were incorrect, because he was already
| considerably older than his predicted age of death. We also
| know they were incorrect because he outperformed people who
| were his "intellectual superiors".
|
| > There's a potential less romantic ending to the movie
| where Vincent strokes out on the rocket and gets someone
| killed.
|
| And that can also happen to the genetically enhanced. The
| whole point of the movie is that statistics are not
| certainties.
|
| > The allegedly positive message of the film is that
| someone's self image is more important than even justified
| standards that exist to protect other people.
|
| No, the positive message of the film is that genetic
| statistics cannot capture the full potential of a human
| being, and that the standards that were in place were in no
| way "justified".
| purple_ferret wrote:
| That's the point of the movie. It's like the current world but
| amplified.
| mejutoco wrote:
| IMO the message is that you can change your destiny with grit
| and effort, no matter what any authority (even science) says,
| and trying that is worth it, even if you fail.
|
| I think it is a movie about life and how ruthless it is.
| hagy wrote:
| Exactly! We are all already the beneficiaries and casualties of
| the unearned rewards and punishments due to the randomized
| genetic combination we received at conception. Kathryn Paige
| Harden brilliantly explains this ethical challenge in her book,
| "The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality",
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th...
|
| > In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have
| shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in
| our health--and in ways that matter for educational and
| economic success in our current society.
|
| > In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the
| latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about
| racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what
| equality really means in a world where people are born
| different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific
| evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power
| of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we
| must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to
| create a fair society.
|
| As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated
| to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence
| that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share
| 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization
| in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate
| strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents.
| A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control
| any of us have in the genes we're bestowed at conception.
|
| Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents
| its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we
| should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract
| these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie,
| veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept
| genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we'd accept
| other injustices.
| atmosx wrote:
| >Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA
| perpetuates the myth of meritocracy [...]
|
| There's an on-going philosophical discussion about
| meritocracy. The debate on i2c[^2] is fascinating. I've read
| both books, but I was leaning towards Sandel from the get-go
| anyway.
|
| However reading about this topic on the DNA /generic side is
| equally interesting. Thanks for the link to the book :-)
|
| [^2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOpdahGGoxE
| [deleted]
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Am I the only one who just realised GATTACA is spelt using just
| the DNA bases?
| darksfall wrote:
| No, I feel this has been very recently asked in another HN
| post.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I understand this article appeared in Nature Genetics and so
| explores the genetics aspect of the movie (which is admittedly
| heavily emphasized, starting with the G-A-T-C letters highlighted
| in the title and opening credits), but I always thought it is
| about the practice of discrimination in general, regardless of
| what "quality" is chosen to put people in sets of "A" and "B".
|
| How literally should the audience take this cautionary tale?
| mynegation wrote:
| It is up to you. Like any good piece of art (literature,
| painting, sculpture, documentaries, movies, fiction etc),
| saying something specific to the audience is just the first
| order effect and sometimes not even the most important one.
| Inspiring you to get on a process of discovery, interpretation,
| asking more questions, is what any great art aspires to do.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination
| against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to
| hide his heart condition to go in an important space mission.
|
| edit: HN is rate limiting me so I can't reply, but to
| davesque's comment below:
|
| > no one wants to live in a world where their life and
| capabilities are pre-determined
|
| But we do live in that world. It was determined that I would
| never play in the NFL the day sperm met egg. (Probably earlier
| than that, actually, as I doubt there is a single genetic
| combination of my parents that makes an NFL player). On that
| same day it was determined that I would never have to study in
| school.
|
| I guess I'm just more comfortable with the fact that genetics
| plays such a decisive role in our lives than most people, and
| that's probably why I didn't see the movie as particularly
| interesting.
| acover wrote:
| Misread
| fallingknife wrote:
| Then it's not good writing, because it isn't a statistical
| probability in the movie. We actually see that he has a
| heart condition.
| [deleted]
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| There is a certain probability he will have the heart
| condition. That actually happened. There is a separate,
| dependent probability that given he has the heart
| condition he will die very young. That, at the point of
| the movie, hasn't yet come to pass. I don't see the
| problem.
| polio wrote:
| The movie is suggesting that the criteria for the mission
| and the fatalistic attitudes of society are somewhat
| incomplete by showing that Vincent's 99th percentile
| "grit" has been completely overlooked because of the
| genetic stuff which is more readily measured.
|
| Perhaps it's true that his genetic predisposition, as
| measured, is 70th percentile, but there are other
| relevant factors towards being a good astronaut that
| aren't so easily measured, to say nothing of
| environmental factors affecting cardiac health as well as
| the reliability of the gene-based measurement itself.
| naasking wrote:
| > We actually see that he has a heart condition.
|
| Actually we don't. The portions of the movie where
| Vincent struggles are because he's trying to keep up with
| the genetically enhanced.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I think this is just the plot device to explore the broader
| questions around scienetific progress, the hubris of a
| society that increases their knowledge and the general idea
| of fate. It's kind of "cool/scary" IMO that we can start with
| a pretty universally agreed-upon statement like "People going
| into space should be screened for health issues" and end up
| with the dystopian world explored in GATTACA.
| davesque wrote:
| I think you're missing part of the movie's message. And that
| was that no one wants to live in a world where their life and
| capabilities are pre-determined. The audience is supposed to
| feel that viscerally as we see Vincent's striving and
| frustration. The story is told from an individual perspective
| because we are, after all, individuals. In that sense, our
| emotional reaction to our lives matters and society should
| care about that.
|
| Put another way, there's a tail in every distribution. From
| the point of view of an individual that ends up in the tail,
| being passed over for the good things in life feels like a
| great injustice. And the fact is that we may not be aware of
| all the characteristics that could make someone successful.
| Maybe that's what makes evolution as a process so effective.
|
| In Vincent's case, he was able to beat his brother swimming
| out to sea because he was at peace with the uncertainty that
| his life had forced on him. Anton didn't have that strength
| because he'd been told his whole life that he was destined
| for success. Even though Anton should have won, it turned out
| that Vincent's attitude made him more fit to survive which
| was something that the massive statistical apparatus of his
| society couldn't have predicted.
| Filligree wrote:
| > The part that I could never get over is that the
| discrimination against the main character actually made
| sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go in an
| important space mission.
|
| That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to
| have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto
| a space mission?
|
| Yes sure, discrimination bad and all that but-- that's a
| human judgement. In actual fact, he's dramatically increasing
| the risk of failure of said mission, along with the risks to
| everyone else involved with it.
|
| My own take-away was that, grit or not, he's incredibly
| selfish.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown
| to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way
| onto a space mission?
|
| But he survived. He survived far longer than calculated.
| Isn't this direct evidence that his genetically determined
| heart condition was successfully counteracted by a non-
| genetically identified trait?
|
| And his perfection and determination when designing the
| mission plan was flawless. Presumably far more flawless
| than the "valids" he was working with, despite having an
| inferior genome, or the director would never have commented
| on it. His attitude dramatically improved the odds of
| mission success.
|
| You seem to be arguing that if a metric says "don't do it",
| that this metric should be obeyed, even in light of
| evidence that it is wrong. Had the metric about his heart
| condition been correct, he never would have made it onto
| the flight.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Those are great points. To follow the argument: is a lion
| selfish when she kills a gazelle?
|
| To me, the story is about individual struggle. Even if his
| behaviour is selfish, his life is richer than if he
| accepted the imposed limitations by others (imagine how
| boring that story would be, why is that).
|
| In a way, he is following nature's rules (survival of the
| fittest), instead of the arbitrary deterministic society
| rules he lives in.
|
| Ultimately, if we only cared about the good of the planet,
| we would probably choose to cease to exist. Up to a point,
| everyone alive is a bit selfish.
| savryn wrote:
| >nature's rules (survival of the fittest)
|
| no he isn't, he is merely exploiting the compassion of
| the society of the fittest that temporary allowed the
| less fit/ gifted /engineered to still live / work near
| them and infiltrate at the right time
|
| -- it's got a bit of that a heist/noir of criminal cat
| and mouse
|
| Vincent uses criminal connections to pull the entire
| scheme off (the german), just like a bank heist in a film
| it feels fun for reasons that don't work without a
| movie's magic 'genre' control of tone/sympathy/agency
| etc.
|
| similar to other problems we have today where
| 'compassion' politics actually harms the fittest members
| most
|
| An old homeless loony stabbing a brilliant healthy young
| person today isn't a show of the former's fitness, it's
| because (there are other incentives for the) the fittest
| of society (elites) choose to not wipe out/exile/enslave
| the unfit for various reasons (inextricable from the
| society itself--labor dynamics, crime and fear being
| useful, christian virtue, etc)
|
| Gattaca in the opening even says it's only because he was
| born in the 'early stages' of the transition
|
| Actual 'meritocracy' safety and other values require
| ruthlessness and violence, which we already have as all
| states do, just distrubuted in one configuration
| (gattaca) versus another configuration (chaotic US today,
| versus say the safety of singapore, or dictatorship of
| north korea, or some other gattaca 2.0 where the Vincents
| aren't born at all because fertility is managed)
|
| A society can distribute its coercion/violence/reward
| structure in different ways, vincent is just a defector
| in a trust game
|
| Always reminds me of that lame smug 'Feynman negging
| woman at a bar' anecdote, how is defecting on social
| norms clever? that's literally the point of
| lying/cheating/stealing/littering etc, one individual
| wins a temp game at the harm of the environment / culture
| long term. Once a few men are rude / cads, reputation of
| the place declines and fewer girls show up, or only
| certain types and not others, etc. A higher status guy
| like F can avoid/internalize the social ding of
| resentment from others who lose out of the good
| vibe/meeting someone cool while he's there, but can't
| tell him off.
|
| Managing mini social games everywhere is 'culture' and
| essentially the reason infinite invisible class norms are
| so 'stifling' and invisible at once, it excludes the
| riff-raff and keeps those included people on their toes,
| behaving in a way that makes the place/group/experience
| "rich" rather than the vincent-like 'richness' of just
| maxing his own experience at cost of group.
|
| (essentially why costume dramas are so fun to watch for
| girls (me included, I just don't lie to myself lol) as a
| guilty pleasure that doesn't feel like a guilty pleasure
| (you claim it's high status reasons -- the set design,
| jane austen, the history, so well written!!! etc) -- But
| the ideology of the genre of the movie itself does all
| the heavy lifting on cost of the 'nice things' you're not
| allowed to advocate for or admit to yourself you want as
| an elite experience missing from our lives today (the
| fantasy of *extreme social exclusion* so only the very
| pretty, very rich, and very witty girls can join the tea
| party-- as well as enjoy the courtship dance pre-filtered
| by only worthy rich/pretty/witty men :) Genre
| expectations let you relax, they 'hold the space'
| ideologically. Real life is social chaos of competing
| norms and suspicion and low trust, that's the price...
| But I digress
|
| Once they find out Vincent's fraud, next years space
| program is gonna have to be even more draconian, annoying
| rules for all coworkers because of him... Maybe all the
| fellow blue-collars will get fired too.
|
| 'we live in a society'
| mejutoco wrote:
| > he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society
| of the fittest
|
| If they are the fittest, how come he can actually do it?
| If he can "win", that is fit enough for nature, moral
| questions aside.
|
| If we had a whole system saying that people with 11 toes
| always run faster, and a person with 10 toes wins once,
| that system was based on false premises, taken as
| objective truth without proof.
|
| Now, if we have a system that claims people with 11 toes
| usually/on average run faster, why not allow the
| diversity of runners with 10 toes?
| savryn wrote:
| 'the fittest' could destroy him but choose not to --
| since fitness in a social species is, reductively, how
| groups of elites structure their power games over others.
|
| elites 'let you win' some games for all sorts of ulterior
| motives, implicit or unconscious even.
|
| Vincent barely wins for a small time, he almost collapses
| on the treadmill lmao
|
| My point is they left the exclusion / ruthlessness dial
| at level 7 when they could choose to crank it to 9
|
| Vincent takes advantage of that temporarily, next guy and
| group will be punished for it.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Gattaca trivia you may already know - the name is made out of the
| letters of the genetic code G, A, T and C
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Oh I know: I loved the movie so much (and still do) and found
| it so cool that the movie was named that way on purpose that I
| gave my daughter four given names and they start respectively
| with G, A, T and C...
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| This movie holds up. I recently rewatched and really, really
| enjoyed it. (Some spoilers embedded in the below.)
|
| One thing I love about the script is how the 4 main characters
| give us all the different angles on the genetic dystopia problem.
|
| Vincent is genetically "inferior", but psychologically
| "determined" to overcome physical limitations. He has to use his
| mind and body to overcome his genetics.
|
| Jerome is genetically "superior", but psychologically defeated
| due to his accident causing permanent physical limitations. He
| has to use his mind to compensate for his body, and he "lends"
| his genetics to Vincent, to make Vincent as capable in their
| society as he once was. Vincent helps Jerome finally achieve his
| own potential by the end, thus the final scene.
|
| Anton is genetically "superior", but mentally and physically
| weak. His willpower atrophied as he was constantly told about his
| genetic superiority. In a way, he allowed his genetics to act
| almost like an inheritance that made him soft and unambitious.
| Through the flashbacks, we get the sense that he was always a
| little cocky about his genetic superiority. He was "born into
| success". But through adult Anton, we learn that all he has done
| with his genetics is to become a conformist in this dystopian
| society. A rule enforcer of the genetic state itself, not someone
| striving for any higher purpose. When Anton loses the swim match
| to Vincent, he lets him go on with his plan (not shown in the
| script or movie), presumably because Vincent has proven that
| genetics alone do not determine ability, shattering one of his
| core beliefs.
|
| Finally, Irene. She is genetically "upper class", but not
| "superior". She illustrates the degree to which genetics had
| become a class marker, like wealth in our current society. She is
| genetically strong enough to join the space exploration program,
| but not strong enough to be an astronaut, perhaps only a
| scientist. (Her last name is Cassini.) She is just as driven by
| passion for humanity's potential as Vincent, and just as angry
| about the genetic lottery. That is why they connect as they do.
| But, in her case, she discovers -- through Vincent's display of
| willpower -- that her heart condition does not have to limit the
| life she can lead today. Irene represents society at large,
| discovering that living your life under the determinism of
| genetics (or any other limiting class & rule system) will cause
| you to live a smaller life than you otherwise could.
|
| Vincent shows us what we can aspire to despite our imperfections,
| and Irene shows us how to come to terms with living a happy life
| despite our imperfections.
|
| "Irene" has its origin in the Greek word for "peace" (coming to
| terms with life as it is). Whereas "Vincent" has its origin in
| the Latin word for "conquer" (fighting against life's limitations
| and winning).
| [deleted]
| paulwilsondev wrote:
| Looking forwards to genetic discrimination lawsuits.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Gattaca is hands down my favorite movie of all time.
|
| From a dystopian future, where a determination ("not saving
| anything for the way back") can still make a difference against
| all odds. A love story, a friendship, and finally an unexpected
| act of goodwill and an ending that is both relieving and sad.
|
| And all this on top of the great acting and cinematography!
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Jerome, Jerome, the metronome.
|
| You can play the piano by that heartbeat of his.
| parenthesis wrote:
| I thought it was super fun to see Gore Vidal acting in a movie.
|
| I haven't seen it in a long time, just looking up the cast, and
| Dean Norris plays -- you guessed it -- a cop.
| anonporridge wrote:
| The great thing about Gattaca is that the cinematography ages
| incredibly well on top of the amazing plot.
|
| A lot of great sci-fi is marred by cheap effects that look
| incredibly dated only a decade later. Gattaca chose to focus on
| the story and create a minimalist future environment that still
| looks beautiful 25 years later.
| the_af wrote:
| I totally, 100% agree. Gattaca is amazing, and my all time
| favorite Blade Runner also has outstanding practical effects
| (flawed, sure, but you stop noticing soon enough).
|
| One of my favorites that, while very cool in general, suffers
| from some dodgy effects is Aliens. In general I wouldn't change
| a bit from it, but some of the dropship scenes are terrible and
| were pretty bad even back then.
|
| Then again, be careful what you (um, I) wish for: if they were
| to touch up Aliens they wouldn't stop at the dropship and they
| would ruin it with unnecessary CGI.
| lancesells wrote:
| I noticed those dropship scenes on a rewatch a couple of
| years ago. I think when I watched it as a kid it was on a CRT
| on cable television and you couldn't see the details as much.
| Plus, I was a kid.
|
| On that note, I just rewatched the original Alien and there's
| really only one or two shots that looks kind of bad or goofy.
| Holds up so well for a film from 1979 with what would be a
| lower range budget in today's money ($44M).
| the_af wrote:
| Yes, and also: imagine _Alien_ in the hands of a director
| with access to today 's budget and CGI: it would completely
| ditch any ambience, pace and characterizations in favor of
| showing one -- nay, thousands -- of monsters and chase
| scenes.
| chaostheory wrote:
| This is exactly why I hated the last half of Will Smith's
| I Am Legend. The first half did so well at showing a post
| apocalypse, and the last half ruined everything with CGI
| video game monsters. They also butchered the main plot.
| duxup wrote:
| I was watching an Industrial Light And Magic documentary on
| Disney+ and it had Spielberg talking about the transition to
| digital, and he goes out of his way to make the point that
| effects are great but if you're not presenting it right and
| telling a story that is worthwhile the film just won't last.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Too bad he didn't follow his own advice when doing A.I.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Jurassic Park, full of dinosaurs(!) had less CGI than most
| mundane action movies of today.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Last time I watch Terminator 2, I stopped frame by frame
| during the mall shooting scene, and I realized how cheap some
| effects were, but how editing made it subtly perfect. It just
| conveys the blow to represent the T1000 liquid metal
| visually. No need to do more.
|
| I think today's era is obese.. too much power, too available
| .. no constraint.. the movie gets lost in the technology.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I believe there is one shot in the final steelworks where
| Arnie is wrestling with a guy wrapped in tinfoil. But it's
| quick, not obvious and you just accept it as part of "metal
| dude killing people". It's only in freeze frame that you go
| - oh yeah.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I know exactly which scene you're talking about and I
| haven't seen that movie in decades. I thought the point was
| to subvert audience expectations though. Cameron would have
| the first real SFX on screen be practical so that you think
| you're going to see something fairly run-of-the-mill. Then,
| the shrapnel shrinks digitally and you realize T2 is like
| nothing you've seen.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Well even the first bullet impacts were suspiciously
| strange but yeah you don't fully get slapped until the
| body regenerate.
|
| I really wonder how these people (movies, tv or music)
| felt about things and what emotions made them operate /
| edit / select shots and tricks to use.
| duxup wrote:
| In the ILM documentary, they talked about T2, and how they
| could do some amazing new effects, but they could not do a
| large volume of them due to the complexity. They were very
| careful about how they used their resources.
|
| They had a surprisingly short amount of high end effects
| time in that film...but it doesn't feel like it. Th film
| moves very fluidly and the effects blend from one to
| another without being jarring.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Particularly when the supposedly futurist technology has
| already become obsolete since (CRT screens, rudimentary 3d
| animations, lack of portable communication, absence of
| networks, etc).
|
| Also lots of sci-fi movies underestimate how much will not
| change, we live today with 200yo buildings, our cities won't
| look that different in 200 years.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Not until improved concrete replaces current reinforced
| concrete: https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-
| reinforced-conc...
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Well, I live in Copenhagen, in a brick building that is
| some 130 years old, like most of the buildings around here.
| Reinforced concrete has arrived, and most new buildings are
| built with it. I guess when the next level of super-
| concrete comes, we will start building with it, but old
| buildings will still stand for 50-100 years.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Also lots of sci-fi movies underestimate how much will not
| change
|
| My favorite detail of the Battlestar Galactica reboot was how
| normal it all felt. For the most part your only clue that
| it's The Future was that every rectangle had chopped off
| corners to become an octagon.
|
| They even found a clever plot-driven reason for why that's
| the case. Loved it.
| goatlover wrote:
| It also wasn't set on Earth. It was the future of the 12
| colonies.
| Bayart wrote:
| Your point can be extended to other sci-fi movies that rely on
| practical effects and sober aesthetics, 2001 comes to mind.
| the_af wrote:
| And Blade Runner. The original settings/artwork are miles
| ahead the 2049 sequel just for this reason.
| eternalban wrote:
| > a minimalist future environment that still looks beautiful 25
| years later.
|
| Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright a few decades ago, building
| started in 1960, so "~60 years later" /g
|
| https://franklloydwright.org/site/marin-county-civic-center/
|
| https://secretsanfrancisco.com/marin-county-civic-center-san...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_County_Civic_Center
| bin_bash wrote:
| If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend just going in
| and walking around. It's incredible.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Hey don't forget the CLA building at Cal Poly Pomona[0]!
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLA_Building
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Generally, movies that focus on set design age much better than
| movies that focus on effects. If you make a good set, it will
| look good no matter how technically advanced your setup is. It
| may look better when filmed using the latest cameras, but it
| will never look wrong when it isn't, because it is the real
| thing. Effects are not the real thing, and as technology
| improved people have gotten better at noticing and are less
| tolerant of the details that make it look fake, that's what
| makes them look dated.
| peter303 wrote:
| You mean they dont still use 1980s computer screens in 22nd
| century Star Trek?
| hgsgm wrote:
| They use 1960s plastic and foam panels with arrays of giant
| light bulbs.
| to11mtm wrote:
| For how bad much of the computer imagery has changed, the
| overall bridge sets in the TOS films look a -lot- better to
| me than all of the fancy CGI stuff.
|
| All of that said...
|
| There's a certain correctness in my head to the idea that
| in a pre-replicator future [0], it would be more smart to
| use a bunch of physical buttons and CRT type monitors.
|
| The main reason that comes to mind, is that a simple CRT is
| probably easier to fabricate on a deep space mission than a
| flat screen, if it needs replacement. Similar for all the
| buttons/lights/switches.
|
| Now, it wouldn't necessarily be -easy- for a ship in deep
| space to re-fab these components. Thus the need for 'low-
| fi' graphics, since you might be in a region where the best
| your folks can fab is NTSC-quality.
|
| [0] - While TOS had food synthesizers, that seems like a
| subset of a full replicator's functionality.
| hgsgm wrote:
| TOS had famously low budget fake "high school theater"
| quality sets. They are only tolerated because the story
| is good.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Keep in mind people originally watching TOS were likely
| doing so on black and white TVs with a 10"-13" screen ten
| feet away. The sets looked no worse than Forbidden
| Planet, a theatrical release from a decade prior.
|
| Modern high definition scans of the original film looks
| hilariously bad on modern TVs. It looked far less bad on
| TVs contemporary with the original broadcasts.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Also I was talking about TOS era _films_ which had much
| more proper sets.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's why I think the Farscape puppets were absolutely genius.
| They look so timeless compared to a lot of the heavy CGI use
| during that era of TV sci-fi.
| buildbot wrote:
| Farscape is criminally under rated/known! It's also amusing
| that SG1 ended up with two of the leads from it too for a
| bit.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Leading to the best joke in the Episode 200.
| bsder wrote:
| I like Farscape very much, but, to be fair, the really
| good episodes were few and far between. You had to slog
| through a _lot_ of sub-par episodes, and people can be
| forgiven for not really taking to it because of that.
|
| It's really a shame that Farscape didn't have stronger
| writing because the whole puppets and minimal effects
| thing works pretty well. (I can forgive Season 1 a bit as
| the actors _and the writers_ were still figuring out the
| characters. Season 2 and forward sub-par episodes were
| all on the writers.)
|
| However, as I understand it, the problem with the puppets
| is that they are _expensive_.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| No upres issues either like what happened with Babylon 5
| when they did the hd transfers for dvd.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| that's because props >> vfx
|
| props cost much more, so you have to focus on everything else,
| because you cannot rely on tons of CGI to fill the gaps
|
| jaws is still a terrifying movie about a killer fish, meg is
| already a joke.
| js2 wrote:
| Despite _Gattaca_ being one of my favorite movies for years I
| only recently learned, right here on HN, that the
| cinematographer is Slawomir Idziak, frequent collaborator of
| Krzysztof Kieslowski, which explains why _Gattaca_ looks so
| much like one of my other favorites, _The Double Life of
| Veronique_.
|
| > create a minimalist future environment that still looks
| beautiful 25 years later.
|
| See also: _Dark City_
| cstuder wrote:
| And for the love of god, watch the directors cut of `Dark
| City`, not the cinema version.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I have never watched the directors cut of any movie. This
| will be my first.
| implements wrote:
| Director's cuts and Director's (and actor's) commentaries
| are a good reason to still buy physical media.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| These are also available on the high seas as I found
| after posting this comment.
| the_af wrote:
| I watched the cinema version and found it outstanding. What
| are the changes in the director's cut?
| riffraff wrote:
| I second this, I love dark city and never knew there was
| s director's cut.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| The main reason director's cut is recommended for first-
| time viewers is theatrical version having an intro that
| reveals many elements. That said the list of all the
| differences is quite extensive:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/alternateversions/.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting. Will definitely watch the director's cut.
|
| I must say though that I don't think the opening
| monologue reveals too much. It reveals _something_ but
| the city still feels weird, you don 't truly understand
| the strangers' goals at the beginning, and there are
| still plot twists. If you don't even know about the
| strangers at the beginning, I wonder how the movie would
| play... a pity I cannot wipe my own memories and re-
| experience it ;)
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| A general rule of thumb that I've adopted is to
| intentionally skip the first 10 minutes of any movie.
|
| This happened accidentally with Memento [0], it it became
| an incredible film. Without all that setup in the first
| scene, you exist with the protagonist as he discovers his
| world.
|
| I've tried it with other films and they give away too
| much information, you the viewer are practically handed
| the whole script.
|
| Give it a shot, you might like doing it that way.
|
| [0][https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/ ]
| usrusr wrote:
| I observed a similar effect with University lectures:
| being there from the start I often lost myself in some
| embarrassing state of deep distraction, but when I missed
| the beginning I went into attentive panic to make up for
| what I missed that echoed on even after I fetched up.
| jvm___ wrote:
| So you use the Wadsworth constant on movies?
|
| "The Wadsworth Constant is the idea (and 2011 meme) that
| one can safely skip past the first 30 percent of any
| YouTube video without missing any important content."
|
| I don't quite think the UI_at_80x24 constant has the same
| ring to it.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I had no idea about the Kieslowski connection, wow. I follow
| his other great collaborator, composer Zbigniew Preisner,
| where if you take anyone involved with Kieslowski chances are
| it's going to be a good film. I have his tri coleurs and
| decalogue on dvd, and double vie on vhs in a box somewhere.
| Strange to think when these things were artifacts now that
| nothing is, and that they could even be somewhat rare. I have
| the original House of Cards series on dvd in that box, The
| Big Sleep and other classics as well.
| voytec wrote:
| > A lot of great sci-fi is marred by cheap effects that look
| incredibly dated only a decade later.
|
| I, for one, enjoy low-budget scifi very much. Crappy CGI has
| it's charm but CGI aside, I have the feeling that actors in
| lower-budget shows were more involved than those in shows
| written to be ratings winners.
|
| It's kind of like with websites created with passion and
| websites created for SEO.
| snozolli wrote:
| A lower-budget production, particularly by an independent
| studio, will also have far less interference from "producers"
| who try to justify their salary by giving notes.
|
| Gattaca is from '97, which was right in the middle of a
| golden era for movies. Independent films took off and even
| big studios were affected by the shift.
|
| With regards to GP's comment about bad effects, look at the
| cult classic Event Horizon from the same year. It still holds
| up in a lot of ways, but there's one laughably bad element:
| horrible CGI water droplet effects. It was a hot new effect
| and they shoved it into way too many shots.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| You don't know how good you have it until you see really
| bad stuff.
|
| Take the animated TV series Space Angel (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Angel ), which
| evidently used the patented-at-the-time Syncro-Vox (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchro-Vox ) to display
| moving lips on the animated characters.
|
| It makes Hanna-Barbera cartoons look like Disney-quality
| works in comparison. The lips made me cringe back when I
| was a kid watching reruns of the show.
|
| YouTube has episodes of the show.
| narrator wrote:
| We can do editing of somatic cells of adults now. Gattaca assumed
| that was all static and unchangeable.
| kanzure wrote:
| We can do _some_ editing of _some_ of the somatic cells in
| adults, and those edits have _some_ effect. Reaching all of the
| somatic cells is actually quite difficult. We have had
| significantly better results with germline genetic engineering
| in animal models.
|
| If you really need to reach all the cells, that's how you'll do
| it. For example, if your trait is developmental in nature.
|
| Try it at home: https://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/
| kanzure wrote:
| Gattaca set the field of biotech back by decades. Countless hours
| have been wasted pointing to the movie for why we should not go
| down the slippery slope of genetic choice. Cool movie though,
| that's part of the problem.
|
| "If the audience is supposed to accept that genetic determinism
| is true in Gattaca, then no amount of Vincent's hard work should
| make Vincent a hero. He's just a fraud. If the audience is not
| supposed to believe that in the world of Gattaca genetic
| determinism is true (that is, it's false), then it should be
| interpreted as a story of discrimination, and a story of the
| underdog's heroic hard work overcoming the negative effects of a
| corrupt, wrong, erroneously-discriminating society."
|
| from http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf &
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32386006
|
| Besides, Vincent could just purchase a ticket for a rocket ride
| instead....
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > Therefore the statistical estimates issued by genetic experts
| have to be true; otherwise, there is simply no story to tell.
|
| (from your first link)
|
| The movie obliquely addresses this when Vincent experiences a
| non-fatal heart attack on the treadmill. The scientific
| predictions are not infallible but some people seem to have
| forgotten that.
| [deleted]
| brmgb wrote:
| Or as I like to put it Gattaca put the spotlight on research
| which had been treading the line of ethics for a decade with a
| dangerous lack of supervision and helped convince people that
| putting the brakes on it was welcome. That's fiction playing
| its role.
| kanzure wrote:
| yeah let's hope parents don't get to choose a better life for
| their kids, watch out?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Well, the problem we deal with today is that parents--
| actually medical professionals--choose death for children
| rather than allow them to live out their lives.
|
| Zero children with Down Syndrome are born in Iceland. Why?
| Because physicians would rather end their lives as soon as
| they find out that they "suffer" from the condition. I
| placed "suffer" in quotes, because many of us are quite
| aware that people with Down Syndrome don't suffer any more
| or less than the rest of us with a medical condition, and
| many of them lead happy and productive lives for a
| relatively long time.
|
| But if the physicians, or the parents, can just head off
| that predicted suffering within a 9-month time frame,
| nobody has to suffer at all (beyond one little procedure.)
|
| Sometimes I wonder who would suffer more, a child born with
| Down, or overly-entitled parents who will always wish their
| baby wasn't so... imperfect.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't particularly agree with your comment but it does
| point out another aspect of the movie's genius: it
| presents the scenario, makes us think and suggests some
| conclusions but doesn't beat us over the head with moral
| lessons. In other words, it treats the viewer like an
| adult.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think there's some status quo bias here? Seems like if
| Down's Syndrome didn't exist, someone who invented it and
| caused children to born with it would be considered a
| monster?
| readams wrote:
| I don't think that's at all what you should get out of Gattaca
| on discrimination. Rather, even in a world where you have
| people who are statistically overwhelmingly likely to be better
| in every way, the morally right thing to do is _still_ to allow
| people the same opportunities to excel, and succeed or fail on
| their merits.
| kanzure wrote:
| Bingo. It's mostly a story about discrimination.
| Unfortunately it is mistakenly used as a cautionary tale to
| slow down or prevent progress on genetics.
| college_physics wrote:
| There is a bit of survivorship bias. Sci-fi has imagined every
| possible universe, some of the predictions feel very close to
| what is transpiring. And if we focus entirely on the _human_
| stories behind technological facades or other cultural
| variability, some people claim that all possible stories have
| been written already.
| naasking wrote:
| I doubt that very much. People can always be wilder than
| fiction. I'm not aware of any sci-fi that predated gender
| fluidity, for instance.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I'm not aware of any sci-fi that predated gender fluidity,
| for instance.
|
| Ursula Le Guin's _The Left Hand of Darkness (1964)_ had
| gender fluidity, before it was called that. It was central to
| the story.
| naasking wrote:
| Good point! Totally forgot about that one.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ (1997) and _Oceanic_ (1998) come to my
| mind. Of course not really predating, with what we now
| recognize as gender fluidity existing for thousands of years,
| but in any case early texts long before the notion rose to be
| widely known in our culture.
| Vecr wrote:
| Those are probably written too late, I'd say they would
| need to be written in 1990 or before to really count as
| predicting anything. Though actually, if they predict it
| with more accuracy and say how common it is (so it's not
| just the one weird character being weird, but also not
| being anywhere close to everyone) that might be something
| as well.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| Fair. (In _Diaspora_ many people are; in _Oceanic_, all.)
| [deleted]
| dougmwne wrote:
| As someone who saw it when it came out, no it was clear at the
| time that the movie was a classic and also something we would
| be wrestling with for a long time to come. The genetic
| temptations were clear, as was thousands of years of wealth and
| ethnic inequality. Gattaca did a great job of portraying
| something yet to come.
|
| And we are still just at the beginning of our genocratic
| journey.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Like all great SciFi, Gattaca also portrayed the culture at
| the time. And this is a culture that is still with us.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I also think there is a negativity bias in effect here. I have
| noticed that dystopian stories like Gattaca always seem more
| realistic, even when they are not.
|
| Look at 1984, it got almost all of the details wrong, and yet,
| many people say it is somehow visionary because it had a few
| things somewhat right. That's, I think, because almost all of
| it is negative, and because of that natural bias, we tend to
| think of these of more relevant.
| giberson wrote:
| I though about this movie a lot going through IVF with my wife.
| Particularly when selecting the embryo to implant. For those that
| don't know:
|
| With IVF, the doctor harvests as many eggs from the woman as
| possible. Then after taking the make sample and cleaning,
| selecting the semen with best modality , fertilize each embryo.
| Then let the embryo grow for a couple of days then freeze the
| embryo until it's ready to be implanted (likely during the
| woman's next cycle). If you choose, and generally for a fee, you
| can have each embryo tested for chromosome mutations.
|
| After the process your doctor will call you and let you know how
| many eggs were harvested and how many were fertilized. They can
| then give you a report card for the embryos that represent
| likelihood of live birth, chromosome evaluation, male/female etc.
|
| You then make a selection of which embryo (s) to insert.
|
| Obviously, given the expense of IVF it's hard to imagine a
| scenario of not telling the doctor to pick the highest rated
| (male or female) embryo just for best chance of success.
|
| Felt very reminiscent of gattaca. And that was just selecting the
| best that we produced. I can easily see myself saying yes to "The
| best embryo you have had a chromosome defect that will likely
| result in condition X, but we can fix the defect with a small
| gene modification, and give the child the best chance for a
| healthy life, should we modify the embryo?"
|
| And then the slippery slope, "we can also improve the odds of
| higher intellect, being taller , thinner, etc".
| abledon wrote:
| who are the biggest IVF players in the space right now?
| KMag wrote:
| Did you find a very skewed sex ratio in your embryos?
|
| My dad has a sister, but has only two sons. My brother has 3
| sons and one daughter, all natural pregnancies. My wife and I
| have 1 son via IVF, and the other 4 embryos we had checked for
| chromosomal abnormalities happened to all be male.
|
| I am aware that some IVF processes can inadvertently introduce
| a sex bias by exacerbating the tiny speed advantage the lighter
| Y chromosome gives sperm.
|
| I'm curious (and will never know) how much of the skewed sex
| ratio of my embryos is due to randomness, how much is due to
| IVF processes, and how much might be due to some familial
| abnormality.
| mhb wrote:
| Discussion about the Gattaca draft script:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34134565
| senthilnayagam wrote:
| at current levels space travels is risky, high cost and prestige.
| except for couple of private space tourists in last couple of
| years, everyone else was chosen by governments, predominantly
| fighter pilots.
|
| billionaires will be going to space more often than commoners in
| this and possibly next decade.
|
| I liked Gattaca but believe more in The Expanse kind of future
| colonisation of solar system.
| Vecr wrote:
| One thing I don't understand about the movie, even after reading
| the screenplay etc. is why does Vincent claim the doctors knew
| the exact time of his death just seconds after he was born? They
| clearly don't and can't, given the entire rest of the movie. Are
| the doctors just reading out the exact middle of the probability
| distribution (or the time with the absolute highest probability),
| to way more precision than actually makes sense? On another note,
| I'm not sure the probability curve would actually only have one
| peak in Vincent's case, one peak from his heart condition and
| another from old age would make sense. The doctors/his parents
| should have explained the nature of the probability distribution
| in much more detail.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I always took it as implied that, although the 99% chance was
| their real knowledge of the distribution, this was a story
| _about_ the one guy that ended up flying to space.
| Filligree wrote:
| He does not actually fly to space in-movie, and from what I
| recall, it seems entirely plausible that he'll have a heart
| attack and die during the first flight. With all the
| implications that has for the rest of the team.
| coryrc wrote:
| After surviving jogging on the treadmill? I don't think
| space launch is /that/ stressful.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The movie features the moment of ignition, as a counter-
| point to Jerome incinerating himself, so we see Vincent is
| going into space, I guess it's conceivable that for some
| reason his heart fails shortly after the movie ends but you
| could say that about any movie. Maybe right after he
| leaves, Truman drops dead of a heart attack in The Truman
| Show?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "They clearly don't and can't, given the entire rest of the
| movie."
|
| Even today some doctors dumb-down and overvalued their own
| opinion. I assume someone who thinks they're basically playing
| god would think similarly.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| That part of the movie actually makes perfect sense to me.
|
| In the real world, the vast majority of people are quick to
| misinterpret scientific findings to reinforce their own biases.
| Gattaca is the story of a world where the "Others" in that
| society are those who are not genetically engineered to
| culturally acceptable standards.
|
| IMHO it is a very human and believable part of the story that
| most of society will simply choose to go along with being
| bigoted against the out group, and not spend the extra time and
| effort to figure out if their biases are actually correct. In
| the story, Anton tells Vincent his parents died assuming that
| he had died young, because the doctors told them he would.
| Vecr wrote:
| I suspect this is probably correct, thank you.
| goatlover wrote:
| Also because how would they know a medical treatment wouldn't
| become available to allow Vincent the likelihood of a longer
| life? Maybe society has stopped advancing because of their
| deterministic outlook?
| naasking wrote:
| > Are the doctors just reading out the exact middle of the
| probability distribution
|
| The movie was very explicit about reading out high
| probabilities for Vincent's problems. So they're not
| certainties, but they are treated as such by the wider society
| which is why he narrated it as if it was a certainty.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| the doctors were also salesmen. There is a scene where they are
| pitching the various options and pushing for the more
| expensive. I would assume that a majority of what they say is
| just dishonest attempts to make the parents feel bad about not
| optimizing their child. They are presenting the worst case
| scenario as fact.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Isn't that the entire point of the movie? They /don't/ actually
| know even though they think they do, the entire society is
| built on hubris.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Good thing we would never fall for such an obvious thing.
| maxerickson wrote:
| You can read it as a criticism of the society that he was born
| into.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> The doctors/his parents should have explained the nature of
| the probability distribution in much more detail.
|
| It may be a movie based in science and still relevant, but it
| is still first and primarily a movie for entertainment. Add in
| the fact that "doctors knew the exact time of his death just
| seconds after he was born" can be interpreted as how long his
| body will last, not predicting the future, and I'm not sure
| your request for explaining the math behind this statement
| would contribute much to the movie.
| Vecr wrote:
| >> an be interpreted as how long his body will last
|
| How would you know that either, even with perfect
| interpretation of a full DNA sequence and NMRI scans? Let's
| say to simplify you knew the exact total number of heartbeats
| his heart could handle before instantly conking out
| (obviously not a real thing). There would still be a
| probability distribution, and possibly not a simple one at
| that, based on how much physical activity he does, when and
| how often he gets sick from viral infections, etc. Really
| anything that impacts his heart rate at the time.
| lapama wrote:
| Interestingly enough, the article ends up in what I understand is
| a circular loop: a concern about the best in society. I'd prefer
| a concern about the average neighbour and person, instead.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Gattaca is one of my favorite movies, mainly because of how
| believable the concept is. Lets say tomorrow they create a
| commercially available means of ensuring a child is physically
| and intellectually superior. Once people start availing
| themselves of this service anyone with the means almost has to do
| it as well simply as a kindness to their unborn child to ensure
| they don't end up as a subspecies to the new genetic ubermensch.
| Society would quickly split into a genetic upper and lower class
| exactly as displayed in the movie. It would be very hard to
| consciously condemn your child to the lower class for the
| entirety of their life if you had the means to do otherwise.
|
| I'm not advocating for this, just describing what I see as the
| most likely scenario.
| goatlover wrote:
| Problem is genetics is messy as the article states, and we have
| a long way to go to unentangle the role the environment plays,
| plus there are always unpredictable environmental factors.
| There's also the possibility of negative side effects to
| certain genetic advantages. You might predispose your child to
| being a genius and mentally ill.
|
| I don't think the movie's caste system is realistic, because
| the role of genes isn't that deterministic. There would be too
| many exceptions like Ethan Hawke and Jude Law's characters.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| >I don't think the movie's caste system is realistic, because
| the role of genes isn't that deterministic.
|
| When your entire society is structured around covertly
| filtering out people with the wrong genes, you end up with a
| self-fulfilling prophecy. Natural-born people can't succeed
| because they've been predicted they won't succeed, and
| engineered people succeed because they've been predicted they
| will succeed. I'm not even saying this happens because
| someone wants it to happen like this to maintain the status
| quo. It can happen because your peers push you in a direction
| that aligns with society.
|
| Also, if you think about it, the movie never directly states
| that engineered people are actually "better". Sure, they're
| on average taller, with perfect eyesight, and with the lowest
| chance of developing certain conditions, but they're not
| necessarily smarter or stronger; they're just as smart or as
| strong as they could have been given their parents. The space
| program was filled with "the best", but we don't actually
| know if it would have operated worse with a mixer personnel,
| that's just what the administration believed.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| While I don't disagree with you based on today's genetic
| mastery I think things could look very different in 25 years.
|
| Also all of human history is essentially different castes
| deciding they are better and society adapting to it.
| lenocinor wrote:
| I'm glad many of you enjoyed the movie. I watched it for the
| first time last month and did not enjoy it personally. I think
| the thing that kept making me not believe the narrative was the
| assumption that you could somehow control how your DNA was left
| behind. Your body leaves behind hair and skin cells and eyelashes
| and whatever constantly. No amount of scrubbing like he does in
| the movie will help that. Also the idea that we would have really
| advanced genetics but not better genetic detection and tracking
| technology was not believable for me either.
|
| It's a shame because I think the core idea of the movie was
| interesting. I just wish the implementation was more believable
| for me.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Sci-fi has always accidentally reflected the limited
| imagination of the era it was written in. My favorite example
| is Isaac Asimov's _I, Robot_ , written before digital displays
| were a thing. In the story technology has advanced so far that
| humans have landed on Mercury for mining, but they have to
| track their lost robots by _manually drawing a pencil graph_ of
| their radar pings.
| abtinf wrote:
| Death by thesaurus: switching "relevant" to "pertinent" is
| incoherent in this context. If you are going to use a cliche or
| idiom, then _use it without modification_.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Not everyone has idioms memorized by word. Some of us have them
| memorized by gist, and our misunderstanding of words can cause
| us to get it gist wrong.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the
| best life for their children, that's pretty much their top
| priority. We don't like to frame it that way but we are already
| there with pre-natal tests. Even the selection of mating partner
| is a form of eugenics. College graduates only marrying college
| graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to
| have an effect.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| thrown_43 wrote:
| Eugenics is a comforting story the middle classes tell
| themselves feel better about being ruled by liars and
| swindlers. If you want the best life for your children teach
| them to be selectively sociopathic without a shred of decency.
| One day they can be the next Obama or Trump. Or Gates. Or Musk.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Three of the four people(I think Obama wanst) are white sons
| of millioneirs, I don't think smart is the important part of
| the equation.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| One of the major problems with eugenics highlighted in Gattaca
| is that it was used to artificially pre-select who was allowed
| to compete and who wasn't.
|
| > "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics."
|
| Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two
| partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the
| absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between
| partners - there's no guarantee the aspects two people find
| attractive in each other are genetically heritable.
|
| > "College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat
| that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect."
|
| Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes
| an instruction from the outside on what mating partners
| _should_ consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this
| instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even
| mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these
| variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits.
|
| http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=3...
|
| "Eugenicists realized that assortative mating did not always
| produce the best offspring, so sought ways to popularize what
| they considered to be good marriages. Francis Galton urged the
| brightest and the healthiest individuals to marry each other.
| He found an ideal situation in German university _professors_
| <emphasis mine> (then all male) who tended to marry the
| daughters of professors or their female _graduate students_
| <emphasis mine>. This positive expression of eugenics
| encouraged the selection of good mates through popular health
| books and Fitter Families Contests held at state fairs. The
| training of field workers at the Eugenics Record Office
| included exercises to help them analyze mate preferences and
| make better eugenic choices."
| lmm wrote:
| > there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive
| in each other are genetically heritable.
|
| Evolution naturally tends in that direction.
|
| > Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It
| takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners
| should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this
| instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even
| mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on
| these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits.
|
| Up to a point. There's still a pretty strong correlation
| between what different people find attractive, and there are
| certainly things that almost everyone agrees are
| unattractive.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Evolution naturally tends in that direction.
|
| A lot of what people find attractive about each other are
| personalities (and only some traits are heritable, not
| entire types), and artifacts of how people were raised or
| adapted to how they were raised.
|
| > Up to a point. There's still a pretty strong correlation
| between what different people find attractive, and there
| are certainly things that almost everyone agrees are
| unattractive.
|
| Of course, though moreso the latter. Eugenics, as a term,
| to have meaning, is an extreme of breeding behavior. It
| isn't just regular assortative mating among local
| populations.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I keep thinking about eugenics, how can we have eugenics
| without resorting to genocide or ending up with a dystopia,
| like in Gattaca? Should we even strive to get eugenics, why
| bother? Where does diversity become detrimental to success for
| an individual? The clone of a perfect individual will always
| perform better than the peers, except when we need adaptation
| and flexibility. Will we get to a society where just some
| parents agree to alter the genes of their offspring like in
| Gattaca, for some very niche job opportunities? What happens
| when it goes wrong, can the child sue the parent?
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am not sure why you would associate eugenics with genocide.
| As the article mentions, today you can promote or suppress a
| gene by simply patching the genome.
|
| And frankly I am not sure which is more dystopian: a future
| where none of the kids are born with genetic diseases,
| predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or ugly, vs the
| present where a kid has to live with those things he can do
| nothing about.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > a future where none of the kids are born with genetic
| diseases, predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or
| ugly
|
| But we're all defective today, one way or another. It's
| incredibly rare for someone to be "perfect" genetically
| speaking, and a lot of those people will have a bad
| upbringing or something else to hold them back. It's true
| that being beautiful and above average smart will get you
| through life so much easier though.
|
| Anyway, have you seem Gattaca? It shows how this can become
| dystopian very quickly.
|
| Also, if we weed out "bad genes", we might get a surprise
| down the line, where those gene were actually essential for
| out survival as a species, and we might be wiped out by a
| pandemic or something similar.
|
| Yeah, I dunno, eugenics is hard, ethically speaking. Yes, I
| would have liked to be beautiful...who wouldn't ?
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > It's incredibly rare for someone to be "perfect"
| genetically speaking
|
| its actually impossible because the only objective
| measure of gene quality is the performance of the
| organism and the performance of the organism depends on
| the environment.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I have seen Gattaca (a while ago). But if anything it
| illustrates the point of view of the guy who has to live
| with a flawed genome (though in the movie a minor
| imperfection). Isn't it the point of view of the kid who
| has to live with his below average genome today?
| hgsgm wrote:
| And then the guy who had an accident gets his life ruined
| because only the dominant subjective "perfection" is
| tolerated.
| [deleted]
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It wasn't an accident. Thus the marketing line for
| Gattaca: "There is no gene for the human spirit.".
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I am not sure why you would associate eugenics with
| genocide."
|
| Historically eugenics has included some mistreatment of
| those with undesired traits, upto and including genocide.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Historically chemistry has been used to produce Zyklon B.
| Doesn't mean chemistry is bad.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But it does show that it can br used in a bad way or or a
| bad cause. Someone asked why genocide was mentioned.
| History supports caution on that front, just as it does
| for chemistry.
| ben_w wrote:
| Chemistry gets like a trillion plus points for the
| benefits it's bright and a few hundred million minus
| pounds for the harm it's caused. And indeed, for some
| people the term "chemical" is automatically something bad
| (they don't appreciate it if you point out water is a
| chemical, and not only because there's an implied
| "artificial" in its usage).
|
| Eugenics... well, we can see the theoretical benefits of
| things like ending sickle cell anaemia outside malarial
| regions, but we're starting from _really huge_ negative
| points because it turned out that racist people found it
| to be a really convenient justification for genocide, and
| sadly genocides get attempted so often[0] that it 's
| probably not going to be possible to dissociate the two.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Isn't Gattaca already here? Another commenter mentioned 0 down
| syndrome children born in Iceland. Aren't we already doing embryo
| selection as prospective parents in "1st world" countries?
| jart wrote:
| Iceland just has a high abortion rate. Selectively terminating
| births isn't quite the same thing as the genetic engineering
| and embryo manipulation that was going on in the Gattaca movie.
| There's even a quote from the movie that specifically addresses
| this, where that guy says, "you could conceive a million times
| naturally and never get such a result."
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I don't mean Gattaca's full tech involving choosing traits
| for a child are here, but that the age of embryo and trait
| selection is here. Aren't some parents doing embryo selection
| filtering out undesirable traits?
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Yes. In India and China, selecting embryos based on sex
| (preferring males) has supposedly led to a lower number of
| baby girls.
|
| see https://www.newscientist.com/article/2199874-sex-
| selective-a...
|
| But South Korea has been able to reverse the trend, from
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38362474
|
| ====
|
| In an effort to reduce the incidence of selective
| abortions, South Korea enacted a law in 1988 making it
| illegal for a doctor to reveal the gender of a foetus to
| expectant parents.
|
| At the same time women were also becoming more educated,
| with many more starting to join the workforce, challenging
| the convention that it was the job of a man to provide for
| his family.
|
| It worked, but it was not for one reason alone. Rather, a
| combination of these factors led to the eventual gender
| rebalancing.
|
| South Korea was acknowledged as the "first Asian country to
| reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth", in a
| report by the World Bank.
|
| ====
| apples_oranges wrote:
| I believe advances in AI will make the core plot idea of the film
| obsolete. It is a good movie, but even the most genetically
| perfect human will probably not have a fraction of the
| intelligence of AI. He will be, relatively speaking, a mere dummy
| like the rest of us. Thus the future as shown in this film will
| not happen.
|
| However, good sci-fi is actually always about the present. And
| the movie has a lot of interesting things to say about the human
| condition in the late 1990s and now.
| jart wrote:
| The elite in Gattaca weren't genetically perfect (i.e. the
| upper echelon of a race born by natural chance), they were
| genetically engineered. There's a big difference here. Humans
| are biological computers. There's no reason we can't be made
| like computers too, with features added that give us the same
| advantages as silicon machines. In fact it's more likely that
| silicon machines will become more like us, due to the density,
| three-dimensionality, power efficiency, and antifragility of
| our wetware, which is the product of eight billion years of
| natural selection rather than a century of industrialization.
| So I think Gattaca is entirely plausible, although it wouldn't
| surprise me if the oppression ends up happening in the
| _complete opposite_ direction, where the genetically engineered
| superior creatures aren 't granted human status and instead
| used as a slave caste by the faith births who wield their
| unfairly inherited wealth and power.
| mb7733 wrote:
| From what I remember the film didn't focus on intelligence. The
| main character suffers from genetic disorders that affect his
| health and lifespan, plus discrimination based on his 'invalid'
| status. All of that is still very relevant regardless of any
| progress with AGI.
| whatshisface wrote:
| IQ was mentioned a couple times in the film, and the main
| character was shown studying very hard to keep up with his
| job. The fact that it wasn't the sole focus of the selection
| program was a consequence of the whole society wanting to do
| it. It wasn't a bunch of super-nerds doing something weird,
| the idea was that _every_ part of our society 's conception
| of achievement and "human quality" had been folded in to the
| nightmare, which made it inescapable.
| mb7733 wrote:
| Fair enough, but health and fitness are not just for sport
| and culture. It's practical; you don't want your astronauts
| to have medical emergencies in space. Similarly, if you put
| resources into training them you'd rather they didn't die
| at 30 due to poor genetics.
|
| If any new tech threatens to render the premise obsolete,
| it's robotics. Not sending humans to space in the first
| place avoids the issue of selecting astronauts at all.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, you have to be open to a little symbolism in films.
| "Astronaut" is a universally recognized symbol of someone
| who is fit and highly educated, and who had passed a lot
| of tests to gain access to an esteemed position.
| mb7733 wrote:
| Totally agree, the actual theme of the film is pretty
| timeless. I was just entertaining the "obsolescence"
| debate
| purple_ferret wrote:
| The wealthiest classes in the world will select their kids to
| be genetically superior to others in many ways.
|
| A 'natural' human will be so inferior to these people that they
| can only exist in subclass
|
| That is the message of the movie.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I am not so sure of that future. I do believe that AI will have
| incredible capabilities. I also think the human race would
| destroy the planet trying to maintain control. We will do
| everything possible to make AI a slave to our wills, up to and
| including genetically engineering ourselves to brain-computer
| interface with and dominate AIs if that's what it takes.
|
| I understand the established narrative is that AI will zoom
| past us and subjugate us before we even realize it. I saw we
| would never go down without a fight and our survival and
| domination instinct is more powerful than any machine.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > perfect human will probably not have a fraction of the
| intelligence of AI.
|
| Yes.. but he will still be operational even when the
| electricity is interrupted, which will make him look light
| years ahead of the AI. The "AI" will always have this problem.
| Until it gets a body and an internal power source it won't
| match our capabilities, and even then, most likely.. it will
| start to share some of our vulnerabilities and common ends.
|
| As if AI would somehow be unconstrained from the limits of
| physical engineering.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| An AGI will very quickly understand how to create a body and
| self-sustaining solar or nuclear energy source for itself,
| far more independent than our needs of water, food, oxygen,
| and warmth.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Throw away comment but to anybody that likes this movie and it's
| ideas, I highly recommend the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown.
| It's the concepts of this film allowed to run their course for a
| few hundred years.
| seized wrote:
| With Crispr and related technologies it seems even more pertinent
| today than 25 years ago.
| beebmam wrote:
| I found it really hard to relate to any of the characters in the
| film, to the point where they were barely recognizable as humans.
|
| Does it make sense, in a world like the one in Gattaca, for a
| person that is part of a discriminated class, to go into space,
| instead of trying to change the society around him to be less
| discriminatory?
|
| It seemed to me like the whole effort was a self-motivated,
| flaccid revenge fantasy that wouldn't make any material
| difference to the others suffering from discrimination on earth.
| All of that effort, for what?
|
| Anyway, I didn't hate the film, I just found it bizarre, alien-
| like.
| refuse wrote:
| > Does it make sense, in a world like the one in Gattaca, for a
| person that is part of a discriminated class, to go into space,
| instead of trying to change the society around him to be less
| discriminatory?
|
| Most people in discriminated classes in the real world don't go
| out trying to change society.
| beebmam wrote:
| > Most people in discriminated classes in the real world
| don't go out trying to change society.
|
| What is your evidence for this claim? I'm not as certain as
| you that a majority of people in discriminated classes don't
| try to change their society for the better. Maybe it depends
| on exactly what you mean by "change society", but at least
| for me, I see even small discussions like the one we're
| having here as potentially changing society.
|
| By the way, I'm curious, and please correct me if I'm wrong
| (as I'm not trying to misrepresent your beliefs): Are you
| making a normative claim here too, like "Discriminated
| classes shouldn't try to change their societies"?
| sangnoir wrote:
| ...and the few that attempt to change society almost always
| fail, or don't live to see the change they fight for in their
| lifetime.
| bequanna wrote:
| > Does it make sense, in a world like the one in Gattaca, for a
| person that is part of a discriminated class, to go into space,
| instead of trying to change the society around him to be less
| discriminatory?
|
| I think this is a little naive.
|
| Why should every member of an underclass have to fight the good
| fight vs improve their own personal position? IMO, the latter
| is much more likely.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| And when the news gets out a underclass achieved something
| great it may change things.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| definitely - look at sports, academics, etc. Once something
| "impossible" gets completed, it gets repeated more
| frequently and widely than you'd expect.
| sangnoir wrote:
| History is filled with counterexamples. Discriminated
| people who do great things are discounted as once-offs,
| ceremonially inducted into the in-group or ignored
| entirely.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > Does it make sense, in a world like the one in Gattaca, for a
| person that is part of a discriminated class, to go into space,
| instead of trying to change the society around him to be less
| discriminatory?
|
| Yes, it absolutely makes sense for one lone individual to
| pursue self-actualization against the odds rather than embark
| on a crusade to remake the world around him against even
| greater odds.
| naasking wrote:
| Moreover, systemic change results from lots of stories like
| this piling up, proving that the underlying narrative driving
| the discrimination was always false.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| if you are broadly discriminated against I think it makes
| perfect sense that you focus on one, important thing and try to
| overcome that. Otherwise you'll just continually be beat down
| and get nowhere. I think the film does a good job showing this
| realistic path.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Why can't things be self-motivated? Not every story has to be
| about changing society...
| beebmam wrote:
| Of course, and that's totally fine! I'm glad the film was
| made, and like I said, I didn't hate the film.
|
| I was just commenting on my own perspective on the film: that
| it was unrelatable for me.
| pfortuny wrote:
| One is not obliged to do the best thing possible, or even to
| choose the "better" thing, as long as one does good.
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| In my imagined ending he _does_ die in space, but after
| accomplishing something great and as a result the obstacles he
| overcame to get there become known and contribute to the very
| slow process of realigning society.
| curiousgal wrote:
| lol how exactly do you expect him to change things if he
| stayed? Once he's back he'll be able to actually make a
| difference with the status/resources he got by leaving.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It tells you something about HN that there are like ten
| replies arguing that he should have the right to be selfish,
| and only one that recognizes that he was doing exactly what
| people from minorities did in the past to overturn the belief
| that they couldn't do anything.
| allenu wrote:
| I mean, it's fair to be selfish and to recognize that
| people are allowed to be selfish. It's a big expectation
| that discriminated peoples should devote their life to
| changing the system that was unfair to them. We're all
| human and still want to achieve personal goals in our
| lifetime, many of which don't necessarily have to do with
| social justice.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I think the reason is because I am an actual mintority who
| is doing the same thing. It's exactly why I relate to the
| movie despite being a woman.
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| I'm glad you relate to it because it is amazing but if
| there is one criticism I could level, it is that the only
| female character seems like she is ~drugged~ for most of
| the movie. Uma Thurman is a good actress so I have to
| assume it was the direction/script.
|
| Edit. Sorry, I was getting hyperbolic. There just isn't
| much development of her character so it is hard to see
| what the relationship between her and Ethan Hawke's
| character is even based on.
| whatshisface wrote:
| She was written that way to show what effects their
| cultural expectations would have on somebody's emotional
| expressiveness.
| [deleted]
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It's not just her who acts that way. It's every valid
| portrayed in the movie.
|
| > "it is hard to see what the relationship between her
| and Ethan Hawke's character is even based on."
|
| As implied in the movie he sees in her a person who,
| despite being a valid, is limited by the fact that she
| has a disability. The same kind of disability he has.
| Only she buys in to it and allows cultural expectations
| to limit her. He wants to "fix her". To show her that she
| may not be so limited if she has the fortitude to push
| past her limitation.
|
| Also they probably find each other physically attractive
| too.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| This is my favorite movie but I always wondered if Vincent ends
| up dying in space.
| bni wrote:
| I always interpreted it this way: He is going to space wearing
| a business suite, so space flight is quite routine and safe in
| the Gattaca universe.
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