[HN Gopher] The Plumber Problem
___________________________________________________________________
The Plumber Problem
Author : zdw
Score : 58 points
Date : 2023-08-18 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hypercritical.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (hypercritical.co)
| etchalon wrote:
| This is a much larger issue than just a media related one.
|
| There's a friend I've had for years. He's a physicist. I always
| ask him questions about physics. I've often referred to him as
| the smartest guy I know.
|
| I have another friend, also a physicist. Less accomplished, but
| just as smart. Friend 2 hates Friend 1. Calls him an idiot. I
| generally dismissed it as arrogance or jealously.
|
| Then, a few years ago, Friend 1 told me he'd been doing a lot of
| Python lately. I use Python a lot. Have for 15 years.
|
| Over a group dinner, he was explaining a problem he was facing,
| specifically he was explaining how Python handles dictionaries.
| It was ... very wrong. But he sounded like he REALLY knew what he
| was talking about.
|
| It occurred to me that maybe Friend 2 was right all along. Friend
| 1 isn't that smart. He seems smart to me because I don't know
| physics. He's good at saying things that sound right. Maybe they
| are sometimes. But maybe they aren't sometimes, and it was that
| "sometimes he's wrong" thing Friend 2 picked up on, just like I
| picked up on the Python stuff.
|
| Media, journalism, etc is likely the same way. 90% of the story
| can be right, or technically accurate, but if 1 fact is wrong,
| and you KNOW that fact, it's going to bother you. A lot, and will
| shade your opinion of everything else.
| TillE wrote:
| This is a really common trap that smart people fall into,
| thinking that just because you know everything about one field,
| your huge brain must be able to quickly understand just about
| anything.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've adroitly avoided that trap by understanding just about
| everything.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Funny, I got plumber-problem'd by this article.
|
| > _In Speed 2, a plot point involves a laden oil tanker about to
| collide explosively. My wife, native to a major oil port city,
| couldn't follow the plot because she could tell the tanker was
| empty just by looking at it, so she didn't understand why
| everyone was saying it would explode._
|
| Wait a minute. Full oil tanks don't explode, but empty oil tanks
| full of hydrocarbon vapor do.
| philsnow wrote:
| Hey! You got your Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis [0] in our Gell-Mann
| Amnesia!
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf#Career_in_f...
| ballenf wrote:
| The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because
| my expectations are basically zero.
|
| What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human
| choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to
| understand characters as they increasingly make the most
| superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot
| necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent
| movies feel like window dressing or set design.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Yes, this drives me crazy. I particularly hate the trope where
| the plot hinges on two characters having a huge
| misunderstanding that would be resolved by a 5 second
| conversation.
| clarada wrote:
| This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of
| times when I've been closely involved in an event that was
| covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were
| presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias.
|
| I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years
| and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet
| everyone still seemed happy to trust the accuracy of the other
| articles being reported.
| tobr wrote:
| This is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect mentioned in the post.
| nvader wrote:
| When people display this kind of blindness to real-world media
| the term for it is https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-
| Mann_Amnesia_Effect
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Actually, this is an even bigger one after working on
| classified intelligence projects. Being able to watch in real
| time what is actually happening in some place a news reporter
| is speculating about and get wildly wrong makes you despair to
| the point of wondering what they're ever right about. It's even
| worse to come on a place like Hacker News and see the kinds of
| wildly wrong things people believe or speculate on, which is
| doubly frustrating because you can't even legally correct it or
| even say you know they're wrong.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Just think how awful the 737MAX was reported on in the press to
| a 757 stabilizer trim design engineer (me).
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There's no money in unbiased news. If news organizations want
| subscribers they need to present a clear voice that is distinct
| from what other organizations offer, otherwise people will just
| click the first link on google or facebook and never pay.
| Unbiased can also mean undiferentiated, so NYT has leaned into
| technoskepticism, the journal into Karl Rove conservatism(and
| now just plain old republican or bust), and on and on. A news
| organization that hasn't made itself into a destination for its
| readers is forced to rely on cheap farmed out content that's
| usually either listicles or just straight ripped from a wire
| service.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| > I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in
| an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both
| times the stories were presented with major factual
| inaccuracies and with clear bias.
|
| Same. A few years ago, I worked at a large tech company that a
| certain well-known news organization likes to cover. After a
| few articles were published relating to work I was involved in,
| I found myself thinking "Nope, that's totally wrong" or
| "Technically correct but presented in a biased way". I decided
| to cancel my news subscription with them because I realized
| that they have a certain narrative they want to present to the
| public, and why should I trust any of their reporting on other
| topics if the one I was involved in firsthand was just
| completely wrong?
| ta573957294 wrote:
| In the movie 300, after Leonidas and the 300 decide to march
| North towards Thermopylae. The valley & mountains in the
| background are REALLY from Sparta, Grecet. The producers made had
| sent crews to take enough photos and videos of the valleygt to
| accurately portrait the landscape. It was eerie to watch the
| movie (I grew up in Sparta) and see the mountains all around as
| they really are. BUT (big but here) they march SOUTH while they
| should be marching NORTH.
|
| When I watched it at the cinema (in Athens) back in the day,
| apparently there was one more Spartan in the venue and we both
| stood up and shouted (using different words) something to the
| effect of: hey morons, you are going the wrong way, you should be
| marchin North!!
| dragontamer wrote:
| Honestly, my brain turned off the moment I remembered that
| Spartains were known for their heavy armor and not for dressing
| up like Chippendales dancers / male strippers.
| mosselman wrote:
| To be fair, I bet a lot of minds turned on for that.
| freetanga wrote:
| The Boys nailed that episode where the two superheroes enter an
| out of control plane and discuss how to change its trajectory mid
| air.
| iamthemonster wrote:
| I witnessed the converse of this in the recent Mario Brothers
| movie. There is a scene where steam piping is about to
| overpressure and it shows a pressure safety valve lifting. Well
| that pressure safety valve is an accurately drawn ASME I BPVC
| open-bonnet PSV with test lever.
|
| The open bonnet is to expose the spring to air so it is kept cool
| and therefore has the correct force downwards on the seat. If you
| specify a closed-bonnet PSV (like the vast majority of PSVs) for
| steam service then the whole valve body can get up to the steam
| temperature, including the spring, and it doesn't lift until a
| much higher pressure than your bench test indicates.
|
| Quite remarkable that they found someone to help them on this
| 5-second bit of animation who had experience with using steam in
| an industrial process plant or boiler, and not just a domestic
| plumber.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This seems to be the case with virtually any profession. You have
| to just learn to live with it, mostly, maybe even laugh at it. It
| was damn near a pasttime when I was still in the Army to make fun
| of how the military is portrayed in film and television. Basic as
| fuck shit like almost no one even has a haircut that meets
| regulations. It also makes you doubly appreciate when someone
| gets it right. We all loved Band of Brothers for that. At least
| the first season of Mr. Robot stands out in light of so many
| ridiculous and shitty "hacker" portrayals. Having worked on
| classified projects is even worse. After working for the NRO for
| years, scenes of people willy-nilly taking over satellites are so
| silly you just have to take it as part of the way that fictional
| universe works, clearly unlike the real universe. The Mission
| Impossible movies are still pretty entertaining in spite of it.
|
| Honestly, probably the worst thing I can recall is the first
| season of The Walking Dead when Rick hides inside of a tank
| turret. I was a tank commander back in my time. Do television
| writers really think there is that much space inside the turret?
| drewcoo wrote:
| > This seems to be the case with virtually any profession.
|
| I think that's why the author chose plumbers instead of rocket
| surgeons.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Every computer movie with a hacker ever:
|
| _hacker opens an excel spreadsheet and types in a bunch of
| gibberish_
|
| "I'm in the mainframe."
| WalterBright wrote:
| For decades, computers in movies, despite writing text to the
| screen, would make a sound like an ASR-33 electro-mechanical
| tty ka-chunking out each character.
| msla wrote:
| Oh, for the days when you could run a murderous android with a
| 6502!
|
| https://www.pagetable.com/?p=64
| dale_glass wrote:
| Hackers is surprisingly realistic, though.
|
| A lot of what they do is social engineering, a lot of stuff
| references things that were actually part of the culture, and
| if you ignore the fancy graphics a lot of what is done is quite
| plausible even if not exactly as depicted.
| dools wrote:
| My brother has this problem but for all films. He was a producer,
| so his field of expertise is film. As a result, I can enjoy a
| wide range of film and TV series that he finds unwatchable
| because "the casting is terrible" or "the lighting is all wrong".
| karmakaze wrote:
| As for the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, I remember exactly how/when
| I noticed it. In high school, there was a football game at our
| school which was technically a trade school with all the shop
| classes but also with good academics. Apparently there was this
| supposed rivalry between our school and another nearby trade
| school. The reports of the event described it like there was
| chaos and rampant vandalism and some violence. I was there the
| whole time. At most there was some left-over litter on the field
| from people having fun. That's when I learned the value of
| printed words in newspapers. I stopped reading them, except as
| entertainment or the classifieds.
|
| Software can also have mistaken identity. Something that appears
| polished, is good software because not only did they make the
| thing do its function, but they even had time to do all this
| other stuff to make it look and feel great. The other possibility
| is that they did that work first, and the core function works
| just well enough that you can't readily tell it's completely
| broken inside if you go slightly off the beaten path.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| In the Matrix humanity is enslaved to use them as an energy
| source.
|
| But the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that any energy
| harvested would be, by definition, less than the energy of the
| food required to sustain their bodies.
|
| Therefore the plot makes no sense, because they should just
| shovel the food directly into the computer and skip the humans.
| peter422 wrote:
| Modern industrial farming "wastes" tons of energy to get their
| desired outputs.
|
| It's possible that the machines were advanced at some things
| but something that human bodies produced was something they
| couldn't directly synthesize.
| SilasX wrote:
| Right but that still means they need to pick literally any
| other human output besides "energy". At the very least it
| would have to be some very specific form of energy that
| humans emit.
|
| Just like it would make no sense to explain the purpose of
| animal agriculture in human society as "extracting the
| animals' energy". Like you said, it's the different _form_ of
| energy (plus nutrients) that they can provide, not energy
| simpliciter.
| ballenf wrote:
| I always interpreted "battery" to be lazy shorthand for using
| the humans as data storage or computation. Like an external
| hard drive or compute cluster. But I knew I was amending the
| story so I could stay invested in it.
| thriftwy wrote:
| This one is super easy. We're getting this story from a band of
| lunatics. Of course their understanding of the situation is
| limited by the framework they exist in.
| wCxV8HzziQBb wrote:
| that's just because they're mining for what computers need to
| function: RLHF data.
| dmurray wrote:
| We use cows for the same purpose - we eat them instead of
| shoveling grass straight into our mouths, even though in some
| strict sense the grass contains more caloric energy.
|
| Or, we eat vegetables even though the energy in them is less
| than all the solar energy that falls on them.
|
| But of course the calories in grass and sunlight aren't
| accessible to us. It's not impossible to imagine some parallel
| situation where human biology - perhaps genetically modified -
| is useful to transform some source of energy into a more usable
| form.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The Doylist explanation is that of course the human brains are
| being used as computing substrates; the energy explanation is a
| symptom of how little the Zion people actually know about the
| world.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because
| it was considered too complicated for general audience to
| understand.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Neil Gaiman wrote a short story set in the Matrix universe
| that sticks to this premise:
| https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Specifically, IIRC, it was in test cuts of the film, and
| identified as baffling by test audiences.
|
| I don't think anything substantive in the films is
| inconsistent with it (and the behavior of the agents
| throughout the films is suggestive of it), just the in-
| character exposition.
|
| Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the
| filmmakers _incorporating_ the inability of audiences to
| grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of
| the "free" humans to do so, so that (as part of the system
| of control it is established that Zion is) instead they
| were fed the "battery" story.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Yeah it's a shame because it was such a cool Philip K
| Dick-esque kind of plot point.
|
| > Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the
| filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to
| grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of
| the "free" humans to do so, so that (as part of the
| system of control it is established that Zion is) instead
| they were fed the "battery" story.
|
| Yeah and the original was already meta being a postmodern
| critique of society so it's a "yo dawg I heard you like
| meta..."
| eternityforest wrote:
| It's kind of immediately obvious if you know tech, to the
| point where I mostly forgot this wasn't the official canon.
|
| Like, what else about a person is of any use to machines with
| that kind of power?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| An alternative explanation is that the machines aren't
| _using_ the humans for _anything_ ; they're just devoted to
| the most ethical treatment of these billions of people who
| believe themselves to be at war, and the only way to capture
| them and keep them sane is to hook them up to virtual reality
| and keep them complacent.
|
| Every human is a prisoner of war, in the finest possible
| cell.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The same thing annoyed me too but not that much--the premise is
| a bit like a macguffin where the 'why' isn't important.
|
| Pretty much anything to do with physics, especially in sci-
| fi/space stories. Now I see everything as a typical human
| emotional drama with a science/space backdrop. Actual sci-fi
| where the plot directly ties into it is rare, and good ones
| rarer. It was actually better when sci-fi was niche and what
| there was, was trying to be good.
|
| Even worse for me these days than this plumbers effect is bad
| acting. Once my mind gets into the reality of actors doing a
| job, getting this filmed, and played for me, it's hard to get
| back into the storyline even if it might be great, like trying
| to return to a dream when fully woken.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Happens for me right here on HN.
|
| Comment thread about digital audio/audio software: the comments
| are just clearly full of people who don't really know much about
| what they are writing about.
|
| Anything else: wow, HN commenters are so knowledgeable and good
| at explaining stuff!
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I've definitely stuck my foot in my mouth in the bus route
| threads.
| motohagiography wrote:
| This plumber problem is not just for movies. It's very difficult
| to go along with any narrative when its errors offend your
| competence. It's also why technically competent people tend not
| to prevail in narrative driven companies or institutions, which
| is pretty much all of them. Just watch the movie and sustain the
| dissonance.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| As a writer myself: I have actual experts review what I write.
| That's about the best you can do.
|
| I think I read that The Big Bang Theory makes sure all the
| science is accurate. I wouldn't know.
| sublinear wrote:
| It's too bad then that the rest of the show was so awful.
|
| How can writers focused on scientific accuracy create such ugly
| and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so much
| anti-intellectualism in every episode?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Totally agree.
| NeoTar wrote:
| That was my opinion as a PhD astrophysics student. I didn't
| recognise the people being presented.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _How can writers focused on scientific accuracy create such
| ugly and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so
| much anti-intellectualism in every episode?_
|
| The show isn't aimed at people they're caricaturing. And it
| was apparently tremendously successful, so whatever they're
| doing, they're doing it right.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >ugly and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so
| much anti-intellectualism
|
| Isaac Asimov saying is quoted for a reason...
|
| "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there
| always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been
| a constant thread winding its way through our political and
| cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy
| means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
| WalterBright wrote:
| Mr Spock was "on the spectrum", too, but it ways that were
| fun.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Part of the movie "American Gangster" was filmed in the
| neighborhood I lived in. When I watched it, the breaks in
| continuity versus actual physical reality were so distracting
| that I had to turn it off within the first ten minutes.
|
| I'm sure for anyone who didn't literally live on the block where
| they were filming, this is an issue they would have never ever
| ever noticed, but for me it felt very much like a plumber problem
| and was basically a showstopper in terms of my ability to enjoy
| the movie.
| [deleted]
| QuizzicalByte wrote:
| Star Trek Discovery: "the Probe used a SQL Injection attack"
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| Knowing how legacy software lives on far past its expected
| lifetime, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if SQL (and services
| though which you could pass SQL injection) are still in use 235
| years from now.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| one of the pitfalls of hobbies like historical reenactment is
| precisely this. Nobody does armour or most material goods
| correctly in visual media, and once that's a salient fact for you
| it really kind of breaks the spell.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Not to mention the actual combat. It's hard to take a
| swordfight seriously when both parties seem preoccupied with
| swinging at their opponents sword.
| ever1337 wrote:
| As a former fencer, this is what a lot of HEMA bouts look
| like to me
| greedo wrote:
| Also as a former fencer, I've realized that fencing has so
| little to do with most "blade" warfare, whether in real
| life or in the movies. Epee might be the closest to reality
| for parts of Europe with duels etc, but I think all three
| forms diverged pretty quickly since the death of an
| opponent kind of kills the sport.
| sprior wrote:
| Try watching any movie involving either space or computers...
| dmm wrote:
| At the end of the movie Gladiator(2000), Maximus has a vision of
| being reunited with his family as he walks through a field of
| wheat. However the wheat is clearly a modern dwarf variety. These
| weren't developed until the mechanization of agriculture in the
| 20th century. Ancient varieties would have been taller because
| the stalks were used as a building material.
| dvh wrote:
| Not to mention the road had 2 groves not 3.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Do horse drawn vehicles make 3 grooves (I assume that's what
| you were alluding to)? I'd expect it would just be a wide
| band of pretty bare ground with two grooves inset from the
| edges?
| deadbunny wrote:
| I would assume the 3rd groove is from the horse.
| ortusdux wrote:
| https://comicbook.com/thewalkingdead/news/the-walking-dead-s...
| dudul wrote:
| Yeah you need a better name for that, because, while the
| phenomenon is real, the name is kind of meh. Why not the
| electrician problem? Or the teacher problem? Any profession would
| work. Why plumbers? Plus, I can't really recall any movie or
| novel where expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot.
|
| Editing here because based on some replies my message wasn't
| clear: I was talking about expertise in plumbing exhibited by one
| of the protagonists, not someone watching the movie obviously.
| e28eta wrote:
| Does he? "Here's a phrase I use, and what it means" seems fine
| to me. There might be a bit of personal history why he chose a
| plumber, but I'm guessing he doesn't remember.
| andy81 wrote:
| This bit sounds plumber-y from the article.
|
| > Simon Orrell: My first exposure to "The Plumber Problem"
| was sitting in a theatre with my dad in 1973 watching
| "Emperor of the North" and my dad leans over to whisper,
| "They didn't make culvert pipe like that back in the '30s. It
| was plate, not corrugated."
| e28eta wrote:
| I think people are tooting examples to him, and that's just
| a recent example, not the source of the name.
| nomadluap wrote:
| or just, "The Expert Problem"
| blowski wrote:
| I know "the expert problem" as being unable to explain your
| area of expertise to anyone because your entire vocabulary
| and mental model of the world is so deep into that expertise.
| This is why so many of us on HN are ignored at work, for
| example - the leaders prefer simpler explanations they can
| understand, even if they're wrong.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Gell-Mann awareness?
| sublinear wrote:
| https://imdb.com/title/tt0079727/
|
| The Plumber (1979)
|
| A young couple, living in a campus apartment complex, are
| repeatedly harassed by an eccentric plumber, who subjects them
| to a series of bizarre mind games while making unnecessary
| repairs to their bathroom.
| justincredible wrote:
| [dead]
| alanbernstein wrote:
| The dull name kind of emphasizes how it applies to practically
| any field of knowledge, AND how it often has no plot
| significance. The plumbing example given was just an
| anachronism in the set design.
| lightbendover wrote:
| > Plus, I can't really recall any movie or novel where
| expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot.
|
| That's the point, expertise in an area can completely distract
| from the plot entirely. I can't even watch anything medical-
| related with my wife since she'll get annoyed about
| inaccuracies and start complaining about them. Doesn't matter
| how unrelated to the actual plot it is.
| dudul wrote:
| I wasn't clear, I was talking about expertise exhibited by
| one of the protagonists.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Also, the bike shed is the wrong color!
| bluGill wrote:
| The point is that expertise in plumbing isn't essential to the
| plot. Sometimes it might be, but sometimes it is just a
| background thing that a plumber would catch but most people
| don't. If the scene is in the basement a plumber might notice
| that the drain pipes are all flowing uphill, but the average
| person just sees a bunch of pipes that to think look like the
| pipes in any other basement.
|
| Of course in a lot of cases expertise is needed. However that
| isn't important. The important part is you have more knowledge
| about something than the average person.
| d--b wrote:
| I gave it a cold, I gave it a virus, a computer virus.
| (Independance Day, 1996)
| thriftwy wrote:
| Going along with narrative requires suspension of disbelief.
| However, when you see obvious factual errors, disbelief comes
| knocking again as you begin questioning everything.
| bluGill wrote:
| One of the reasons I like fantasy is the plot is set in a
| universe with different physics and so much of my knowledge of
| this world can be set aside. Even then though I often wonder
| how do they feed those large cities with only wilderness
| between them (most are set on navigable water, even though it
| is just luck at least the city location doesn't violate
| possibility, but the lack of explanation of how they get food)
| - underground dwarf cities are the worse about this.
| TillE wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress answers that last question with: mushrooms!
|
| I think the fantasy city problem is at its worst in 3D video
| games, where you visit some impressive capital city, massive
| walls, towers...and enough housing for about a hundred
| people.
| karmakaze wrote:
| My problem with fantasy is that the physics of the universe
| is not well presented. For the entire duration, I watch with
| the premise that anything and everything is possible until
| shown to be otherwise. It's probably different if the source
| material was read and the viewer already has that context.
| There's probably some science-fantasy that fits your
| description which I would enjoy more than the more typical
| magical/mystical sorts.
| llimllib wrote:
| My wife is a physician and it drives her crazy. It often
| manifests as a scene like: Doctor 1: This
| patient has severe hepatitis, we need to get them into surgery
| stat! Doctor 2: You mean they have an inflammation
| of their liver?
|
| Which is truly the dumbest possible way for a doctor to respond
| in the real world, though obviously can be necessary for
| exposition to the viewer.
|
| As a programmer, "Live Free or Die Hard", "Independence Day", and
| "Swordfish" are memorable examples of this sort of cinematic
| stupidity
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The youtube genre of "Expert at XYZ reacts to XYZ scenes in
| TV/Movies" is a guilty pleasure of mine. Especially the medical
| ones.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| arrgh - swordfish really got to me
| eternityforest wrote:
| Bad tech realism in scifi doesn't bother me, because a lot of
| it is showing the way tech _could_ be, with a few liberties
| taken.
|
| Generally they show extreme capabilities, similar to what
| machine learning can do now(Except it's implied that a lone
| genius coded it, rather that it being a trained model), in a
| world of highly flexible IoT type devices that can be
| repurposed to do anything via a pretty easy GUI.
|
| I take it as a challenge. Using an app I wrote should feel like
| being on SeaQuest DSV. If there's a broken connector, can I
| make a software workaround? If I'm buying a product, what's the
| state of the art for that area?
|
| Except hacking. Hacking scenes are just comedy.
| tiffanyg wrote:
| Or, she could just note the exposition as part of the fiction
| and its presentation.
|
| Years ago, I used to be critical when it came to that sort of
| thing, then I realized that I was being critical of something
| with a clear purpose that's useful. And, that this was just a
| distraction from the often much more appalling flaws in mass
| media that can actually have real-world harms. I.e., flaws that
| give people the wrong idea about how things actually work in
| ways that can negatively impact their behavior.
|
| "Independence Day" provides some exemplars of that, certainly.
| It is completely outclassed, however, by:
| https://www.salon.com/2023/02/05/the-core-science-entertainm...
|
| These days, I see something like two axes, when it comes to
| flaws in movies (/ productions of any kind). One axis relates
| to "style" / "taste". For example, some people dislike works of
| the author Charles Dickens because he tends to spend a lot of
| time describing settings, preferring the works of someone like
| Shakespeare, who's typically much more "action-oriented". The
| other axis relates to factual / logical / structural issues,
| the worst in my estimation these days being in the "factual"
| part of this sort of "dimensionally reduced" axis (i.e., you
| could of course have 3 or more independent axes for what I've
| written).
|
| I may not have much interest in something that has a style I'm
| not a fan of, but I only have a more realized reaction
| (something like negative, and I care to some degree) when the
| flaws are on that second axis.
|
| She should try it - heh, save the annoyance for something
| "truly worthy" of it. :)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Medical stuff is often worth avoiding if you have even a
| passing knowledge. I'm a radiographer, and pretty much useless
| at anything except driving a magnet, but it still bugs me.
|
| Medical shows have ventilators set up wrong, chest x-rays hung
| up backwards (L on R) and piss poor representations of CPR
| chest compressions. The main actor can often operate all sorts
| of specialist equipment, perform surgery and analyse results of
| complex tests. It's almost universal.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| And of course the classic "oh no they flatlined, use a defib
| to restart their heart " when they're not in V-fib or V-tach.
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