"Neeum Zawan" <fee### [at] festercom> wrote in message
news:87w### [at] festercom...
> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

> > Are you suggesting that a company supplying clean, practically limitless
> > energy to the whole world cannot afford a couple of manned moon launches
per
> > year? I did not realize the energy business was so hard to make a buck
in.
> > Maybe we should start a donation fund to help our poor oil companies...

> Who said they can't afford it?

If it's not a monetary decision, what then?

> > Even our tiny little company has a policy against key personnel
traveling
> > together. Do yo realize how much paranoid risk assessment goes in mega
> > corporations?

> Well, let's see. You start off a thread complaining about a science
> fiction movie, and then you insist on rules that follow a subset of
> today's businesses.
>
> Who's being uncreative here?

Today's business rules, human and corporate behaviour evolved for a reason.
They will surely keep evolving. However, fundamentals don't change.
Operating with utmost safety in mission critical applications is not ever
going to go out of fashion. Sci-fi is not to be a genre where anything goes,
however illogical.

> >> Why assume that it is unethical?

> > Because to assume otherwise (ie. clones engineered to die after 3 years
is
> > perfectly acceptable) goes against everything we know and believe. Plus,
to

> "We"?

Yes. I posit that 99.9% of surveyed would say that that's not ethical, and
that warrants the generalization of "we".

> > assume otherwise invalidates the point of the movie: If it's perfectly
> > acceptable to do that, the movie becomes pointless and devoid of
conflict
> > for the audience.

> So, there's little that goes on that is "unacceptable" in our world?

No. But I'm pretty certain that, say, MS does not kill off its programmers
who are past their prime productivity to avoid costs. In fact, give me one
example of a company that actually did that at any point. If it's not
something I can buy today, it's not something I can buy tomorrow, not
without an extraordinarily solid explanation and backstory, no matter how
paranoid one is of megacorps.

> > If anything, the clones would function better if "HAL"
> > stuck to the official company line. Also, it can be argued that even an

> I take it you're an expert on clones?

At least as much as the makers of that movie.

> > Asimovian robot would lie in that situation to maximize the happiness of
the
> > poor soul before his inevitable death.

> I don't recall: Did they say anywhere in the movie that it has to follow
> the three laws of robotics?

You were the one who suggested clones might function better with such caring
robots.

> >> > the new HAL's lines and voice acting was beyond forgettable. What
were
> > they
> >> > thinking? That the silly smiley faces would somehow make up for its
> > utter
> >> > lack of character?)

> >> Set up a strawman, then blow it down. Congratulations!

> > Huh?

> Your assumption that they were trying to rip off much from other
> movies.

It's an observation, and a very trivial one. I know you like being contrary,
but surely even you are not going to argue that the robot (among many other
things) is not a direct rip off from 2001? And I am sure opening the scene
with an astronaut on a threadmill was also a coincidence.... etc

> >> By watching snippets of a few weeks of his life,

> > There's no real "Moon" world to objectively analyze. Our mind model is
> > solely based on the movie we are presented with. If you start adding
extra
> > information to the movie, you are making *another* movie.

> Yes, and it takes a wise person to know when not to analyze if there
> isn't sufficient information.

It's a movie. It's self contained. And it's sufficient information. If I'm
presented with "insufficient information" in a movie, it's the director's
fault. I'm not about to pull him out of the water by assuming that the
"sufficient information" would make the movie make sense, had he bothered
show it to me.

> >> you managed to figure
> >> out the whole operation the company is running. Very perceptive.

> > I am not under obligation to *imagine* that he has additional, more
> > important jobs. If the moviemakers wanted me to believe that, they would
> > have to have *shown* me. Since they did not, it's their failing either
way,

> If the moviemakers had deemed your knowing that as relevant, yes.

Exactly. We can conclude that the director though out guy doesn't do
anything else relevant. We see him sleeping, working out (several times),
building models (several scenes), banging an alarm clock (couple of
different times)... etc. Obviously, it's not as if the director ran out of
celluloid before he could show us the really "important" jobs he does on the
base. We thus conclude that he has shown all that is relevant, and he
doesn't really do anything more demanding than carrying canisters back and
forth.

Post a reply to this message