"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

> I would say it's *entirely* unbelievable. Why on earth (or moon) would a
> company probably worth multi trillions of dollars not able to afford to keep
> a crew of more than one person on their  base? Does it make sense to any

Who said they can't afford it?

> reasonable businessman, not to mention paranoid shareholders, to trust all
> your company marbles to the sanity and physical health of a single human?

If it's been tested, yes. 

> Why go through all the trouble (ethical, legal, technical, logistic) trouble
> of using self-destructing clones, when shipping a proper and healthy crew
> every six months or so would probably be even cheaper and without all the

Why assume that it is unethical? Why assume it is cheaper? 

> risks? Plus, if you are going through all that trouble, why give your HAL
> clone an Asimovian conscience so it can screw up things royally when the

Perhaps because the clones function better with it? Plenty of other
potential reasons.

> inevitable comes? (BTW, if you are going to rip off so many pieces from
> previous movies, at least try to improve on them. Compared to the original,
> 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!

> It seems that the whole operation is automated, except for taking a full
> canister from the harvester and putting it into the launcher, which their
> engineers conveniently forgot to automate. Speaking of the launcher, it

By watching snippets of a few weeks of his life, you managed to figure
out the whole operation the company is running. Very perceptive.

> that they remembered about the lunar gravity). Instantenous earth moon
> videoconferencing (everyone and their dog knows there's a minimum of just
> over 2 sec delay) shows that they could not be bothered to look up even the

This may have been a slipup, although I have no memory of it. The only
Earth to moon conversation I recall was with the robot - and I don't
actually remember it.

Sounds like you wanted a science movie, not a science fiction movie.

And if you want a really poor movie from an SF perspective, go and watch
District 9.

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

> > I would say it's *entirely* unbelievable. Why on earth (or moon) would a
> > company probably worth multi trillions of dollars not able to afford to
keep
> > a crew of more than one person on their  base? Does it make sense to any

> Who said they can't afford it?

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...

On a practical matter, the spacious accomodations on the base that look like
it could easily house 20, with leather, upholstered furniture, real wood to
carve... etc don't quite give me the impression of a cash stapped operation.

> > reasonable businessman, not to mention paranoid shareholders, to trust
all
> > your company marbles to the sanity and physical health of a single
human?

> If it's been tested, yes.

No. It's something not even worth testing. You never ever do that, period.
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?

> > Why go through all the trouble (ethical, legal, technical, logistic)
trouble
> > of using self-destructing clones, when shipping a proper and healthy
crew
> > every six months or so would probably be even cheaper and without all
the

> 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
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.

> Why assume it is cheaper?

It's cheaper in the long run when you consider the risks. Granted, I'm not
about to perform a real cost analysis. But at a first approximation, it's
cheaper for the same reason a company hires a qualified engineer for 10
times the cost of a bum on the street. When you are talking about running a
billion dollar factory, you don't try to cut huge corners for extremely
short term gains, if any.

> > risks? Plus, if you are going through all that trouble, why give your
HAL
> > clone an Asimovian conscience so it can screw up things royally when the

> Perhaps because the clones function better with it?

You are reaching. If anything, the clones would function better if "HAL"
stuck to the official company line. Also, it can be argued that even an
Asimovian robot would lie in that situation to maximize the happiness of the
poor soul before his inevitable death.

> Plenty of other potential reasons.

Such as?

> > inevitable comes? (BTW, if you are going to rip off so many pieces from
> > previous movies, at least try to improve on them. Compared to the
original,
> > 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?

> > It seems that the whole operation is automated, except for taking a full
> > canister from the harvester and putting it into the launcher, which
their
> > engineers conveniently forgot to automate. Speaking of the launcher, it

> 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.

> 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,
that is even if they had more important jobs for him in mind, not
communicating that to the audience is failure of the movie. But the overal
simplemindedness of the script tells me they probably did not even have any
such concerns to fill the plot holes.

> > that they remembered about the lunar gravity). Instantenous earth moon
> > videoconferencing (everyone and their dog knows there's a minimum of
just
> > over 2 sec delay) shows that they could not be bothered to look up even
the

> This may have been a slipup, although I have no memory of it. The only
> Earth to moon conversation I recall was with the robot - and I don't
> actually remember it.

He calls "his" wife (and talks to the daughter). I'm surprised you did not
explain this away too by saying the parties deliberately started talking 2-3
seconds before the other party finished.

> Sounds like you wanted a science movie, not a science fiction movie.

Sci-fi doesn't mean wrong-sci and nonsensical human behaviour and motives.
With sci-fi, you *extend* the science, not disregard it (as you can with
fanatasy genre). And humans should behave in a reasonably normal way, not
like comic book supervillains who inevitably let the hero escape while
attempting to kill them with a Rube Goldberg contraption.

> And if you want a really poor movie from an SF perspective, go and watch
> District 9.

I finally agree, and I might even have said so here.

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On 2010-06-14 01:21, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> I do, however, have to agree with John that compared to sci-fi
> stories/novels, the sci-fi movie business is hopelessly behind (with
> only very few exceptions).

I can sum up the reason for this in one simple word:  budget.

Namely, the fact that it's always going to be limited, so you can't just 
portray whatever you want, whereas in a novel...it's all just words.  If 
you can find a way to describe something, even if it's "undescribable," 
you can have it exist.  You can look up some celestial mechanics 
formulas and make entirely believable situations with a single sentence 
that costs $0.00 to produce.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> your company marbles to the sanity and physical health of a single human?

It wasn't a single human, tho. Certainly physical health wasn't a problem, 
and presumedly part of the job of the computer was to replace the clones if 
there was a mental problem.

> Everything was so cardboardy.

I'll grant that. I don't know why everyone thought it was so great.

Neeum Zawan wrote:
 > This may have been a slipup, although I have no memory of it. The only
 > Earth to moon conversation I recall was with the robot - and I don't
 > actually remember it.

He called his wife and daughter when he found out he was a clone. It wasn't 
the sort of scene that would have the same kind of punch if you put a 
three-second delay into the conversation.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> writes:

> On 2010-06-14 01:21, Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> I do, however, have to agree with John that compared to sci-fi
>> stories/novels, the sci-fi movie business is hopelessly behind (with
>> only very few exceptions).
>
> I can sum up the reason for this in one simple word:  budget.
>
> Namely, the fact that it's always going to be limited, so you can't just
> portray whatever you want, whereas in a novel...it's all just words.  If
> you can find a way to describe something, even if it's "undescribable,"
> you can have it exist.  You can look up some celestial mechanics
> formulas and make entirely believable situations with a single sentence
> that costs $0.00 to produce.

I quite disagree. SF is not about fancy effects. 

Perhaps what bothers me is that SF movie *stories* (plot line, etc) are
fairly poor in comparison to written SF. It's rare that they're
creative. I'd be fine with low budget, low special effects SF movies if
they had a fairly good story.

Post a reply to this message

"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

>> > I would say it's *entirely* unbelievable. Why on earth (or moon) would a
>> > company probably worth multi trillions of dollars not able to afford to
> keep
>> > a crew of more than one person on their  base? Does it make sense to any
>
>> Who said they can't afford it?
>
> 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?

> On a practical matter, the spacious accomodations on the base that look like
> it could easily house 20, with leather, upholstered furniture, real wood to
> carve... etc don't quite give me the impression of a cash stapped operation.

Who said it was cash strapped?

>> > reasonable businessman, not to mention paranoid shareholders, to trust
> all
>> > your company marbles to the sanity and physical health of a single
> human?
>
>> If it's been tested, yes.
>
> No. It's something not even worth testing. You never ever do that, period.

An opinion is not a fact.

> 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?

>> > Why go through all the trouble (ethical, legal, technical, logistic)
> trouble
>> > of using self-destructing clones, when shipping a proper and healthy
> crew
>> > every six months or so would probably be even cheaper and without all
> the
>
>> 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"? 

You must live in a small world.

> 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?

>> Why assume it is cheaper?
>
> It's cheaper in the long run when you consider the risks. Granted, I'm not

The risks have not been established. What risks?

> about to perform a real cost analysis. But at a first approximation, it's
> cheaper for the same reason a company hires a qualified engineer for 10
> times the cost of a bum on the street. When you are talking about running a
> billion dollar factory, you don't try to cut huge corners for extremely
> short term gains, if any.

It seems you're making wild assumptions about the costs. 

>> > risks? Plus, if you are going through all that trouble, why give your
> HAL
>> > clone an Asimovian conscience so it can screw up things royally when the
>
>> Perhaps because the clones function better with it?
>
> You are reaching. 

You are assuming.

> 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?

> 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?

>> > inevitable comes? (BTW, if you are going to rip off so many pieces from
>> > previous movies, at least try to improve on them. Compared to the
> original,
>> > 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 seems that the whole operation is automated, except for taking a full
>> > canister from the harvester and putting it into the launcher, which
> their
>> > engineers conveniently forgot to automate. Speaking of the launcher, it
>
>> 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.

>> 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. 

>> > that they remembered about the lunar gravity). Instantenous earth moon
>> > videoconferencing (everyone and their dog knows there's a minimum of
> just
>> > over 2 sec delay) shows that they could not be bothered to look up even
> the
>
>> This may have been a slipup, although I have no memory of it. The only
>> Earth to moon conversation I recall was with the robot - and I don't
>> actually remember it.
>
> He calls "his" wife (and talks to the daughter). I'm surprised you did not
> explain this away too by saying the parties deliberately started talking 2-3
> seconds before the other party finished.

Frankly, don't recall whether there was a delay or not. But still,
perhaps a valid flaw. I'll take it over loud explosions in space any
day.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I prefer reserving "science fiction" for those stories that are about the
> affect of science on people rather than merely stories about people in the
> future.

This.

Post a reply to this message

4c1547ff$1@news.povray.org...
> I just like making the distinction between "science fiction" and "fantasy 
> set in the future".   Fifth Element is fantasy set in the future, not 
> science fiction.
The problem with that definition is that is probably excludes most of what 
has been produced, sold and accepted by the public under that name, from the 
pulp stuff written to titillate teenage boys (monsters! titties!) to the 
works of many famous SF writers. Bradbury was never about science, and 
neither were Dick, Farmer, Herbert, Van Vogt etc. Hard SF where science is 
the topic rather that the facilitator / pretext is really a subgenre rather 
than the norm. Likewise, movie SF is rather about eye candy and occasionally 
challenging ideas than science. "A clockwork orange" is one of the most 
powerful and influential SF movie ever, except that there's 0 science in it. 
There's not much science in 2001 either, btw.
Really, the label "science fiction" was basically a marketing trick design 
to attract readers at a time when "science" was a catch-all term (see 
"scientology" or "Christian science" for similar abuses of the word). In 
other words, the "science" in science fiction never actually meant science, 
except for a few science-minded writers.

G.

Post a reply to this message

"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

Gilles Tran wrote:
> The problem with that definition is that is probably excludes most of what 
> has been produced, sold and accepted by the public under that name, 

Sadly true.

> "A clockwork orange" is one of the most 
> powerful and influential SF movie ever, except that there's 0 science in it. 

I've never heard that called science fiction.  Is 1984 also considered to be 
science fiction?

> There's not much science in 2001 either, btw.

In the book there is, certainly. You can't tell the story of 2001 without 
aliens setting up a monolith.

> Really, the label "science fiction" was basically a marketing trick design 
> to attract readers at a time when "science" was a catch-all term (see 
> "scientology" or "Christian science" for similar abuses of the word). In 
> other words, the "science" in science fiction never actually meant science, 
> except for a few science-minded writers.

Sadly true.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message