I’m also triggered by the phrase “scientifically accurate.”
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m also triggered by the phrase “scientifically accurate.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I’m still annoyed from reading the book when it came out.
Magical energy-proof, space-faring, laser microbes…
xenon super-material…
a colonial microbe mineral mech…
And they never made the “Hail Mary, full of Grace” joke that the whole story seemed to be a set up for…
The reviews I’ve read have all been positive. Major hit, blockbuster and like that.
“The reviews I’ve read have all been positive. Major hit, blockbuster and like that.”
Um, PZ wrote a review, and it was not positive.
Therefore, you did not read his review. Two posts ago.
(want me to find some negative reviews for ya, stuffin?)
PZ
Do you think you would have enjoyed the movie if it had NOT been promoted as “scientifically accurate”?
Just another time-displaced, 1960s pulp magazine sf?
stuffin–
(a) Most reviews are now farmed by studios to maximise the early scores on RT, which the clickbait-hungry media then reports on uncritically, creating a vortex of puffed-up reviews.
(b) Part of the studio marketing exercise for certain types of science fiction movie is to pump its “realistic science”, even in movies that have woefully bad science, e.g. Interstellar, and Andy Weir’s previous adaptation The Martian.
Wildly OT, but PZ’s topical post is two weeks old so no one will read this if I post it where it belongs, but I still wanted to commiserate with him and needed to vent anyway. :)
.
I bought a new iMac last January (’25) because my ’09 iMac would no longer allow me to upgrade or install any newer version of any OS or browser due to SAFE issues with the hard drive I guess? I’ve been limping along since then, too terrified of finding out what will no longer work on the new machine, etc.
.
I finally unboxed the thing last night, because my bank made some changes to their website and no longer let me access any part of it and I needed to pay bills. It took me 3 hours with breaks for weeping just to get to the Welcome screen. And that was with skipping over the Migration Manager. All I wanted was to access the bank (I’ll sweat the rest of it out later when I can cope).
.
It took over an hour just to get it out of the box (and later another half hour working out how to put the box back together again to get it out of my way). I wonder how many millions of dollars were spent designing that fucking box and all its internal spacers, engineering the machinery to cut, print, and assemble the box and putting the computer and its accessories into the box and into the outer shipping box. Money I wish they had instead spent on a simple booklet manualette to get me started. Instead I found a little 3-page paper foldup with all the legal disclaimers and a url where I could go to get help (if I didn’t still have this computer hooked up, how was I supposed to go to their help site when I don’t have a cell phone?).
.
Once I finally got the computer turned on (they changed the chime!) I ran into that Apple account bullshit. After fighting with that for awhile, I finally broke down and agreed to make an icloud email account so they’d let me make an Apple account without tripping over ancient accounts they no longer acknowledged but that still kept me from reusing my normal email addresses. Honestly, I have no idea what sort of and how much information they’ve collected on me since the 80s that’s still rattling around in their systems, and apparently they don’t either.
.
So I paid my bills finally (overpaying for next month too in case I don’t get my act together to complete the transition). Then I shut down the computer. Then I remembered something else I needed to do while I had a working browser and powered back up. I had written down all the new passwords I’d created to get online, but I wasn’t sure which ID they were asking for, so after several attempts I got locked out (only for 1 min though, just long enough to be annoying), and finally hit on the right combination.
.
Did someone say new Office is not compatible with older Office? I’ve heard Office 2010 isn’t compatible with this iMac, so what am I supposed to do with all my old docs? At least I got my taxes paid before I find out I can’t use my printer with the new machine.
.
I won’t even go into the lunacy of a bluetooth mouse that won’t work while recharging, instead of having rechargeable batteries you can replace in 15 seconds.
.
I’m now wishing I’d figured out how to replace my old hard drive instead and transferred everything over to that so I could upgrade my OS so I could upgrade my browser. I might still have to do that, depending on how the Office issue shakes out. Of course, had I done that, the computer would’ve probably died in some other manner shortly after and that would’ve been a whole other order of magnitude of clusterfuck. I guess seventeen years is still a pretty good run for a computer though?
.
(written on my old computer, with a keyboard without working “t,” “g,” “b,” or “-” keys, using Keyboard Viewer as a workaround :))
@3 John Morales – Um, PZ wrote a review, and it was not positive.
Therefore, you did not read his review. Two posts ago.
(want me to find some negative reviews for ya, stuffin?)
I did read his post, and I know you know exactly what I was denoting with my remark. To go out of you way to quibble over your made-up conflict is quite petty. I find you waste much keyboard time posting stuffin here with little value or importance.
I gathered my information from several different news feeds I read daily. Also, I did a search for reviews before I posted and in the limited results (so far), there were none in the negative category. If I need your assistance, I will ask for it, please refrain from offering to me in the future.
@5 chrishlawson
Thank you, I do understand how the propaganda machine works. Four years in the USMC during the Viet Nam War gave me access to one of the biggest conditioning programs on earth. I fully understand how this shit works. Please note in my response to John Morales I said “Also, I did a search for reviews before I posted and in the limited results(so far), “
The only true opinion of this movie will be mine (If I ever take the time to watch it.) I will not let PZ’s negative review or all the other reviews decide for me.
stuffin, your cringe is noted.
“I did read his post, and I know you know exactly what I was denoting with my remark. To go out of you way to quibble over your made-up conflict is quite petty. I find you waste much keyboard time posting stuffin here with little value or importance.”
Ahem. Truth matters. Self-referencing does not.
“The reviews I’ve read have all been positive. Major hit, blockbuster and like that.”
is contrary to “I did read his post”.
It is not assistance. It is correction.
You offered your opinion, I noted it was either a falsehood or ignorant.
That is my opinion, but also correct.
(It’s nice to not be wrong)
Or: ‘I will ignore the utter stupidity and silliness of the plot, since that matters not to me’.
Point being, PZ kinda approves of it, other than the premise and the alleged scientificancy of it.
And yet millions of USAians still think trump is great (37% approval) so, opinions…meh.
Offhand, I’m guessing there were a lot of people who really liked the story, or the writing, or the characters, or some other aspect of the book or movie, and just plain didn’t care about the science. Which is understandable, given that I’ve enjoyed lots of stories the don’t pretend to be anything but “fantasy” (like “Game of Thrones” — zombies AND fire-breathing dragons?); and some SF whose “science” was obviously just hastily or lazily made-up on the fly (case in point: “Star Trek”). Generally speaking, the better or more enjoyable the story, the more sci-tech ridiculousness I can put up with, at least up to a point. And I’m sure other people’s tolerances of such nonsense are different from mine or PZ’s. No accounting for taste and all that…
Fucking regurgitated shite; The Hero’s Journey; The Reluctant Hero; Lone Survivor; Badass Bookworm; Improvisational Hero; First Contact Hero; The Chosen One (By Elimination); Earn Your Happy Ending; The Aloner Who Finds Connection; Plot Armor; Things Always Break the Hero’s Way; Conveniently Timed Amnesia; Deus ex Biologica; Hypercompetent Everyman; Science‑Montage Heroics; Crisis‑Gives‑Him‑Exactly‑the‑Clue‑He‑Needs; One‑Man Saves Two Civilisations; Friendship‑Powered Success; Last‑Second Insight Saves the Day; Improbable Survival; Narrative Gravity Favors the Protagonist.
Tired tropes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (a year ago):
Brian Cox (Mar 19):
Raging Bee–
Just to clarify, I have nothing against “soft” science fiction or fantasy. Even a lot of “hard” sf takes scientific shortcuts for narrative purposes. My favourite sf novels include Camp Concentration, The Demolished Man, Pavane, Lord of Light, Dreamsnake, and More Than Human. (Dreamsnake is biologically plausible, but the scientific aspect is written into the background.)
The problem I have is BS science being passed off as accurate for marketing purposes.
@ 5 chrislawson
I love it when on a site called “freethoughtblogs” you see unevidenced motivated reasoning conspiracy theories in the wild. X-D
Dude, you can’t just make up a conspiracy theory to discount dis confirming evidence. It has to make sense / have some evidentiary basis.
If this is true, why did “Project Hail Mary” (budget $248 million, Sony) get 94% positive reviews on RT, while “Eternals” (budget $236 million, Disney) got 47%?
Did Disney (biggest most powerful studio) after spending a fifth of a billion just accidentally forget to game the system and “farm” reviews creating a “vortex”?
Dude I suggest given two hypotheses:
a) Everyone thinks Project Hail Mary is totally shit and agrees with PZ but powerful studios have forced reviewers to lie.
b) Vast swathes of people love Project Hail Mary and are conveying that in reviews but PZ is in the minority that hated it.
Hypothesis “b” better explains the known facts while making the fewest unwarranted assumptions.
It’s fine for PZ to hate a moviefilm. But making up nonsense claims that everyone agrees and is just pretending otherwise makes you look like a loony.
(As I already said I haven’t seen it. I’m defending rational thinking here.)
@ 10 Nick Wrathall
You’re comparing a populist fascist trading on racism having a 37% approval with a movie PZ doesn’t like have a 94% approval among professional movie reviewers. Okay dude.
(By the way it’s ALL opinion. In this case PZ’s opinion and the contrasting opinion of over 300 movie reviewers.)
@ ^
Fact check. “contrasting opinion of 94% of over 300 movie reviewers”. X-D
Silentbob.
Congratulations. You argued all the way to my actual point. Well done you!
It is opinion about whether one enjoys the movie, of course.
However, there is no dispute about its lack of scientific merit.
(The opposite, and fractally)
From the magic bugs to the magic timelines. With bonus unobtanium!
Obs, de gustibus etc. Sure.
Nothing wrong with liking stupid stuff.
But it’s basically silly alleged ‘competence porn’, where the plot armor guy gets success on a plate, whether one likes it or not. The less science one knows and the less thought one applies, the more one will appreciate that stuff.
(‘Cos he’s the protagonist!)
Silentbob, to be clear, I did not claim that PZ was right and everyone who liked the movie was wrong. I made a comment about the trustworthiness of review aggregation sites. True, I did not supply the evidence since it was a short comment which I thought rather uncontroversial given PR manipulation is standard practice in contemporary business. But since you ask, here’s a small sampling of the evidence I had in mind:
An article from Vulture about a PR firm that paid reviewers to increase RT scores for a studio.
This analysis showing how average RT scores for wide release films have climbed from 45% to 66% after RT was bought by studios.
This dataset which shows the gap between critic reviews and audience reviews has grown significantly since RT was bought out, with a sudden influx of pro review sites that pump out huge numbers of reviews.
This Medium page by a data scientist about scraping historical data from RT to examine to well-known drop in Wonder Woman 1984 RT ratings from 90% on opening weekend to below 60% within a fortnight. (Here’s a direct link to the graph if you don’t want to watch the embedded video). She does not undertake a systematic analysis, but she shows the same pattern for another couple of tent-pole releases by major studios.
This piece explaining how the RT score of The Flash (2023) fell precipitously after opening weekend (95% to 86% over a weekend, and currently sitting at 62%), following WB’s pre-release marketing strategy of flooding review sites and social media with ratings from studio-selected fans.
Given your past contributions to this blog, I was pleasantly surprised to see you taking such a brave stand for rational thinking, not to mention looking past your self-attested leftist political views to defend multi-billion entertainment conglomerates from the vile accusation of market manipulation. I am particularly impressed by your finding a low RT score for a recent Disney movie, a rebuttal I find at least as compelling as a global-warming denier waving gloves during a cold snap.
If you like “hard” science fiction, a good place to start is the books by Stanislaw Lem. “Fiasco” is the gold standard about interstellar travel and contact.
I am ambivalent about the books by Arthur C Clarke, he was a visionary (and a very nice man) but his writing about dialogue is a bit wooden, a flaw many early SF authors shared. But the scientific accuracy is good.
“Semiosis” by Sue Burke is a good SF novel where biology dominates.
By the way, I did try reading “Project Hail Mary” on the recommendation of a very good friend who said it was the best SF they had ever read.
About 4 pages in I started to develop a degree of concern for my friend, concern that has remained entirely private (they are my friend and I value their opinion – mostly of me – and want to remain friends).
Needless to say I could and indeed did put that book down. When asked, I keep saying that I just don’t have the time to read it (without saying that life is too short for crappy books).
But hey, that is my opinion. If I were you, Silentbob, I would just go….”meh. Nick’s opinion is rubbish”.
It could wel be mutual. If so we will have that in common at least
I enjoyed the audiobook. I expect I will enjoy the movie, which I hope to see in a day or two. The fact that it diverges from reality is a feature not a bug, because — key point, bold, caps, 24 point — I’ve seen reality.
Off-topic, but here is a diagram that may make you feel less cranky.
‘Trump Hits New Levels Of Unpopularity In Public Polling’ | HuffPost .https://share.google/aWT5O31tgZNSbrmQh
birgerjohansson, this is not in any way directed at you. Thanks for posting this information.
But wow, averaged across all polls, 40% of polled ‘Americans’ have a favourable opinion of trumps performance. Given that he won the Whitehouse with barely 32% of the popular vote, he is doing just great!
I wonder against what they critique his performance? Screenplay, costume, special effects, soundtrack? Oh wait, that is what professional film critics look at.
Perhaps they approve of his corruption, dishonesty, instability, inhumanity, his policy on ‘illegal aliens’, Palestinians and Iranians, or just that he isn’t a she with dark skin and a funny laugh?
@ etfb : “The fact that it diverges from reality is a feature not a bug, because — key point, bold, caps, 24 point — I’ve seen reality.”
Seconding that! Right now some escapism and something fun that distracts from reality is VERY welcome. Albiet reality is still going to be there and some work and our efforts are going to be needed to cope with and try to improve it.
I am 100% aware that my opinion of the movie is counter to the majority. I don’t care.
For bad sci fi may I suggest Rick And Morty?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-lm&q=rick+and+morty+come+watch+tv#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c5f72667,vid:E_qvy82U4RE,st:0
There is a major cosmologist (I think the word is) person that does youtube that has been harping on its “accuracy”. I haven’t really bothered to look at what all she has said on it (though she usual deal with new discoveries from space telescopes, issues we still have with the models we have of the universe and what proposed solutions exist for them, etc.) So, near as I can tell, what “scientifically accurate” means in this context is, “The guy who wrote the story for this movie came up with an insane idea, which makes no biological sense.” – the part PZ is irritated by, then, “Spent a really long time talking to experts, doing the math, and creating literally messes of spread sheets full of stuff explaining how this imaginary thing would have to work, why it works, and what the consequences of that would be, in terms of how fast it does things, etc.”
This is vastly more “accurate” than say the physics in Mass Effect, or a whole bloody lot of other science fiction, including probably Star Trek in many cases (which, if anything, was even worse when it dealt with anything involving evolution). So… Yeah, if you find the core premise to be utterly stupid, it won’t matter if the guy that came up with it wrote a whole book on the theoretical physics needed to make it “accurate”, if said nonsense thing was real and could actually exhibit the basic properties it needed to for the story. Basically, you can rip it apart, apparently, for being just absurd from premise one, but not so easily dismantle it via the usual, “But, the physics, if it was real, don’t work at all.”
All I can say is… shrug.
I think people touting the scientific accuracy of the movie may by projecting some aspects of the book, which often spends pages explaining some concept into plausibility. The movie skips practically all of that but if you’ve read the book you vaguely fill that in with “I seem to remember some calculation or potentially new physics explanation”. Without that, yeah I can see how the movie is a hot mess of scientific holes just being hand-waved away.
For example in the book he starts in a black box of a room, no windows or memory or access to the flight deck, and scientifically deduces he must be in a ship by measuring acceleration to not be 1g, including observations about why that couldn’t be simulated with e.g. a centrifuge on earth. I enjoyed reading this bit with my kids because it was true practical scientific process. The physics of a ship accelerating and decelerating, with a spin mode for stationary “gravity” were all plausible, even including the need for a certain size to avoid vertigo. The level of detail the book goes into on these simpler examples lends credence when it wanders into fanciful new physics like a cell sized object being able to perfectly absorb and “unabsorb” incompatible wavelengths of light energy and convert it somehow to mass. The book (as I recall) does even mention why specifically this, or Rocky’s magical Xeon material, seems impossible based on current physics, which I also found a positive example for the kiddos – here’s something we’re observing that doesn’t match our current understanding, and now we’re going to have to figure it out – after we solve existential crisis.
The movie left literally every aspect of that out other than a few hints here and there; only by connecting back to recollections of the book’s was my plausibility meter satisfied, so I could watch it just as an entertaining representation. As a standalone movie, it does a terrible job of it. As for the “heroic” individual, again the book does make a finer point of him being part of a much larger effort. The movie hints at and tries to keep Ryan fallibly human, but of course the interesting plot will always be the story of the actual individual who ended up on the ship!
In short, I enjoyed the book with my kids, was able to use that to enjoy the movie with them – and yet completely agree with PZ’s assessment of the movie.
John Morales – (want me to find some negative reviews for ya, stuffin?)
That is offering assistance, not correction. I recommend you go to the bathroom and take a dump, your constipated mind needs some relief.
PZ: I am 100% aware that my opinion of the movie is counter to the majority. I don’t care.
I don’t care either. Your opinion is part of the whole picture. It seems if one can suspend logic the movie is entertaining. There are times this works for me, Rick and Morty – cheerfulcharlie
After reading your first review It appeared the author was trying to transform a black hole into a living organism. The reference to “black particles” makes a slim connection.
“spends pages explaining some concept into plausibility” — I agree. It’s all post-hoc rationalization to make his plot work.
It literally reminds me of Christian apologetics, only it’s for Weir’s imaginative creations.
Here are some common science fiction tropes
1. Time Travel
2. Multi universes
3. Interstellar flights and colonies
4. Aliens
5. Self conscious robots
6. Travel through wormholes.
7. Teleportation
8. Chemicals/Crystals/Elements that allow things that are not currently possible to happen
which of these are “scientifically accurate” as opposed to something that is proven not false and hence could possibly kind of happen sometime in the future.
I remember having discussions about this for Babylon 5, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Stargate, Jurassic Park, etc. years ago. I think a lot of the enjoyment is knowing what level of science to expect if you value science.
For Doctor Who, Rick & Morty, and Star Wars, the science is more like magic. The fun is in how they play with the magic.
For Star Trek, Jurassic Park, The Core, and Stargate, Armageddon, the science should not look like magic, but will easily fall apart on inspection. The fun is in the situations happen and the moral quandaries they play upon. Some of these fail for me because the science seems too magical.
For Babylon 5, Andy Weir movies, The Expanse, and Gravity, the science is a lot better. Thrusters may fire in the right direction but not right duration and some new made up science shows up. A lot of the science is plausible and somewhat researched, but if you really dig into it, you will find flaws. If you can get past the alien artifacts or story shortcuts, you can enjoy a movie that feels almost plausible as long as it has other elements that pull you in.
For Interstellar, 2001, Contact, Gattaca, and The Andromeda Strain, these movies invite people to question the science. You can still find flaws, but it is way harder. I could see some people putting the Expanse and Gravity here. The idea is it seems like this really could happen on some level and what follows is how it may go down.
I think a lot of enjoyment for a movie is going in with the right expectation for the genre and accuracy. And if there is a category that just does not appeal (like I know people who really hate Doctor Who), then best to avoid movies in that category. See reviews to see if it there and do not waste your time. Though sometimes it is really fun to hate watch a movie.
I get it! I’m part of a group of four widows from the neighborhood. I’m the youngest at 73. We call ourselves the VWs, or Village Widows. We get together weekly for dinners, movies, etc. Several weeks ago we went to Marty Supreme. I absolutely and completely hated it! I resented the loss of my three hours and fumed all through dinner afterwards at our favorite Mexican place! It, too, was highly rated, and the others didn’t have the same reaction I did…and I still can’t see what they saw in it and never will! This week we went to see Hail Mary…and all agreed that it was cute, nothing spectacular, but cute, and mostly an updated ET. On another note, I need help! One of our group is reading a book on pantheism with her book club. As the only science oriented and atheist in the group, they’re mostly agnostics, I kept telling them that gods are not allowed in science…they countered with what came before the Big Bang…I’m biology…heck if I know…but, not a god. So what’s up with this? Sounds like creationism, just on a bigger scale to me…
Can’t say whether I’ll ever watch this Weir movie or not. Enjoying the back and forth on these threads though no matter where commenters’ opinions fall. PZ’s video was cool too, seeing that old game he played and having to use library resources to double check the game. Probably had to use actual card catalogs too. The good old days.
Becky Smith @ 37
“what came before the Big Bang”
The answer is, I don’t know and neither does anyone else.
Any other answer is a claim that needs evidence.
Becky, classic case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
(‘agnostics’ are cryptotheists, basically. No intellectual courage)
Becky Smith @ 37
here is a link to a theoretical physicist talking about before the big bang:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2017/01/25/what-happened-at-the-big-bang/
I played StarForce:Alpha Centauri in high school and college, and I still have a copy or two on my game shelf. Best 3D movement system in a space war game, ever!
#38: Of course I used a card catalog! Although all I needed to do was find the astronomy section and start browsing shelf after shelf of books.
Fun fact about StarForce: Alpha Centauri. It was responsible for naming a well-known British synth band known as the Human League.
I’m a huge fan of the game, and bless the designer Redmond Simonsen for trolling its audience. You see, back then in the ’70s wargaming was (still is) a very male hobby. So Redmond purposely wrote a future history in which warfare was fought between psychic crews of starships who could teleport their ships about, so avoiding all that messy relativity stuff. As they battled with psychic powers, the wars were, barring accidents, effectively bloodless. He then doubled-down by insisting that in this universe only women could be psychics, therefore these bloodless wars were fought entirely by women. I’m sure you can imagine how that went down with a section of the wargaming audience.
Scott McKinley–
I think that’s a good way of looking at it. The question of scientific accuracy in a story depends on (a) how ridiculous the errors are (“we only use ten percent of our brain” is an automatic fail unless it’s there to establish that the character is an idiot), and (b) how much it impacts the story.
Gravity is an excellent example of the latter. It famously got the direction of orbiting satellites the wrong way around. Scientifically wrong but zero impact on the story, so I don’t think it really matters. On the other hand, astronauts hopping from one satellite to another is a different matter. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding and it is critical to the plot. (As engineer Margo Madison says in For All Mankind, when trying to explain to an administrator why a suggested orbital manoeuvre isn’t going to work, “Flying a spacecraft isn’t like driving a car. It doesn’t just go where you point it.”) Having said that, I still enjoyed the film overall.
Interstellar, unfortunately is full to the brim of scientific errors that are fundamental to the story at almost every stage. I highly recommend Kip Thorne’s non-fiction book *Black Holes and Time Warps”, which was the inspiration behind the movie. The process of converting non-fiction scenarios into story concepts appears to have involved skimming the book for cool ideas while skipping over the explanations behind them. This leads to errors such as the visit to the planet where time dilation means the crew member left in orbit ages decades while those who went down to the surface age a few hours. Yes, gravitational time dilation is real, and yes it opens good narrative opportunities for gravity-based twin paradoxes. But the problem here is confusion over time dilation caused by the supermassive black hole and time dilation caused by the planet. If the planet had sufficient gravity to dilate time that severely, the astronauts would have been smooshed to molecular paste on the surface, the ship would never have been able to achieve escape velocity, and the crew of astrophysicists and ex-NASA engineers would have been surprised not by the time dilation, which they would all be familiar with, but by returning alive to orbit.
This is not hard to check. They paid Thorne to be their science advisor and seem to have ignored him. Even without Thorne there are online calculators that can do the mathematical lifting. Plug in the values given in the movie (3 hours on the planet, 23 years in orbit), assume the planet is roughly one Earth radius, and it turns out the planet’s mass is over 700 million Earths.
@34 To be fair, given the description of the difference between the movie and the book, I would agree with you PZ, in terms of the movie. I sort of disagree with you on this specific comment. You literally just described literally every sci-fi concept in existence, with the, ironic, exception that most of them do not spend pages trying to explain how it works to any complicated degree at all.
@45 chrislawson
I’m with you, buddy. Ain’t no sci-fi film that’s been “scientifically accurate,” although I’ll nominate Andromeda Strain as very close, right down to the pucka-pucka sound a mass spec makes. I would also broaden the concept to “historically accurate,” “romantically accurate,” and “accurate accurate.”
The first sci-fi film I remember seeing was in 1960: The Day the Earth Stood Still. My parents would drop us off at the Broadmoor at 10 o’clock and we would watch two cycles of the program; everything twice – news, trailers, cartoons, shorts and the feature. Pick us up at 4 pm. Twenty-four cents to get in and two more dimes would get you popcorn, a drink and some candy. Baby sitting at its finest.
I was in total awe of that film because it was so “real” and “scientifically accurate” right down to Doctor Zorba playing Professor Barnhardt. This was a year before Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 on a sub-orbital flight.
Beware ye that “scientifically accurate” double-edged sword. Imagine, if you will, a movie about a graduate student in the lab. That’s the signpost up ahead: Young Doc Bill – Grad Student.
See Young Doc Bill construct a copper ion selective electrode out of a glass tube and some wire!
See Young Doc Bill burn a hole in his shirt with a soldering iron!
See Young Doc Bill wash glassware.
See Young Doc Bill wash glassware.
See Young Doc Bill wash glassware.
See Young Doc Bill wash glassware.
See Young Doc Bill wash glassware.
Face it, you’d be begging for Rocky. Amaze! Amaze! It’s time go!
The phrase that I’ve been pondering as being useful for this sort of philosophical promotion of naturalism is “preponderance of evidence”. It doesn’t rule the supernatural out as being logically impossible, but it emphasizes how much would need to be overturned in order for supernaturalism to be even vaguely supported.
After studying the universe very carefully using the methods of science, scientists are very confident that the preponderance of evidence that we have is in favor of minds and senses and bodies not being basic. By “basic”, I mean that “minds can just exist and not be made of mindless particles interacting with each other in very complex ways”. And minds and senses and bodies not being basic means that they are fundamentally made of mindless particles interacting with each other in very complex ways. People may well ask “How do minds and sense and bodies arise from mindless particles interacting with each other?”. and we would have to admit that we don’t have all of the answers yet, but the answers that we do have (in the sciences of biological development and cognitive neuroscience, and so on) all support that, and none, so far, actually oppose it.
I realize that’s kind of complicated, but consider asking “When you imagine God existing in order to create the universe, is the God you’re imagining made of atoms (or something like atoms; mindless particles and/or fields interacting in some way), or not made of atoms?”
To put it another way, consider this: I suspect that when most people imagine God, they imagine a disembodied mind that can know things using something like clairvoyance, and do things using something like telekinesis, God’s mind acting directly to do things that it just knows how to do. But the preponderance of evidence that we have is that minds are the effects of bodies. If a mind exists without a body, how does it do so? Our minds interact with the rest of the universe via bodily senses and bodily movements. If clairvoyance and telekinesis exist, how are they even supposed to work?
Imagination is an important tool that our minds use, but unfortunately our minds don’t have any a priori way of knowing how the universe works. And our minds can imagine a disembodied clairvoyant telekinetic mind, without having the slightest idea that the preponderance of evidence of how the universe actually works does seem to rule out disembodied minds, and clairvoyance, and telekinesis.
There really haven’t been enough movies about washing glassware. Next youtube video from Dr Myers – cleansing the spider domiciles.
Entertainment experiences are subjective and relate to the viewers’ experiences and interests. For some reason not currently apparent to me, I’ve taken to watching “first time reactions” to movies on youtube. (How can the reviewers have missed any knowledge of the very famous movies they watch? Most start with something akin to – “I know what the title is and one of the actors, that’s it, let’s go watch Citizen Kane“. That has to be inaccurate!)
I rarely agree with the views expressed, but I find at least some of the attempts amusing.
This is a minor quibble, but I really doubt that such a joke was even in the mind of the author (or the screenwriter and director of the film).
While the phrase “Hail Mary pass” entered the vernacular from (American) football terminology, and the term did originally come come from Catholicism, most people do not think of venerating Mary when they use the phrase to refer to a desperate last-chance low-probability-of-success measure, any more than people think of Jesus resurrecting when they talk about Easter eggs in software.
Owlmirror@50>
It just seems like the whole story was set up for this lame joke – the interstellar ship being named “Hail Mary”, while the lone occupant (after the others die) having the surname “Grace”, so that the spaceship that saves Earth/Humanity is “Hail Mary” and also full of “Grace” (cause everyone else is dead…)
that’s just too close of a set-up for me to believe it’s entirely coincidental, and even if it was coincidence, someone in the editing pipeline has probably met a Catholic, and should have recognized that and either proposed a name change, or leaned into the joke.
It’s as ridiculous as the “science” in the rest of the story.
(no venom towards Owlmirror, and appreciate their engagement)
lochaber@50:
Apparently Weir has confirmed in an AMA that the pun is intentional.
But… again this is an interesting example of it always being possible to find something to dislike if you want to. The author chose a name as a small bit of wordplay that isn’t referenced in the text itself, just something the reader might pick up on. I have to imagine that if someone in the story actually commented on it explicitly, many people (not necessarily you) would have groaned and said it was terrible, stupid writing. But because it’s left as an unacknowledged easter egg for the reader only, that too gets deemed bad writing. Chances are that if the main character had been named John Smith, someone would object that a chance had been missed by not calling him Grace.
It just seems strange to condemn the story for not making a move you seem to think would have been bad anyway. Don’t fault people for failing to live down to your low expectations! (This is a low stakes instance of it, but I see this kind of thing a lot – people get it in their heads that e.g. someone is secretly racist, and then non-racist behaviour or statements are taken as dishonest and more reason to dislike them!)
Just came back from watching Project Hail Mary. I quite enjoyed it but “scientifically accurate” in terms of contemporary science is not how I’d describe it,
The problem is that being true to contemporary science means no interstellar adventures. We just don’t have the science, technology or money to do it. For me 2001 made a worthy attempt to stick close to the science but even Kubrick and Clarke had to introduce mysterious and powerful aliens with their Swiss Army knife black monoliths to do the interstellar heavy lifting to make the story work, And I remember thinking at the time that the space station, Moon base and space ships looked cool but they would have been hideously expensive to build. I can imagine even Elon Musk balking at that kind of expenditure.
It was good to see Epsilon Eridani, location of the future Babylon 5 space station, cropping up yet again. In SF it’s almost become just a neighboring town of the Solar System now, What wasn’t clear was that, even if Grace knew where the star was, how did he plot an intercept course for Rocky’s ship? As others have pointed out, space is a very big place, Another review also mentioned that Weir speculated about the astrophages were making use of neutrinos in some sort of energy conversion process. That always bugs me, like the use of nifty little handheld tricorders to detect neutrino flux in Star Trek . We all know that neutrinos are notoriously hard to detect let alone use as a fuel, The other problem with the movie was there were too many sequences where where the action happened in the dark occasionally illuminated by flashes of light from alarm displays. It was just hard to make out what the hell was going on. On the positive side there were some nice touches of humor and the relationship between Grace and Rocky was quite touching.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie. I had no difficulty suspending disbelief. I wouldn’t say it was a classic, but it was well made, well-acted and fun.