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  1. - Top - End - #151
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dienekes View Post
    Yup. To paraphrase an eloquent pterodactyl:

    But I donÂ’t want to cure cancer I want to turn people into make a theme park for dinosaurs
    Plus in a doubly Doyleist sense:
    We don't want to watch a movie about curing cancer we want to watch a movie about scary dinosaurs and brave contempory people.
    That means we have to accept that for 'reasons' a theme park makes sense, or only watch clones of After Amy

    (Similarly for the Matrix, we need a plot inspiring reason why the world we perceive isn't the real world.)

  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by McNum View Post
    Funny thing is, they had a perfectly good excuse sitting right there. Gypsy Danger is a later generation nuclear powered Jaeger. Early Jaegers had nuclear reactors, but exposed pilots to radiation. GD therefore had generous amounts of radiation shielding installed, which is a perfectly serviceable excuse for how it can take an EMP hit and keep going. It's insulated.
    Radiation shielding still has issues as an explanation for why it wouldn't shut down, though, because radiation shielding goes between the reactor and anything - people, most electronics, structural elements that don't absolutely need to be in the high-radiation region - that you want to protect against radiation damage, which means that it's in the wrong place to protect those things against an externally-generated EMP.

    Now if you want to go for another Pacific Rim thing, there is that whole bit about how "No alloys!" is a good thing. Because clearly, it is not.
    I don't remember the part of the movie that you're referring to, but I would point out that any given alloy is not necessarily strictly superior to any other specific alloy or metal; they can be both better and worse depending on what properties you're looking at. If it's structural, though, it probably was better than pure iron, unless someone chose really dumb materials - not, mind you, that someone who decided skyscraper-sized bipedal machines that have a soft requirement for two drivers/pilots and fight giant dinosaur-like monsters with pseudomedieval weaponry and giant robotic fists is necessarily someone I expect to be making completely rational, well-founded decisions.
    Last edited by Aeson; 2020-08-31 at 05:57 PM.

  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aeson View Post
    Radiation shielding still has issues as an explanation for why it wouldn't shut down, though, because radiation shielding goes between the reactor and anything - people, most electronics, structural elements that don't absolutely need to be in the high-radiation region - that you want to protect against radiation damage, which means that it's in the wrong place to protect those things against an externally-generated EMP.
    I did say it was an explanation that wouldn't hold up to any serious scrutiny, but it's better than it being analog. "Ours is a nuclaer model, so it has shielding." Done. Run with it. Go hit a monster in the face with a tanker in downtown Hong Kong.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aeson View Post
    I don't remember the part of the movie that you're referring to, but I would point out that any given alloy is not necessarily strictly superior to any other specific alloy or metal; they can be both better and worse depending on what properties you're looking at. If it's structural, though, it probably was better than pure iron, unless someone chose really dumb materials - not, mind you, that someone who decided skyscraper-sized bipedal machines that have a soft requirement for two drivers/pilots and fight giant dinosaur-like monsters with pseudomedieval weaponry and giant robotic fists is necessarily someone I expect to be making completely rational, well-founded decisions.
    Of course, of course. It's more that they put it as a sense of pride that their giant death robot contains no alloys, as in none at all, that's ridiculous. Because I simply cannot believe that to be true. Use the right material for the right job, especially when you're building giant robots that's the last hope of mankind. If you need some pure materials for that? great. Need alloys for it? Great. But don't make it a point of pride that it doesn't contain one of those. Because that's silly.

  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by McNum View Post
    I did say it was an explanation that wouldn't hold up to any serious scrutiny, but it's better than it being analog. "Ours is a nuclaer model, so it has shielding." Done. Run with it. Go hit a monster in the face with a tanker in downtown Hong Kong.


    Of course, of course. It's more that they put it as a sense of pride that their giant death robot contains no alloys, as in none at all, that's ridiculous. Because I simply cannot believe that to be true. Use the right material for the right job, especially when you're building giant robots that's the last hope of mankind. If you need some pure materials for that? great. Need alloys for it? Great. But don't make it a point of pride that it doesn't contain one of those. Because that's silly.
    Particularly if you are building your giant robot out of ferrous metals. If you're not using alloys, you've got armor only very slightly ahead*, technologically speaking, with USS Monitor back in 1861. Good old HMS Dreadnought from 1906, with its nice thick belt of cemented and surface hardened Krupp steel, is, metallurgically speaking, way ahead of, and way better protected than, Ye Olde Iron Robot. Hell, a reasonably upper class knight circa 1450 will have more advanced armor, albeit a 2mm thick breastplate is probably not ideal protection from giant monsters.

    *Since one would assume they're at least taking advantage of modern smelting techniques to get the slag out.
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  5. - Top - End - #155
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Has the Assassin's Creed Animus been mentioned yet?

    Apparently, you have the memories (literal memories) in your blood that you play like a video game! Edit: Oh, you can have memory bleed and die from it too.
    Last edited by Lurkmoar; 2020-08-31 at 08:14 PM.
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  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    Ian Malcolm strikes me as the guy who just released a book about his particular discipline that is really hot on the New York Times Bestseller List, so Hammond got him to come to the project because it looked cool to have this current celebrity looking at your project. It would be like having Stephen Hawking come to look at your park about real aliens that you reconstructed from Roswell DNA, only to find out that the ship that crashed at Roswell was the Nostromo.
    So the fault with the Ian Malcolm character lies with Crichton and it is not Steven Spielberg or David Koepp job to fix it with not doing a good job explaining the purpose of the Ian Malcolm character inside the text and why he is there at this presentation (outside the text his purpose is for Crichton to give rants about Human Nature.)

    -----

    Malcom job is to explain the principle of "emergence" where things can have properties independent of the original thing by mixing two factors together. Economics and a whole other host of math fields deal with this all the time. (Likewise certain philosophies and religions such as Buddhism also deal with this.) Things can be more than the sum of their parts A+B is not just AB but sometimes putting A and B next to each other you get something new aka C.

    So Ian Malcom math job with emergence is Chaos Theory which sounds like gobbledygook you will have some fictional Malcolm Gladwell sell on the NYT. But what it is really is talking about interconnectedness, feedback mechanisms, how you can't create a perfect science experiment, fractals, etc.

    His job is to be a math skeptic saying you can solve everything with statistics and calculus, while simultaneously the study of this is precisely a math job.

    He is hired by the insurance people to be the skeptic whose says ignore the people who say you can insure this just like a zoo but just make the zoo bigger.

    -----

    An example of Chaos Theory and the illusion of knowing things via math is that famous Tesla announcement about their new pickup truck. They tested the windows and windshield numerous times saying it was a A) bulletproof against a 9mm round fired by a gun, and B) a sledgehammer, and C) a big metal ball the size of your fist thrown by a muscly guy.

    All of these are true if you do only A, or only B, or only C. But if you do B, and C together (let alone A+B+C) you will break the glass for what happens is you damage the glass with the sledgehammer and it looks fine with no obvious fault to the human eye, but that changes the molecular comprehension of the glass and the places the glass attaches to the pickup truck and thus when you then hit it with the metal ball there is no more ability to give for the glass is no longer in the pristine condition of the first place.

    It is the interconnectedness of things that Chaos Theory studies, and change only a few small variables and you can create big changes. Especially in systems that never stop (for they are dynamic), and are real life and not some controlled experience. (Yes I am comparing Elon Musk to John Hammond (Mr. Spared No Expense)

    -----

    And chaos theory is not just a thing about books with dinosaurs you use it with any complicated thing like weather modeling. Furthermore if we had a couple of these people at wall street and government regulatory bodies we wouldn't have such severe losses with 2008 with things like Credit Default Swaps for guess what the economy of city A is tied to city B is tied to city C and you should not sell a credit default swap insurance asset / derivative for all those things are actually linked when the economy tanks all them will tank at pretty much the same time and thus your derivative has a chance of bankrupting the insurance issuer. Yadda, yadda, yadda (you get the point.)

    Just because something has never broken before, even never broken in 1 year, 10 years, 100 years does not mean it is invincible. That is Ian Malcolm's job, his job is to tell you that things such as 1000 year storms do exist. Furthermore to remind you that dinosaurs* are not like other animals and thus Michael Crichton "Magic" may suddenly happen and the park breaks down.

    (I have my problems with Crichton, some things about science, magic, etc I feel he is kind over the top with.)

    -----





    So yeah Ian Malcolm had a purpose for the story, but Crichton did a horrible job writting that purpose well in the Book but also the Movie Screenplay which Crichton gets credit for with David Koepp.
    Last edited by Ramza00; 2020-08-31 at 09:29 PM.
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  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ramza00 View Post
    So yeah Ian Malcolm had a purpose for the story, but Crichton did a horrible job writting that purpose well in the Book but also the Movie Screenplay which Crichton gets credit for with David Koepp.
    Almost every major Crichton novel has a character who is immensely smarter than everyone else, has some distinctly non-conventional view or approach, is initially derided for this, and is then ultimately justified by the end. This is one of the established criticisms of his works in circulation (also that these characters grew to be more and more self-insert-y over time). In Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm is said character.

    It's not that Malcolm's purpose isn't reasonable, it is, or that his character isn't justified in being very smart, a genius mathematician taking a big paycheck from a large corporate account is absolutely a career choice that's out there. It's mostly that everyone else, especially all the park personnel, make unnecessarily foolish decisions which Malcolm is later able to criticize, which is particularly true in the book version where the Park is comically unprepared to run even as a regular zoo and takes one shortcut after another to save money. Hammon says 'spared no expense' a lot, but this is in fact a blatant lie and if he'd been even slightly less penny-pinching (like by paying Nedry even a fraction of what he was worth) the whole disaster probably would have never happened. I mean, there would have eventually been some kind of incident, but almost certainly nothing movie scale.

    Admittedly, there's no particularly easy way to unleash your dinosaurs-eating-people monster scenario in the 20th century. No matter what you do, it's going to take some major contrivances to get around the 'and then security just shot them all dead' problem.
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  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Agreed Mechalich, complete and utterly agree.

    (I was just complaining about having the Malcolm character was a good idea, and he actually makes sense, and then he can't be explain to the audience for Crichton did that part badly yet everyone remembers Malcolm being the self-insert character pointing out all the computer flaws like the tracking problems.
    It is like Crichton couldn't tell if he wanted to make a small point about stupid individual humans or a big point like humans as a society are bad with estimating risk and how risk is interdependent. It feels off and sloppy.)

    But super agree with the other points you brought up.
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  9. - Top - End - #159
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ramza00 View Post
    Agreed Mechalich, complete and utterly agree.

    (I was just complaining about having the Malcolm character was a good idea, and he actually makes sense, and then he can't be explain to the audience for Crichton did that part badly yet everyone remembers Malcolm being the self-insert character pointing out all the computer flaws like the tracking problems.
    It is like Crichton couldn't tell if he wanted to make a small point about stupid individual humans or a big point like humans as a society are bad with estimating risk and how risk is interdependent. It feels off and sloppy.)

    But super agree with the other points you brought up.
    It's Crichton. You can sum up his points as "technology bad".
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Khedrac View Post
    There's also the new-series Dr Who epsiode where the lab handing a really deadly disease has an automatic vent into the atmosphere protocol for emergencies! I mean, why bother with a bio-hazard lab in the first place...
    I noticed that too and it was really bad.

    Oh-and sharks don't roar. Too many bad Syfy movies to name them all because they kind of blur into bad cgi.

  11. - Top - End - #161
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    It's Crichton. You can sum up his points as "technology bad".
    I don't know, I think the novel about copywriting genes and cell ownership had a point.

    It is kind of bullcrap that a doctor could be looking at a leftover slide of my blood from bloodwork I got done eight years ago, discover that my blood cells have some useful unique mutation, replicate it for study, make something of it, and then patent my unique genes and make a fortune without giving me any when he's making that money on my DNA.

    Or, to use a historical example, the Lacks family are owed billions for all the profit that' been made on selling different strains of Hela, which is especially disgusting becuase the hospital and doctor who made Hela from Hernreitta's cancer cells actively chose not to patent the original strain. The way the laws are written, they're never gonna get a dime.

    And, to Crichton's credit, the court ruling that said that the company that patented a man's cell line were allowed to take his and his children's cells whenever they wanted whether they agreed to or not was overturned and the company ridiculed for the audacity of trying to get slavery reinstituted.

    On the other hand, IIRC in that book Crichton also used the name of one of his critics for a character who molests babies band has a microscopic whatsit.

    Basically, shoot the messenger but the messege in fine.
    Last edited by Rater202; 2020-09-01 at 12:00 AM.
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  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    I don't know, I think the novel about copywriting genes and cell ownership had a point
    That's not the point that was being made though, Dr.Malcolm's point was more of a "hurr durr things will go wrong if you try to play god" type thing, furthermore, the intellectual property thing is really more of an issue with intellectual property than with technology regardless

    EDIT:
    And the stupidity lies in the fact that the disaster had exactly nothing to do wih playing god and everything to do with the zoo being poorly designed
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2020-09-01 at 03:46 AM.
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Hammon says 'spared no expense' a lot, but this is in fact a blatant lie and if he'd been even slightly less penny-pinching (like by paying Nedry even a fraction of what he was worth) the whole disaster probably would have never happened. I mean, there would have eventually been some kind of incident, but almost certainly nothing movie scale.
    I'm not prepared to give it to Nedry here. If Nedry was worth more he should not have contracted so cheap. Paying Nedry more would just have meant it cost more. Hammond clearly had reservations about Nedry, and he should have listened to his gutinstinct and picked someone else. The hilarious part is he kinda tries doing Nedry a favour too. But you are correct Hammond does definitely not not spare any expense. Arguably his ability to tell where to put the money (more security, less fancy food) is deeply flawed. However, not not sparing expensive by paying Nedry more would not have helped.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lurkmoar View Post
    Has the Assassin's Creed Animus been mentioned yet?

    Apparently, you have the memories (literal memories) in your blood that you play like a video game! Edit: Oh, you can have memory bleed and die from it too.
    No I don't think it has. But you are also overstating it. You have literal memories in your blood from your ancesters, DNA memory. Which isn't as off as it may sound as a lot of DNA isn't actually used to create us and IIRC theorized to be e.g. left over virus DNA and such. Playing your memories can only be done after they have been processed by a really powerful computer, though technology advances as the series go on so the technology becomes less invasive and more portable. The first versions of the Animus needed you to like hook up in the spine and stuff and it took time for them to process the memory data from you DNA.

    As a game device it's a really good explanation for how come you can experience things like it is a game. Unlike say some other game that just randomly insists you are in history. Even Elder Scrolls sorta went with the gameification idea so one of the powers you have as chosen one seems to be Save and Reload.

    Where it *really* goes off the rocker is when inanimate items have memory DNA though in the later series. Assuming you can buy into the whole idea that memories can be stored in DNA.

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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Even Elder Scrolls sorta went with the gameification idea so one of the powers you have as chosen one seems to be Save and Reload.
    The canonicity of that is wildly debated.
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Where it *really* goes off the rocker is when inanimate items have memory DNA though in the later series. Assuming you can buy into the whole idea that memories can be stored in DNA.
    Are you talking about the spear in Odyssey? Because I'm fairly sure it's Kassandra/Alexios's DNA that's been left on it that you relive memories from.
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    That's not the point that was being made though, Dr.Malcolm's point was more of a "hurr durr things will go wrong if you try to play god" type thing, furthermore, the intellectual property thing is really more of an issue with intellectual property than with technology regardless

    EDIT:
    And the stupidity lies in the fact that the disaster had exactly nothing to do wih playing god and everything to do with the zoo being poorly designed
    Different book.

    The conversation moved from JP to Crichton in general, so I made a comment about NEXT, which was a criticism of how the law treats genetic research an he products thereof, particularly how it's drought from abuse.

    I think the criticism of gene and cell ownership is a perfectly valid one, even if Crichton himself and the book are.... Yeah and saying that it boils down to "science bad" is... Meh.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Androgeus View Post
    Are you talking about the spear in Odyssey? Because I'm fairly sure it's Kassandra/Alexios's DNA that's been left on it that you relive memories from.
    Origins and Odyssey. But they make a specific mention of this as a breakthrough that they can now somehow "read items". I think in Origins (set before Odyssey) it's brought up as the new and next step Layla is working with for Abstergo. The way the spear is used there's no way there's any Kassandra/Alexios DNA left on it. Plenty of other people's DNA though... DNA couldn't survive in the conditions most of these artefacts are aquired anyway. In Origins I thought they'd use a mummy as the source but I think they then used an item. Been awhile since I played through.

    I strongly remember there was something odd with the whole getting DNA off items I reacted to. I just have the mental picture it was somehow something more than just random DNA left over on something you handled.

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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    I always interpreted the Animus and its variants in Assassin's Creed as a purely gameplay-inspired reason for why you can play the games the way you do, rather than anything meant to be scientifically rigorous. It's like the New-U stations in Borderlands, which clearly exist in the game's universe but which conveniently don't work for anyone other than the player character. As such, I don't really care too much about them. I actually find it more annoying, for example, that some of the stuff you get blueprints for in Subnautica can only be manufactured using alien technology that nobody knows exists--it's like the famous Star Trek sensors that can detect forms of energy nobody knew about before!

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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    I always interpreted the Animus and its variants in Assassin's Creed as a purely gameplay-inspired reason for why you can play the games the way you do, rather than anything meant to be scientifically rigorous.
    Well that is basically what it is. It is as I said a very good way of having both your this is a videogame and this is reality at the same time cake. It is a very elegant solution to limit the players interactions with the world and removing the real world/game barrier by the game itself embracing the fact that is is a simulation. In the early installations where "real world" and simualtion is blended there are differences in gameplay, as in real world does nto come with all enhancements simulation does. It is rather meta. Not sure if I make sense. (Even though the real world/simualtion isn't perfect, you can mess up and reload on the real world parts too, cause you know, it has to be). Contrasted to stuff like Call of Duty where if I mess up and die well hey it's just a game and I reload. The AC series embraces this aspect.

    However, it does *claim* to be based on science (not all of it science that may exist, the is a strain of the Precursor science/artefacts being effectively magic), in this case genetic memories being an actual thing, so for the purposes of this thread it can be argued.

    I actually wanted to defend the Animus and attendant technologies as it does, in the context of the game it sort of holds together.

    Some of the story bits of how the Animus technology is used, improved and spread holds up quite well IMO in it's own world.
    Last edited by snowblizz; 2020-09-01 at 06:40 AM.

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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    And the stupidity lies in the fact that the disaster had exactly nothing to do wih playing god and everything to do with the zoo being poorly designed
    You see, I'm not sure Dr. Malcolm would agree.
    In THIS PARTICULAR here and now, yes, you are right. The security was ridiculous, the IT admin was alone, overworked and underpaid, the research behind some of the cloning absolutely questionable (poisonous plants, frog dna...), and yadda yadda yadda.

    But I think Malcolm's point is that even if you managed to close all those gaps, there would still be something out there ready to turn your park into a failure, and a dangerous one at that. The idea is that it doesn't matter *what* makes you lose control. Someting *will*. And the more dangeorous the thing you are trying to control is, the worse it'll be for everyone when you will lose said control over it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jan Mattys View Post
    You see, I'm not sure Dr. Malcolm would agree.
    In THIS PARTICULAR here and now, yes, you are right. The security was ridiculous, the IT admin was alone, overworked and underpaid, the research behind some of the cloning absolutely questionable (poisonous plants, frog dna...), and yadda yadda yadda.

    But I think Malcolm's point is that even if you managed to close all those gaps, there would still be something out there ready to turn your park into a failure, and a dangerous one at that. The idea is that it doesn't matter *what* makes you lose control. Someting *will*. And the more dangeorous the thing you are trying to control is, the worse it'll be for everyone when you will lose said control over it.
    I think the issue is, Malcolm’s talk of chaos theory as a means that demonstrating the level of control required for this to work out is impossible. And I believe the evidence that other zoos have lost control of their animals would just further Malcolm’s point. He’d likely say that it proves we can’t control environments full of animals we know and live with. The hope of controlling super predators from before the evolution of man is impossible.

    But, the failures of the Park don’t really fit that type of failure under scrutiny. Sort of. In the books it’s abundantly clear that Hammond is cutting corners. And so the parks failure can be put under mismanagement. The movie seems to portray him as the benevolent grandfather watching his dreams go up in smoke. To my completely untrained in Park control eye it doesn’t look cheap. If we listen to Nedry he comments that he’s not being paid enough, but every scene we see him in he is being pointlessly entitled, cruel, and cheap. Which I believe we’re meant to think that he’s the one with the inflated sense of self worth.

    Which means the failure of the Park was less about chaos and more about direct villainy.

    However, interestingly chaos theory does directly destroy one plan that required inhuman control of the environment: Nedry’s. The random storm completely messes up his timetable, forces him to take greater risks and ultimately ends in his death.

  22. - Top - End - #172
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Chaos theory aside, i do think there is some merit to the idea that large scale and ambitious projects have correspondingly large and ambitious problems. But thats an argument in favor of foresight and careful preparation, not against having large projects. Sure, we cant make a perfect zoo (or anything else) that will never fail and be 100% happy forever, but that doesnt mean the problems that will show up are insurmountable either.
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    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    I'm not prepared to give it to Nedry here. If Nedry was worth more he should not have contracted so cheap. Paying Nedry more would just have meant it cost more. Hammond clearly had reservations about Nedry, and he should have listened to his gutinstinct and picked someone else. The hilarious part is he kinda tries doing Nedry a favour too. But you are correct Hammond does definitely not not spare any expense. Arguably his ability to tell where to put the money (more security, less fancy food) is deeply flawed. However, not not sparing expensive by paying Nedry more would not have helped.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dienekes View Post
    I think the issue is, Malcolm’s talk of chaos theory as a means that demonstrating the level of control required for this to work out is impossible. And I believe the evidence that other zoos have lost control of their animals would just further Malcolm’s point. He’d likely say that it proves we can’t control environments full of animals we know and live with. The hope of controlling super predators from before the evolution of man is impossible.

    But, the failures of the Park don’t really fit that type of failure under scrutiny. Sort of. In the books it’s abundantly clear that Hammond is cutting corners. And so the parks failure can be put under mismanagement. The movie seems to portray him as the benevolent grandfather watching his dreams go up in smoke. To my completely untrained in Park control eye it doesn’t look cheap. If we listen to Nedry he comments that he’s not being paid enough, but every scene we see him in he is being pointlessly entitled, cruel, and cheap. Which I believe we’re meant to think that he’s the one with the inflated sense of self worth.
    It's cut out of the movie, likely because as pointed out, the film almost exclusively portrays him in a bad light, but in the novel it's revealed that Hammond grossly misled the bidders on the scope of the project, which was why Nedry bid so low, and then went on to professionally sabotage and blackmail Nedry at every turn - using InGen's vast financial reserves to burn bridges between Nedry and other clients. They also forced Nedry to do work that was not contracted, such as future support after the initial build while not paying any more for it. Nedry was an ass, for sure, but there's no indication he would have done anything for Dodgson if he hadn't been completely screwed for his work on JP. And that the movie does keep in. "Don't get cheap on me Dodgson. That was Hammond's mistake."
    Quote Originally Posted by Dienekes View Post
    Which means the failure of the Park was less about chaos and more about direct villainy.
    100% incorrect. The park had already fallen before any of the events we see in the movie (even the raptor attack in the beginning). Grant finds a hatched egg in the park. This tells us several things: first, the dinosaurs have been breeding (which is the obvious takeaway), but more importantly, and what most people seem to gloss over, that they have been breeding for quite some time. He's just arrived and has already found a fully hatched egg. They had no control over the island.*

    Further, the type of egg is also interesting. It's explicitly called out as a raptor egg in the novel, but the movie skips this line. However, we can see that it is the exact size, color, and texture of the eggs we see in the incubation room early in the movie - which are raptor eggs. This was probably a simple cost-saving feature - they have a scene with eggs already, why not reuse a prop? But regardless of whether it was intentional or not, the end result is that we have a hatched raptor egg outside of the raptor enclosure. Which tells us something else - not only can the dinosaurs breed, they can also escape. All before Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, and Dr. Malcolm ever set foot on the island. Nothing in the movies made them lose control, those events were just a perfect storm that highlighted (not instigated) their lack of control.

    The island was already lost. They just didn't know.

    *Again, this is where the novel really shines but the movie loses a lot of its punch, but in the book, they have a computer tracking each and every dinosaur they have to keep an accurate count - except they never thought about more dinos without their intervention, so it was capped for a max and only designed to look for losses, and when that cap was removed, it showed far more of several dino species and immediately showed not only proof of their failure but also the sheer extent of it as well.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2020-09-01 at 09:37 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Chaos theory aside, i do think there is some merit to the idea that large scale and ambitious projects have correspondingly large and ambitious problems. But thats an argument in favor of foresight and careful preparation, not against having large projects. Sure, we cant make a perfect zoo (or anything else) that will never fail and be 100% happy forever, but that doesnt mean the problems that will show up are insurmountable either.
    I think this is a very good point, and it ties in with what the Park would have been.

    Let's image that NASA had made the park. I say NASA, because they have absurdly costly programs to send people to operate in extremely dangerous environments. They train the hell out of them, they have lots of scientists behind them, they also experiment before the fact through simulations (you know, zero pressure, zero gravity, acceleration, diet, hydration... And, once the astronauts are in space, they keep them busy and strictly monitored, because that's an experiment, too.

    Following the same approach, NASA would have started through simulations while a bunch of engineers would have had to calculate the forces necessary to keep dinosaurs in their place. Many other experts would have worked out behaviour and conditioning, as well as biological quirks. You know, make a dinosaur mock-up using old chicken blood and elaborating it like the dino DNA is going to be, and see what happens. They would have made a climatic analysis, and looked for the safest place to build the park. And so on, and so on.

    It's pretty clear that Hammond, in the movie, wasn't going for this. He was going for the wow, and this kind of preliminary research was the exact opposite of the wow.

    There's also another factor, which is the choice of having dinosaurs "in the wild". One of the themes of the movies is that life will find a way, and the wild offers a lot of ways. The dinosaurs are in an area which his very lightly, almost barely anthropized. The delusion is that taking a "human structure" and filling it with inhuman life to the brim human rules will be able to stand.

    Add in a couple freak occurrences (life finds a way through frogs, the hurricane, and an unfaithful worker), and you get the perfect storm.

    However, even with NASA and a safe place in an heavily anthropized area, the result would probably have been something like Fukushima (I mean, we still need a movie, right?). But then it's a lot more difficult to realistically show interesting characters making the wrong choices.

    About Jurassic Park, I think that it deserves a reverse award for most ludicrously unlikely computer interface ever shown on screen... except that 3d interface really existed. I've read that what is shown in the movie is actually a demo of it.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Speaking of that chemical structure, it was possibly the most absurd depiction of a chemical I've ever seen - and I'm including the various ludicrous DNA depictions.
    If we want DNA depiction examples, Gene Roddenberry’s: Earth Final Conflict had three-stranded DNA (in a human-alien hybrid savior character, who also is going to enter ‘the next phase’ of evolution). I think Xfiles might have had triple stranded DNA as well in an inbred hillbilly clans’ stillborn baby, but that might have been some other messed up science (like maybe all three males contributed sets of chromosomes, but the mother didn’t? It’s been over 20 years since I saw it).

    Looking at 90s/early 2000s sci fi, there’s also Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda and forcefields – now, since force fields are sci-fi gibberish, usually one doesn’t critique them. However, in Andromeda, I seem to recall them having the forcefields actually work differently from episode to episode. Same, I think, with artificial gravity.

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    I now want a Star Trek where the Ferengi abandon gold-pressed latinum in favor of bioneural gel packs as a medium of exchange.
    I seem to recall a TNG episode where Riker bribes some Ferengi with “biomedical gel,” so there appears to be some precedent.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cikomyr2 View Post
    I am unsure if it's science or communication problem. But I hate the forced conflict of Scientists/Church in stories where scientists are piercing the veil between worlds, and the church having actual proof of the supernatural just give vague warning to make them stop.
    TV writers get conflicts, and also who-hates-who wrong so often. Doctors hate surgeons, MDs hate PHDs, applied scientists hate theoretical scientists, etc. etc. I mean, at the individual level, this is true, but on the aggregate, groups tend to have friction with people with whom the directly interact (or even those who might have overlapping niches, as I do see some back-and-forth between Psychiatrists and Psychologists with prescriptive authority), not that person 2-3 lanes over.

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    Piling onto Jurassic Park, those aren't velociraptors. Velociraptors are much smaller, about turkey-sized. I won't blame the movie-makers for the lack-of-feathers issue, due to the release date. Sure they knew (or at least suspected) these animals were feathered, but it hadn't really entered the public consciousness yet. It seems Crichton was using inaccurate resources.
    Michael Crichton, who wrote the book which "Jurassic Park" is based on, and director Steven Spielberg were both aware of the Velociraptor's less than intimidating size back when the movie was being developed in the early '90s.

    The Velociraptor we see on screen ended up based off of another dinosaur, Deinonychus. This is partially because Crichton based his novel on Gregory Paul's "Predatory Dinosaurs," which "labeled the Velociraptor as a Deinonychus subspecies."
    -"What Velociraptors are really like" - Business Insider (can't link yet, sorry)

    I don't however, believe a dinosaur zoo (if it were possible in the first place) is doomed to failure. Dinosaurs are animals, and humans have great experience controlling animals, even large ones. Jurassic Park the park, was doomed through mismanagement and a willful ignorance of reality around them. Yes, there would be emergent, unpredictable problems. Even zoos lose animals (and occasionally people die), but even a T. rex could be managed, using trial-and-error. Use a closed, secure area. Study its abilities. How high can it jump? What kind of force can it bring to bear? Electrified cables probably aren't going to cut it, but a 10-meter concrete barrier that's backed by earth, with an electrified fence on top and viewing platforms above/behind this? That'll probably do it. The velociraptors as portrayed? First, get rid of the trees. No climbing allowed. Concrete paddock, walls 4-5 meters. The key is to observe the animals. If they're exploring a weakness, getting close to escape, than make the wall taller. It works in real zoos. And always have a re-containment plan, even if it's killing the animal.

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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    I don't however, believe a dinosaur zoo (if it were possible in the first place) is doomed to failure. Dinosaurs are animals, and humans have great experience controlling animals, even large ones. Jurassic Park the park, was doomed through mismanagement and a willful ignorance of reality around them.
    Agreed on all points.
    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    Yes, there would be emergent, unpredictable problems. Even zoos lose animals (and occasionally people die), but even a T. rex could be managed, using trial-and-error.
    In the novel, Grant was frequently called about various issues regarding dinosaur behavior at all times, including in the middle of the night (much to his consternation, as he was not privy to what they were doing at the time). They were actively on top of adapting to and attempting to anticipate unexpected behaviors.
    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    Use a closed, secure area. Study its abilities. How high can it jump? What kind of force can it bring to bear? Electrified cables probably aren't going to cut it, but a 10-meter concrete barrier that's backed by earth, with an electrified fence on top and viewing platforms above/behind this? That'll probably do it.
    In the novel, there were large moats (i don't remember the exact width, but 10 meter sounds roughly correct) around most enclosures with the electrified fences on the outer edge of the moat.
    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    The velociraptors as portrayed? First, get rid of the trees. No climbing allowed. Concrete paddock, walls 4-5 meters. The key is to observe the animals. If they're exploring a weakness, getting close to escape, than make the wall taller. It works in real zoos. And always have a re-containment plan, even if it's killing the animal.
    Those are adamantly not how real zoos work - zoos are conservationist. The well-being of the animal is one of their top priorities. In emergency situations, if the case calls for it, yes, they will kill an animal, but these are exceptionally rare circumstances, and for enclosure practices they try to accommodate the animal as much as possible.

    All that being said, Jurassic Park is not a zoo. It is a theme park with live attractions, so I still largely agree.

    Oh, and in the novel, Muldoon does try to implement a significantly more militarized security protocol in the event of animal mishandling or escape, and is largely shot down by Hammond (though he does get some concessions and has a few weapons lockers with munitions capable of handling the animals on the island). Like, as much as I love the movie, the novel blows it out of the water.

    Let this be a warning to you all, this is what happens when someone mentions Jurassic Park around me.
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  28. - Top - End - #178
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    Piling onto Jurassic Park, those aren't velociraptors. Velociraptors are much smaller, about turkey-sized. I won't blame the movie-makers for the lack-of-feathers issue, due to the release date. Sure they knew (or at least suspected) these animals were feathered, but it hadn't really entered the public consciousness yet. It seems Crichton was using inaccurate resources.

    -"What Velociraptors are really like" - Business Insider (can't link yet, sorry)

    I don't however, believe a dinosaur zoo (if it were possible in the first place) is doomed to failure. Dinosaurs are animals, and humans have great experience controlling animals, even large ones. Jurassic Park the park, was doomed through mismanagement and a willful ignorance of reality around them. Yes, there would be emergent, unpredictable problems. Even zoos lose animals (and occasionally people die), but even a T. rex could be managed, using trial-and-error. Use a closed, secure area. Study its abilities. How high can it jump? What kind of force can it bring to bear? Electrified cables probably aren't going to cut it, but a 10-meter concrete barrier that's backed by earth, with an electrified fence on top and viewing platforms above/behind this? That'll probably do it. The velociraptors as portrayed? First, get rid of the trees. No climbing allowed. Concrete paddock, walls 4-5 meters. The key is to observe the animals. If they're exploring a weakness, getting close to escape, than make the wall taller. It works in real zoos. And always have a re-containment plan, even if it's killing the animal.
    Speaking of accuracy about the dinosaurs, the novel actually had one of the scientists suggest to Hammond that they modify the dinosaurs more, to make them slower, less violent, ect. You know, basically making them more suited for zoo life. The scientist pointed out that none of their guests would actually know what dinosaurs are like, so they could modify them however they liked, and Hammond shot him down.

    If anything, that's the lesson I took from Jurassic Park (the Novel). That scientific endeavors should not be motivated by corporate greed or controlled by non-scientists. Because their goals run contrary to good scientific processes or the common good of society. Which has happened in the past with new medicines and the like.
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Forum Explorer View Post
    Speaking of accuracy about the dinosaurs, the novel actually had one of the scientists suggest to Hammond that they modify the dinosaurs more, to make them slower, less violent, ect. You know, basically making them more suited for zoo life. The scientist pointed out that none of their guests would actually know what dinosaurs are like, so they could modify them however they liked, and Hammond shot him down.

    If anything, that's the lesson I took from Jurassic Park (the Novel). That scientific endeavors should not be motivated by corporate greed or controlled by non-scientists. Because their goals run contrary to good scientific processes or the common good of society. Which has happened in the past with new medicines and the like.
    It's not even the scientists; twice now I've had reason to bring up Muldoon's desired security environment and how it was vetoed, and he's not a scientist at all, but he is a top notch game warden. I would change just that part of your statement - "non-scientists" to "non-experts". Listen to the people who damn well know what they're talking about. Hell, that's supposed to be why Hammond got them in the first place!
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    Default Re: What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

    Quote Originally Posted by Poldon View Post
    Piling onto Jurassic Park, those aren't velociraptors. Velociraptors are much smaller, about turkey-sized. I won't blame the movie-makers for the lack-of-feathers issue, due to the release date. Sure they knew (or at least suspected) these animals were feathered, but it hadn't really entered the public consciousness yet. It seems Crichton was using inaccurate resources.

    -"What Velociraptors are really like" - Business Insider (can't link yet, sorry)
    (Agrees with Poldon and adds some more info with links.)

    Yep some of the dinosaur stuff is based off 1988 book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World which is full of illustrations. This book included some dinosaurs with feathers but also tried to create a new taxonomy for dinosaurs and say Velociraptor was related to Deinonychus and the new meta-category should be called Velociraptor even though the scientists were still debating this and you should really go with the names everyone else is going with but no the illustrated book wanted to do its own thing. (Now the writer is not following the science but if his idea turns out to be true you usually name the meta category under the older name of the first found dinosaur of the class, so it is defensible but I would argue you should be following the consensus with things like names.)

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...chus-33789870/

    But yeah it is Deinonychus. Grant's dig is in North America the location of Deinonychus not Mongolia the location of Velociraptors. Furthermore Crichton consulted with the famous John Ostrom. John Ostrom is a big deal in the dinosaur world for several reasons.

    • He is the person who found the Deinonychus in the 1964 and more skeletons in the 1960s and 1970s (there was an earlier skeleton found in the 1931 but it was more fragmentary so they did not know what they had merely it was different than other dinosaur skeletons in the same area.)
    • Importantly John Ostrom skeleton was an almost intact skeleton and this allowed a better understanding of the dinosaur.
    • John Ostrom's skeletons reconceptualized how we thought of dinosaurs for the first time. We understood they, dinosaurs with some species, can be fast, active, agile and sometimes warm-blooded. This one skeleton indicating a new type of dinosaur with John Ostrom launched something called the "Dinosaur Renaissance." Besides changing how scientists view dinosaurs with activity level, energy level, are they cold or warm blooded (or both depending on which species for Dinosaurs are merely a meta-category and each individual species may be different over hundreds of millions of years) ... Ostrom's research in the 60s and 70s also re-ignited the debate whether Dinosaurs and Birds are related or not.


    So yeah Crichton consulted with John Ostrom about his research and his experiences looking for Dinosaurs in North America such as Deinonychus. Grants into about "a big turkey" with the kid is partly Crichton summarizing the idea shift that had happened over the last 25 years at the time. Well in their consultations Crichton tells Ostrom (over the phone) that he is going to rename the dinosaur and call it Velociraptor even though most of the inspiration in his book is based off Deinonychus. (links to source for that 2nd claim, read it in the author's own words not my summarization.)

    https://news.yale.edu/2015/06/18/yal...jurassic-world

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Let this be a warning to you all, this is what happens when someone mentions Jurassic Park around me.
    Why are you warning us about fun?
    Last edited by Ramza00; 2020-09-01 at 11:55 AM.
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