Random Banter #239 - Now 50% more tangible!

[Dame_Mechanus]

Imean, he was getting film roles because of his uncle, but he just didn't want anyone to assume that.

Early on in his career, definitely. Once he started having a library of his performances to draw from, less so. (I'm avowedly a fan of Cage's eclectic style.)

[LaZodiac]

Early on in his career, definitely. Once he started having a library of his performances to draw from, less so. (I'm avowedly a fan of Cage's eclectic style.)

Cage is a genuinely good actor and anyone that says otherwise is just, wrong, actually.

[Dame_Mechanus]

Cage is a genuinely good actor and anyone that says otherwise is just, wrong, actually.

Absolutely true. Cage is a very, very strange actor, but he is also a very good actor. He's even said in interviews that when he's pretty sure he's in a terrible movie he intentionally dials up his performance so that people watching him still have something to entertain. I love his style.

[Anonymouswizard]

Cage is a genuinely good actor and anyone that says otherwise is just, wrong, actually.

I've seen The Rock. He's decent, but he's no Sean Connery.

[LaZodiac]

Absolutely true. Cage is a very, very strange actor, but he is also a very good actor. He's even said in interviews that when he's pretty sure he's in a terrible movie he intentionally dials up his performance so that people watching him still have something to entertain. I love his style.

As well he should!

I've seen The Rock. He's decent, but he's no Sean Connery.

That was near the start of his career. He's gotten better. And that's an unfair comparison, no one is Sean Connery but Sean Connery

[Dame_Mechanus]

I've seen The Rock. He's decent, but he's no Sean Connery.

Excuse you, Nicolas Cage has at least two major advantages over Sean Connery:

1) Has never advocated hitting a woman to end an argument.

2) Acted in the terrible remake of the Wicker Man. (Having watched that whole awful film, I promise you, none of that makes more sense in context.)

EDIT TO ADD:

That was near the start of his career. He's gotten better. And that's an unfair comparison, no one is Sean Connery but Sean Connery

I mean, the start of his career also has Raising Arizona, Vampire's Kiss, and Wild at Heart; even though I think Wild at Heart is easily one of the weak links in David Lynch's filmography, I still think Cage gives an amazing performance in it. And within a few years of The Rock he did Matchstick Men, The Family Man (which manages at least to me to avoid being anodyne garbage mostly on the strength of his earnestness), City of Angels, Adaptation... Cage is an amazing presence in films.

[Rater202]

Popculture Trivia: In the early "Golden Age" of comics, x-ray vision and the "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" package were Superman's only powers and the upper limit of them. No flight, no arctic breath, and definitely no bench pressing planets.

And the explanation for them was that Krypton had a significantly higher gravity and an extremely dense atmosphere with "thick fog" being a common weather condition and those are the conditions that Kryptonians evolved under—X-Ray vision to help them see through the fog and the superhuman strength, speed, toughness, and stamina being byproducts of being in a much less dense atmosphere on a planet with far weaker gravity than the home planet.

Other than the X-Ray vision—which, in the golden age, was depicted as literally shooting x-rays out of his eyes*(not how that works at all) that actually makes a degree of logical sense... If you ignore that something that evolved under those conditions most likely would be short, stocky, quadrupedal if it had four limbs or with an arthropodic body plan if it had more, and most likely would not resemble a human.

Of course, it didn't stay like that for long. Superman is one of the most defining examples of Power Creep for a reason.

*He initially didn't have heat vision. He just deliberatly overexposed things to his X-Ray vision until the radiation burned it.

[LaZodiac]

Excuse you, Nicolas Cage has at least two major advantages over Sean Connery:

1) Has never advocated hitting a woman to end an argument.

2) Acted in the terrible remake of the Wicker Man. (Having watched that whole awful film, I promise you, none of that makes more sense in context.)

Both very good points!

Popculture Trivia: In the early "Golden Age" of comics, x-ray vision and the "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" package were Superman's only powers and the upper limit of them. No flight, no arctic breath, and definitely no bench pressing planets.

And the explanation for them was that Krypton had a significantly higher gravity and an extremely dense atmosphere with "thick fog" being a common weather condition and those are the conditions that Kryptonians evolved under—X-Ray vision to help them see through the fog and the superhuman strength, speed, toughness, and stamina being byproducts of being in a much less dense atmosphere on a planet with far weaker gravity than the home planet.

Other than the X-Ray vision—which, in the golden age, was depicted as literally shooting x-rays out of his eyes*(not how that works at all) that actually makes a degree of logical sense... If you ignore that something that evolved under those conditions most likely would be short, stocky, quadrupedal if it had four limbs or with an arthropodic body plan if it had more, and most likely would not resemble a human.

Of course, it didn't stay like that for long. Superman is one of the most defining examples of Power Creep for a reason.

*He initially didn't have heat vision. He just deliberatly overexposed things to his X-Ray vision until the radiation burned it.

So what you're saying is that Superman should be some sort of horrifying spider alien.

[Jasdoif]

And within a few years of The Rock he did Matchstick Men, The Family Man (which manages at least to me to avoid being anodyne garbage mostly on the strength of his earnestness), City of Angels, Adaptation... Cage is an amazing presence in films.

Is Guarding Tess a lesser known film? Mom and I have always liked it.

[Rater202]

Both very good points!



So what you're saying is that Superman should be some sort of horrifying spider alien.

Under the golden age explanation, yes.

He was almost literally an invasive species: Something transplanted into a new environment that thrives because its adaptations are overkill for its new environment and it lacks natural predators.

Something to note: Even in later continuities with the "yellow sunlight" explanation for his powers Krypton being a death world is still canon.

Sickness and injury were common enough on Post-Crisis that bulk-cloning the population for spare organs and tissue was considered a worthwhile investment(I don't know if everyone was cloned or just the upper classes but everyone who was cloned had three clones each) and Doomsday's origin story is that prior to the evolution of sentient life on Krypton, an Alien Scinectist took an otherwise ordinary infant with no powers, gave it the ability to rapidly mutate in response to physical harm so as to become immune to whatever harmed it, and left it to fend for itself in the Kryptonian wildnerness. Every time the baby died, he would retrieve the body, clone a new born from ti's DNA, artificially implant the memories of the previous iteration into the clone, and start over.

It took a dozen or so iterations before the baby was able to survive for more than a minute(and remember, each infant was immune to whatever killed the previous ones) and it was only the last iteration out of millions(where the infant evolved Doomdsay's iconic self-ressurection ability) that survived long enough to reach the end of adolescence.

...Doomsday's not evil. Doomsday never developed emotionally past infancy and the memories of millions of excruciating deaths have conditioned him to see literally everything as a threat that needs to be destroyed before it can harm him.

[Lord Raziere]

...Doomsday's not evil. Doomsday never developed emotionally past infancy and the memories of millions of excruciating deaths have conditioned him to see literally everything as a threat that needs to be destroyed before it can harm him.

Doomsday is the old Broly of DC: so cool, yet so dumb.

But at least his motivation makes more sense than "didn't like Goku crying"

[Rater202]

Doomsday is the old Broly of DC: so cool, yet so dumb.

In fairness, even this is a retcon.

In Doomsday's first appearance he was just a generic monster with no explanation of what he was or where he came from. The Superman writers had a storyline they wanted to tell but couldn't do it until later and created a "okay, Superman died, four people come out of the woodwork and try to replace him, we do some exploration of what it means to be Superman, and then the real Superman comes back to life and fixes everything" filler arc.

Then Doomsday tunred out to be decently popular so they brought him back and gave him a backstory.

[Lord Raziere]

In fairness, even this is a retcon.

In Doomsday's first appearance he was just a generic monster with no explanation of what he was or where he came from. The Superman writers had a storyline they wanted to tell but couldn't do it until later and created a "okay, Superman died, four people come out of the woodwork and try to replace him, we do some exploration of what it means to be Superman, and then the real Superman comes back to life and fixes everything" filler arc.

Then Doomsday tunred out to be decently popular so they brought him back and gave him a backstory.

Fair.

I just find the him constantly dying and being replaced as the dumbest part, its so inefficient and extra. he could be just as messed up if he survived all those experiences due to his adaptation ability until the self resurrection one, because then you can make the point that "even if Doomsday is the physical embodiment of what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, that does nothing to help him mentally speaking." not to saying that he couldn't have died during the backstory, just that it sounds a bit overused when more build up to him dying and coming back to life would probably be better, as well as look at a mentality about strength and examine why its not helpful or good even with superpowers built to take advantage of it.

[Rater202]

Fair.

I just find the him constantly dying and being replaced as the dumbest part, its so inefficient and extra. he could be just as messed up if he survived all those experiences due to his adaptation ability until the self resurrection one, because then you can make the point that "even if Doomsday is the physical embodiment of what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, that does nothing to help him mentally speaking." not to saying that he couldn't have died during the backstory, just that it sounds a bit overused when more build up to him dying and coming back to life would probably be better, as well as look at a mentality about strength and examine why its not helpful or good even with superpowers built to take advantage of it.

To be fair the pointless cruelty of the experiment that created Doomsday was played for horror.

Like, other scientists working with and under Bertron, the creator, were all like "seriously, what the hell is wrong with you" and "God damn what the hell is wrong with you" and "you know if he ever gets into this lab he's going to kill us all, right? And he'd be correct to do so, you're a monster and we're all monsters by association with this project" and "why the hell are we even doing this?"

Also, double checking, I was somewhat mistaken—there was sapient life on Krypton prior to the evolution of Kryptonians but they went extinct. Both Bertron and pre-mutation Doomsday were of this species.

It isn't stated outright, but Bertron from just his one single appearance hits all of the markers of a low-functioning sociopath. He wanted to create the ultimate killing machine and ignored every last moral, ethical, and logical reason why he shouldn't do it and do it the way he wanted to do it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Ah, Primeval. You know in retrospect this might be a better show than the era of Doctor Who it was designed to compete against. It certainly gets bonus points for being a very different show despite revolving around time travel. Sadly there's only five series, so this isn't going to last long.

[Dame_Mechanus]

Is Guarding Tess a lesser known film? Mom and I have always liked it.

I enjoyed it but I don't personally think it's one of his better roles? Of course, he acts in so many films that a lot of that is going to be in the eyes of the beholder.

...wow, I really do watch a lot of movies now that I think about it.

[Peelee]

I've seen The Rock. He's decent, but he's no Sean Connery.

Truemane and I had a mini Cage-a-thon. My favorite Cage movie that he hadn't seen and his favorite Cage movie tbaf I hadn't seen.

Check out Lord of War and Pig if you have the time and inclination. Cage is very good. He just sometimes picks really weird stuff, like Face/Off. But hey, he's got more money than I do, so I can't knock his choices.

[BisectedBrioche]

Popculture Trivia: In the early "Golden Age" of comics, x-ray vision and the "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" package were Superman's only powers and the upper limit of them. No flight, no arctic breath, and definitely no bench pressing planets.

And the explanation for them was that Krypton had a significantly higher gravity and an extremely dense atmosphere with "thick fog" being a common weather condition and those are the conditions that Kryptonians evolved under—X-Ray vision to help them see through the fog and the superhuman strength, speed, toughness, and stamina being byproducts of being in a much less dense atmosphere on a planet with far weaker gravity than the home planet.

Other than the X-Ray vision—which, in the golden age, was depicted as literally shooting x-rays out of his eyes*(not how that works at all) that actually makes a degree of logical sense... If you ignore that something that evolved under those conditions most likely would be short, stocky, quadrupedal if it had four limbs or with an arthropodic body plan if it had more, and most likely would not resemble a human.

Of course, it didn't stay like that for long. Superman is one of the most defining examples of Power Creep for a reason.

*He initially didn't have heat vision. He just deliberatly overexposed things to his X-Ray vision until the radiation burned it.

There is a reason many a scifi setting has justified fantasy dwarves with high gravity planets.

[Peelee]

Welp, I'm devastated today. I forgot to complete my Wordle yesterday and ruined a 192-day streak

[Rater202]

The Uncanny Valley effect is a phenomenon wherein humans are more likely to trust of be comfortable with something if it looks or acts humanlike, scaling upward... Unless it's a little too human while clearly not being a literal human or else could easily pass for human if its behavior wasn't... Off.

The classic example of this would be say, a walking corpse. A fresh one. It looks human but it doens't move the way a human is supposed to, and that's part of what makes zombies scary. If they were just mindless thugs or flesh-eating predators they'd be no differant from a robot or a pack of starving wolves.

But you also see it in things like... A movie or video game that made the CGI models f the characters a little too photo-realistic. Especially early CG. Or that reality show where people go on blind dates in makeup and prosthetics to look like anthropomorphic animals(so they can't judge by appearance) and the costume designers clearly have never even heard of furries.

I'm far from the first person to bring this up, but... The fact that most humans have this instinct would imply that at some point in our evolutionary history we had a predator or competitor whose whole schtick was imitating us/our ancestors long enough to get us to lower our guard.

We have no record of such things existing, outside of myths.

The only saving grace is that other primates also exhibit this tendency so the predator must have come relatively early in our evolutionary history. A predator that can convincingly fool a monkey is a lot more plausible, and less terrifying than one that can convincingly pass for humans.

[Peelee]

The Uncanny Valley effect is a phenomenon wherein humans are more likely to trust of be comfortable with something if it looks or acts humanlike, scaling upward... Unless it's a little too human while clearly not being a literal human or else could easily pass for human if its behavior wasn't... Off.

The classic example of this would be say, a walking corpse. A fresh one. It looks human but it doens't move the way a human is supposed to, and that's part of what makes zombies scary. If they were just mindless thugs or flesh-eating predators they'd be no differant from a robot or a pack of starving wolves.

But you also see it in things like... A movie or video game that made the CGI models f the characters a little too photo-realistic. Especially early CG. Or that reality show where people go on blind dates in makeup and prosthetics to look like anthropomorphic animals(so they can't judge by appearance) and the costume designers clearly have never even heard of furries.

I'm far from the first person to bring this up, but... The fact that most humans have this instinct would imply that at some point in our evolutionary history we had a predator or competitor whose whole schtick was imitating us/our ancestors long enough to get us to lower our guard.

We have no record of such things existing, outside of myths.

The only saving grace is that other primates also exhibit this tendency so the predator must have come relatively early in our evolutionary history.

Zombies aren't really in the uncanny Valley. They're scary because they're supposed to be dead and are seemingly not.

That aside, there's no implication that we had any such predator. We're excellent at recognizing human faces and features. Show someone five different headshots, then another five headshots, and the person will be able to say if the people in the second group are the same or different from the first group. Change the people to gorillas or chimpanzees and this becomes significantly harder. Birds? Forget about it, you'll be lucky to tell there are five different birds in the first group.

Conversely, show an image of someone and a sketch of a person and we can tell real from fake. Easy peasy.

Now you take someone who looks real but not quite, there's something just barely fake about it but it still triggers our hyper-vigilance in noticing real people but contrasts with something not being real that we can't quite out our finger on, and that is what is unsettling. The unknown part, the part that we can't quite figure out what is wrong with it.

Humans fear the unnkown. Our biggest advantage is being able to know things. Unknown is scary. That's the Uncanny Valley. It's just a super specific version of our fear of the unknown.

[Rater202]

Zombies aren't really in the uncanny Valley. They're scary because they're supposed to be dead and are seemingly not.

. I did specify a fresh one. The ones that you could confuse for a sick perfeon i

That aside, there's no implication that we had any such predator. We're excellent at recognizing human faces and features. Show someone five different headshots, then another five headshots, and the person will be able to say if the people in the second group are the same or different from the first group. Change the people to gorillas or chimpanzees and this becomes significantly harder. Birds? Forget about it, you'll be lucky to tell there are five different birds in the first group.

Conversely, show an image of someone and a sketch of a person and we can tell real from fake. Easy peasy.

Now you take someone who looks real but not quite, there's something just barely fake about it but it still triggers our hyper-vigilance in noticing real people but contrasts with something not being real that we can't quite out our finger on, and that is what is unsettling. The unknown part, the part that we can't quite figure out what is wrong with it.

Humans fear the unnkown. Our biggest advantage is being able to know things. Unknown is scary. That's the Uncanny Valley. It's just a super specific version of our fear of the unknown.[/QUOTE]

The problem with that theory is that the Uncanny Valley effect has been observed in several apes and monkeys, and not every ape or monkey has human level facial recognition—there are monkeys that can't recognize themselves in a mirror.

Which would indicate that an early primate ancestor either had to deal with such a predator... Or that facial recognition on human or greater level was possessed by the primordial primate ancestor but lost over time.

Which is certainly possible but I think that a now extinct predator is slightly more likly. Facial recgnition is a benificial trait with lo resource requirements.

[Fyraltari]

I'm far from the first person to bring this up, but... The fact that most humans have this instinct would imply that at some point in our evolutionary history we had a predator or competitor whose whole schtick was imitating us/our ancestors long enough to get us to lower our guard.

No, it doesn't.

First off, just because you can come up with an evolutionnary psychology explanation for a phenomenon doesn't mean, it's the truth. You need some sort of evidence to go with it. Besides, evolutionnary psychology is very overrated.

The thing is, our brains are pattern-seeking machines. When interacting with other human beings, we are subconsciously looking for and recognizing a huge numbers of patterns (tone of voice, body language, stuff like that) to get a better understanding of the person in front of us.

Things in the uncanny valley look human enough to trigger these pattern-searching processes but not human enough for them to find anything usable. As a result we get contradictory information: "This person is a human that does not behave like a human" which creates unease or even fear.

Something similar is (part of) the reason why neurotypical people find it frustrating to interact with neuroatypical people (and vice-versa). Neuroatypical people aren't in the uncanny valley, but because they have a harder time interprating the unconscious cues the other party is giving off and responding in kind, there's a whole level of communication that isn't happening where the the neurotypical person expects it to be.

[Peelee]

. I The problem with that theory is that the Uncanny Valley effect has been observed in several apes and monkeys, and not every ape or monkey has human level facial recognition—there are monkeys that can't recognize themselves in a mirror.

That's not a lack facial recognition, that's a lack of sense of self. Most animals don't recognize themselves in a mirror, and it tends to be a really big deal when we discover an animal does. Last I heard dolphins are right on the cusp of it, which would make four species total, of all the ones we've tested. Until then, it's only three - humans, chimps, and another primate, I forget which.

Most animals can tell members of their own species fairly well. Also, everything I can find says that primates are incredibly good at facial recognition and it also plays an important role in their sociological development. Can you source where you found primates don't have good facial recognition abilities? And also that those same species experience the uncanny valley?

[Form]

I'm far from the first person to bring this up, but... The fact that most humans have this instinct would imply that at some point in our evolutionary history we had a predator or competitor whose whole schtick was imitating us/our ancestors long enough to get us to lower our guard.

You might enjoy the film Mimic if you want to watch something that explored this concept a little bit:

Spoiler: Mimic

Show

In Mimic genetically engineered insects have grown and evolved in such a way as to be able to mimic humans so as to better prey on them.

Now you take someone who looks real but not quite, there's something just barely fake about it but it still triggers our hyper-vigilance in noticing real people but contrasts with something not being real that we can't quite out our finger on, and that is what is unsettling. The unknown part, the part that we can't quite figure out what is wrong with it.

Humans fear the unnkown. Our biggest advantage is being able to know things. Unknown is scary. That's the Uncanny Valley. It's just a super specific version of our fear of the unknown.

I'm not so sure. There are examples where it's fairly obvious what's wrong with a human look alike, but they can still be pretty unsettling. See some people's fear of dolls or clowns for example.

As for explaining the reason for the Uncanny Valley, I wouldn't be surprised if there's already some psychological research out there that has looked into this.

[Peelee]

I'm not so sure. There are examples where it's fairly obvious what's wrong with a human look alike, but they can still be pretty unsettling. See some people's fear of dolls or clowns for example.

Sure, but those aren't the uncanny valley. UV is a very specific unsettlement. It's not even quite a fear, it's just a sense of unease.

[Form]

Sure, but those aren't the uncanny valley. UV is a very specific unsettlement. It's not even quite a fear, it's just a sense of unease.

Erhm, feels like we're splitting hairs here, to be honest.

[Peelee]

Erhm, feels like we're splitting hairs here, to be honest.

Imean, even if we call it a fear, it's still a different fear than if clowns or dolls. It's like saying fear of heights is the same as fear of open water becuase they both have really big drops to solid ground. Sure, there's some similarities, but theyre different fears.

[Rater202]

First off, just because you can come up with an evolutionnary psychology explanation for a phenomenon doesn't mean, it's the truth. You need some sort of evidence to go with it. Besides, evolutionnary psychology is very overrated.

I don't think it's overrated so much as there's a tendency among some people to over-emphasize evolutionary psychology or use it as the sole explanation for all of human behavior.

It's not, humans are very complex and our psyches are basically a labyrinth, but when talking about things like a relatively basic instinct, a fight or flight reaction to a stimulus, evolutionary necessity is a likely explanation.

If the instinct to fear things that register as "like us but not us" wasn't necessary at some point it either would have been discarded as an evolutionary chafe or it would be a random quirk resent in some but not most of the population like a third nipple or the ability to fold your tongue depending on whether or not it was actively detrimental.

Barring, of course, the fringe scenario of primordial primates going through some kind of genetic bottleneck scenario and it being a only the individuals that have this trait that survived by shear coincidence which is plausible but unlikly.

Beyond that "would imply" is not "this is certan" or even "this is most likly." It just raises it as a plausible scenario.

Admittedly "could" imply maybe would have gotten that across more clearly.

and another primate

If I'm remembering the documentary I saw as a kid correctly then it might be Orangutan...

...Of course, now that I think about it may have been less "does it recognize itself in the mirror" and more "does it recognize that the image in the mirror isn't real" so I'm gonna retract that part of my argument.

[Dame_Mechanus]

The part of this theory (which I've seen go around a few times) that always trips me up is the implication that something looked almost human but not quite human and it resulted in a species-wide fear of something that's just a little shy of humans. All right, that's fine theory there, but wouldn't that also mean that said predator was pretty bad at mimicry? Like, just basic logic implies that all of the humans still alive were the ones able to spot this hypothetical mimic and avoid it, hence why the Uncanny Valley is a pretty universal thing.

Or, you know, it would imply that there's another explanation for the Uncanny Valley aside from "we had a predator who used to look like this." That one seems more plausible.