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Antti posted:I do! Outer Limits is great for those stinger endings where the message was essentially that yo, humans suck. That one was exceptionally ham-handed for even that show, though. Anyone know which ep?
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Sep 19, 2016 19:18
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the best episode is the one where the crew of some ship didn't realize they were turned around and destroyed Earth. i wish more movies had outer limits twists.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:16
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Groovelord Neato posted:the best episode is the one where the crew of some ship didn't realize they were turned around and destroyed Earth. "Charge of the Light Brigade", I think.
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Sep 25, 2016 18:18
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Is anyone here aware of or interested at all with the ARG associated with this movie?
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Sep 25, 2016 21:07
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Man. This movie is really, really good. Like, exceptionally so.
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Oct 11, 2016 13:47
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DickBastardly posted:Is anyone here aware of or interested at all with the ARG associated with this movie? I'm not but wish to be.
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Oct 12, 2016 01:12
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Snapes N Snapes posted:I'm not but wish to be. I tried to join this ARG forum to play the ARG and unravel the mystery, but I never received my activation code and the admin never responded to my email. The site seems semi-defunct, but is the best amalgamation of data regarding the ARG that is updated regularly. So I came here to see if anyone else knows of or has another place to discuss it. Discord maybe?
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Oct 12, 2016 13:13
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Groovelord Neato posted:the best episode is the one where the crew of some ship didn't realize they were turned around and destroyed Earth. My personal favourite twist was in the episode where there's this space pilot or whatever languishing in an alien prison cell and there's this woman with him they keep taking away and experimenting on, as if they're trying to change her into one of them. Eventually she suffers so much and becomes so disfigured that it looks like she's about to die, so to give her hope he divulges their secret plan to destroy the alien armada, at which point she calmly walks out of the prison with an alien guard standing by and says something like, "Oh by the way, they're not changing me. They're changing me back." This movie looks great by the way. I haven't read the book, but linguistics is an interest of mine, and anything bringing that and sci-fi together must be a good thing.
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Oct 19, 2016 06:31
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Drunk in Space posted:My personal favourite twist was in the episode where there's this space pilot or whatever languishing in an alien prison cell and there's this woman with him they keep taking away and experimenting on, as if they're trying to change her into one of them. Eventually she suffers so much and becomes so disfigured that it looks like she's about to die, so to give her hope he divulges their secret plan to destroy the alien armada, at which point she calmly walks out of the prison with an alien guard standing by and says something like, "Oh by the way, they're not changing me. They're changing me back." I think that this is the first episode of a kinda two-parter, where the "whoops we got turned around" is the sequel.
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Oct 20, 2016 00:52
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So I read The Story of Your Life and didn't understand it. I don't know if someone can explain it? Or I guess I can wait for the movie.
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Oct 21, 2016 01:44
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im gay posted:So I read The Story of Your Life and didn't understand it. I don't know if someone can explain it? Or I guess I can wait for the movie. Obviously spoilers. So unlike us, the primary form of alien communication is written instead of spoken. The writing system uses a single symbol to convey an entire thought and it can't really be easily separated into bits. You have to conceive of the entire thought at once instead of stringing things together lineally. The main character gets so into the system working on it that she begins to think exactly like them. She can now see her entire experience from birth to death laid out before her. That's why the tenses are all hosed up and it keeps jumping around time wise. Apparently thinking like this also locks you into never trying to change the future or mentioning it to anyone or ever trying to do anything but act out your part because the story is actually kind of dumb.
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Oct 21, 2016 07:18
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How the hell does a system of writing let you see the future? Christ this movie sounds dumb.
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Oct 26, 2016 19:22
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Drunk in Space posted:My personal favourite twist was in the episode where there's this space pilot or whatever languishing in an alien prison cell and there's this woman with him they keep taking away and experimenting on, as if they're trying to change her into one of them. Eventually she suffers so much and becomes so disfigured that it looks like she's about to die, so to give her hope he divulges their secret plan to destroy the alien armada, at which point she calmly walks out of the prison with an alien guard standing by and says something like, "Oh by the way, they're not changing me. They're changing me back." I loved those late 90s Outer Limits episodes, there was a particularly memorable one about people being stuck in these bunkers who had to periodically press a button to prevent a nuclear launch against these invading aliens, and at the end its revealed that the aliens had already taken control and were using mind-parasited humans to convince the last remaining dude that humans were winning the war. That show owned bones
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Oct 26, 2016 20:57
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banned from Starbucks posted:How the hell does a system of writing let you see the future? Christ this movie sounds dumb. The short story is a mess, so the question is whether Eric Heisserer (screenplay writer) and Villeneuve managed to salvage something from it. The problem isn't even that thinking like an alien means gaining a new perspective on time, but rather that the story takes the laziest possible cop-out with the idea and has everyone who can see the future being magically compelled to pretend that they have free will and carry out the future that they perceive. Just a complete wreck and unusually half-baked for Ted Chiang, who's usually known for holding onto a story, for years even, until he can get it right. And so, of course, that's the one that gets adapted.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:04
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The point is actually that only the perspective has changed, the idea of free will is an artifact of a perspective based on cause-and-effect. She's perceiving time as Dr. Manhattan does in The Watchmen; she isn't 'seeing the future,' she's experiencing the present and the future simultaneously.
Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 03:02
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Hodgepodge posted:The point is actually that only the perspective has changed, the idea of free will is an artifact of a perspective based on cause-and-effect. She's perceiving time as Dr. Manhattan does in The Watchmen; she isn't 'seeing the future,' she's experiencing the present and the future simultaneously. Right, but she doesn't act like she's experiencing the present and the future simultaneously. Dr. Manhattan discusses the nature of his consciousness with the people around him. The cop out, to me, is that the story doesn't reconcile the claim that she can't act on her new perspective and the fact that she is still generating an inner narrative regarding her new perspective.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:34
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Sir Kodiak posted:The short story is a mess, so the question is whether Eric Heisserer (screenplay writer) and Villeneuve managed to salvage something from it. The problem isn't even that thinking like an alien means gaining a new perspective on time, but rather that the story takes the laziest possible cop-out with the idea and has everyone who can see the future being magically compelled to pretend that they have free will and carry out the future that they perceive. Just a complete wreck and unusually half-baked for Ted Chiang, who's usually known for holding onto a story, for years even, until he can get it right. And so, of course, that's the one that gets adapted. It got adapted because it's good. Ted Chiang's stories are way more fantasy/magical realism than sci fi.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:52
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porfiria posted:It got adapted because it's good. Ted Chiang's stories are way more fantasy/magical realism than sci fi. I don't think they have to be one thing or the other, and I don't think trying to draw those lines is particularly relevant to what I was saying.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:59
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Sir Kodiak posted:I don't think they have to be one thing or the other, and I don't think trying to draw those lines is particularly relevant to what I was saying. Prescience is like the only concept in fiction more nonsensical than time travel--take it as a metaphor for the fact that in real life we do stuff even though we know everything always ends in horrendous suffering and death (I think that was the angle I haven't read it in a while).
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Oct 27, 2016 04:03
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porfiria posted:Prescience is like the only concept in fiction more nonsensical than time travel--take it as a metaphor for the fact that in real life we do stuff even though we know everything always ends in horrendous suffering and death (I think that was the angle I haven't read it in a while). It is certainly an element of the story that it includes a woman who looks at her infant daughter and thinks about her lying mangled at the bottom of a cliff. That makes it more of a horror piece that I had originally thought of it as, and maybe I owe it a re-read from that perspective.
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Oct 27, 2016 04:18
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Sir Kodiak posted:Right, but she doesn't act like she's experiencing the present and the future simultaneously. Dr. Manhattan discusses the nature of his consciousness with the people around him. The cop out, to me, is that the story doesn't reconcile the claim that she can't act on her new perspective and the fact that she is still generating an inner narrative regarding her new perspective. I'd have to double check, but I think Dr. Manhattan's perception of time is only really conveyed to the reader. He mentions that Veidt's tachyon field allows him to experience uncertainty for the first time since his transformation, but even then the joke is implicitly that it didn't accomplish anything but creating that sensation. Like, the Comedian knows that he could have stopped the fight that ended with the pregnant Vietnamese woman killed, but not even the Comedian realizes that Manhattan walked into that bar knowing that the fight and murder were going to happen. Manhattan always speaks and acts as if he were only perceiving the present- like when at the end, he says he "thinks he will go create some [humans]." He's known that he would leave and presumably do so for the entire story. His perception of time never affects his choices. Even more to the point, he walks into the interview where he's ambushed with the cancer allegations knowing that he's going to presented with those allegations and be caught off guard by them. He has his conversation with Laurie knowing her arguments and that she will convince him to return. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 04:30
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Hodgepodge posted:I'd have to double check, but I think Dr. Manhattan's perception of time is only really conveyed to the reader. He mentions that Veidt's tachyon field allows him to experience uncertainty for the first time since his transformation, but even then the joke is implicitly that it didn't accomplish anything but creating that sensation. Like, the Comedian knows that he could have stopped the fight that ended with the pregnant Vietnamese woman killed, but not even the Comedian realizes that Manhattan walked into that bar knowing that the fight and murder were going to happen. Manhattan always speaks and acts as if he were only perceiving the present- like when at the end, he says he "thinks he will go create some [humans]." He's known that he would leave and presumably do so for the entire story. His perception of time never affects his choices. Even more to the point, he walks into the interview where he's ambushed with the cancer allegations knowing that he's going to presented with those allegations and be caught off guard by them. He has his conversation with Laurie knowing her arguments and that she will convince him to return. I haven't read the book in forever, but in the movie he talks about how he can perceive his own past and future when he's doing the TV interview. And Rorschach stops by to visit him because he wants him to look into his own future to see if the Comedian's killer is ever revealed.
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Oct 27, 2016 04:48
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Sir Kodiak posted:I haven't read the book in forever, but in the movie he talks about how he can perceive his own past and future when he's doing the TV interview. And Rorschach stops by to visit him because he wants him to look into his own future to see if the Comedian's killer is ever revealed. Sadly, I don't have the movie, and my copy of the book is in a box somewhere at the moment. I'm fairly certain that if he does discuss his perception of time in the book, it's only with Laurie on Mars.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:02
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Just looked at the relevant parts of The Story of Your Life, though, and the problem isn't that people who know Heptapod B can't speak about it, it's that they can only do so if the conversation where they explain the Heptapod perception of time is going to take place. "For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place." The main character does conclude that "Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it." But that only holds true as long as her future doesn't include a conversation in which she discusses her perspective of the future. She'd likely have to convey those ideas to an extent in order to teach students Heptapod B, though; its just that actually conveying her perspective properly teaches the student to share that perspective. The crux of matter is that you can't translate knowledge between the casual and teleological perspectives. The story does make one major error though; it talks about how the fundamental laws of physics are time-symmetric. My understanding is that this is true, but that's misleading. Thermodynamic interactions, which is the realm in which our experiences take place, are largely not time-symmetric.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:25
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Hodgepodge posted:The crux of matter is that you can't translate knowledge between the casual and teleological perspectives. Except, you can, because the story talks about how she and the heptapods engage in a conversation despite knowing how it's going to turn out. That speaks to them possessing a particular knowledge of the future at a particular point in time. That's a translation from the teleological perspective to the causal one. The narrator possesses a sequence of thoughts (causal) that contains information about the teleological perspective.
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Oct 27, 2016 06:01
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Sir Kodiak posted:Except, you can, because the story talks about how she and the heptapods engage in a conversation despite knowing how it's going to turn out. That speaks to them possessing a particular knowledge of the future at a particular point in time. That's a translation from the teleological perspective to the causal one. The narrator possesses a sequence of thoughts (causal) that contains information about the teleological perspective. Except that she possesses that understanding insofar as she thinks the way the Heptapods do, and their thoughts are even more embedded in that mode of thinking. The ideas are framed as causal thoughts because the story is expressed in our language. Her conversations with them took place in their language.
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Oct 27, 2016 07:06
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Hodgepodge posted:Except that she possesses that understanding insofar as she thinks the way the Heptapods do, and their thoughts are even more embedded in that mode of thinking. The ideas are framed as causal thoughts because the story is expressed in our language. Her conversations with them took place in their language. "After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years in duration, and though they didn't arrive in order or land contiguously, they soon composed a period of five decades." She talks about the experience in causal consciousness of remembering the future, which she distinguishes from times when her consciousness itself is teleological: "Usually, Heptapod B affects just my memory: my consciousness crawls along as it did before, a glowing sliver crawling forward in time, the difference being that the ash of memory lies ahead as well as behind: there is no real combustion. But occasionally I have glimpses when Heptapod B truly reigns, and I experience past and future all at once; my consciousness becomes a half-century-long ember burning outside time."
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Oct 27, 2016 07:17
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Hodgepodge posted:The story does make one major error though; it talks about how the fundamental laws of physics are time-symmetric. My understanding is that this is true, but that's misleading. Thermodynamic interactions, which is the realm in which our experiences take place, are largely not time-symmetric. Only (probably) because the universe began highly ordered and with a lot of free energy. The second law of thermodynamics is an artifact of the initial conditions of the universe. There are other arrows of time and most are either similarly illusory/coincidental or poorly understood. It's still a subject of lots of debate and even very bright physicists struggle with conceptualizing the whole thing.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:58
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banned from Starbucks posted:How the hell does a system of writing let you see the future? Christ this movie sounds dumb. why would an alien species have a system of writing and if they had a system of writing how could it even be possible to decipher by a human being.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:43
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The trailer looked interesting, but the idea of being presented with an alien language, and then trying to solve it by having one person who is 'the best' at decoding languages having a go at it alone is just so annoying. Let's solve cancer by defunding everyone except one person who is 'the best' at researching cancer.
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Nov 7, 2016 10:27
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kanonvandekempen posted:The trailer looked interesting, but the idea of being presented with an alien language, and then trying to solve it by having one person who is 'the best' at decoding languages having a go at it alone is just so annoying. It's a movie.
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Nov 8, 2016 04:30
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Groovelord Neato posted:why would an alien species have a system of writing and if they had a system of writing how could it even be possible to decipher by a human being. Because why wouldn't they and read the story to definitely find the answer/watch the movie to probably find the answer.
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Nov 9, 2016 14:00
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kanonvandekempen posted:The trailer looked interesting, but the idea of being presented with an alien language, and then trying to solve it by having one person who is 'the best' at decoding languages having a go at it alone is just so annoying. Unless they changed it to be different in the movie, the aliens set up communication in many countries, and each of those countries has multiple teams working and sharing information.
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Nov 9, 2016 15:59
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^^ this is what it is in the movie too
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Nov 9, 2016 18:30
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I haven't seen this movie yet, but this thread makes me want to go re-watch The Outer Limits. Is there a thread somewhere on the forums for stuff like Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc?
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Nov 9, 2016 22:01
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Rough Lobster posted:Because why wouldn't they and read the story to definitely find the answer/watch the movie to probably find the answer. an alien species would probably communicate in a much different way than we do and may not even have vision.
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Nov 9, 2016 23:42
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Groovelord Neato posted:an alien species would probably communicate in a much different way than we do and may not even have vision. Very interesting, good, good.
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Nov 10, 2016 04:21
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Saw the movie tonight and I wholeheartedly recommend it. I haven't read the short story as in to not spoil myself, but I feel like based on the spoiler tags in this thread it stays pretty true to it. I went in expecting a lot based on the trailer and early reviews and came out satisfied. Great movie, happy to have paid money to see it early.
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Nov 10, 2016 04:29
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I liked this one quite a bit, though there are parts of it (especially the news reports and a few bits of dialogue here and there) that feel weirdly amateurish. The voice-over segment felt really out of place, too. Audience at the theater haaaated it, and I think that's going to be the general response to it. Can't say too much else without spoiling stuff. I read the story a while back and I kinda wish I hadn't because I'm honestly not sure how much that changed my perception / understanding of the movie. Definitely recommend it - it's a very different movie regardless of how you end up taking it, which is reason enough to give it a watch. If you go into it with a hard sci-fi mindset and try to pick apart the technical stuff you are probably not going to like it.
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Nov 10, 2016 06:17
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Groovelord Neato posted:an alien species would probably communicate in a much different way than we do and may not even have vision. What if..what if aliens are just made out of like gas man, and they speak in colours and exist in all 20 dimensions. They'd be totally beyond our understanding and poo poo, makes you think.
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Nov 10, 2016 10:08
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