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Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

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Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#141

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

akira2501 wrote: post #51
Vecr wrote: post #44

One thing I don't understand about the movie, even after reading the screenplay etc. is why does Vincent claim the doctors knew the exact time of his death just seconds after he was born? They clearly don't and can't, given the entire rest of the movie. Are the doctors just reading out the exact middle of the probability distribution (or the time with the absolute highest probability), to way more precision than actu…

Isn't that the entire point of the movie? They /don't/ actually know even though they think they do, the entire society is built on hubris.

Good thing we would never fall for such an obvious thing.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#142

Post by GuB-42 »

college_physics wrote: post #84

There is a bit of survivorship bias. Sci-fi has imagined every possible universe, some of the predictions feel very close to what is transpiring. And if we focus entirely on the human stories behind technological facades or other cultural variability, some people claim that all possible stories have been written already.

I also think there is a negativity bias in effect here. I have noticed that dystopian stories like Gattaca always seem more realistic, even when they are not.

Look at 1984, it got almost all of the details wrong, and yet, many people say it is somehow visionary because it had a few things somewhat right. That's, I think, because almost all of it is negative, and because of that natural bias, we tend to think of these of more relevant.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#143

Post by Barrin92 »

naasking wrote: post #50
fallingknife wrote: post #33

I guess I never thought it was much more than a good movie. I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on. As a larger point about a dystopian future with discrimination based on genetic characteristics I don't think it works either. We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's…

> I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on. Why? Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect. Space travel is clearly quite routine in this future, so to put it in today's terms, would you forbid people with heart conditions from driving cars or trucks?

>Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect

we don't know that because the movie stops before we can figure that out. I went to school with a guy who had a medical condition that put him at risk of passing out, albeit rarely. but he could legally drive. Ended up having an episode and veering into the oncoming traffic and his 19 year old girlfriend ended up dead.

There's a potential less romantic ending to the movie where Vincent strokes out on the rocket and gets someone killed. The allegedly positive message of the film is that someone's self image is more important than even justified standards that exist to protect other people. Mind you in the film he even fakes his heart rate during a test and collapses afterwards, suggesting this is not some abstract form of discrimination.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#144

Post by skybrian »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #83
kanzure wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah let's hope parents don't get to choose a better life for their kids, watch out?

Well, the problem we deal with today is that parents--actually medical professionals--choose death for children rather than allow them to live out their lives. Zero children with Down Syndrome are born in Iceland. Why? Because physicians would rather end their lives as soon as they find out that they "suffer" from the condition. I placed "suffer" in quotes, because many of us are quite aware that people with Down Syn…

I think there's some status quo bias here? Seems like if Down's Syndrome didn't exist, someone who invented it and caused children to born with it would be considered a monster?

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#145

Post by eternalban »

anonporridge wrote: post #8

The great thing about Gattaca is that the cinematography ages incredibly well on top of the amazing plot. A lot of great sci-fi is marred by cheap effects that look incredibly dated only a decade later. Gattaca chose to focus on the story and create a minimalist future environment that still looks beautiful 25 years later.

> a minimalist future environment that still looks beautiful 25 years later.

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright a few decades ago, building started in 1960, so "~60 years later" /g

https://franklloydwright.org/site/marin-county-civic-center/

https://secretsanfrancisco.com/marin-county-civic-center-san...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_County_Civic_Center

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#146

Post by jart »

reducesuffering wrote: post #124

Isn't Gattaca already here? Another commenter mentioned 0 down syndrome children born in Iceland. Aren't we already doing embryo selection as prospective parents in "1st world" countries?

Iceland just has a high abortion rate. Selectively terminating births isn't quite the same thing as the genetic engineering and embryo manipulation that was going on in the Gattaca movie. There's even a quote from the movie that specifically addresses this, where that guy says, "you could conceive a million times naturally and never get such a result."

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#147

Post by cm2187 »

Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the best life for their children, that's pretty much their top priority. We don't like to frame it that way but we are already there with pre-natal tests. Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics. College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#148

Post by Vecr »

IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #140
naasking wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that very much. People can always be wilder than fiction. I'm not aware of any sci-fi that predated gender fluidity, for instance.

Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ (1997) and _Oceanic_ (1998) come to my mind. Of course not really predating, with what we now recognize as gender fluidity existing for thousands of years, but in any case early texts long before the notion rose to be widely known in our culture.

Those are probably written too late, I'd say they would need to be written in 1990 or before to really count as predicting anything. Though actually, if they predict it with more accuracy and say how common it is (so it's not just the one weird character being weird, but also not being anywhere close to everyone) that might be something as well.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#149

Post by ericmcer »

speed_spread wrote: post #82
ericmcer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did he get away with Idiocracy? I thought it was a good movie and somewhat prescient, but if you peel back the layers it is basically advocating some kind of population control or eugenics policy. Or it is just a comedy, but I hear it frequently cited as a dramatized version of a plausible future.

I see it more like advocating for quality public education, easy access to contraception, and accountability of the elites in guiding our civilization. And as an observation that we're still just monkeys with transistors.

Yeah I like this. It also showed a future where capitalism had driven us all the way to dumbed down and instantly gratifying everything.

Re: Gattaca is still pertinent 25 years later

#150

Post by mejutoco »

Filligree wrote: post #128
fallingknife wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go in an important space mission. edit: HN is rate limiting me so I can't reply, but to davesque's comment below: > no one wants to live in a world where their life and capabilities are pre-determined But we do live in that world. It was determined that I would nev…

> The part that I could never get over is that the discrimination against the main character actually made sense. He's trying to hide his heart condition to go in an important space mission. That's the part I also couldn't ever get over. He's shown to have a serious heart condition, and then cheats his way onto a space mission? Yes sure, discrimination bad and all that but— that's a human judgement. In actual fact, h…

Those are great points. To follow the argument: is a lion selfish when she kills a gazelle?

To me, the story is about individual struggle. Even if his behaviour is selfish, his life is richer than if he accepted the imposed limitations by others (imagine how boring that story would be, why is that).

In a way, he is following nature‘s rules (survival of the fittest), instead of the arbitrary deterministic society rules he lives in.

Ultimately, if we only cared about the good of the planet, we would probably choose to cease to exist. Up to a point, everyone alive is a bit selfish.

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