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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

11–20 of 253 posts

Re: The Plumber Problem

#11
This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias.

I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet everyone still seemed happy to trust the accuracy of the other articles being reported.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#12
post #4

Yeah you need a better name for that, because, while the phenomenon is real, the name is kind of meh. Why not the electrician problem? Or the teacher problem? Any profession would work. Why plumbers? Plus, I can't really recall any movie or novel where expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot. Editing here because based on some replies my message wasn't clear: I was talking about expertise in plumbing exhibite…

or just, "The Expert Problem"

Re: The Plumber Problem

#13
This seems to be the case with virtually any profession. You have to just learn to live with it, mostly, maybe even laugh at it. It was damn near a pasttime when I was still in the Army to make fun of how the military is portrayed in film and television. Basic as fuck shit like almost no one even has a haircut that meets regulations. It also makes you doubly appreciate when someone gets it right. We all loved Band of Brothers for that. At least the first season of Mr. Robot stands out in light of so many ridiculous and shitty "hacker" portrayals. Having worked on classified projects is even worse. After working for the NRO for years, scenes of people willy-nilly taking over satellites are so silly you just have to take it as part of the way that fictional universe works, clearly unlike the real universe. The Mission Impossible movies are still pretty entertaining in spite of it.

Honestly, probably the worst thing I can recall is the first season of The Walking Dead when Rick hides inside of a tank turret. I was a tank commander back in my time. Do television writers really think there is that much space inside the turret?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#14
post #5
post #3

At the end of the movie Gladiator(2000), Maximus has a vision of being reunited with his family as he walks through a field of wheat. However the wheat is clearly a modern dwarf variety. These weren't developed until the mechanization of agriculture in the 20th century. Ancient varieties would have been taller because the stalks were used as a building material.

Not to mention the road had 2 groves not 3.

Do horse drawn vehicles make 3 grooves (I assume that's what you were alluding to)? I'd expect it would just be a wide band of pretty bare ground with two grooves inset from the edges?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#15
post #4

Yeah you need a better name for that, because, while the phenomenon is real, the name is kind of meh. Why not the electrician problem? Or the teacher problem? Any profession would work. Why plumbers? Plus, I can't really recall any movie or novel where expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot. Editing here because based on some replies my message wasn't clear: I was talking about expertise in plumbing exhibite…

The dull name kind of emphasizes how it applies to practically any field of knowledge, AND how it often has no plot significance. The plumbing example given was just an anachronism in the set design.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#16
post #11

This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet everyone still seemed happy to trust the acc…

When people display this kind of blindness to real-world media the term for it is https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect

Re: The Plumber Problem

#17
post #11

This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet everyone still seemed happy to trust the acc…

Actually, this is an even bigger one after working on classified intelligence projects. Being able to watch in real time what is actually happening in some place a news reporter is speculating about and get wildly wrong makes you despair to the point of wondering what they're ever right about. It's even worse to come on a place like Hacker News and see the kinds of wildly wrong things people believe or speculate on, which is doubly frustrating because you can't even legally correct it or even say you know they're wrong.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#18
post #4

Yeah you need a better name for that, because, while the phenomenon is real, the name is kind of meh. Why not the electrician problem? Or the teacher problem? Any profession would work. Why plumbers? Plus, I can't really recall any movie or novel where expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot. Editing here because based on some replies my message wasn't clear: I was talking about expertise in plumbing exhibite…

> Plus, I can't really recall any movie or novel where expertise in plumbing was essential to the plot.

That's the point, expertise in an area can completely distract from the plot entirely. I can't even watch anything medical-related with my wife since she'll get annoyed about inaccuracies and start complaining about them. Doesn't matter how unrelated to the actual plot it is.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#19
In the Matrix humanity is enslaved to use them as an energy source.

But the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that any energy harvested would be, by definition, less than the energy of the food required to sustain their bodies.

Therefore the plot makes no sense, because they should just shovel the food directly into the computer and skip the humans.

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