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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#101

Post by takinola »

I once saw the movie Armageddon in the movie theatre onboard a drilling rig. The heads of everyone in the audience collectively exploded watching the drilling scenes (both on earth and in space).

Fun fact: In the DVD commentary, there's a point where Ben Affleck asks Michael Bay why it would be easier to train drillers to become astronauts than it would be to train astronauts to become drillers. If I remember correctly, Michael Bay's response was something to the effect of "well, there would be no movie if that was the case so shut the hell up!"

Re: The Plumber Problem

#102

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dragontamer wrote: post #80
ta573957294 wrote: post #54

In the movie 300, after Leonidas and the 300 decide to march North towards Thermopylae. The valley & mountains in the background are REALLY from Sparta, Grecet. The producers made had sent crews to take enough photos and videos of the valleygt to accurately portrait the landscape. It was eerie to watch the movie (I grew up in Sparta) and see the mountains all around as they really are. BUT (big but here) they march S…

Honestly, my brain turned off the moment I remembered that Spartains were known for their heavy armor and not for dressing up like Chippendales dancers / male strippers.

SPARTANS, WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?

> the spartans start gyrating

Re: The Plumber Problem

#103

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dbrueck wrote: post #83
ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Yes, this drives me crazy. I particularly hate the trope where the plot hinges on two characters having a huge misunderstanding that would be resolved by a 5 second conversation.

"Ooh so I DON'T have to kill half the universe's population because some go hungry?"

"...oh you mean I could also just... give everyone enough food with a snap of the finger?"

Re: The Plumber Problem

#104

Post by Cthulhu_ »

motohagiography wrote: post #87

This plumber problem is not just for movies. It's very difficult to go along with any narrative when its errors offend your competence. It's also why technically competent people tend not to prevail in narrative driven companies or institutions, which is pretty much all of them. Just watch the movie and sustain the dissonance.

I for one am going to write a GUI in Visual Basic to track the hacker's IP.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#105

Post by Cthulhu_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #86
JohnMakin wrote: post #73

Every computer movie with a hacker ever: hacker opens an excel spreadsheet and types in a bunch of gibberish "I'm in the mainframe."

For decades, computers in movies, despite writing text to the screen, would make a sound like an ASR-33 electro-mechanical tty ka-chunking out each character.

That probably explains why mechanical keyboards got popular - computers are cooler with ka-chunk-a-chunk.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#106

Post by Cthulhu_ »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #82
llimllib wrote: post #24

My wife is a physician and it drives her crazy. It often manifests as a scene like: Doctor 1: This patient has severe hepatitis, we need to get them into surgery stat! Doctor 2: You mean they have an inflammation of their liver? Which is truly the dumbest possible way for a doctor to respond in the real world, though obviously can be necessary for exposition to the viewer. As a programmer, "Live Free or Die Hard", "I…

The youtube genre of "Expert at XYZ reacts to XYZ scenes in TV/Movies" is a guilty pleasure of mine. Especially the medical ones.

I'm annoyed at them because they are often not as expert as they claim to be.

Like "singing teacher reacts to " kinda thing.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#107

Post by PcChip »

iamthemonster wrote: post #81

I witnessed the converse of this in the recent Mario Brothers movie. There is a scene where steam piping is about to overpressure and it shows a pressure safety valve lifting. Well that pressure safety valve is an accurately drawn ASME I BPVC open-bonnet PSV with test lever. The open bonnet is to expose the spring to air so it is kept cool and therefore has the correct force downwards on the seat. If you specify a cl…

That makes me want to watch the movie

Re: The Plumber Problem

#108

Post by Cthulhu_ »

d--b wrote: post #78

I gave it a cold, I gave it a virus, a computer virus. (Independance Day, 1996)

Later explained (retconned? fanfictioned? idk) in that computer technology as we know it was made possible due to alien tech.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#109

Post by derbOac »

ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

What's interesting is that you could think of it as a variant of the plumber problem, but where your area of expertise is human behavior and experience.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#110

Post by Cthulhu_ »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #23
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

one of the pitfalls of hobbies like historical reenactment is precisely this. Nobody does armour or most material goods correctly in visual media, and once that’s a salient fact for you it really kind of breaks the spell.

Not to mention the actual combat. It's hard to take a swordfight seriously when both parties seem preoccupied with swinging at their opponents sword.

That's what I always felt, like lightsaber fights are apparently about striking each other's blades in the middle with zero risk of hitting each other. They got (even) more visually interesting later on though.

That said, the more I learn about things like that, the less a sword seems practical in actual combat. Spears and (spiked) hammers are where it's at, with knives/dirks as backup worst case.

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