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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#41

Post by andy81 »

e28eta wrote: post #31
dudul wrote: 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…

Does he? “Here’s a phrase I use, and what it means” seems fine to me. There might be a bit of personal history why he chose a plumber, but I’m guessing he doesn’t remember.

This bit sounds plumber-y from the article.

> Simon Orrell: My first exposure to “The Plumber Problem” was sitting in a theatre with my dad in 1973 watching “Emperor of the North” and my dad leans over to whisper, “They didn’t make culvert pipe like that back in the ’30s. It was plate, not corrugated.”

Re: The Plumber Problem

#42

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Happens for me right here on HN.

Comment thread about digital audio/audio software: the comments are just clearly full of people who don't really know much about what they are writing about.

Anything else: wow, HN commenters are so knowledgeable and good at explaining stuff!

Re: The Plumber Problem

#43

Post by HDThoreaun »

clarada wrote: 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…

There's no money in unbiased news. If news organizations want subscribers they need to present a clear voice that is distinct from what other organizations offer, otherwise people will just click the first link on google or facebook and never pay. Unbiased can also mean undiferentiated, so NYT has leaned into technoskepticism, the journal into Karl Rove conservatism(and now just plain old republican or bust), and on and on. A news organization that hasn't made itself into a destination for its readers is forced to rely on cheap farmed out content that's usually either listicles or just straight ripped from a wire service.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#44

Post by deadbunny »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #14
dvh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would assume the 3rd groove is from the horse.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#45

Post by ballenf »

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 window dressing or set design.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#46

Post by e28eta »

andy81 wrote: post #41
e28eta wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does he? “Here’s a phrase I use, and what it means” seems fine to me. There might be a bit of personal history why he chose a plumber, but I’m guessing he doesn’t remember.

This bit sounds plumber-y from the article. > Simon Orrell: My first exposure to “The Plumber Problem” was sitting in a theatre with my dad in 1973 watching “Emperor of the North” and my dad leans over to whisper, “They didn’t make culvert pipe like that back in the ’30s. It was plate, not corrugated.”

I think people are tooting examples to him, and that’s just a recent example, not the source of the name.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#47

Post by dudul »

lightbendover wrote: post #18
dudul wrote: 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.

I wasn't clear, I was talking about expertise exhibited by one of the protagonists.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#48

Post by justincredible »

sublinear wrote: post #40
dudul wrote: 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…

https://imdb.com/title/tt0079727/ The Plumber (1979) A young couple, living in a campus apartment complex, are repeatedly harassed by an eccentric plumber, who subjects them to a series of bizarre mind games while making unnecessary repairs to their bathroom.

[dead]

Re: The Plumber Problem

#49

Post by 123pie123 »

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…

arrgh - swordfish really got to me

Re: The Plumber Problem

#50

Post by eternityforest »

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…

Bad tech realism in scifi doesn't bother me, because a lot of it is showing the way tech could be, with a few liberties taken.

Generally they show extreme capabilities, similar to what machine learning can do now(Except it's implied that a lone genius coded it, rather that it being a trained model), in a world of highly flexible IoT type devices that can be repurposed to do anything via a pretty easy GUI.

I take it as a challenge. Using an app I wrote should feel like being on SeaQuest DSV. If there's a broken connector, can I make a software workaround? If I'm buying a product, what's the state of the art for that area?

Except hacking. Hacking scenes are just comedy.

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