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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Doylist explanation is that of course the human brains are being used as computing substrates; the energy explanation is a symptom of how little the Zion people actually know about the world.
Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.
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!
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…
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.
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…
Medical shows have ventilators set up wrong, chest x-rays hung up backwards (L on R) and piss poor representations of CPR chest compressions. The main actor can often operate all sorts of specialist equipment, perform surgery and analyse results of complex tests. It’s almost universal.
Funny, I got plumber-problem'd by this article. > In Speed 2, a plot point involves a laden oil tanker about to collide explosively. My wife, native to a major oil port city, couldn’t follow the plot because she could tell the tanker was empty just by looking at it, so she didn’t understand why everyone was saying it would explode. Wait a minute. Full oil tanks don't explode, but empty oil tanks full of hydrocarbon v…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf#Career_in_f...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Doylist explanation is that of course the human brains are being used as computing substrates; the energy explanation is a symptom of how little the Zion people actually know about the world.
Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.
I don't think anything substantive in the films is inconsistent with it (and the behavior of the agents throughout the films is suggestive of it), just the in-character exposition.
Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the film as an inability of the “free” humans to do so, so that (as part of the system of control it is established that Zion is) instead they were fed the “battery” story.
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…
Medical stuff is often worth avoiding if you have even a passing knowledge. I’m a radiographer, and pretty much useless at anything except driving a magnet, but it still bugs me. Medical shows have ventilators set up wrong, chest x-rays hung up backwards (L on R) and piss poor representations of CPR chest compressions. The main actor can often operate all sorts of specialist equipment, perform surgery and analyse res…
Going along with narrative requires suspension of disbelief. However, when you see obvious factual errors, disbelief comes knocking again as you begin questioning everything.
One of the reasons I like fantasy is the plot is set in a universe with different physics and so much of my knowledge of this world can be set aside. Even then though I often wonder how do they feed those large cities with only wilderness between them (most are set on navigable water, even though it is just luck at least the city location doesn't violate possibility, but the lack of explanation of how they get food)…
I think the fantasy city problem is at its worst in 3D video games, where you visit some impressive capital city, massive walls, towers...and enough housing for about a hundred people.
There's a friend I've had for years. He's a physicist. I always ask him questions about physics. I've often referred to him as the smartest guy I know.
I have another friend, also a physicist. Less accomplished, but just as smart. Friend 2 hates Friend 1. Calls him an idiot. I generally dismissed it as arrogance or jealously.
Then, a few years ago, Friend 1 told me he'd been doing a lot of Python lately. I use Python a lot. Have for 15 years.
Over a group dinner, he was explaining a problem he was facing, specifically he was explaining how Python handles dictionaries. It was … very wrong. But he sounded like he REALLY knew what he was talking about.
It occurred to me that maybe Friend 2 was right all along. Friend 1 isn't that smart. He seems smart to me because I don't know physics. He's good at saying things that sound right. Maybe they are sometimes. But maybe they aren't sometimes, and it was that "sometimes he's wrong" thing Friend 2 picked up on, just like I picked up on the Python stuff.
Media, journalism, etc is likely the same way. 90% of the story can be right, or technically accurate, but if 1 fact is wrong, and you KNOW that fact, it's going to bother you. A lot, and will shade your opinion of everything else.