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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#81

Post by iamthemonster »

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 closed-bonnet PSV (like the vast majority of PSVs) for steam service then the whole valve body can get up to the steam temperature, including the spring, and it doesn't lift until a much higher pressure than your bench test indicates.

Quite remarkable that they found someone to help them on this 5-second bit of animation who had experience with using steam in an industrial process plant or boiler, and not just a domestic plumber.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#82

Post by squeaky-clean »

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.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#83

Post by dbrueck »

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.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#84

Post by dools »

My brother has this problem but for all films. He was a producer, so his field of expertise is film. As a result, I can enjoy a wide range of film and TV series that he finds unwatchable because "the casting is terrible" or "the lighting is all wrong".

Re: The Plumber Problem

#85

Post by dilyevsky »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
dilyevsky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.

Specifically, IIRC, it was in test cuts of the film, and identified as baffling by test audiences. 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 f…

Yeah it's a shame because it was such a cool Philip K Dick-esque kind of plot point.

> 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.

Yeah and the original was already meta being a postmodern critique of society so it's a "yo dawg I heard you like meta..."

Re: The Plumber Problem

#86

Post by WalterBright »

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.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#87

Post by motohagiography »

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.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#88

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Just think how awful the 737MAX was reported on in the press to a 757 stabilizer trim design engineer (me).

Re: The Plumber Problem

#89

Post by pixl97 »

sublinear wrote: post #27
AlbertCory wrote: post #8

As a writer myself: I have actual experts review what I write. That's about the best you can do. I think I read that The Big Bang Theory makes sure all the science is accurate. I wouldn't know.

It's too bad then that the rest of the show was so awful. How can writers focused on scientific accuracy create such ugly and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so much anti-intellectualism in every episode?

>ugly and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so much anti-intellectualism

Isaac Asimov saying is quoted for a reason...

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

Re: The Plumber Problem

#90

Post by WalterBright »

TillE wrote: post #72
etchalon wrote: post #70

This is a much larger issue than just a media related one. 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 t…

This is a really common trap that smart people fall into, thinking that just because you know everything about one field, your huge brain must be able to quickly understand just about anything.

I've adroitly avoided that trap by understanding just about everything.
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