/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4929602]

Does a science fiction completely failing at science, let's be lenient and say their technology could happen since that's not the topic at hand, justify hating it despite good characters and story?

pic related, apparently there is a zone of 0g near the Earth's core but everywhere else is at 1g, with an instant switch between the two

[Anonymous No.4929618]

it doesn't. most science fiction films are flawed in one way or the other. it's hard to be completely consistent with science and also include really cool shit. getting mad about it is just being an autist. Actually, sometimes certain things are possible and people with poor knowledge of science claim it as a plot hole (happens a lot on /tv/).

P.S. this total recall wasn't very good. Maybe seeing the 90's version ruined it for me.

[Anonymous No.4929626]

To my own understanding, if a science-fiction would abuse of already known false theories, pervert concepts, extrapolate or generalize conclusions of some discoveries and researches and such, it stops being science-fiction and falls in other genres, like fanstatic.

Paycheck with Ben Affleck is a good example of what I just explained as perverted concepts that shouldn't be called science-fiction.

[Anonymous No.4929630]

Science fiction is too broad a term.

Hard science fiction obviously has to be true to the science. If not it's worthless.

Soft science fiction is allowed its fair share of magic and bullshit provided it explores the social and psychological implications of it in a believable manner.

Space opera can get by on badassery and flashy effects alone.

[Anonymous No.4929631]

>>4929618
can we at least draw the line at high school level science?

any high schooler can tell you that it's a gradual process to 0 g's at the earths core because more and more mass is above you. not a magical flip switch

That's much more known than the fact that the air pressure when they exited the Fall near the end (mid ride) would kill them.

More commonly known that they should have known as well, is how in the bloody hell do you traverse the diameter of the Earth in 17 minutes without crushing your occupants? the acceleration is mind boggling

[Anonymous No.4929634]

Check out the grandmasters such as Asimov who's actually a chemist and it shows in some of his stories.

[Anonymous No.4929640]

It doesn't matter one bit.

It could be completely magic disguised with computer screens. As long as the story is engaging in some way. It wouldn't be sci-fi though, but that doesn't matter at all, people should stop aiming for a work to fit the name of a genre.

Whether a good reproduction of scientific ideas helps you engage in the story, that's another thing. And even that is debatable. Movies are illusions, lies within their very existence. They are about believing you are watching an action instead of 24 still frames per second, believing the man is an agent instead of a hired actor, believing that place is his house instead of a studio and so on.

To be sci-fi, the movie has to make you believe the story is based on science.

Obviously, all of that is subjective, it depends on what you know and what you don't know.

[Anonymous No.4929639]

>>4929634
great writer, but he's a brand name. His books are outrageously expensive for the amount of time it takes me to read them

[Anonymous No.4929645]

>>4929639
>buying books
>2012
seriously though we stole a lot of books back in high school and college. some for the thrill of it, some to read. I learned 3dsmax and programming through actual book stealing. Back then the magnetic alarm thingy wasn't so common

[Anonymous No.4929644]

>>4929631
>any high schooler can tell you that it's a gradual process to 0 g's at the earths core because more and more mass is above you
and they'd be wrong. this would only be true if earth was a perfect sphere. it's not and in certain places gravity would increase as you go down (until a certain time). I know even with this fact the movie is still wrong but my point is that little exceptions such as this tend to be easy to miss during film making.

[Anonymous No.4929648]

>>4929618
>it's hard to be completely consistent with science and also include really cool shit.

this part is wrong.
It isn't that science can't live up to making really cool tech -- we have tons of extremely great examples.
The problem is that young people seeking entertainment want to go to extremes, ONLY.
You can't just have an explosion, it has to be HUGE.
You can't just shoot the bad guy, you have to do it while jumping, twisting, patting our your burning arm and making a sarcastic joke.

We artificially raise the bar for nonsense even if we'd have been fine with previous standards of entertainment -- usually far less extreme, but far more relevant and more dramatic.

[Carl !!dFf2PUolAtC No.4929655]

It all comes down to one simple phrase: "reasonable suspension of disbelief"

If the argument the film/novel makes for how some piece of technology is convincing enough, is demonstrated properly, and is consistent with the rules established in that universe - most sci-fi fans will give it a pass even if it doesn't jive with the laws of physics, because it's a "reasonable suspension of disbelief".

A couple of examples of how this is done properly:
- The 'Warp Drive' in Star Trek is a bit iffy as far as the physics go, but they take a lot of opportunities to lay out the 'rules' that this method of travel follows in that universe and (much to the chagrin of the writing staff I imagine) an effort is made to remain self-consistent with those established rules.
- The 'Force' in Star Wars is a bit more on the 'magic-y' side, and it's not really properly explained (ignoring the prequels), but it is demonstrated early on and the story takes time to establish that this is how things work in this universe
- A more recent example that I've seen lately, in an episode of Breaking Bad Walt and Jesse rig a powerful electromagnet to wipe the harddrive of a computer in an evidence locker. In a comical moment this ends up pulling their truck up on its side wheels. Is it a realistic portrayal of what would happen? No. But the show has a seen just prior to this which establishes to the viewer that the magnet is reasonably powerful enough to accomplish this.

An example of how this is done poorly:
- Armageddon
- The Day After Tomorrow
- The Core... good lord, I'm pretty sure the writers and technical advisers for that film gave up on 'reasonable suspension of disbelief' the moment the pitch landed on their table

[Anonymous No.4929656]

>>4929630
>Hard science fiction obviously has to be true to the science. If not it's worthless.

No, if it isn't largely true to science, it's just fantasy.
Only teen-agers have to go to the extreme and call something 'worthless' for no reason. Let's not do the teen tactic; they are idiots.

[Anonymous No.4929660]

>>4929631

Personally I'm a lot more dumbfounded at the amount of works that parse "vaccine" as "panacea".

Here's a hint: if your girlfriend already has the zombie-disease, it's a bit late to vaccinate her.

[Anonymous No.4929661]

>>4929648
>this part is wrong
>We artificially raise the bar for nonsense even if we'd have been fine with previous standards of entertainment -- usually far less extreme, but far more relevant and more dramatic
what? you basically admitted that it was right. it doesn't matter that our bar shouldn't be as high as it is, the point is that it is. Also with somethings that we haven't figured out already you are almost certainly bound to break some law of science. Time travel for example, is pretty popular and most of those movies usually try to explain how the machine was possible. Unless they solved time travel, there is probably some flaw in their logic and it is also hard to do anything interesting with it without ignoring something like causality.

[Carl !!dFf2PUolAtC No.4929666]

It all comes down to one simple phrase: "reasonable suspension of disbelief"

If the argument the film/novel makes for how some technology or phenomenon works is convincing enough, is demonstrated properly, and is consistent with the rules established in that universe - most sci-fi fans will give it a pass even if it doesn't jive with the laws of physics, because it's a "reasonable suspension of disbelief".

A couple of examples of how this is done properly:
- 'Mass Effect' technology in the series of the same name. While it does require the use of MacGuffinium ("Element Zero") all of the technology which incorporates the concept in the series operates within the rules the series establishes, and they go out of their way to provide detailed explanations for how the concept operates.
- The 'Force' in Star Wars is a bit more on the 'magic-y' side, and it's not really properly explained (ignoring the prequels), but it is demonstrated early on and the story takes time to establish that this is how things work in this universe
- A more recent example that I've seen lately, in an episode of Breaking Bad Walt and Jesse rig a powerful electromagnet to wipe the harddrive of a computer in an evidence locker. In a comical moment this ends up pulling their truck up on its side wheels. Is it a realistic portrayal of what would happen? No. But a scene prior to this establishes to the viewer that the magnet is reasonably powerful enough to accomplish this.

An example of how this is done poorly:
- Armageddon
- The Day After Tomorrow
- The Core... good lord, I'm pretty sure the writers and technical advisers for that film gave up on 'reasonable suspension of disbelief' the moment the pitch landed on their table

[Anonymous No.4929667]

>>4929644
>and they'd be wrong. this would only be true if earth was a perfect sphere. it's not and in certain places gravity would increase as you go down (until a certain time).
Wow -- you've got it way wrong. Gravity does not increase, and the slight variance of the oblate sphere is completely unimportant.
The effects given are true, even for vastly imperfect giant potatoes. The amount is all that would vary -- and by only the tiniest degrees.

>I know even with this fact the movie is still wrong but my point is that little exceptions such as this tend to be easy to miss during film making.

? because you should be able to see the distinction if the gravitational pull in a skydiving scene is .0003 weaker than it should be?

[Anonymous No.4929669]

>>4929602

i am more than willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy such things after a good day of reading how actual scientists can't even agree what's 40kilometers under our feet, much less the core.

[Anonymous No.4929668]

>>4929656

If you take a hard science book and take out the science you're not left with fantasy. You're left with something barely readable. Try reading 2001 and dropping each sentence describing what we now know to be false. There's nothing left over.

[Anonymous No.4929672]

>>4929666
Essentially this. Non-realism should always serve the plot, and be as internally consistent and simple as possible while doing so.

But the Core is full of so much mind-numbingly stupid shit that doesn't even have anything to do with the plot. It's really horrible.

[Anonymous No.4929675]

>>4929672

>mfw they signaled the whales

[Anonymous No.4929679]

>>4929661
It looks like you applied the wrong part of my response.
I was not responding to the 'if it's reasonably consistent with some laws and is entertaining, it's okay'
I was responding to 'and also include really cool shit.' which I took as 'it isn't cool enough to enjoy unless it's extreme by this year's standards.'

I think it is sad and morally wrong to put yourself in the attitude that everything you see has to outdo anything else, ever.
(Sports suffers the same problem with it's audience.)

[Anonymous No.4929677]

>>4929667
gravity is not necessarily strongest at the surface in a non-perfect sphere, this is not wrong even if the difference is small. In this case, missing something like this would be unnoticeable anyways but my point was that little details are always easy to miss, regardless of their impact. There's no point in bitching about it. why should the possibility of the movie affect how enjoyable it is unless you're autistic?

[Anonymous No.4929683]

>>4929672
>But the Core is full of so much mind-numbingly stupid shit that doesn't even have anything to do with the plot. It's really horrible.

Example?
I thought the unfounded stuff was all there just for the support of the silly journey.

[Anonymous No.4929686]

>>4929666
Very well said.

>The Core
FUCK The Core! Christ I don't I've ever seen a more irritating sci-fi film. No attempt at believable technologies, no attempt at self-consistency, not too mention one of the main characters is the fucking 'Evil Spock' version of Carl Sagan.

[Anonymous No.4929687]

>>4929677
Don't know why people keep attacking the autistic for things that have nothing to do with autism, but I agree:
the point of movies like that is mere entertainment; they can even be self-inconsistent as long as they don't distract.

My dad can't watch anything he knows has modern effects in it because he figures he's being cheated if it wasn't filmed practically.

[Anonymous No.4929690]

>>4929687
gotta ask if he watched Inception, there was a big deal about the lack of CGI, even though it was blatantly used in the first act, still, curious on his stance

also, doesn't almost everything use CGI now adays?

[Anonymous No.4929694]

>>4929679
i get your dislike of it, but how is it morally wrong?
either way, whether it is right or wrong doesn't change the fact that it's what a majority of people want. People want extremism and most directors are going to pander to the majority. Sure you can make a good movie without exaggerating everything, but it's a lot easier to entertain people by ignoring impossibilities.

[Anonymous No.4929693]

>>4929683
>Unobtanium - as you apply heat and pressure it becomes exponentially stronger
>... except when you need to kill off a character or blow up a nuke inside a shell made of the stuff.

[Anonymous No.4929699]

HAHAHA The Core, I'd forgotten about that movie! "Dumb" doesn't even begin to describe it, I'm pretty sure I lost 10 to 20 IQ points watching it.

[Anonymous No.4929700]

>>4929668
>If you take a hard science book and take out the science you're not left with fantasy. You're left with something barely readable. Try reading 2001 and dropping each sentence describing what we now know to be false. There's nothing left over.

That's a nonsensical test.
You don't judge food by imagining how it would be in you arbitrarily removed ingredients, whatever your reason.

Science fiction as a genre is regular fiction wherein an aspect of known technology is modified; it supposes a what-if mode against a known societal background.
Fantasy is about providing a whole new framework of technology, and doesn't have to rest on a familiar societal background.

if you want to look at 2001, you examine what they altered from what they knew at that time -- ancient alien race, provides spark of intelligence, monitoring the solar system in some way.

Anything you have trouble with in the last 15 minutes has to be gauged against the flaws of subjective observation by Bowman.

[Anonymous No.4929701]

>>4929683
Well, the basic plot is "the core of the Earth is fucked up, it's causing real problems, we need to send someone down there to fix it". This minimally requires fictional materials and technologies, both to make such a trip possible and to have a chance of accomplishing anything when you're there. But then there's all this ridiculous bullshit BESIDES that. Like the nature of the problem and the issues it causes, and the stuff they encounter on the way to the core, and the things they do on the way. It's not even consistent in the use of its fictional technology.

I don't really have a list of the things that bugged me, so here's this.
http://geolor.com/The_Core_Movie-Facts_and_Fiction.htm

[Anonymous No.4929709]

>>4929700

It's a very meaningful test. A novel can't ramble on about everything. There's a limited amount of space on the page and limited amount of concentration in the reader. The prose needs to have a focus. If it focuses on the technological aspects of the setting, describing how machines work and the processes behind them, it's hard science. If these descriptions are absurd and don't make any sense, you don't get fantasy. In fantasy that prose would need to be directed to the vistas or the characters or the epic spinning or whatever else.

[Anonymous No.4929714]

>>4929672
>First scene with the main character
>"Hey class! Let's look at how sound waves transmit through different densities of rock!"
Oh ho! I see what you did there movie. He's going to develop some kind of device that lets them see where they're going by looking at sound waves in the rock like a sonar! That's pretty clever!

>some time later
>"I built a giant, souped up MRI machine to see where we're going!"
... wait, what?

[Anonymous No.4929718]

>>4929694
>i get your dislike of it, but how is it morally wrong?
OK, I can't back that part up. It's strategically wrong (predispositions that affect your appreciation; forces stories to become extremely shallow and stupid very quickly, diminishes appreciation and acceptance real-world events)

>either way, whether it is right or wrong doesn't change the fact that it's what a majority of people want.
Not in the least true. It is certainly what the teen audience wants, but they're generally idiots about such things, dismissing anything that didn't happen in the last few months as 'old, therefore bad.'

>People want extremism and most directors are going to pander to the majority.
As soon as you look at the larger audiences (a flawed approach, but a good first step) you find almost none want extremism. They want quality, they want good characters, and they want humor.
Changing the audience just to 'entertainment' motivated, you start including action movies and other fantastic things, but the best ones are still character-based.

>Sure you can make a good movie without exaggerating everything, but it's a lot easier to entertain people by ignoring impossibilities.
Easier, yes -- and a really great project of any kind is rarely easy.
But who cares about 'easier' if you aren't actually the production company?

[Anonymous No.4929721]

You guys notice how many people are making meaningful contributions to the thread?
I hope it holds up...

[Anonymous No.4929725]

>Keep hearing about "the core"
>IMDB
> "The only way to save Earth from catastrophe is to drill down to the core and set it spinning again."
Never watching that movie, ever.

[Anonymous No.4929726]

>>4929714
Yeah, stuff like that. The worst part of that is that MRI machines only analyze things that are in a chamber with a carefully designed magnetic field inside the machine. It doesn't tell you jack shit about what's outside the machine. It's worse than redundant with the rock-sonar possibility; it's flat-out retarded.

[Anonymous No.4930060]

bump

[Anonymous No.4930066]

>>4929602
Fantasy is not only for evading reality but for fighting it too. Try to see how our universe could had just happened in other way, making the details less important. If a programmer like me can forgive tron, you surely can forgive dr who.

[Anonymous No.4930073]

>mfw I enjoyed The Core and Armageddon

[Anonymous No.4930075]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-07-29/tecca-total-recall/56542746/1

[Anonymous No.4930109]

>>4929672
Isnt that the movie where Americans nuked the Earth's core?
Or was it the movie where they nuked the Sun?

[Anonymous No.4930112]

>>4930109

The Earth's core.

"Sunshine" was when they nuked the sun

[Anonymous No.4930117]

>>4930112
>implying they used a nuke

They used shit much stronger then a nuke

[Anonymous No.4930135]

>>4930117

That's nice anon...

The real statement here is... Who gives a fuck?

I was answering a question, I know they used something bigger than a nuke. Damn.

[Anonymous No.4931748]

bump