I had a friend over yesterday. We have a lot in common, including our academic goals.
We had another round of a conversation we've touched on in the past. It boils down to how hard it is to suspend belief. The more you understand about the world around you, the harder it is to enjoy works of fiction. For example, in the fiction realm, I prefer what's known as 'hard science fiction'. There isn't much of it these days, at least that interests me. But 'hard science fiction' is fiction that's strenuously working to preserve scientific accuracy. (Think some of Clarke, Niven, or Asimov material.)
The example I'll use in this post will be movies/television silliness.
A fun one is when you see an object catch up with another object on the same orbital plane. That just can't happen. If you're on the same orbit and speed up, you'll move further away from the gravity well. If you slow down, you'll move closer to the gravity well.
As much as it makes for great cinema, you don't go flying backwards when you're shot with a shotgun.
Along those same lines, if you're involved in an explosion that slams you against the wall, you're probably known as 'walking dead' (if it didn't kill you outright). For forces that strong, it'd have crushed your internal organs (the squishy bits), and you'd have very little time left before you collapsed and died. You'd be likely to die even with immediate medical attention.
Oh, if you're shot with pretty much any firearm, you're probably out of the fight. You don't get shot in the shoulder, wrap it up with a torn-off shirt sleeve, only to go on fighting for three more days. While there are 'through and through' and 'flesh wounds', they still suck and will limit what you're able to do for the near future. Yes, some examples do exist, but they're the exception and not the rule.
No, cars don't explode on a regular basis. They don't even normally explode when dropped from high places. There's a town in Alaska that celebrates by sending cars off a cliff. They are running when they do so. None of those cars explodes or even catches on fire.
Also, bombs don't tend to whistle. Along those same lines, planes don't make a high-pitched scream while diving. That was done by the Germans during WWII. And that's about it. It was a siren on a Stuka and was used to instill fear in the ground troops.
Serial killers aren't normally geniuses. They're impulsive and lack forensic sophistication. Those that don't get caught quickly aren't doing anything exceptional; they're just lucky -- while there's also a bias against some of the victims that may lead to police incompetence. The person who kills the pretty high school girls gets caught quickly, while the person who preys on the marginalized people gets away with it longer. (There are, of course, exceptions.)
Oh, man... Fighting... I don't want to add bravado to this, so I'll simply point out boxers. Boxers fight one opponent for three minutes at a time. They're often in peak physical condition, with heavy training for long periods of time before a bout. The accountant next door is not, in fact, going to fight off five people over a fifteen-minute span. On top of that, the injuries sustained by the fighting parties would have put them out of the fight at the start of it. If you get kicked in the jaw, you're eating protein shakes for the next three months. If that same kick was in the kidney, you're going to pee blood for a month.
(See 'professional' wrestling for examples. If they weren't highly trained athletes who were carefully choreographed, they'd snap a neck the first time they had a 'pile driver'.)
No... There has never been an untrained pilot who managed to successfully land a large commercial plane. It has happened with small planes, but those are actually quite simple to operate. I can (and have) landed a small plane. (I know a handful of pilots. Private plane ownership is fairly common here.)
I could go on... Should we get started on computers in movies and television? There are a few scenes of people typing on the same keyboard at the same time. That's just plain silliness. Also, if your computer 'goes rogue', just unplug it.
Heck, I could go on for quite a while.
The key point is that it's just so darned hard to suspend disbelief. At the end of the day, I end up preferring movies with some action in them. If I'm to suspend belief, I like it to be simple. That doesn't mean they're all technically 'action' movies, just that they're quickly moving on to the next thing and that the plot is simple to keep up with. Oddly enough, there are a lot of 'Western' movies that fit that description.
What do you find difficult to watch/read?
We had another round of a conversation we've touched on in the past. It boils down to how hard it is to suspend belief. The more you understand about the world around you, the harder it is to enjoy works of fiction. For example, in the fiction realm, I prefer what's known as 'hard science fiction'. There isn't much of it these days, at least that interests me. But 'hard science fiction' is fiction that's strenuously working to preserve scientific accuracy. (Think some of Clarke, Niven, or Asimov material.)
The example I'll use in this post will be movies/television silliness.
A fun one is when you see an object catch up with another object on the same orbital plane. That just can't happen. If you're on the same orbit and speed up, you'll move further away from the gravity well. If you slow down, you'll move closer to the gravity well.
As much as it makes for great cinema, you don't go flying backwards when you're shot with a shotgun.
Along those same lines, if you're involved in an explosion that slams you against the wall, you're probably known as 'walking dead' (if it didn't kill you outright). For forces that strong, it'd have crushed your internal organs (the squishy bits), and you'd have very little time left before you collapsed and died. You'd be likely to die even with immediate medical attention.
Oh, if you're shot with pretty much any firearm, you're probably out of the fight. You don't get shot in the shoulder, wrap it up with a torn-off shirt sleeve, only to go on fighting for three more days. While there are 'through and through' and 'flesh wounds', they still suck and will limit what you're able to do for the near future. Yes, some examples do exist, but they're the exception and not the rule.
No, cars don't explode on a regular basis. They don't even normally explode when dropped from high places. There's a town in Alaska that celebrates by sending cars off a cliff. They are running when they do so. None of those cars explodes or even catches on fire.
Also, bombs don't tend to whistle. Along those same lines, planes don't make a high-pitched scream while diving. That was done by the Germans during WWII. And that's about it. It was a siren on a Stuka and was used to instill fear in the ground troops.
Serial killers aren't normally geniuses. They're impulsive and lack forensic sophistication. Those that don't get caught quickly aren't doing anything exceptional; they're just lucky -- while there's also a bias against some of the victims that may lead to police incompetence. The person who kills the pretty high school girls gets caught quickly, while the person who preys on the marginalized people gets away with it longer. (There are, of course, exceptions.)
Oh, man... Fighting... I don't want to add bravado to this, so I'll simply point out boxers. Boxers fight one opponent for three minutes at a time. They're often in peak physical condition, with heavy training for long periods of time before a bout. The accountant next door is not, in fact, going to fight off five people over a fifteen-minute span. On top of that, the injuries sustained by the fighting parties would have put them out of the fight at the start of it. If you get kicked in the jaw, you're eating protein shakes for the next three months. If that same kick was in the kidney, you're going to pee blood for a month.
(See 'professional' wrestling for examples. If they weren't highly trained athletes who were carefully choreographed, they'd snap a neck the first time they had a 'pile driver'.)
No... There has never been an untrained pilot who managed to successfully land a large commercial plane. It has happened with small planes, but those are actually quite simple to operate. I can (and have) landed a small plane. (I know a handful of pilots. Private plane ownership is fairly common here.)
I could go on... Should we get started on computers in movies and television? There are a few scenes of people typing on the same keyboard at the same time. That's just plain silliness. Also, if your computer 'goes rogue', just unplug it.
Heck, I could go on for quite a while.
The key point is that it's just so darned hard to suspend disbelief. At the end of the day, I end up preferring movies with some action in them. If I'm to suspend belief, I like it to be simple. That doesn't mean they're all technically 'action' movies, just that they're quickly moving on to the next thing and that the plot is simple to keep up with. Oddly enough, there are a lot of 'Western' movies that fit that description.
What do you find difficult to watch/read?
