Watch it if you haven't already. I accidentally landed in the middle of it while doing some illicit late night channel surfing when I was a kid.. this left quite an impression.
I think it was a healthy formative influence for me and primed me for rejecting fads / peer pressure, distrusting authority, etc. Probably also helped me to resist the more unhealthy aspects of a religious time/place, and I was even doing light reading on Cartesian skepticism a few years later, which got me into math. Didn't figure out the name of the movie until years later when it was a big meme.
This is not advice but I definitely advise you to show your small children this movie before they are old enough to think it's corny. They may have a schizophrenic episode or descend into solipsism sure, but they may also get scared as hell by monsters and learn some mental judo, and thank you for it later.
What I find funny (only not really) is the wildly different interpretations of this film people have, for many they seem to be primed by other things to see in it what they want.
Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.
Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.
It's interesting right? Now there's too much distrust of authority and also not enough. Even the word "skeptic" is sometimes used to refer to people who "do their own research" and doggedly latch on to wild conspiracy theories.
Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.
For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.
Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.
Not sure you can purely talk about "is the motivation likely?" and end up with qanon stuff. This leaves out motivated reasoning coming from the rube, plus a bunch of other things like narratives that are sufficiently fun / scandalous /surprising
Looking at conspiracy nuts joining ice and gleefully celebrating unidentified armed goons abducting people, i think they more likely think, well, i would do y, so they must be doing it against me.
"Mainstream" people will also look at past evidence that A, B and C did Y, and say something like "that was N years ago, surely nobody would do this today".
> Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
The former is trivially manipulated and can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent and obvious biases. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.
Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.
Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption. These are base biological urges that have existed regardless of societal economy for millennia! By casting it as something from a sinister conspiracy it makes the creator come across as someone completely insane from being so swallowed by their ideology. The sheer ridiculousness of it it brings to mind the "Mortal Engines" series and its incredibly dumb basic premise and the critical panning that it received. The lesson being, that just because something is an allegory or metaphor doesn't prevent it from being so incredibly stupid that it completely derails the message it is trying to send. Imagine if the billboards instead said.
I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.
So telling someone to make a table for you is more human than making it yourself, because you're using natural language instead of saws and hand planes?
I think we can agree that this is not something anybody will actually use, but rather an homage to "They Live", and IMHO, letting this be done by AI is in contrast to the basic premise of the movie.
That argument could be taken to any extreme at the end of the day. They Live, at its core, is a commentary on unrestrained capitalism. You could fault OP for using a Google browser. You could fault OP for using a Microsoft cloud repository. The line may be blurrier than one thinks...
I think this is false dichotomy. It's been a while since actually empowering and encouraging humans was considered normal and attempted at scale. But not that long. How quick we forget. I think it's worth getting back to.
That “kick ass & chew gum” line has been hugely borrowed, reused and parodied many times throughout the following decades since the release of this movie.
In fact the whole movie is almost a parody of itself now due to how many scenes have since become a meme.
it replaces terms used to exalt Artificial Intelligence to what they really mean, and some tongue in cheek jokes against things that are used to pass billionaires/tech as friendly (e.g. replacing bill gates with his actual name)
Replacing ads reminds me of the eye tap AR stuff by Steve Mann
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44406552
Cool idea!the font weight should be extra/heavy, and not true black, dark gray.
The heavier weights of League Spartan would be a good match.
Watch it if you haven't already. I accidentally landed in the middle of it while doing some illicit late night channel surfing when I was a kid.. this left quite an impression.
I think it was a healthy formative influence for me and primed me for rejecting fads / peer pressure, distrusting authority, etc. Probably also helped me to resist the more unhealthy aspects of a religious time/place, and I was even doing light reading on Cartesian skepticism a few years later, which got me into math. Didn't figure out the name of the movie until years later when it was a big meme.
This is not advice but I definitely advise you to show your small children this movie before they are old enough to think it's corny. They may have a schizophrenic episode or descend into solipsism sure, but they may also get scared as hell by monsters and learn some mental judo, and thank you for it later.
Nice pitch. I'll stream it right away!
I've been watching Andor as a instructional manual recently and this seems like a good addition to the reality based manuals out there.
Idiocracy, War INC etc.
My dad pitched this movie to me when I was a kid, as he was a Carpenter fan.
Beyond the somewhat "obvious" message (for a grown up) it's just an eminently entertaining movie.
What I find funny (only not really) is the wildly different interpretations of this film people have, for many they seem to be primed by other things to see in it what they want.
Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.
Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.
It's interesting right? Now there's too much distrust of authority and also not enough. Even the word "skeptic" is sometimes used to refer to people who "do their own research" and doggedly latch on to wild conspiracy theories.
Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
>wild conspiracy theories.
Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.
For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.
Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.
I ll let you decide who is smarter...
Not sure you can purely talk about "is the motivation likely?" and end up with qanon stuff. This leaves out motivated reasoning coming from the rube, plus a bunch of other things like narratives that are sufficiently fun / scandalous /surprising
Looking at conspiracy nuts joining ice and gleefully celebrating unidentified armed goons abducting people, i think they more likely think, well, i would do y, so they must be doing it against me.
A "mainstream" person can also consider past evidence of A, B and C doing Y and assume that X is doing Y too without any evidence about Y.
"Mainstream" people will also look at past evidence that A, B and C did Y, and say something like "that was N years ago, surely nobody would do this today".
> Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
The former is trivially manipulated and can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent and obvious biases. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.
> extreme far-right communities
Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.
Meanwhile I've personally found myself completely unable to take it seriously due to the subliminal messages being "marry and reproduce" and "consume". Like people need sinister brainwashing to fall in love, have sex, or engage in hedonistic consumption. These are base biological urges that have existed regardless of societal economy for millennia! By casting it as something from a sinister conspiracy it makes the creator come across as someone completely insane from being so swallowed by their ideology. The sheer ridiculousness of it it brings to mind the "Mortal Engines" series and its incredibly dumb basic premise and the critical panning that it received. The lesson being, that just because something is an allegory or metaphor doesn't prevent it from being so incredibly stupid that it completely derails the message it is trying to send. Imagine if the billboards instead said.
I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.
"They live" was a cult classic, and great fun if you were a Roddy Piper fan.
Other entertaining films =3
"The Great Dictator" (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
https://archive.org/details/the-great-dictator-disc-01-title...
"Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/day-the-earth-stood-still-1951
"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1956)
https://archive.org/details/invasionofthebodysnatchers1956_2...
"The Man in the White Suit" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/the-man-in-the-white-suit_202105
"The Twilight Zone" (1959)
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
spoiler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN8Z7y_QcwE
Seems not to be available in europe "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"
Oh the irony: "They Live", a movie famously about alienation and dehumanization, and you let AI do all the coding.
Interacting with a computer in natural language is much more human than typing in special codes and punctuation.
So telling someone to make a table for you is more human than making it yourself, because you're using natural language instead of saws and hand planes?
I would say yes, conversing between two humans, maybe even collaborating, is more human than a solitary human using inanimate objects.
What if it wouldn't get done otherwise?
(Genuine question as we're all trying to figure this shit out)
I think we can agree that this is not something anybody will actually use, but rather an homage to "They Live", and IMHO, letting this be done by AI is in contrast to the basic premise of the movie.
That argument could be taken to any extreme at the end of the day. They Live, at its core, is a commentary on unrestrained capitalism. You could fault OP for using a Google browser. You could fault OP for using a Microsoft cloud repository. The line may be blurrier than one thinks...
I think this is false dichotomy. It's been a while since actually empowering and encouraging humans was considered normal and attempted at scale. But not that long. How quick we forget. I think it's worth getting back to.
I never found the Matrix very impressive, because I'd been inoculated by this movie.
My personal tagline, "I came here to kick ass, build web applications, and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of gum." came from this movie.
And Duke Nukem.
That “kick ass & chew gum” line has been hugely borrowed, reused and parodied many times throughout the following decades since the release of this movie.
In fact the whole movie is almost a parody of itself now due to how many scenes have since become a meme.
I came here to kick ass and deploy microservices... And I'm all out of ass.
I came here to shitpost and deploy microservices... and github is down.
I LOVE for someone to make a version of this for Apple Vision Pro. In fact I would put down $500.
If AR ever makes it big, I think we have the first ad blocking idea already fleshed out. Would be kind of fun to see.
An idea probably as old as ad blockers themselves. Here's one from 8 years ago: https://imgur.com/i-wear-sunglasses-night-uF4fy42
on the same line, but less pop meme replacements
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/artificial-cl...
it replaces terms used to exalt Artificial Intelligence to what they really mean, and some tongue in cheek jokes against things that are used to pass billionaires/tech as friendly (e.g. replacing bill gates with his actual name)