Weak attempt at an appeal to authority argument. None of those people dispute the FACTS I cited, facts which disprove
-
robert3750 — 10 years ago(September 14, 2015 11:49 AM)
The President: We're to blame, both of us. We let our machines get out of hand.
There's no talk in
Dr. Strangelove
about "machines getting out of hand". The blame is placed directly on a loony General acting according to Plan R, which was authorized by the President. Even the Doomsday Machine operates exactly as its human designers intended. -
sage2112 — 10 years ago(September 19, 2015 12:17 AM)
I think the point he was making was that the more complex the machines are, the harder it is for a human to step in if/when needed when something does go wrong.
Really you liked Strangelove better? Are you just more into comedies? Like, did you prefer Airplane! to Airport! ? -
robert3750 — 10 years ago(September 19, 2015 10:47 AM)
More complex machines can be more difficult to deal with, but they're nothing but a tool. The ultimate responsibility ALWAYS lies with humansOUR choices. Saying that the "machines got out of hand" dodges this. That's one of the things I like about Dr. Strangelove. There is NO talk about "machine failure", or "machines getting out of hand". EVERYTHING is focused on the choices that PEOPLE make.
Dr. Strangelove vs. Airplane! is a poor comparison. The latter is pure farce played strictly for laughs. Strangelove is satire, using comedy to comment on a very serious subject (nuclear war). In fact, Kubrick started to make a serious movie, but decided that a comedic tone was more effective. His decision was a brilliant one. What better way to point out the insanity of nuclear war than to show someone who is literally insane as the instigator?
Dr. Strangelove IS the superior film, and it has nothing to do with being "more into comedies". It is ranked number 39 on the AFI's top 100 films,37 on the Hollywood Reporter's list of favorite films by industry people, 42 on the BBC.com top 100, and number 50 right HERE (IMDB top 250). I think that's a damn good consensus. Fail Safe appears NOWHERE on those lists. -
jgroub — 10 years ago(January 22, 2016 01:47 PM)
What you say is literally true - I cannot deny that Strangelove is higher.
But - for me personally, Fail Safe has much more meaning, and I'm sure others feel the same way. It was literally my first introduction to global thermonuclear warfare; in other words I saw Fail-Safe before Strangelove, and for that reason, Fail-Safe had a much, much bigger impact on me.
Fail-Safe made me think, and made me think for a long time after seeing it. While I enjoyed Strangelove immensely, and of course it's a great film, it didn't have that impact on me.
I consider a truly great film to be something that provokes the viewer. Recently, there have been two films that did this - Her and Ex Machina. Fascinating looks at artificial intelligence that had me thinking for weeks afterward.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well. -
LateNightCable — 10 years ago(January 22, 2016 12:16 PM)
So just what are those failure rates of current day computers eh?
Last time I checked, we live in a world of buggy electronics and crashed servers.
Computers today are always screwing up over something. Bring a modern car in for a repair, and the problem could be due as much to a bad sensor or other electronic component as anything mechanical.
Electronic failure is not a false premise now, any less than it was in 1964.
But the premise was meant to be fictional anyway. The producers made note at the end of the film, the DoD's claim (or some other authority) that no possibility of failure as portrayed in the story existed.
I actually thought it was a vastly better film than Dr. Strangelove,
which was a peculiar mix of self conscious farce and Cold War drama that I just didn't think worked at all.
"Cristal, Beluga, Wolfgang Puck It's a f#@k house." -
robert3750 — 10 years ago(January 22, 2016 08:11 PM)
So just what are those failure rates of current day computers eh?
Much lower than the
less
complex computers of the past, which is the point.
Electronic failure is not a false premise now, any less than it was in 1964.
What is false is the strawman premise you created. I never said there's no such thing as electronic failure, only that the facts do not support the contention in the film that more complex electronics are more prone to failure than simpler ones.
But the premise was meant to be fictional anyway.
Agreed. It's not reality.
I actually thought it was a vastly better film than Dr. Strangelove
Of course you can state your opinion, but Strangelove is rated more highly by people on IMDB and critics in general. -
LateNightCable — 10 years ago(January 22, 2016 09:43 PM)
Much lower than the less complex computers of the past, which is the point.
Now there is a straw man argument, as it is superficially plausible, but not easily determined to be fact.
Comparing an era where computers were used sparsely, and for relatively basic computation, to one which is essentially ruled by computers is basically apples and oranges One solid fact however is that complex systems today experience an exorbitantly greater rate of failure by their sheer number alone.
The crew of Apollo 11 and it's computer with 64 kilobytes of memory made it to the moon and back, while smart phones today which rival supercomputers from 30 years ago glitch out by the thousands. And their replacement ensures steady business.
What is false is the strawman premise you created. I never said there's no such thing as electronic failure, only that the facts do not support the contention in the film that more complex electronics are more prone to failure than simpler ones.
See above.
Of course you can state your opinion, but Strangelove is rated more highly by people on IMDB and critics in general.
The masses are highly impressionable idiots who's pop culture clouded judgement is not to be trusted,
Kubrick worship and all that. The average movie goer is waiting for someone of authority
to tell them what they like more.
"Cristal, Beluga, Wolfgang Puck It's a f#@k house." -
robert3750 — 10 years ago(January 24, 2016 06:32 PM)
Comparing an era where computers were used sparsely, and for relatively basic computation, to one which is essentially ruled by computers is basically apples and oranges One solid fact however is that complex systems today experience an exorbitantly greater rate of failure by their sheer number alone.
You're comparing apples and oranges by confusing sheer numbers with rate. The fact is that the simpler computers of an earlier era (ENIAC, etc.,) were extremely unreliable. ENIAC was down HALF the time. There is no way you can reasonably contend that the much more complex IBM 360 of 1964 had anything approaching such unreliability. Saying that there are "thousands" of failures (out of BILLIONS of smartphones) amounts to a failure rate on the order of one ten thousandth of one percent, far smaller than the much simpler IBM 360. Your own numbers prove my point.
The masses are highly impressionable idiots who's pop culture clouded judgement is not to be trusted,Kubrick worship and all that. The average movie goer is waiting for someone of authority to tell them what they like more.
That amounts to saying "I'm right because I'm smarter than other people on IMDB, and I'm also smarter than movie critics". That's not an argument. -
BrianRaess_Is_FinallyGone — 10 years ago(February 13, 2016 08:31 AM)
Continuing
to argue over the span of almost 2 years, and making one post almost two years later to make that observation are two very different things. It's obvious you're too dumb to know the difference. Just like you're too dumb to understand the point of the quote in the movie. Making you the ONLY one in this thread who doesn't. No one is ever going to convince you of anything no matter how convincing as you're, obviously, too dumb to understand it. -
nashspacerocket — 9 years ago(June 16, 2016 09:45 PM)
A computer expert writes:
the computers in use at the time of failsafe by the military were mainframes using tubes. they used tubes because they are immune to EMP's unlike transistors. The us military used tube based computers much longer than civilian companies.
the tubes were more liable to burnout than transistors, but they knew that and were willing to put up with it, better to have one tube to replace than a fried mainframe.
secondly there is plenty of evidence (and papers) that the more complex a computing environment is, the more likely it is to fail, especially if you have distributed nodes, since the failure rate per node is the same.
there are other factors such as workload which effect failure rate, but none of them compare to complexity.
Pointless witty comment here -
RDrrr — 9 years ago(December 04, 2016 02:45 AM)
A confusion of evolution of systems (over time) with complexity of systems.
The point of evolving systems (progress) is to add capability and improve reliability an improved future system should be more reliable.
Complexity can be added in the 'now' for example, local 'simple' weather systems monitoring conditions 'outside' can have added sensors and control terminals for the entire neighborhood or city or state or country and you have a complex system with much more chance for failures.
A warning system making hard-coded 'decisions' can expand beyond the operators' ability to analyze, control or correct it in (real) time. The humans ceded control to a rigid non-correcting network, and system of procedures which made the humans ultimately at fault. -
LawrenceJoseSinclair — 9 years ago(July 16, 2016 10:34 PM)
Dr. Strangelove is perhaps the best comedy ever made.. it's full of hilarious presumptions.. like "We will choose them for their breeding charactistics, and at a healthy ratio to men, of, say, ten to one" and the classic "Men, there's no fighting in here - this is the War Room!"..
Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!
My only regret in life is that I'm not someone else - Woody Allen