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Zero VGS posted:My bf is a real scientist dealing with the various controversies arising from DEI in the academic world (the Supreme Court Affirmative Action decision was a big shakeup with a lot of lawyers doing mandatory powerpoint training sessions, the Harvard plagiarism thing, etc). When he saw Saul in Ep.8 he was like "what has this guy accomplished?" and the show is like "We are making Saul a wallfacer, he has studied with some of the greatest minds..." and he lost his poo poo like "Studied with them?! What the gently caress has he published!!" and I was lolling. Even Saul himself is like "hmm I think I know why they picked me... nahhhhh" like he knows he's World Savior Diversity Hire. What else could they possibly expect anyone to infer from that part? I forget when exactly but in that same episode there is a TV in the background displaying the news headline "Who is Saul Durand?". So yes, everyone in the show is thinking the exact same thing. e: scrub to 31:57 left in e08 arrowdust fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 23:37
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I thought the point of choosing him was because Ye Wenjie made a contact with him.
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Mar 25, 2024 23:44
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I never thought he was a “diversity hire” what the gently caress
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Mar 25, 2024 23:48
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Skim read too hard over that bit...... welp
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Mar 25, 2024 23:52
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Yeah.....I think in the show he is nominated because the Trisolarian went out of their way to try to assassinate him (though Jack Rooney was also assassinated so it kind of weakened the thesis).
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Mar 25, 2024 23:55
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pedro0930 posted:Yeah.....I think in the show he is nominated because the Trisolarian went out of their way to try to assassinate him (though Jack Rooney was also assassinated so it kind of weakened the thesis). I think the Trisolarians only tried to assassinate him after he was selected. My impression is that they have no idea why he was chosen, and this scares them into thinking he might be the real threat - although it makes the most sense that he's just a misdirection designed to draw focus while the others do their work, it's not clear how well the Trisolarian's understand deception so I could imagine them falling for this. I really love the way the Trisolarians are depicted as having completely comprehensible actions and motivations, but missing something as simple as lying transforms their behaviour into something very alien to us. Chalks fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 00:02
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SimonChris posted:The cars were explicitly said to be autonomous self-driving cars. Presumably, they can't hack vehicles with human drivers / pilots. If they are able to exert positive control over a car's electronics, that is way more powerful than only needing to exert negative control over a plane in order to make it crash.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:06
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My problem with Saul as a character is that his character is entirely useless to the plot. He doesn't advance the plot, and all the time spent on him has no payoff. I can accept that he's a brilliant scientist without the show having to prove it to me, but like his entire role in the show was just inconsequential. Maybe if I read the books it would hit differently. But as a show only watcher, the whole idea of a wallfacer is the most idiotic and loving dumbest thing in the world. Maybe if I read the book this would have been a OH poo poo HERE IT IS moment but the entire scene just fell short. Why are they broadcasting to the world the full name and image of these people who are being set up some of the most important people in the world? And why are they broadcasting to the world that these guys have a blank check? Geeze, it sure would suck if one of them got kidnapped, or bribed, or even just brown nosed to. Geeze, it would suck if their family got targeted for ransom and the kidnappers asked for one trillion dollars. Geeze, let's give all the power to these 3 people who can't work with a team to figure out a plan. I just don't get it. None of this makes any sense and I can't just ignore it because it seems to be a major thing.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:08
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good lord, the DEI takes on this show are godawful (I've seen a few on twitter, too). Saul Durand is not a diversity hire ffs. Read the books or wait til season 2 if it happens. I'm about to go re-watch episode 5 with some friends who haven't seen it yet and haven't read the books 
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Mar 26, 2024 00:08
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Mantle posted:If they are able to exert positive control over a car's electronics, that is way more powerful than only needing to exert negative control over a plane in order to make it crash. And once you're at that point why not just gently caress with the electrical signals in Saul's brain and stop his heart beating
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Mar 26, 2024 00:13
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iirc (book spoilers) Saul / Luo Ji is targeted by an autonomous vehicle in the future, but it was hacked by a Trisolaran sympathizer But they really do need to figure out how to explain away that sophons can't just gently caress around with electronics at will. That's going to leave some huge plot holes.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:15
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D&D definitely reacted to internet criticism of GoT so I wouldn't be shocked if at some point next season the murderer girl whose name I've forgotten looks into that camera and says "I'm so glad that the sophons taught me how to hack into self driving cars and also aeroplanes, just a shame all the firmware manufacturers have updated their encryption and also I called the sophons dickheads so now they're not talking to me any more and I must return to my home planet byeeee" Or they'll ignore it because gaping plot holes generate YouTube explainer videos with arguments in the comments section and that's engagement baby
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Mar 26, 2024 00:22
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Yeah anyone who's asking for Saul's credentials while not also asking for Liam Cunningham's character's credentials should look inward and ask themselves why. When I asked what Saul did in the show, I meant like in general. All of his scenes were not memorable and the only thing I remember is that he smoked weed, dropped acid, and hosed. And then there was the whole big reveal in episode 8 which I already said is the most dumbest loving thing ever. "Wait 2 years for next season" is also real dumb.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:25
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He's where his book character is at at this point in the story. "Why tf did they pick this dude?" is a big plot point. Ye Wenjie shared something important to him in the form of a joke during their last meeting. He doesn't realize that he's got a huge piece of the puzzle, but the San Ti figured it out by watching what Ye Wenjie studied before their meeting and putting the pieces together.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:29
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Zero VGS posted:Airplanes are like 99% autonomous already though. Airlines beg us to put our phones into Airplane Mode, yet loving Sophons can't disrupt them? Well even if we doubted that, a Sophon DID disrupt an airplane (I think maybe even the same one?) 2 episodes later in the scene with Wade.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:02
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Avasculous posted:Well even if we doubted that, a Sophon DID disrupt an airplane (I think maybe even the same one?) 2 episodes later in the scene with Wade. Maybe it didn’t and just made him hallucinate that they did
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Mar 26, 2024 01:07
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BoldFace posted:I thought the point of choosing him was because Ye Wenjie made a contact with him.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:14
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discoukulele posted:He's where his book character is at at this point in the story. "Why tf did they pick this dude?" is a big plot point.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:20
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bawfuls posted:Didn't they have a more extended conversation in the books than what was depicted in the show? Like she tells him directly to study "cosmic sociology" and gives him a set of axioms to ponder. yeah it's much more explicit in the book
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Mar 26, 2024 01:27
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I decided to re-read the chapter of the first book where the aliens build the sophons, because I was pretty sure they discussed their capabilities in lots of detail. I'll stick it behind spoiler tags in case people are planning on reading the book The chapter is presented as a conversation between their chief scientist and a bunch of other high ranking officials. They explain that the sophons are designed and programmed to do five things: - they can insert themselves into particle accelerators and anticipate the movement of the particle being accelerated so that the sophon ends up being the thing it collides with. They can then emit fake results, and they can reconstitute themselves after collision - they can emulate the behaviour of photons, causing reactions on photographic film and retinas - in a pair, they can sense electromagnetic radiation, allowing them to function as observers of basically everything but our thoughts - they have full control and awareness over all of their higher dimensional structure, and can unfold into higher and lower dimensions at will, allowing them to block electromagnetic radiation but rendering themselves extremely vulnerable to attack - They can communicate instantly with their quantum entangled counterparts on Trisolaris. The book even makes a bit of an attempt to explain how. It's because the sophon is sapient and has full awareness of its own quantum properties. Having watched that video linked upthread this isn't all that convincing but this is the wild sci-fi stuff and it's internally consistent at least All of this is explained in a lot more detail than I've gone into here, and I would absolutely recommend reading it. They definitely can't control computers, speak through speakers or control TVs. All communication to Mike Evans from Trisolaris is done by the same retinal writing as the countdown
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Mar 26, 2024 01:30
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D-Pad posted:very disappointed at what amounted to a very dumb person's idea of hard sci-fi riddled with poo poo that falls apart with the smallest application of logic. I feel like a large part of the books original success was the novelty of a chinese sci-fi epic, it wasn't outright bad but didn't deserve the pedestal it was placed on imo. 
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Mar 26, 2024 01:33
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bawfuls posted:Didn't they have a more extended conversation in the books than what was depicted in the show? Like she tells him directly to study "cosmic sociology" and gives him a set of axioms to ponder. Correct. Book 2 spoilers: The axioms are - Survival is the primary need of civilisation - Civilisations expand and require increasing resources but the matter in the universe is constant and finite And she also asks him to think about two other concepts that she doesn't explain - The chain of suspicion - Technological explosion The show drops an extra clue with the titles of the books Ye Wenjie is reading after she finds out the aliens think we're bugs. One is Game Theory, the other is Fermi Paradox. I wish they hadn't just stuck a book called Fermi Paradox on screen though because the Wikipedia article has a Dark Forest section that directly references these books in a way that's pretty spoilery for anyone who might see those titles and Google them
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Mar 26, 2024 01:40
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Boris Galerkin posted:Maybe if I read the books it would hit differently. But as a show only watcher, the whole idea of a wallfacer is the most idiotic and loving dumbest thing in the world. No, I'm trying to think of something dumber in the books and I cannot. It is supremely stupid in the books as well. It's a huge drag on Book 2, which is easily the worst one, although it does lead to some absolutely  stuff
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Mar 26, 2024 01:45
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I feel like the series could have done a bit more to make Saul and that character Liam plays (they did say his name in the show but I can't remember it!) feel more relevant early on. You got Jin doing stuff, Portuguese girl doing stuff with nanofibers, Jack being involved with the video game, and then these two other guys who for 6/8ths of the series don't seem to have any importance to the bigger plot. Then you find out they're relevant which is either a cool "oh thats why we were seeing so much of them" or a "couldn't they have started to weave some of this in sooner?"
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Mar 26, 2024 01:48
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PostNouveau posted:No, I'm trying to think of something dumber in the books and I cannot. It is supremely stupid in the books as well. There's even a chapter in book 3 where the main character reflects back on the project as something revealing of humanity's incredible naivety and how utterly unprepared they were for what was to come. This is kind of what I was alluding to earlier when I said that the bad writing and logic holes of the show make it harder to spot when something is a bad idea in fiction vs the writers just loving up
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Mar 26, 2024 01:52
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I liked Saul from the start because I also like to smoke weed and drop acid  Lampsacus posted:Who said it was hard sci fi in the first place?? Surely, it, like most sci fi and like most good sci fi, falls apart when you apply certain logics to it. I feel like 3bp is a bit above falling apart with the smallest application of logic because would that mean it has no logic to it? I feel like it's got a bit of logic to it?? And of course it falls apart! It's sci fi! Everything falls apart because it's dramatized fiction. Name a tv show or book that doesn't fall apart when you apply certain real-world logic to it. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride It’s soft sci-fi pretending to be hard sci-fi
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Mar 26, 2024 01:53
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:I liked Saul from the start because I also like to smoke weed and drop acid Yup, there's a lot of physics chat in the books and most of book one is, from what I understand, reasonably accurate when talking about actual real world physics but as soon as we get to alien physics it's extremely fantastical extrapolation from things that are already hypothetical. See earlier chat in the thread about higher dimensions and quantum entanglement. The books keep talking about science in the same tone all the way through, so the real-world stuff in the beginning softened me up sufficiently that by the time it's all "we unwrapped a proton and inscribed an AI supercomputer on its surface" I was like gently caress yeah dude (possibly related to the first half of your post)
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Mar 26, 2024 02:03
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Ccs posted:I feel like the series could have done a bit more to make Saul and that character Liam plays (they did say his name in the show but I can't remember it!) feel more relevant early on. You got Jin doing stuff, Portuguese girl doing stuff with nanofibers, Jack being involved with the video game, and then these two other guys who for 6/8ths of the series don't seem to have any importance to the bigger plot. Then you find out they're relevant which is either a cool "oh thats why we were seeing so much of them" or a "couldn't they have started to weave some of this in sooner?" Thomas Wade They definitely could have explained Wade more, but he is serving an important role of personifying the political will of the elite in charge of combatting the alien menace. In the book series, he doesn't show up until Book 3, and the political machinations up until then just fall out of the sky like it's the will of God.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:07
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PostNouveau posted:the political machinations up until then just fall out of the sky like it's the will of God. Perfectly on theme!
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Mar 26, 2024 02:11
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Wii Spawn Camper posted:I liked Saul from the start because I also like to smoke weed and drop acid i guess this is just semantics and categories which are headcanon and subjective so meh who cares
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Mar 26, 2024 02:11
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PostNouveau posted:Thomas Wade Oh I meant Will Downing. I misread an earlier post. I liked Wade, he was basically all plot, but the actor did a great job selling it. But Will and Saul were just sort of there, part of the gang but not active participants in the larger struggle up until the last minute.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:13
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Ccs posted:Oh I meant Will Downing. I misread an earlier post. I liked Wade, he was basically all plot, but the actor did a great job selling it. But Will and Saul were just sort of there, part of the gang but not active participants in the larger struggle up until the last minute. They're characters that don't show up until the later books (the story is told in a much more straightforward chronological order in the show, we've seen material from all three books so far) so during the first 5 - 6 episodes they're at the writing mercy of the people who brought us Game of Thrones season 8
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Mar 26, 2024 02:17
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Ccs posted:I feel like the series could have done a bit more to make Saul and that character Liam plays (they did say his name in the show but I can't remember it!) feel more relevant early on. You got Jin doing stuff, Portuguese girl doing stuff with nanofibers, Jack being involved with the video game, and then these two other guys who for 6/8ths of the series don't seem to have any importance to the bigger plot. Then you find out they're relevant which is either a cool "oh thats why we were seeing so much of them" or a "couldn't they have started to weave some of this in sooner?"
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Mar 26, 2024 02:17
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I think the setups of who the Oxford 5 are is fine. Saul, in his first scene, bluntly says he feels he failed to get his career track going and is now kinda spiraling. The deliberately misleading particle accelerator results aren't helping. Then bigger events take over and he decides to stop trying, and focuses on his friends...mostly. Honestly, out of the five, his reaction is the one I can most relate to.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:47
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I would get high as gently caress if the world was ending too. Saul is the Everyman.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:58
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I was pumped for a classic moment where a scientist technobabbles for a bit only to be cut off by another character with, "In English, please!" Disappointed.
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Mar 26, 2024 03:01
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:I was pumped for a classic moment where a scientist technobabbles for a bit only to be cut off by another character with, "In English, please!" They kinda did this scene in one of the flashbacks with the chalkboard scene.
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Mar 26, 2024 03:06
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In hindsight, that explanation in the book of "The sun's a signal amplifier. Don't think about it too hard. Just go with it" is a good primer for how to treat some of the more whackadoodle wonderful setpieces to come later.
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Mar 26, 2024 03:14
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Rewatching Ep 8 they leave it open ended who hacked the cars to kill Saul, it could’ve easily been an ETO operative
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Mar 26, 2024 03:32
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Steve Yun posted:Rewatching E S* O
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Mar 26, 2024 03:39
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