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A Remarkable Number of People Think 'The Martian' Is Based On a True Story (buzzfeed.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The Martian is a smash hit movie that made $100 million worldwide during its first weekend. The science and engineering depicted was, with certain notable exceptions, near perfect. The cinematography and special effects were so well done that one could almost imagine that Ridley Scott sent Matt Damon and a film crew to Mars to shoot the movie. In fact, perhaps the film was a little too good. Buzzfeed took a stroll through social media and discovered that many people think that The Martian is based on a true story.
Nothing new about it.
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If you think stories like this aren't important, just remember the fact that each of those people has the same number of votes in our glorious democracy as you do. There is no such thing as 'too much' when it comes to shaming stupidity in public.
A post on Slashdot related to the fact that many people lack basic education and/or skills to basic reasoning skills? /. now?
And over the top linking/citing a buzzfeed post? Are they now directly feeding their facebook wall on
I wonder what's worse: A few people believing a film is based on a true story when it obviously can't or the fact that this is posted here. I will ponder on that.
who think the moon landings were a hoax.
After Apollo 13 (based on a true story) and Interstellar (based on a true story) it's no surprise that people would think that The Martian is continuing the trend. Hell, it even stars Matt Damon, from the previous one. How are they supposed to keep it straight?! /satire
True in general, but there definitely IS such a thing as too much if shaming a specific individual. While that's not the case here, it can't be stressed enough. This public shaming crap has gone WAY WAY to far, to the point that you just have to hope your name never comes up among any significant number of Internet users because they'll either make you a king (e.g. clock boy) or essentially destroy your life and future for some relatively petty and insignificant perceived "wrong," the likes of which we've almost all said or done at some point in our lives.
(see also the book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" Scary stuff.)
A remarkable number of people believe homeopathy works. A remarkable number of people believe in gods, devils, prophets and an afterlife. A remarkable number of people believe scrying, remote sensing, dousing or fortune telling is real. A remarkable number of people firmly believe various economic, political or social "truths" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
A remarkable number of people are intelligent, well-adjusted and successful in their lives, and still manage to hold one or several of the beliefs above without ever experiencing any sense of disconnect. Those remarkable people almost certainly includes myself, and most likely you as well.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
This is why I'm seriously advocating that the weight of one's vote should be proportional to his knowledge + intelligent.
Does that mean that my vote will count more than yours, because I know the difference between "intelligent" and "intelligence?"
Be careful how you tell other people to measure things.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Some even think this kind of mental masturbation is actually the real slashdot.
This is why I'm seriously advocating that the weight of one's vote should be proportional to his knowledge + intelligent. People should be asked to take a test and the weight of their individual votes should depend on how well they do on the test.
The problem with proposals like this is that whoever is in power will design the "test" to disenfranchise other people. In case you're unaware, poll "tests" were common in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s: they were widely used to prevent black people from voting in many areas. The "tests" claimed to be about literacy or whatever, but they were made arbitrarily difficult so that blacks couldn't pass. In fact, whites couldn't pass either, but they were literally "grandfathered" in (i.e., if their grandfather who was eligible to vote, they didn't have to take the test... blacks mostly had slaves for grandfathers, so they wouldn't have been eligible to vote -- this is where the phrase comes from).
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
I've often wondered how much our media actually sways public perception.
To take an example, consider the TV series "West Wing", which ran from from 2000 - 2007. This was during most of the Bush administration.
In the series, the president (played by Martin Sheen) was powerful, smart, compassionate, and likeable. The character was a Nobel Prize laureate in economics(*), and pretty-much the pinnacle of personal achievement.
For comparison, note that Dennis Kucinich brought 35 articles of impeachment against Bush at the end of his term, including taking the country into war for no just cause.
(I don't bring this up to cast aspersions on the man or party, only to show that there was widespread disapproval with some justification at the time.)
I can't help but wonder if peoples' perception of the president's actions were somehow biased because of the "West Wing" series. It was highly popular, and the character of the president (in the series) was one who garnered a lot of respect.
Would the public have been less tolerant of Bush without "West Wing" running concurrently with his term?
I wonder what other effects that TV and entertainment might have on the population. Does everyone's view of police stem from CSI, Hawaii 5-0, and Hill Street Blues? We see all the time how police risk their lives to protect the innocent, for example... on TV. Do people use their TV viewing as the basis for their assessment of reality?
(*) And in one particular moment during the show, someone asked the president about NAFTA and whether opening up free trade would hurt America, and Martin Sheen (as the president) stated something like "every economist thinks it would be to our benefit".
I wonder how many people believe both that "The Martian" is based on a true story and that the Apollo moon landings were fake. I bet there are a few, some people seem to be serial conspiracy theory/hoax believers.
For a moment there, I thought you were talking about the moon landings.
Robinson Caruso? The famous singing castaway?
He died of Random Pavarotting Syndrome, don't you know, you insensitive clod.
If you're more intelligent than I am, then I wouldn't mind if your vote counts more than mine.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
I will. I admit it was stupid to read this far down this chain of posts.
--
Anyhow, if we were to reinstate some sort of poll test, it may not be used to disenfranchise according to racial lines, but you can be sure that whoever is in power will find a way to stop others from voting or to make their vote count less. It's probably impossible to design a system that couldn't be manipulated once you start disenfranchising people. Who gets to define the relevant "knowledge"? How do we measure " intelligence"?
And you must realize that political parties immediately get incentive to do this if the voters most likely to be excluded lean a particular way politically. Say party A is strong with the low income families and party B is more of a middle class party and that statistically if you make the test harder more low income families will drop out because they're already working their ass off making ends meet. Now one party has obvious incentive to set the bar higher, the other to set the bar lower. Here in Norway there's a campaign to lower the voting age from 18 to 16, you can compare the youth vote scores with the parties supporting it and it's obvious why. Voters who've mostly never had a real job, never paid taxes and never had to balance a budget because they live at home with mom and dad with an allowance tend to vote quite differently than people who've had to support themselves.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you don't believe civilians should be able to own any weapon our military is allowed to use, your out.
If you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" - you're out.
A remarkable number of people believe homeopathy works. A remarkable number of people believe in gods, devils, prophets and an afterlife. A remarkable number of people believe scrying, remote sensing, dousing or fortune telling is real. A remarkable number of people firmly believe various economic, political or social "truths" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
A remarkable number of people are intelligent, well-adjusted and successful in their lives, and still manage to hold one or several of the beliefs above without ever experiencing any sense of disconnect. Those remarkable people almost certainly includes myself, and most likely you as well.
Why don't we turn the "NASA faked the moon landings" conspiracy theory on it's head and convince the tinfoil-hat community NASA has secretly sent astronauts to Mars? I'm challenging all Slashdot users to discreetly spread rumours and manifestly fake and/or weak evidence that NASA has secretly gone to Mars and that this film is a reenactment documentary based on revelations by a mysterious unidentified NASA whistle blower thus fanning the flames of this simple misconception among a few uninformed people into a full blown conspiracy theory. If people believe NASA faked the moon landings even though you can see the astronaut's footprints on the moon to this day they'll swallow this story hook line and sinker since the believability of a conspiracy theory seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of evidence proving that it is a big steaming pile of bullshit.
For a moment there, I thought you were talking about the moon landings.
Didn't you know that the Moon landing was actually faked by filming on Mars. But when they finished they left one crew member behind .....
This is like the reverse of what we had with Apollo 13. I watched it with a friend who was *astonished* to learn it was based on a true story. And yet, even I -- somewhat of a space nut myself -- had barely heard of the Apollo 13 mission when I was growing up. Nobody talked about it. There were no documentaries about it. I was vaguely aware that there was one Apollo mission that had some kind of malfunction and was aborted, but that was all. I had no idea there was any sort of *drama* associated with that.
When the Apollo 13 mission happened, I presume it was all over the news. I don't remember because I was four years old. Maybe all these people who think The Martian was real are just assuming it was before their time???
Didn't you know that the Moon landing was actually faked by filming on Mars. But when they finished they left one crew member behind .....
The sick part is that the people who don't believe we went to the moon will believe that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So, if I were by far the most intelligent man on the planet, you wouldn't mind me stealing the election and running the country just to benefit my friends and myself?
Don't mistake intelligence alone for an automatically benign and positive thing for everyone else involved - there are seriously smart people you might want in charge, but there are also seriously smart psychopaths you might not want to run the country or even have a bigger say in the decision on who does.