this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I stopped watching this movie after this scene (which is pretty close to the start). The way the scientists and world leaders were discussing how to communicate was just so absurdly shallow that I couldn't take the movie seriously.

    Like, I can easily suspend disbelieve to watch a movie about aliens doing all sorts of weird things that are inconsistent with basic physics; but it just really bugs me when a movie makes a point of bringing together the smartest and most capable people to solve some issue, and then utterly fails to show even a faint glimmer of that knowledge or intelligence in what they do. I reckon a random person picked up off the street would do a better job of first-contact with aliens compared to these clowns.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I would totally botch trying to communicate with aliens. How would you have done it?

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

    Look, I don't know exactly. I don't think it's an easy problem.

    But I think the first stages would try to help the aliens understand how we communicate with each other. If people are waving their limbs around and breathing and poking at devices, and making all sorts of noises, it may be unclear which of those actions is meant to be communication. So the first thing is to have very clear correlations and patterns that are easy to recognise. Bring in the white-board to write words is a decent idea; but writing the word 'human' and then just standing there doing nothing with no follow-up is pretty much useless. There needs to be a couple of different words shown with very concrete context. 'Human' is not terrible, but it isn't a great choice because you can't really draw attention to what a human is when there is literally always a human there while you are trying to communicate. So it might be a decent word if the aliens already have the concept of words - but as a starting point... not really. Better to just say nouns for concrete things and point while doing it; with repetition and clear patterns. Writing just a list of counting numbers wouldn't be a bad idea either. If you write all the numbers up to 100 or so I think there would be a clear pattern, so that at least the aliens would know that you are trying to communicate by writing stuff.

    Regarding my criticism of the movie, it's not so much that the whiteboard idea is bad, or that their attempts were bad; but rather that these are supposedly the attempts of experts - after other experts have tried and failed; and then the meetings with the project coordinators have weird discussions like "this method will take too long." - as if they think you can somehow side-step the need to establish a common language. And the description of the plan from the scientist talk about teaching the different meanings of the word 'you', and some grammar rules - as if that's somehow a core priority. I just think it's a really shallow level of discussion. Their strategy is super basic (but not unreasonable), and the criticism of it from the other characters is somehow even more shallow. They were even questioning why the scientist wanted to bring in the whiteboard. Like, isn't that extremely obviously? Do you really need to have a discussion about that? I really just felt like it was not a convincing set of smart people talking about the problem.

    When I said anyone off the street could do a better job, I guess what I had it mind is that people would typically just point to things and say what they pointing to. They could bring in props and talk about the props; and perhaps try to give something to the aliens to interact with - if possible. Just basic ideas like that would be a decent start. I reckon that would be better than just holding up a whiteboard with a single word on it then just standing around. Like, how are the aliens meant to even know that it is a word at all - let alone what it might mean?

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
    [–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

    Hey I know that movie! That was 100% in the movie.

    [–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)
    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

    You could also run a shell command that kills vim from within vim... :!killall -9 vim.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

    Killing Vim is already a bummer. Making it commit suicide is sad as it can get.

    [–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Joke's on them: those aliens don't perceive time, so the concept of pressing keys in sequence is impossible to convey.

    [–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

    HAHAHAHAHAHAH DAE VIM SCARY???

    [–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    God am i tired of this meme

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

    I'm beginning to suspect it was perpetuated by Vim devs to make sure most people know how to exit it and won't be afraid to try it.

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

    I don't know? Are you?

    • God
    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

    And in a way, you've always been predestined to become tired of this meme.

    [–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Unplug the computer? Got it.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

    Uh oh, you're on a laptop. Now you gotta pull the ass end out of it too.

    [–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

    echo "vim garbage.txt" >> ~/.bashrc

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)
    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Which you should always follow by running the command to show the active processes.

    The beards were in honor of Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    ZZ ps aux? Who are they?

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

    * Only if you intend to save changes

    [–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Why quit out of the superior text editor?

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    the superior text editor

    I never stopped, I'm still using Nano.

    [–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    After decades using Vim, I wouldn't choose to exit it... But it would have been nice to have had a choice...

    [–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

    If you were talking about emacs, sure. But this is vi(m), it's not even a web browser, let alone a full operating system.

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    A question that's been on my mind for a while: can you run vim in emacs? That way you'd have the best editor in the most comprehensive OS.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

    In theory you can fire up vi(m) in an emacs terminal, so... I guess?

    [–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Oh, is that what we're gonna do today? We're gonna fight?

    [–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I didn't make such statement, don't strawman me into this fight. But OP asked why you would need to exit out of it. Well maybe because one needs to do other things than edit text. Which wouldn't be the case if one were to use emacs.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

    Why would you do anything other than edit text? That's what a pc is for!

    [–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Now you've gone and made this personal, buddy.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I'm not your buddy, friend.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

    I'm not your friend, pal.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Why would I want an OS to edit text? It's already on *nix - I want the best text editor smh

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Ahh. ed

    Just kidding. It’s vi.

    [–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Oh oh, this didn't save before quitting...

    [–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    If you ended up with a file open and don’t know how to get out, there’s a good chance you shouldn’t be changing that file in the first place.

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

    Yes there is definitely that aspect to consider as well:-).

    [–] [email protected] 56 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    When I was absolutely new to computers I was given a similar instruction. Unfortunately, I didn't notice whatever the key was actually being its own key, let's say Ctrl, so I began to press down C+T+R+L.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

    The number of times I have had to explain to people who have more wealth than I ever will that Del is a key and it is different than Backspace...

    [–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)
    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

    Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

    Even today, some people are still looking for the Any key

    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

    I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.