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What a Programmer Sees When He Watches Inception
- l0nwlf 16y ago'Inception' was a classic example of recursion.
- confuzatron 16y agoNot really, just a callstack four* calls deep. ...just four? Hmm, actually there was multi-threading, using sort of kick-based synchronisation primitive.
- stingraycharles 16y agoactually there was multi-threading, using sort of kick-based synchronisation primitive I think they actually used an actor-based threading model.
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- fizx 16y agohttp://instantrimshot.com/ http://instantrimshot.com/
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- googler 16y agoWhat if she watches it?
- philk 16y agoWhat a Programmer Sees When He or She Watches Inception does not have the same panache.
- sprout 16y agoWhat a Programmer Sees When Watching Inception is just as good, and makes no unwarranted assumptions.
- jonursenbach 16y ago"He" is a common vernacular; get off your soapbox.
- ant5 16y ago"He" as gender-neutral singular pronoun is not even vernacular -- it is standard English.
- seanstickle 16y agoStandard English is a construct of a society predominantly run by, and for, men. It is, in no small way, the English of Those Who Rule, which is to say, at least for a very long time, men.
- ant5 16y agoI don't disagree that standard language is dynamic and a representation of culture (and those who control it). However -- while I have heard plenty of suggestions for resolving the issue from college english professors, none of them have managed to convince the Central Board of Oppressive English to accept their proposal, and so we might just be stuck with non gender-neutral pronouns and awkward she/he constructions for the time being. 'They' might emerge as a ambiguously plural/singular gender-neutral pronoun, but in the meantime I won't berate anyone for sticking to the accepted standard.
- sliverstorm 16y agoSo? It means what it means; you can't argue that something is insulting because it would be insulting if someone else was directing the growth of the language.
- tsally 16y agoYou might be interested in reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Modern_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Modern_Englis.... As third person singular personal pronouns, he and he/she are both acceptable in the dual gender case. If we're going to be strictly PC we should say gender-neutral, but A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language was written in 1985, so I hope you let it pass. :)
- calcnerd256 16y agoPerhaps the post's author was speaking more personally. It is semiotically ambiguous.
- forkandwait 16y agoInception also understands "Big Oh" ideas -- when you are looping inside the third level down, you have 10 seconds on the outside giving you 10^3 seconds on the inside. (EDIT: a single "tick" in one level allows for 20 or so "ticks" at the next level of dreaming, because of extra brain capacity during sleep.) Hehe -- I loved the movie...
- Griever 16y agoHaha, I was thinking the same thing while watching it last night. Terrific movie indeed.
- ilovecomputers 16y agoExcept the human brain doesn't have the capacity to process so fast that seconds turns into years. None the less, the movie was entertaining and I'm just gonna leave it there. I know movie logic shouldn't be a comparison to real world logic, but the geek in me can't help but point out illogical happenings in the film.
- ardit33 16y agoin real life dreams are very short. Minutes 1-5. And they feel a lot longer. We can dream a lot 1-5 spinets withing one hour, and they feel like hours. Hence you see your dream to shift from one place, to the other. Here is a very good NOVA documentary on netflix about it: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/What_Are_Dreams_Nova/70129639?strackid=4624b6968f9b85fa_0_srl&strkid=337777698_0_0&trkid=438381 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/What_Are_Dreams_Nova/70129639...
- ilovecomputers 16y agoI'm referring to turning minutes into decades. I doubt the brain has the capacity to process that fast.
- CamperBob 16y agoAs long as it has the capacity to make you think decades are passing, it doesn't matter that they aren't.
- siglesias 16y agoAnybody else think of the book Godel Escher Bach when they were watching this movie? Beautiful how the movie wraps in on itself like a mobius strip.
- forkandwait 16y agoIs this wrapping around because of the first "act", when washes up on shore? I still don't quite understand how that fits in, if someone cares to elucidate.
- bmalicoat 16y agoSpoilers Don't read if you haven't seen it yet! Saito dies at some level (if I remember right at the top dream level) and he enters limbo. Cobb goes there from the snow compound dream level but Saito has already been there 20-40 years (maybe they said in the movie, I forgot that too). Cobb then helps him remember Saito is in a dream so they can wake up together from the limbo state.
- almost 16y agoSTILL SPOILERS Except they don't, you never see them kill themselves (to exit the dream) or pass through the other levels of dreams, it just cuts straight to the plane. Then at the end he sees his kids, but they're exactly as they appear in his dreams. The top continuing to spin just makes it more explicit. So he never made it out of limbo, when you see him awaking in the plane that's just him creating his own reality inside limbo, one where he gets to go back to his kids.
- jhuckestein 16y agoif(depth > 3) return false; else { try { // ... do what the OP wrote } catch (DeathException D) { enterLimboState() ... } }
- bmalicoat 16y agoCan someone explain why the zero g scenes didn't cascade down through each dream level? They were feeling forces in the first dream in the van and those would go to the hotel but those sleeping there would not feel the same forces (eg lack of gravity) the next level down. I did really love the idea behind the totem though, very clever.
- forkandwait 16y agoThe totem reminded me of passing a reference down a series of recursive calls. Hehe.
- greenlblue 16y agoThere are a lot of inconsistencies and you just noticed another one but it's still a really good movie because the inconsistencies are all subtle enough that you are willing to overlook them when you are watching the movie.
- aditya 16y agoWhy doesn't the totem work if someone else touches it, though?
- bjg 16y agoThe point of the totem is that only you know how it behaves, and how it feels and how it's weight is distributed. If someone else has held and seen your totem, they can possible recreate it exactly in a dream. If they can recreate it then they can trick you into thinking you aren't dreaming when you actually are.
- AngryParsley 16y agoThe totems seem to be pretty vulnerable to trickery, but the film didn't explore that much. For example, (spoiler alert) replace Joseph Gordon-Levitt's loaded die with a fair one. He'll think he's in a dream and kill himself. Making an ever-spinning top would be harder though.
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- qbg 16y agoWhat a computer scientist sees is an infinite tower of reflective interpreters.
- adbge 16y agoI found the movie didn't make a whole lot of sense at times. It felt like the writer cut a lot of corners when it came to the whole logical coherency of the plot. Maybe if we blow something up they won't notice! The plot was entertaining and a good idea, but it left a lot to be desired. It's not destined to become a classic like: Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Requiem for a Dream, Primer. If you enjoyed Inception, do yourself a favor and check those out if you haven't seen them.
- greenlblue 16y ago+1 for Primer.
- bbgm 16y agoMovies are much too subjective. 12 monkeys had some fine writing, but the editing, direction, and acting are way better in Inception (IMO of of course). Is it an all time great? Not sure, but it's a darn fine movie
- nlativy 16y agoIf you haven't already I would highly recommend you watch The Pier (La Jetee) which was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys. It has a really beautiful and unique style being composed almost completely of still images which suits the story very well.
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- twism 16y agoI felt exactly them same way when I left the theater, but then I thought "isn't that the way dreams are?" In dreams (at least mine anyways) there are solutions/objects/processess that suddenly, without explanation, just materialize out of thin air (but makes perfect sense while in the dream) to problems/events that occur in the dream and only realize how absurd the whole thing was when you wake up.
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- forkandwait 16y agoFurthermore, ... I thought it was interesting the movie only went down 4 levels. I have a rule of thumb when working on hierarchical structures (like a directory tree holding lots of data) that three levels of hierarchy is all a person can hold in their head at a time. This is sort of the like the 7 items +/- 2, except I think that the seven items rule only applies "across" a structure. To understand more than three levels deep requires supplementary structures like indexing, sorting, or nesting ... (of nesting (of nesting (...)))
- waterlesscloud 16y agoWhen they added the 4th level, I explicitly thought to myself "Oh, this is an effort by the filmmaker to pull us out of logical thought by making it too much to organize in our heads in real time."
- Scriptor 16y agoSPOILERS: It wasn't too much though, the top two were just sleeping in a plane and a falling van, which isn't too much to remember. The elevator scene was just him setting up charges, much more action was happening at the hospital and the limbo level.
- ardit33 16y agoEntering Limbo = Memory Leak. The reference to an object is nullified (the subject's projection/reference is killed in the dream), so the object is leaked and there is no way to access it, until either a garbage collection happens, or when the parent process is stopped. (i.e. the subject is awaken up).
- nhnifong 16y agoGarbage collection offers a nice explanation for why limbo is only a problem under the influence of the "strong sedative". If garbage collection is a feature of normal dreaming, the "strong sedative" disables it. If you can stretch the metaphor further be my guest.
- bitwize 16y agoWhat I thought: * These dreams are far too cohesive and realistic. Dreams aren't like The Matrix where physics is normal and you do something to it. They're more like weird shit happens and you accept it as normal. * Dreaming nested 3 levels of recursion deep? Done it, didn't need a sedative.