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> Jurassic Park wasn't a "don't clone dinosaurs" movie, it was a "don't be an idiot" movie with a dinosaur theme. This is why we have people building torment n

> Jurassic Park wasn't a "don't clone dinosaurs" movie, it was a "don't be an idiot" movie with a dinosaur theme. This is why we have people building torment nexuses and genuinely thinking they're doing nothing wrong. Jurassic Park was a "don't clone dinosaurs" movie. They were very clear and explicit about it. The characters had multiple conversations about it. It was the central plot. The moral of the movie was "nature is indifferent to the hubris of man". Not that hubris is the downfall of man, but that the universe does not care about you, your intentions, or your actions. If you clone dinosaurs, they will escape at some point and they will kill and torment people. Did you watch the movie? Did you miss the entire "life finds a way" scene? You're taking "this is a torment nexus, please don't build it" and reading it as "torment nexus is fine, it's dumb men who are the problem" You are the problem.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I love that this is precisely the point. I sincerely wish more people were forced to actually take a class on all the ways hubris messes up, and all the ways people explain they just need to build the torment nexus carefully, paired with all the media about people who say the exact same thing and it blows up in their faces the exact same way. But of course the whole point of hubris is that they’ll see all the examples and think it’ll be different for them because they’ve learned from previous mistakes. It’s brilliant!
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Man it'd sure be cool if great thinkers had been writing about hubris since the dawn of history or something. But alas, we'll just have to move forward with the torment nexus
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    They were also writing a lot about deities and heroes who were constantly drunk in between of casually murdering or raping people. Some of those themes survived to this day. Doesn't mean we should be basing our behavior on them. They also believed a lot of things we know today to be just wrong, despite their writings making it seem to be right. Again, some discernment and critical thinking is required. Skills presumably taught in liberal arts curriculum, which makes me think that people arguing for libart education in this thread didn't actually get any, judging by lack of aforementioned skills.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
I did. My point is that the movie isn't the Holy Bible. The explicit message was wrong, and in a rather dumb way. "Life finds a way" is just law of large numbers for masses. Big deal. Humans find can find a way too. We've been fighting "life finding a way" ever since humanity learned language. It's not something you run away from, it's something you overcome.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  > Humans find can find a way too Hubris. Philosophically, it is opposed to reason. The story of Icarus is the classic tale of hubris. As a sort of omnipotence with unlimited power, it is irrational precisely because it appropriates a belief in the possibility of transcending physical limits.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    The story of Icarus is the story of inadequacies of wax as an adhesive. I'd understand your take, if you wrote this 200 years ago. But holy shit, we've been doing powered, heavier-than-air flight for over a century. People put their footsteps on the Moon, and then they safely came back to tell about it. If anything, I see such takes as a great example why the talks about "hubris" and "playing god" are not just wrong - they're dangerous, perverse, mind-consuming memes. Literally every advancement we've made in recorded history came from ignoring this take on hubris. (To be clear: there exist hubris that is dangerous. It's not this though.)
    - cratermoon 3y ago
      > The story of Icarus is the story of inadequacies of wax as an adhesive. You can't be serious, can you? That's really your takeaway? Was it not covered in the schools you attended?
      - randallsquared 3y ago
        It's death-of-the-author applied to stories which no longer make sense as they were originally intended, due to reality being other than what the author believed. This is as true for Jurassic Park as for Icarus, except that the explicitly intended message of JP was obsolete when it was written, and it still was written that way for reasons (money, Luddism, or whatever) other than that anyone should have believed it. It's ironic that a similar message about AI, in 2023, is much more well-grounded, but largely ignored due to decades of crying wolf about nuclear energy, genetic engineering, etc.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
No True Scotsmen would be so dumb as to let his cloned dinosaurs escape!

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

I love that this is precisely the point. I sincerely wish more people were forced to actually take a class on all the ways hubris messes up, and all the ways people explain they just need to build the torment nexus carefully, paired with all the media about people who say the exact same thing and it blows up in their faces the exact same way. But of course the whole point of hubris is that they’ll see all the examples and think it’ll be different for them because they’ve learned from previous mistakes. It’s brilliant!

calamari4065 3y ago
Man it'd sure be cool if great thinkers had been writing about hubris since the dawn of history or something. But alas, we'll just have to move forward with the torment nexus
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  They were also writing a lot about deities and heroes who were constantly drunk in between of casually murdering or raping people. Some of those themes survived to this day. Doesn't mean we should be basing our behavior on them. They also believed a lot of things we know today to be just wrong, despite their writings making it seem to be right. Again, some discernment and critical thinking is required. Skills presumably taught in liberal arts curriculum, which makes me think that people arguing for libart education in this thread didn't actually get any, judging by lack of aforementioned skills.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

I did. My point is that the movie isn't the Holy Bible. The explicit message was wrong, and in a rather dumb way. "Life finds a way" is just law of large numbers for masses. Big deal. Humans find can find a way too. We've been fighting "life finding a way" ever since humanity learned language. It's not something you run away from, it's something you overcome.

cratermoon 3y ago
> Humans find can find a way too Hubris. Philosophically, it is opposed to reason. The story of Icarus is the classic tale of hubris. As a sort of omnipotence with unlimited power, it is irrational precisely because it appropriates a belief in the possibility of transcending physical limits.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  The story of Icarus is the story of inadequacies of wax as an adhesive. I'd understand your take, if you wrote this 200 years ago. But holy shit, we've been doing powered, heavier-than-air flight for over a century. People put their footsteps on the Moon, and then they safely came back to tell about it. If anything, I see such takes as a great example why the talks about "hubris" and "playing god" are not just wrong - they're dangerous, perverse, mind-consuming memes. Literally every advancement we've made in recorded history came from ignoring this take on hubris. (To be clear: there exist hubris that is dangerous. It's not this though.)
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    > The story of Icarus is the story of inadequacies of wax as an adhesive. You can't be serious, can you? That's really your takeaway? Was it not covered in the schools you attended?
    - randallsquared 3y ago
      It's death-of-the-author applied to stories which no longer make sense as they were originally intended, due to reality being other than what the author believed. This is as true for Jurassic Park as for Icarus, except that the explicitly intended message of JP was obsolete when it was written, and it still was written that way for reasons (money, Luddism, or whatever) other than that anyone should have believed it. It's ironic that a similar message about AI, in 2023, is much more well-grounded, but largely ignored due to decades of crying wolf about nuclear energy, genetic engineering, etc.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

No True Scotsmen would be so dumb as to let his cloned dinosaurs escape!