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You know, it's nice to be "correct" about history, to be grounded in actual facts, context, and all that good stuff. But you have to remember that at the end o

You know, it's nice to be "correct" about history, to be grounded in actual facts, context, and all that good stuff. But you have to remember that at the end of the day, people greatly prefer to believe in, and see movies based on narratives -- especially hero narratives. And the more complex the hero is, and the more he/she suffers, the better. "Handsome-looking; persecuted or his sexuality; single-handedly wins WW II; then either commits suicide, is murdered, or accidentally poisons himself; not formally pardoned until decades later" is a great hero narrative. "Plain-looking; makes a seminal contribution whose impact won't be realize until much later; survives the war, goes home, becomes an accountant and never talks to anybody for 20 years", not so much.

Retric 12y ago
Sure, and considering how little of recent history is accurate it seems reasonable to suggest the vast majority of 'history' as is generally understood is pure BS. But, oddly enough I find the actual stories more interesting because the made up narrative, being fiction, needs to seem believable where actual history can be really strange. EX: The Edward Snowden 'leaks' of NSA collecting phone record information was treated as a 'new' leak. However, such spying was common for other parts of the government to the point where apparently a drug lord used a one such database to clean house internally. So, phone records might be useful for finding terrorists, but there clearly useful for finding snitches.
j2kun 12y ago
The fixes are minor and don't detract from the narrative. Instead of saying "Your universal machine that can compute anything," they could have said "Your universal machine that can compute anything that can be computed." No less impressive to someone who isn't listening to the details anyway, but true instead of false.

Retric 12y ago

Sure, and considering how little of recent history is accurate it seems reasonable to suggest the vast majority of 'history' as is generally understood is pure BS. But, oddly enough I find the actual stories more interesting because the made up narrative, being fiction, needs to seem believable where actual history can be really strange. EX: The Edward Snowden 'leaks' of NSA collecting phone record information was treated as a 'new' leak. However, such spying was common for other parts of the government to the point where apparently a drug lord used a one such database to clean house internally. So, phone records might be useful for finding terrorists, but there clearly useful for finding snitches.

j2kun 12y ago

The fixes are minor and don't detract from the narrative. Instead of saying "Your universal machine that can compute anything," they could have said "Your universal machine that can compute anything that can be computed." No less impressive to someone who isn't listening to the details anyway, but true instead of false.