Thanks for the review; now I know there's no reason for me to see the movie. Sometimes I just want to yell at Hollywood, "Get your own stories!" There are too many movies that could have been fairly decent films if only they weren't pretending to represent the books that inspired them. Think of all the people running around today thinking they know something about Tolkien's works....

That goes for films based on history, too. I liked both Braveheart and Amadeus until I discovered that they played fast and loose with the truth. Far better to make up new characters than to tell lies about real ones.

Anonymous person: I certainly would never (and could never!) dispute your feelings, or your own reliance on them in cases like this. I certainly admit that some (probably even most) people might feel that question of who to save in such an incident would be highly, or even primarily, emotionally-based.

Dennis Prager, for example, frequently talks to groups of young people, and often asks them: "If your pet were drowning, and a person you didn't know were drowning, which would you save?" Almost without exception, these days, he reports, kids choose their dog or cat over a human. Part of that is based on their values (life is precious only if it matters to me), and the other part is based on their emotions (so then, how do I *feel* about each death?).

Some people would say that's a right decision. Obviously, I don't, and I don't think such thinking makes the world a better place.

I cannot honestly say I'd equate the accident on the bridge in the movie with a doctor making triage decisions...

I agree you wouldn't. But a well-trained paramedic who knew neither parties probably would choose the person with the highest chance of survival, at least if asked the question verbally. Who knows: in real life, he or she might also go for the little girl just because she's "cuter" or something, even though he or she knew both victims were most likely to end up dead in that scenario.

(In the movies, an 11% chance of survival, or even 1 in a thousand, is truly "more than enough", and such cases always work out. In real life, they almost always die.)

My point wasn't to argue that no human being could ever agree with Smith's character about the primacy of emotion, or that specific decision. My point was only that some humans -- e.g. ones who do this for a living, and are concerned with doing the most good overall -- would probably have agreed with the robot's choice, given the same assessment.

I could be wrong, of course, but we'd find that out by asking ER doctors, military doctors, and paramedics.

The whole scenario is a bit contrived. We're told that Smith's character had a 45% chance of survival: yet he needed an arm and even a lung replaced, was apparently in surgery for a long, long time, and barely made it. The little girl looked fine, was standing upright and looking cute, and apparently had both arms free. If she was visibly 3/4 worse than Smith, she should have been unconscious, almost dead -- or at least pinned.

But I'm sure she wouldn't have looked "cute" enough to sway our emotions if she had been accurately depicted as far more injured than Smith's character.

One could have argued perhaps the robot made a bad assessment of survival odds. But that wasn't the choice the film made: the assessment is never disputed. We're just told that humans would have known better than to save the person who appeared to have a higher chance of survival.

Next, even Will Smith's own argument seems bogus: "She was somebody's little girl." Well, sure, most likely the dead people next to her in the car. He was also somebody's little boy, as we learn from his frequent visits to see his elderly mother, who was clearly not in the car with him, and who he seems to have been supporting.

Finally, the rescue doesn't seem to be something a human could have done: the robot breaks through the glass and hauls the body out against the inrushing water. Clearly, there's also some complicating circumstance (like deep water) which made it impossible to attempt to save both people (even though the little girl's car seemed to fill slowly). If so, Smith's character's rage against robots seems even more unjustified: in a world of mere humans, both victims seemingly would have died.

Hi Tim,

I know you've talked about sci-fi in past musings, but I haven't seen you talk about Orson Scott Card's work like "Ender's Game". I enjoyed many books in that series, but not all of them.

What's your take on that series, assuming you've read them of course!

Don

Hi Don!

A friend lent me Ender's Game a while ago. Not too long, but long enough that any specific insights have probably escaped me by now. (Sadly, I'm cursed with a short memory on some points.) Didn't read the rest in the series.

My general impression was that I enjoyed the story. Like some, I wasn't so sure if any kid that age could be quite that savvy -- much less three of them. (Especially the one who was picked on the most, being that socially savvy.) But hey, they're super-kids, not like ones we have today, so a bit of suspension of disbelief is in order.

As in many SF stories, the poor aliens are simply misunderstood, no matter how badly they behave or how many they kill. (STTNG, for example: the only truly evil aliens were Republican surrogates, like Cardacians or Ferrengi.) I often see this as a thinly-veiled restatement of a political belief that says most or all seemingly badly-behaved humans are also misunderstood.

Tim,

Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow I found to be a fascinating commentary about leadership and group formation. I would agree that one must suspend reality because of the characters ages, but the detailed writing of the psychology of leadership held my attention without pause.

In fact, leadership is always an interesting topic, and when wrapped in SciFi, it adds a nice change of scenery.

If you were to read just one more book in that series, I'd highly recommend Ender's Shadow.

don!

Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow I found to be a fascinating commentary about leadership and group formation...

I agree that the way Ender manipulated the group and hid behind the throne was interesting.

If you were to read just one more book in that series, I'd highly recommend Ender's Shadow.

Thanks much for the recommendation and feedback!

STTNG, for example: the only truly evil aliens were Republican surrogates, like Cardacians or Ferrengi.

I dunno about that. There were some trecherous Klingons and Romulans. There was the evil character that killed Tasha Yar (a sort of Jungian shadow distillation of evil discarded by some kind of enlightened civilization.) There was Lore, who was psychopathic,outright. There was Tasha Yar's sister who was willing to manipulate the Enterprise to gain an advantage in her tribe's local skirmish. There was a civilization based on drug trade, where the narcotic was presented to the addict civilization as a cure for their disease. etc. etc.

Granted, I think Gene Roddenbury had the values that you describe and often incorporated them into the series. But the trend wasn't quite so monolithic.

I often see this as a thinly-veiled restatement of a political belief that says most or all seemingly badly-behaved humans are also misunderstood.

Quite a few human conflicts on the personal level do revolve around misunderstandings of one type or other. People frequently misinterpret one another without consciously setting out to do so. I just don't think that that rule of thumb can be transfered from the personal realm to international politics.

Tim: STTNG, for example: the only truly evil aliens were Republican surrogates, like Cardacians or Ferrengi.

Ryan: I dunno about that. There were some trecherous Klingons and Romulans.

And humans, too.

I'd gently point out that a statement about few individuals cannot function as an effective rebuttal to a generalization about STTNG's use of certain species.

If I say "species X are portrayed as generally evil", saying "well, some individuals from Y,Z are shown as bad." Yes, sure, but the later does not rebut the former. (Nor would a few "good" renegades from X.)

There was the evil character that killed Tasha Yar (a sort of Jungian shadow distillation of evil discarded by some kind of enlightened civilization.)...

You make my point nicely: The slime in question wasn't even conscious! And you'd have to look at the producers' own political beliefs to see, in detail, what abstract ideas such an "enlightened" civilization had discarded.

I think in doing so, you'd again find a case where a truly evil entity represents, in the producers' minds, political beliefs they reject.

Quite a few human conflicts on the personal level do revolve around misunderstandings of one type or other.

No doubt. But, as you say, that's true because the vast majority (if not all) of the people who surround us don't wish personally wish us serious harm, don't murder their opponents on a regular basis, and the dispute in question is often minor -- such as a misunderstood word in a mail message, or a bad feeling over a lost parking space.

On the international stage, as you imply, these statements apply less often. It isn't usually the case that, say, a nation acting as Japan did in WWII simply "misunderstood" their neighbors (the Chinese, Manchurians, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, etc.), resulting in rape and prison camps. Or that Kim Jong Il simply "misunderstands" the families he uses for chemical weapons tests.

But in SF, it works out that way surprisingly often.

(If anything, a number of these conflicts happen because we "misunderstand" truly evil intentions (yes, I use such words) as being parking-space type disputes. Nevil Chamberlain misunderstood Hitler's nature and trustworthiness. FDR thought of Stalin as a reliable partner. We haven't quite comprehended that Hezbollah really means their rhetoric about driving "the Jews" into the sea.)

I'd gently point out that a statement about few individuals cannot function as an effective rebuttal to a generalization about STTNG's use of certain species.

Ah. So we're only talking about species/societies. That makes a little more sense.

In that case I can think of a few collectivist alien societies which represent the opposite end of the spectrum - loss of individuality.

You've noted before that STTNG authors rejected the Borg collective as evil.

That same organizational system is also rejected in a few other settings. (Riker goes so far as to kill his clones which were created by a cloning society, in one episode, the Q are portrayed as a 'collective', a group of telepathic collective-minded aliens kidnap Picard and replace him to study the enterprise and how individuals organize, etc. ) I agree with what you're saying about Cardasians and Ferengi. But I still don't think they're the only adversarial alien type of society in STTNG.

You've noted before that STTNG authors rejected the Borg collective as evil.

Touche! The producers reject Republicans AND uber-conformist Leninist-style Communism.

Riker goes so far as to kill his clones which were created by a cloning society...