Nontrivial Tests For Being Trapped In A Cultural Artifact

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:34 pm

I took this from Leonard's site!

The two already suggested:

Nontrivial Tests For Being Trapped In A Cultural Artifact #1 wrote:

Before ROTK I saw a preview for a time-travel movie, and I started thinking about the common time-travel trope that attempting to change the past will invariably make the present worse. Isn't this effectively the view that we inhabit the best of all possible worlds? And what does this say about our ability to make choices in the present? Why is it that the decision we make with no foreknowledge is always better than the alternatives? Answer: because we're trapped in a patronizing cultural artifact! This is probably the best nontrivial test I've thought of for being trapped in a cultural artifact.

Nontrivial Tests For Being Trapped In A Cultural Artifact #2 wrote:

Product placement. If you live in a modern consumer society, yet lead a Soviet-like existence in which there's effectively only one brand of soda, one type of car, etc, you're probably in a movie or TV show.

It seems probable there are others!

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:38 pm

Man, that reminds me, I was driving my Ford the other day, while drinking a cool, refreshing Coca-Cola, when I get this call from Ryan on my Nokia.

He was all, "Dude, I think we may be stuck in a cultural artifact. Let's go get some Starbucks coffee, and then discuss this possibility over a nice bucket of KFC."

I told him he was nuts, and to come back to reality. I mean, really, Ryan, you can't beat the real thing.

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:09 pm

i don't know about you, but i think being stuck in a cultural artifact might not be so bad. those people never have to use the restroom, or shower, and rarely have to eat!
and think, if it was a cartoon, you wouldn't even have to change clothes, except on special occasions.
T-Rex - OMG!

of course i - i shower and change clothes in real life...

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:33 pm

In fact, if you WERE trapped in a cultural artifact, the mere act of using the restroom would probably tip you off that SOMETHING BAD was about to happen! Anytime you saw somebody go into one, you would just shake your head and say, "Well, somebody better call an ambulance. Odds are he's not coming out in one piece."

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:37 pm

Boorishly P. Foundry wrote:

In fact, if you WERE trapped in a cultural artifact, the mere act of using the restroom would probably tip you off that SOMETHING BAD was about to happen! Anytime you saw somebody go into one, you would just shake your head and say, "Well, somebody better call an ambulance. Odds are he's not coming out in one piece."

same deal with the shower...except sometimes replace something bad with something...naughty?

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:02 pm

I don't know, man. I'd be pretty nervous about taking showers! I'd be afraid that either spiders would crawl out of the drain, or I would start bleeding profusely. Either that, or somebody else would mistakenly see me naked, resulting in wacky high jinks!

Personally, I think that's a lot of stress to deal with just for taking a shower! So, no thank you!

Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 3741 Location: Cumming

it's very strange that I had a short relay with someone about almost the same thing last night.

Quote:

As for time machines. I think its all likely possible that someone in the future already has one and is busy totally friggin' up time right now. However we never realize that time is getting screwed up, we can only percieve one linear possiblity to it seems like whatever is happening is occuring on a linearr fashion. Movies always like to make it out that something bad is going ot happen if you screw up time--that's only if your assuming that our current state is "fated" to happen and that altering this fate would be a bad thing. Alternatively I think no matter how much you screw up the timeline you'll probably just end up with something that's on par with how hugged up the world is now--not worse, or better--just about the same level of medocrity.

that is what they said. (the end?)

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:05 pm

i wrote a short story once. it had the theory that anyone can travel back in time w/ the proper technology but that they can never travel back to their future because the future is always in flux (i.e. multiple quantum realities.)

Joined: 21 Nov 2004 Posts: 381 Location: Oregon, probably.

[quote="Ryan"]I took this from Leonard's site!

The two already suggested:

Nontrivial Tests For Being Trapped In A Cultural Artifact #1 wrote:

Before ROTK I saw a preview for a time-travel movie, and I started thinking about the common time-travel trope that attempting to change the past will invariably make the present worse. Isn't this effectively the view that we inhabit the best of all possible worlds? And what does this say about our ability to make choices in the present? Why is it that the decision we make with no foreknowledge is always better than the alternatives? Answer: because we're trapped in a patronizing cultural artifact! This is probably the best nontrivial test I've thought of for being trapped in a cultural artifact.

Actually, I can't think of any movies that make this suggestion, can anyone name an example?

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:46 pm

Joined: 21 Nov 2004 Posts: 381 Location: Oregon, probably.

Except that in the end of each movie Marty ends up better than he started, right? Plus, Biff benefits from his time traveling.

Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 1442

Somewhat off-topic: Do you consider Groundhog Day a time travel movie?

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 12:42 pm

What about The Christmas Carol?

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 2:13 pm

Random wrote:

Actually, I can't think of any movies that make this suggestion, can anyone name an example?

Where time travel makes the present worse?

Butterfly Effect...City on the Edge of Forever (okay that's a star trek episode)...and, well, everything with time travel. Changing stuff makes the present worse; you have to go back and UNchange it to make it all better!

Joined: 21 Nov 2004 Posts: 381 Location: Oregon, probably.

Again though, didn't butterfly effect end with a reality that was both different from, and better than the original? The decision made with the most foreknowledge was the best!

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 4:17 pm

Nope, it ended up worse but he decided "screw it, I'm sick of messing crap up."

In...in my interpretation!

Joined: 21 Nov 2004 Posts: 381 Location: Oregon, probably.

I thought his friend killed herself in the original timeline? And the point was that in the end he'd rather not know her and have her be happy?

Out-Talled Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 4580

Welshy wrote:

Somewhat off-topic: Do you consider Groundhog Day a time travel movie?

Technically, I guess. I class Groundhog Day as a temporal anomaly, a term that also covers conventional time travel. However, I feel it is distinct from the classic idea of time travel, and therefore merits a niftier tag.

Guest

Don't forget It's a Wonderful Life! When the past changes, things get A LOT worse. For everybody! Well, except for Mr Potter. But he's the bad guy!

And there's a Ray Bradbury story called "A Sound of Distant Thunder" (I think!) where small changes in the past have some big consequences in the present. The story makes a point of showing that the changes are not for the better!

Also, Sliders makes a pretty good case for "the best of all possible worlds" without using time travel.

Now I'm trying to think of other time travel stories, but I don't remember most of them good enough to decide if they have anything to say about this subject or not... Does anybody have any insight on these:

- TimeCop? They try to stop folks from changing the past, but why? Because it makes things worse? I don't remember if it's ever discussed!
- Time Bandits? I don't think they address the "changing the past" issue at all!
- The Time Machine? I think he only goes forward, to the future, right?
- Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? I don't even know where to start with this one!

Anyway, Back to the Future seems to make a case that meddling with the past can go either way. It does seem to say that maybe things can be better if we make little tweaks to our past lives. (In fact, the timeline seems to be in potentially MORE danger when Marty visits the future!)

As somebody else mentioned, Groundhog Day also argues that you CAN change the world to make things better, given the chance to live the past over. Star Trek: Generations makes the same argument, I think!

And doesn't visiting the past also makes things better in Terminator and Terminator 2? But, significantly, NOT in Terminator 3... I can't think of any other time travel stories off the top of my head. Well, except for ones I haven't seen or read yet!

Guest

Oh, and then there's The Final Countdown. Again, I can't figure out if that one has anything to say about changing the past! Mostly, I think it says that the past is history is fated to happen in a particular way, so you can't really change it anyway.

The Philadelphia Experiment 2, on the other hand... Woah, boy! By changing the past, they accidentally let the Nazis win World War II. I think that counts as worse! For basically everybody except a couple of people maybe!

In the first Philadelphia Experiment, I don't think there are any real effects of time travel, except that it just was really boring and stupid.

Out-Talled Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 4580

There's a Stephen Fry novel called Making History that explores the possibility of erasing Hitler from history (a drug that causes absolute sterility is zapped back in time into his father's drinking water). However, a far more competent ruler named Rudi Gloder came to power instead and the future became a totally different place! Technology is more advanced, but homosexuality is illegal and the Holocaust has been erased from history.

It's the same moral, basically.

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:23 pm

The Twilight Zone had an episode like that! A time traveller goes back and kills Hitler as a baby, but Hitler's nurse doesn't want to get blamed with losing the baby ("THIS IS A MUCH BIGGER DEAL THAN YOU THINK IT IS!" "But - she can have more, right?")

So she buys a baby off a random starving gypsy for lots of money and uses it in baby Hitler's place! Thus by trying to prevent Hitler's reign the time traveller CREATED THE VERY MONSTER SHE WAS SEEKING TO DESTROY.

Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:44 am

BenB wrote:

Man, that reminds me, I was driving my Ford the other day, while drinking a cool, refreshing Coca-Cola, when I get this call from Ryan on my Nokia.

He was all, "Dude, I think we may be stuck in a cultural artifact. Let's go get some Starbucks coffee, and then discuss this possibility over a nice bucket of KFC."

I told him he was nuts, and to come back to reality. I mean, really, Ryan, you can't beat the real thing.

And then you realized that you lived on the set of "Cellular."

Really, their car chases consisted of shots of the car's logos racing around after each other and hitting trucks with the name of the beverages they were carrying (Coke and Red Bull), cut with shots of people talking on their Nokias (often also talking about their Nokias).