Decipher SciFi

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Natural Sciences
**Decipher SciFi**

Decipher SciFi explores the how and why in science fiction with conversations about technology, humanity, and the future. This is not a review show, nor will you see much criticism or snark. It is a rationally optimistic look, through film, at where society and technology are and where they are headed. Also, butts.

Latest Episodes:

Interstellar Part 2: wormholes, time dilation, and love stuff May 24, 2016

Show notes

Gravity and Black Holes

More Kip Thorne. Wormholes. Detecting gravitational anomalies.

Time Dilation

Einstein. Train rides. Relativity. Frames of reference. Frame dragging. Time as an expendable resource.

Crazy Planetary Adventures

Water planet is the stuff of Christopher’s nightmares. Frozen clouds!

So Many Dimensions

Abstraction of extra dimensions into fewer. Tesseracts. Carl Sagan’s genius powers of explanation.

Time Travel Paradoxes

Predestination paradox? Self-consistent single timelines.

Love

Multidimensional beings and the power of love. Social utility and bonding, etc.

Space Settlement

O’Niell cylinders. Another call-in from Liam Ginty of Voices From L5.

Flatland & The Fourth Dimension by Carl Sagan: YouTube
The Science of Interstellar w/ Kip Thorne: YouTube

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Interstellar Part 1: monoculture farming, robot locomotion, and Kip Thorne May 17, 2016

Show notes

Memories of Carl Sagan’s Contact

Kip Thorne does movie science again. Carl Sagan’s Contact. Mathew McConaughey plays two opposing roles.

Corn, Corn, and Corn

Monocultures. Blight. We talk about anthropogenic climate change even though it isn’t mentioned in the film. Reduced population. Governments.

Explorers and Pioneers

Scientific mindset. Humanity’s will to expand. Good science parenting.

Robots

TARS. 2001. Humor settings and the best robot locomotion.

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Surrogates: materials science, pseudonymity, and ludditism May 10, 2016

Show notes

Areas of progress

Areas needing a lot of progress to lead to the world of Surrogates: robotics, materials science, network bandwidth and latency, human-machine neural interfaces, legality and ethics.

Effects

Violent crime nearly nonexistent, productivity, pseudonymity, anonymity, merito cracy. Level playing field for people with disabilties. Soldiering by proxy.

Human connection

The loss of it. The resistance. Surprisingly bad solutions.

DEKA "Luke" Arm: YouTube
Game Over by A Life Well Wasted: 99 Percent Invisible

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Forbidden Planet: robust design in AI, exobiology, and philology w/ Chris Noessel May 03, 2016

Show notes

Robbie the Robot

Prop design. AI language understanding. Super strength and a matter replicator. Bad reactions to conflicting orders. Like a mechanical calculator dividing by zero!

Morbius

He’s totally Zod! Philology. Engineering. Dangerous tech designs.

Gender Stuff

Cutting edge sexiness in the 50s. Innocent virgins. Blaming the victim. To the captain go the spoils. The deleted scenes that explain the animal behaviour:

Decoding the Krell

Best attempts at judging Krell biology from their technology and architecture. Their “plastic educator.” Deciphering their language. Using alien Wikipedia on microfilm. Vannevar Bush’s Memex. The alien arithmetic problem.

Jef Raskin's Alien Arithmetic Problem Jef Raskin Self Destruct

A comparison of scuttling procedures in Alien and Forbidden Planet. Speculation about Krell hearing and sight frequencies.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman: iTunes Amazon

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The Dark Knight: Batman gadgets, sonar phones, and blowing up the boat Apr 26, 2016

Show notes

Is Batman science fiction?

Short answer: yeah, sure. Featuring a voice clip from Liam Ginty, space nerd.

Batman’s detective work

CSI bullet reconstructions. The trappings of science.

Batman’s Bondian Gadgetry

All kinds. The skyhook.

Sonar Phones

Prerequisite technologies. Zero day vulnerabilities and phone hacking. Distributed computing to combine the massive data. Google’s Project Tango.

Law, Fairness, and Chaos

Batman and his enemies in the film.

Batman Chooses His Voice by Pete Holmes: YouTube
Batman The Animated Series: iTunes Amazon
Heart of Ice from Batman TAS: YouTube

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The Fifth Element: space turtles, magic stones, and LeeLoo Dallas multipass Apr 19, 2016

Show notes

The Film

90s, Leeloo’s thermal tape, awesome hair.

Alien Species

Space turtles, space orcs, space squids, space humans. Archeology and ancient mythology. Chamber design.

Malevolent Evil

The possible nature of the evil space-mass. Zorg’s motivations. Broken window fallacy.

200 Billion Citizens

Overpopulation. Governance over interstellar distances. Real-time FTL space comms. Space wizards. Space borders.

Building Leeloo

3d printing skeletons. Genetic design and genetic data storage.

The Stones

Sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic. Good and bad places to smuggle 20 pounds of stone. “Space opera.” Impossible series of vocal notes. Saved by love, or something.

The Divine Language:
Affordances and Constraints in the Fifth Element: Vimeo

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Man of Steel: burly Superman, Kryptonian prison rehab, and yellow sun superpowers Apr 12, 2016

Show notes

Krypton is Imploding

No refuge! Except for all the different refuge options. Harvesting the planet’s core something something oh no it’s collapsing!

Zod is the Good Guy

On Krypton at least. Sure, he sounded a little bit like Hitler, but look what happened when they didn’t listen to him - no more Krypton! And then

Kryptonian Prison Rehab

They seem to put some serious resources into their criminal rehab system that barely gets used. Mundane black hole tech. Dildo butt plug space ships.

The Codex and the Genesis Chamber

Kal first natural birth in centuries. Clearly Kryptonians were multistellar once upon a time. Wonder what happened.

Super Awakening

Lessons in how not to handle a kid having a panic attack. Humans actually do pretty well adapting to new sensory input. Clark’s compensation and self control.

Yellow Sun Superpowers

Disagreement over the exact function of Kryptonian power armor and the nature of the yellow sun/superpower relationship.

Simulated Consciousness

Russel Crowe hologram simulation. So the Kryptonians reached the singularity basically, but don’t seem to be impressed enough.

Defeating Zod

Super strength, super neck bones, super despondent military leaders with nothing to protect.

Superman (1978): iTunes Amazon
Fleisher 1940s Superman Cartoons: YouTube
All-Star-Superman: iTunes Amazon

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Signs: the ending, religious determinism, and how not to invade a watery planet Apr 05, 2016

Show notes

Shyamalan

Christopher loved his direction in this movie. “Twists.” Appears in all his own films.

Crop Circles

Crop circle hoaxes. Not a great method of communication.

Two Groups of People

People who think there is meaning, and people think the universe is deterministic and unconcerned with us as individuals. Benjamin Franklin’s pragmatism re religion. Our own perspective.

The Aliens

A list of unreasonable presumptions from the movie about alien life. Recon forces. Encryption. Spoilers.

The Signs Demon Theory by ZorroMeansFox: Reddit
Joaquin Phoenix's Forehead Face: YouTube
You Are Not So Smart: The Podcast

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War of the Worlds: aliens, biological warfare, and Orson Welles radio w/ Joe Ruppel Mar 29, 2016

Show notes

War of the Worlds - the book, the movie

Original book. Orson Welled radio broadcast hysteria not as reported. Radiolab report on repeated adaptations. The new developments at the time of writing that informed the book.

Alien Attack

Methods, research, planning. Trying to explain the buried death-bots.

But Why

Are we food? Do they want our resources? Making the most sense of the options. Are liquified people good for fertilizer?

Germ Attack

They might have done a little more research.

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: Project Gutenberg (ebook)Project Gutenberg (audiobook)
War of the Worlds (1953 film): iTunes Amazon
War of the Worlds Orson Welles original radio broadcast: YouTube
Could it happen again? And again?: Radiolab

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Bicentennial Man: laws of robotics, biorobots, and natural language processing Mar 22, 2016

Show notes

Asimov’s Three Laws

Enumerated in spectacular fashion in the film in order to get it out of the way and never speak of it again.

Natural Language Processing

It’s really hard! Errors in humor and social expectations. Infinite conversational loops.

Robot Personification

A nurturing environment maybe contributed to Robo Williams’ sentience. Art as awakening. Acting human. Emergence.

Robot Slave Class

Why don’t we see them?

Uncanney Valley