The movie Gattaca on YouTube.

[RandomThoughts]

I believe it has value as a commentary on many current issues.

Gattaca part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyerhQ-UerM

[kenny blankenship]

1. You mean like the separation of people into classes?

Bodily, economically, dividing them in ways act as self-fulfilling, externally enforced predictions of their potentials?
Like giving them overt rankings - 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place?

[RandomThoughts]

2. There are many thoughts in that story.

But to reply to your comment, A ranking after an event, like first second or third, is some evaluation of an action and intent is different then prejudice based on some predictive system or bias from self superiority.

Notice that the word prejudice is from the words pre judge, and in that story, people were pre judged from the time of birth. So I think it is a story about many things.

A caste system, or prejudice, is a predictive ranking based on flawed information, but thought to be correct by some, usually because of what someone wants to be true, a sense of superiority.


That movie could be applied to many forms of ideas of some person being able to decide who is better and who is worse. In that movie they use genetics, but it could be race or creed, or even belief system that creates false groupings of who is correct or wrong.

In my view only God has the ability to know perfect justice. So in my belief, we have to do the best we can to have a just society, but also know that we can make mistakes, so try and look for biases that might lead to a distortion of justice.



If your comment was about separating people into classes based on some assumption of their value, and not equal dignity to all life, then that would fit the story in my view. Classes always exist, it is part of specialization, the question is are they open based on a persons actual actions and intents, or are they predetermined for other reasons like ideas of self superiority or to horde some advantage. The story in that movie can say many things, and there are many metaphors in the story about other things also.

[bridgit]

3. The premise of Gattaca is important, true enough and a very sad one

[RandomThoughts]

4. For what reason did he choose to climb the stairs?

I think that is pretty great.


If the ending of the movie bothers anyone, I do not think of it as in linear sequence, or chronological order. Hard to explain.

[Paulie]

10. Not stairs, a DNA double helix :-)

Makes all the difference. :-)

[Odin2005]

5. I hate that movie, it's technophobic fearmongering.

Every time I bring up my Transhumanist beliefs the reaction is full of technophobic references to "Gattaca".

[NashVegas]

6. As It Should Be

Aging, suffering, death ... that shit is all part of the life cycle. People who want to change that are the worst control freaks imaginable.

[Odin2005]

7. Eww, that fatalistic post is very disturbing.

:puke:

[NashVegas]

12. Not Nearly As Disturbing

As the desire for a controlled environment.

[comrade snarky]

15. If suffering is your appointed due

I hope you'll be turning down any and all pain medications if you have an accident. Repairative or preventative surgeries too.

Wouldn't want any of that nasty technology making your life easier or extending it beyond the natural measure now would you?

[Odin2005]

16. It is our nature as a species to control things, we are the toolmakers.

Our tools are extensions of ourselves.

[Political Heretic]

9. "If man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings"

Yeah... I've heard this shit before, constantly standing in the way of creativity and possibility.

[RandomThoughts]

8. Its not about technology, note that the screens had a 1950's look.

If someone said that to me, arguing against your views, I would probably point out these points.


If it was about technology, then the tech would have to be perfect, which it is not, they could only give him a 99% chance of heart failure, and by using that to classify him as lesser, then that 1% is treated wrong. He should have the same opportunities to succeed as anyone else. And that even assumes that the 99% prediction is correct.

To use tech to judge a persons worth, as done in that movie, ignores the non measurable elements, like how people can be more then the sum of their chemical make up. It ignores the whole idea of spirit and drive.

And there are systems that do those very things, some pre-judge people with profiling that says a person would be a certain way, so they get economically or socially derailed. Some systems pre-judge a person as being to cost heavy to help, and may miss something special that person has to contribute that can not be shown by just tech. There are many systems of pre-judging that try to do such things with stats, ignoring the dignity and value of every life.

[Bonobo]

13. Is genetic profiling part of your transhumanist beliefs? nt

[Odin2005]

17. No.

But whenever Transhumanism comes up people will always get hysterica and say that it will inevitably lead to a totalitarian cyberpunk dystopia, which is funny because for me Transhumanism is all about freedom, what we call Cognitive Liberty and Morphological Liberty.

[Bonobo]

18. I thought that the film made a very accurate and frightening warning about the dangers

of this kind of genetic profiling.

Literally it will be possible for people with money to make permanent changes to their genes that will be passed on (naturally) to the next gen.

Inevitably, a completely separate species could arise from this. Rich people will be healthier, larger, stronger, more intelligent with more advantages. Naturally, employers, insurers, etc. will be able to obtain genetic information for profiling purposes.

Don't you agree that this is a possible and even likely outcome?

[Odin2005]

19. That is why the technology must be made a human right and not a commodity.

It's the ECONOMIC SYSTEM that is the problem NOT THE TECHNOLOGY.

[comrade snarky]

14. A dystopian film isn't necessarily fear mongering

I didn't get that at all from "Gattica".

It didn't portray the technology as inherently bad or dangerous, the problem was what people were doing with it. An anti-technology movie wouldn't have had a main character who dreamed so intensely of going into space.

Some people may think it was about evil technology but then again some people think "Fight Club" is about boxing. So...

[NutmegYankee]

11. In 2008 a law was passed to ban that sort of thing.