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   mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:46:55 JST mcc

   Y'know Jurassic Park has that famous quote "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" but the text of Crichton's original novel is very specific that the research direction was not chosen by the scientists at all but rather dictated directly by John Hammond, the corporate investor https://mastodon.social/@lentinic@mastodon.gamedev.place/109961295590298984

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:03 JST mcc

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     Like who knows, maybe if the scientists had been actually given the choice to provide input the technology would have been used to reverse, I dunno, the 1976 extinction of the Jalpa false brook salamander and nobody would have died

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     Everybody loves Gordo (gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:06 JST Everybody loves Gordo

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     @mcc Too bad that's such a classic quotable, nobody who hasn't read the book will ever know.

     And now we find ourselves in whatever tf this past few years of history is, where mistrust of the gov't and giant pharma megacorps has morphed into mistrust of independently funded, impartial science.

     I've kinda given up on even trying to explain anything to anybody at this point. Thankfully my SO and I both work from home, and it's too cold in Canada anyway, so we exist in our own little sanity bubble

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:07 JST mcc

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     • Everybody loves Gordo

     @gordoooo_z If it helps, Crichton had deeply weird views on science that got worse over his life to the point where eventually in his final novel he took the name of a NYT reporter who had previously called him out for global warming denialism and wrote him into the book as a child molester

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:08 JST mcc

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     • Everybody loves Gordo

     @gordoooo_z i thought the jurassic park novel was pretty good

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     Everybody loves Gordo (gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:10 JST Everybody loves Gordo

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     @mcc No fucking way ?

     Damn, and after my last months long ER marathon, I was thinking maybe I should consider reading one of his books.

     I mean, I didn't, because I'm terrible about finishing books, so I'm choosing not to start any until I finish the ones I already have going, lol, but the thought occurred!

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:49 JST mcc

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     • Everybody loves Gordo

     @gordoooo_z I don't know, and as with many authors, the fucked up stuff seems to have come in at the end of his life. I think his science fiction is fundamentally anti-science, IE, the running theme seems to be a very cynical one that humanity cannot be trusted with knowledge or power (consider the ultimate moral of Sphere). But that is not so unusual for science fiction.

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     Everybody loves Gordo (gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:47:50 JST Everybody loves Gordo

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     @mcc Was he just a weirdo, or a hateful toxic weirdo?

     I can handle weird, but again, maybe I don't need to add anything to my reading list.

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     Everybody loves Gordo (gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:52:38 JST Everybody loves Gordo

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     @mcc ...accident, just by doing really good work, and beind a really agreeable person, along the way.

     I'm not sure that anybody with the resources to do really cutting edge science even has the same world view or motivations as the rest of us, I mean, aside from eating, sleeping, and maybe having a couple kids to pay someone to raise.

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     Everybody loves Gordo (gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 16:52:40 JST Everybody loves Gordo

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     @mcc I guess it depends. I tend to like the more hard scifi writers like Asimov, and maybe a background like that gives someone a different view of the world, but I can't say I blame anyone for a fatalistic outlook.

     I think one person, or a small team, can do a whole lot of good with a bit of knowledge, but the resources to do something really new, and really difficult, and really impactful are concentrated at the top, and I don't know of many people who got to the top completely by...

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 21:24:27 JST mcc

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     • J M Berntson

     @jedimb Movie Hammond definitely does seem tho like a guy who'd pivot from pharmaceuticals to entertainment to avoid regulation and think he was being real smart

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     J M Berntson (jedimb@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 21:24:33 JST J M Berntson

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     @mcc I mean... Novel Hammond was a significantly worse person than Movie Hammond, whereas Movie Wu got up to all sorts of shady shit once Hammond was out of the picture... so I think the Movie Malcolm quote was accurate?

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     Ryusui (theryusui@computerfairi.es)'s status on Saturday, 04-Mar-2023 21:25:50 JST Ryusui

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     • Everybody loves Gordo

     @mcc @gordoooo_z

     relevant:

     http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/

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     Ryusui (theryusui@computerfairi.es)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 11:56:21 JST Ryusui

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     • Everybody loves Gordo

     @mcc @gordoooo_z

     a funny thing is i had to search for this and the first result was a Reddit post of this with multiple comments describing it as representative of Crichton's output

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     whatever (viel_zu_negativ@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 11:56:28 JST whatever

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     @mcc Sorry I have to tell you, but I don't think so. In my experience, scientists hate ethics commitees and every kind of instances that question if it is good to do certain things. One of the very few exceptions is clone technology on humans, and even this has been done, by scientists who like what they do.

     The truth is that very intelligent persons are not necessarily morally good persons. There might be some who won't do it. But you will always find someone to do your dirty work.

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     wintermin (wintermin@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 11:56:30 JST wintermin

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     @mcc as a scientist, I reject the idea that the scientist would not have been fighting each other to make dinosaurs and give them cute names like “Stompy” and “Smellykins” and go “tut-tut” and fill in forms when the lab assistants lost appendages.

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     margot (emaytch@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 11:56:33 JST margot

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     @mcc if nothing else i doubt they would've used it to set up a theme park

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