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From: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: re: Loose Ends (BRAINSTORM)
Message-ID: <4335@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 15-Mar-85 14:07:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4335
Posted: Fri Mar 15 14:07:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Mar-85 02:26:59 EST
References: <804@topaz.ARPA> <509@ahutb.UUCP> <4237@ucla-cs.ARPA> <551@ahutb.UUCP>
Reply-To: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 57
Summary: 

In article <551@ahutb.UUCP> leeper@ahutb.UUCP (m.r.leeper) writes:
>REFERENCES:  <804@topaz.ARPA> <509@ahutb.UUCP>, <4237@ucla-cs.ARPA>
>
>> >   ...   The at-death-experience is one of the least interesting
>> >implications they could follow. ...
>> 
>> Oh, come on now.  The question of what happens when a man dies can
>> hardly be considered uninteresting.
>
>No, but it is less interesting than any number of other ideas they
>touched on but passed up.  What it would do to our understanding of
>animal intelligence and psychology would have been more interesting.

Would you rather know

  (a) how/what/if a chimpanzee thinks?

		-or-

  (b) if there is life after death, and if so, what is it like?

For me the answer is clear.  Do you REALLY care more about how an animal
thinks?  If you say so, I'll believe you, but I can't help but find it a
rather odd outlook on life (we'll continue this discussion in Heaven :-).

>What it would do to human relations, what it would do to defense
>technology, what it would do to psychiatric treatment, to the
>entertainment industry,  all these were ideas picked up and then
>abandoned.  By rights, this should have been BRAINSTORM I, first of a
>long series to how the world would be completely transformed by this
>one tool.  I do find the at-death experience of some interest, but
>there is so much more that could be done with the premise given time!
>
>				Mark Leeper
>				...ihnp4!ahutb!leeper

Exactly the point.  No doubt there are any number of fascinating ideas that
arise from positing a device like the one in BRAINSTORM, and an exposition
of these might provide material for a good series of speculative articles,
or as material for developing a future world in which to write science
fiction stories.  However...  When it actually comes to writing one of those
stories, you must concentrate on some facet of the phenomenon.  Trying to
cover them all in a series of ten movies is a silly idea.  Further, to make
your movie popular and enjoyable to a wide audience, you'd like to pick a
ramification of the device that everyone can relate to.  You might have a
personal interest in animal psychology (particularly if you teach freshman
computer science :-), but it is unlikely to be as embracing a topic as the
life after death experience, since everyone gives serious thought to that
subject at least occasionally.  All of this isn't to say that you can't
make an interesting movie about animal psychology.  TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES
did that to some extent.  I'm only pointing out that it is a much more
difficult task.  And why complicate your task when you have a better topic
at hand?  I think that the choice to focus on the life after death experience
was the right one, but I also agree that there are many other interesting
ideas inherent in the story.

						-- Scott Turner