Alternate theory on Inception’s top totem

There’s a lot of chatter out there on the interwebs about Dom’s real totem.  Some say that his wedding ring is his totem.  Others say that his children’s faces are his totem.  One thing that all this has in common is that his wife’s spinning top totem seems like kind of a bad totem.  

The point of a totem is to make sure that you keep track of reality.  Dom tests Ariadne by trying to trick her into giving him her totem.  He approves when she refuses.  You need to keep your totem a secret because you want to make sure that you don’t get lost in someone else’s dream where they have replaced your totem with a fake version.  This is the mentality of a dream walker who is expecting adversarial attacks.  A secret totem will protect you because your attacker will not know the secret property of the totem.  If you are in a hostile dream your totem will lose its secret property because your attacker will not know what that property is.  So if your totem does not have its secret property then you know you’re in someone else’s dream.

Mal’s spinning top totem only has it’s secret property when it is in a dream.  In reality the top will topple.  But think about what happens if Mal is in a hostile dream.  The attacker will not know the secret of the totem and when Mal spins the top it will topple even though she is in a dream.  This is a totem that was made by a dream walker who does not expect adversarial attacks.  Mal made this totem so that she’ll know if she’s stuck in her own dream (or a dream of a cooperative dream walker).  Mal always expects her top to spin forever.  And it will if she’s in a dream she controls.  It won’t if she’s back in reality.

This makes sense though.  Mal came up with the top back when she and Dom were experimenting with dreams in a friendly context.  Dom came up with secret totems after joining the underground world of corporate dream espionage and he realized there could be hostile dream walkers and that he might be a target. 

So why does Dom still use Mal’s top.  Dom and Mal never woke up from limbo.  It really is infinite down there.  And Dom is trying desperately to stay out of any dream that Mal controls.

We don’t know how Dom and Mal setup the initial dream within dream scenario that led them to limbo.  But it was probably by alternating between who was dreaming.  After all this was how they did it in the movie proper.  They always used a different dreamer when going down a new level.  So I’m going to suggest that Mal was the dreamer in control of limbo.  Dom would be in control of the dream one level up.  And Mal the one above that.  Dom tells Ariadne that he couldn’t stand living in limbo.  But that’s because Mal was in control of it.  In the flashback/story that Dom tells Ariadne, Mal claims that Dom is in control of the dream they are in but he can’t control it because he doesn’t know he’s dreaming.  He does know he’s dreaming, but he’s lying.  He knows if he and Mal kill themselves that they would just drop into another dream.  This time with Mal in control.  Mal kills herself and goes up another level.  Dom stays.

Dom said his mission was to get back to his kids.  But we don’t learn about that until later.  What we learn right off the bat is that Dom has a figment of Mal that is tormenting him.  This story is about Dom trying to rid himself of Mal’s influence.  The story starts with a top spinning and then we’re introduced to Mal.  The story ends with Dom walking away from the same top that represents Mal’s influence.  This is why Dom is always checking the spinning top.  He knows that if the top doesn’t fall then he’s in a dream controlled by Mal.  Or the figment in his mind that represents her.  His goal is to create a sub-dreamverse that is completely isolated from Mal and where he has total control.

New Time Vocab Guideline

12pm is now always “noon” and 12am is now always “midnight”.  You may say things such as “noon thirty” to indicate “12:30pm” or “midnight forty five” to indicate “12:45am”.  Similarly, talk about “noon plus 3:25” in order to indicate “3:25pm”.

So the problem is that anytime you have some sort of modulo arithmetic people fail spectacularly.  I think it’s because discontinuities is something that can generate Cognitive complexity [1] and modulo arithmetic has a giant discontinuity built right into it.

Technically the new Vocab Guideline still has a discontinuity in it, but it’s a discontinuity that is a bit easier on the mind.  AM is from the latin ante meridiem (before midday) and PM is from the latin post meridiem (after midday) [2].  This adds two difficult things for the individual to process in addition to the notoriously bad modulo arithmetic. Namely an acronym from a dead language, and the disconnect between solar noon and 12pm and midday.

So making people think about a latin acronym is bad because most people don’t know latin.  Now they have to deal with something completely out of left field when they’re already having problems.  The other side is that midday used to actually be a meaningful concept before our modern conveniences.  You got up at sunrise because that’s when you could see and you went to bed at sunset because that’s when you couldn’t see.  Midday was solar noon because that’s when the sun was in the middle of the sky and you knew the day was half over.  Today solar noon and actual noon don’t match up, and it doesn’t matter anyway.  We have alarm clocks, meetings with the other side of the world, internet, lights, 24/7 stores, and uber.  Noon and solar noon have nothing to do with whether or not the day is half over.  

This actually isn’t the first instance of something that doesn’t make a lot of sense that we still use due to tradition, but totally made sense back in the day.  You might think that a mile as a unit of measurement doesn’t make a lot of sense at 5,280 feet.  Shouldn’t we use the metric system or something.  Well we inherited miles from the Roman mile, which was defined as 1,000 paces [3].  And that sort of sounds like the same thing that we get from the metric system.  It’s almost like they did something that made sense instead of having a totally arbitrary system.

[1] - http://stackallocated.blogspot.com/2016/05/cognitive-complexity.html

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock

[3] - http://mentalfloss.com/article/25108/why-are-there-5280-feet-mile-making-sense-measurements

Rewrite

There’s a Joel on Software [1] blog about why you should never rewrite a program from scratch.

He gives a couple of examples from the 90s (? I guess … I wasn’t active in the field until the late 00s) that all ended in disaster because people tried to rewrite some very complex program from scratch.  Then comes the punchline:  The reason why everyone hates their programs is because they’re filled with badly written components that have had hundreds of independent incremental changes made over time.  And the reason that these programs work and need to be kept is because these hundreds of independent incremental changes are all bug fixes.

So when I hear this I immediately think of stories about machine learning being able to create well optimized sorting algorithms, but the source code is completely incomprehensible.  My interpretation is that some problems exist in a space that has bad cognitive complexity [2].  When you hit this problems with a machine learning algorithm the algorithm starts charting out the space, but it’s blind and stupid.  It bumps into all of the little holes and discontinuities and makes ad hoc fixes that make sense in the moment but generate code that doesn’t make any sense.

My thought is that the Software Engineering process that was in place in the 90s (and let’s be honest, is probably still is in place nearly everywhere) is basically nothing more than a machine learning algorithm.  A blind and stupid algorithm that doesn’t have the wherewithal to conceptualize the problem that it is trying to solve.  Joel sees all of these less than ideal software components and says this is how we get working software; I see all of these less than ideal software components and think that we need a better way to analyze what the end users need and generate requirements.  Better bug tracking, better flaw resolution procedures, better discovery phases, better prototyping, better implementation techniques.  It has been over 15 years, I wonder if Joel’s opinion has changed or been otherwise refined.

Can the software engineering process be better?  Well I heard a story about how the JPL resolves bugs.  Every bug at the JPL isn’t a problem with the software it’s a problem with the process.  When they find a bug in the software they find out how to change the process such that the bug wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.  The next thing they do is to audit the entire code base to ensure that they get all instances of the bug that may have been introduced when they were using the faulty process.  Probably too involved to use for a throw away web app, but it does give you something to think about.

[1] - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

[2] - http://stackallocated.blogspot.com/2016/05/cognitive-complexity.html

Here’s an idea: Semantic movie scene search engines

We’ve got all this increasingly impressive image recognition technology.  So let’s run it over every movie ever.  Then we can build a database.  Finally you throw a scripting language over it.  

Imagine we could be living in a world where all you need is to type the words “Kevin Bacon walks out of an elevator” and you’ll get a montage of every time Kevin Bacon walked out of an elevator.

Expertise

I’ve got three links: 

[1] - http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2013/03/12/more-than-mashing-evo-moment-37/

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq_NmGmI8eI

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A&feature=youtu.be

The first one is a description of evo moment 37.  The second is a Doom 2 custom map that someone built.  And the last one is an in depth breakdown on a challenge on Super Mario 64.  

What do all three of these links have in common?  They highlight people being absolutely unreasonably good at video games.  Don’t get me wrong though.  I think it’s fantastic that people are capable of being so good at anything and this includes video games.  However, I also can’t help but think that there is some change that can be done in society such that these people’s hard work and expertise can be more productive.  What’s going on in these tiny samples of video games at large is after all rather impressive; there’s much more where this came from.

I don’t think the answer is gamification.  More like finding opportunities for people with this sort of potential to have the leeway to be excellent in the world. 

How Suicide Squad Should Have Started

I think there’s two problems with Suicide Squad.  The first is that they advertised it as a Joker movie.  The second is that Will Smith decided to play Deadshot as cool when he should have played him as flawed.  It’s pretty obvious why mis-advertising a movie is a bad idea, so let’s talk about the second issue.  Why shouldn’t Will Smith be a cool Deadshot?  The problem is that Deathstroke [1] is much cooler then Deadshot.  Eventually DC is going to make a movie with Deathstroke and no one is going to care about Will Smith and his much less cooler Deadshot.  Also Deadshot is much more interesting as a flawed person.  Deadshot never misses because he accidentally shot his brother while trying to shoot his abusive father.  This is also might be why he can’t bring himself to kill batman.  Because batman is a personal rival that reminds him of his brother.

So here’s the way I see fixing Suicide Squad.

The movie opens by retelling the end of the last movie.  The Suicide Squad is fighting Enchantress and suddenly Adam West in the 1960’s batman suit flies into the room and proceeds to punch everyone into submission (complete with POW!).

Cut to Joker in an abandoned warehouse.  He’s sitting at a table surrounded by his gang and Harley Quinn.  He’s just been telling his story about Adam West Batman.  The camera spins around to see a lone Deadshot.  Deadshot says, “Thats the stupidest story I’ve ever heard.”

It’s really hard for a movie studio to admit they’re wrong, but in this case they should apologize to the fans and this is the perfect way to do it while also making a great joke.

The movie rewinds from this point (with an audible rewind sound) to an earlier part of the film that we haven’t actually seen yet.  Deadshot is outside a warehouse with a group of people.  He says, “I’ll handle it myself.”  The response is, “You can’t do that by yourself.  That’s suicide.”  Deadshot gives back a grin.

Cut to the movie’s title:  Suicide Squad

Back at the warehouse we deliver some expositional dialog that let’s us know that Deadshot is brokering a deal between some unknown person and the Joker gang.  Several camera shots highlight the one-sided nature of the room.  The Joker has beefy, gun-toting psychopaths.  Deadshot sits by himself looking small.  However, he’s also completely unfazed by the potential danger to his person.

An explosion occurs and there’s a police raid on the deal.  It’s not going well.  Between Joker’s gang and Deadshot the police don’t have a chance.  However, batman shows up and is able to subdue the majority of Joker’s gang including Harley Quinn and Deadshot.  Joker gets away by stabbing Deadshot in the back (perhaps literally).

The rest of the movie is Joker doing something big chaotic and insane in order to rescue Harley Quinn from having to be part of the Suicide Squad as well as Deadshot trying to get revenge on Joker for betraying him by joining the Suicide Squad willingly.

The warehouse action scene is a great opportunity to do some cool camera work and tell about Deadshot’s past.  Before each shot that Deadshot takes you slow down time and show a flashback of him being abused by his father.  Cut back to the action and Deadshot takes another shot.  Finally Deadshot has the opportunity to shoot Batman and time slows down again.  However, this time instead of seeing Deadshot’s abusive father we see Deadshot accidentally shooting his brother.  Time speeds back up and Deadshot misses Batman.

This also lets us build up a morbidly humorous bit with Joker.  Joker can see Deadshot doing the slow motion flashback thing and “copy” it.  Joker approaches a swat team member with a knife, time slows down, we get a flashback of children opening a present with a puppy emerging out of it, cut back to the action scene and Joker stabs his victim.

The original Suicide Squad movie is about Enchantress breaking free and causing problems.  The real story should be something about Joker, but Enchantress trying to break free via covert actions would actually make a really great secondary plot to a Joker movie.  Each time Enchantress is let off her chain she sets up something without a clear purpose.  At the end of the movie we are finally able to put together what we were seeing during the entire movie.  A plot expertly executed that gives her freedom.  And then 30 seconds into her escape and revenge Joker pulls off some ridiculous attack that kills her.

Naturally people are going to ask where Batman is.  The movie can totally answer this as well.  Literally have someone from the Suicide Squad ask Amanda Waller why they just don’t get Batman to fix everything.  

The camera immediately cuts to a massive Batman fight scene.  He’s fighting a room full of men with guns.  In the background there’s a nuclear bomb with a 30 second countdown shown slowly counting towards zero.  

The camera cuts back to Amanda Waller and she says, “You can’t expect us to put national security in the hands of a crazy vigilante who doesn’t answer to anyone.”

It would also be great to deal with is why nobody tries find out who Batman really is.  Personally, I think secret identity drama is kind of silly and normally done wrong.  So far the DC cinematic universe has done a good job with this because it looks like everyone knows who Batman is, but no one can do anything about it because he’s a billionaire ninja.  Batman is unfazed every time someone says they know his secret because his name isn’t Bruce Wayne OR Batman.  It’s the sound his fist makes when it hits you in the face.  New Suicide Squad is going to expand on this.

“If Batman is such a lose cannon why don’t you just find out who he is and neutralize him?” asks Captain Boomerang.  Camera cuts to Batman punching people in the face.  Camera cuts again to a well dressed man in a suit.  He’s in city hall handing some documents to an unseen person, “And you *will* stop these ridiculous inquires into Mr. Wayne or we *will* move forward with our $200 billion dollar defamation lawsuit.”  Cut back to Batman punching people in the face.  Cut back to Colonel Rick Flag saying, “It isn’t that easy.”

You can also run this scene again with the Joker to humorous effect.  Random gang member asks why Joker doesn’t just find out who Batman really is.  Cut to Adam West in the BvS batman suit punching people in the face.  Cut to the earlier scene with the lawyer handing the unseen person the document in city hall … only for the camera to pull back showing the lawyer is really in a bad part of town and the unseen person is actually Joker.  The line about $200 billion is replaced with an identical one except with $200 quadrillion.  Cut back to George Clooney punching someone in the face in the 1960’s batman suit.  Cut back to Joker who says, “I’m not *that* crazy.”]

Obviously there’s a lot more work to be done.  But a “remake” of Suicide Squad with these sorts of elements would go a long way to fixing the issues with the movie.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathstroke is different than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadshot

Avi's Number

"... suppose we define f(X) over integers as taking the 1st digit from the left, then the 2nd, then the 4th, then the 8th, etc, so f(12345)=124 and f(12345678)=1248

Set y=f(f(f(f(f(…f(Graham’s number))))) such that there are the fewest number of fs such that y has less than a million digits." [1]

y is Avi's number.  Is Avi's number a prime or composite number?

Because we know the last digits of Graham's number, it seems to me that there might be a way to determine if the last digits of Avi's number is definitely not a prime.

[1] - http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2673#comment-1013711