
Depp to Star as a Supercomputer in Christopher Nolan Film About the Singularity - swohns
http://betabeat.com/2012/12/christopher-nolan-johnny-depp-transcendance-supercomputer-movie/
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raimondious
> Johnny Depp may seem like a strange casting choice, but given his penchant
> for bizarre roles, we imagine he’ll play a mad scientist quite convincingly.

Actually it seems like a really predictable casting choice. When will people
get tired of seeing Depp playing a weirdo? I don't even have to guess that
Helena Bonham Carter is going to be bug-eyed with big crazy hair in this one
too...

~~~
kingkawn
The man is a really good actor.

But thank you.

There are some celebrity actors who have stopped playing new roles, and made
the roles they take on into studies of their public personas rather than
explorations of a character.

If he gets along with Nolan and gets pushed in the right ways he might not
phone it in, but all of his recent work points to him being emptily encouraged
to do the same thing repeatedly.

I want some art, dammit.

~~~
civilian
Yup. I really like his more "normal" roles-- like his lucid moments (which
were most of the movie) in "Secret Window"
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363988/>

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polyfractal
Hopefully it will make an entertaining movie, but man, I really hate all
things associated with "The Singularity". Nothing fills me with more
irrational (impotent) rage than people babbling on about the Singularity.

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bhousel
Ok, I'll bite. Why do you care?

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polyfractal
Oof, Comcast died as soon as I made this post.

I have two major contentions. First, I'm a neuroscientist by training, so
hearing anything related to "upload my brain" just makes me weep. The only
realistic way to "upload your brain" is to pump your body full of fixatives
(paraformaldehyde), section it on a cryostat and then perform electron
microscopy across every single slice. Then put it all back together (fixing
skewing artifacts, etc) on a computer.

THEN make a simulation out of it, where _every atom_ of your body is
replicated with pristine accuracy. Otherwise you are not yourself anymore.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's so far from likely that being
near-immortal due to bio-enhancements is almost certainly more practical. Or
you can develop some "scanning ray gun" which does the same thing without
killing you first, I suppose.

Second, the whole notion of "exponentially increasing intelligence" I find
silly. Are we more intelligent than homo sapiens 3000 years ago? Perhaps more
scholarly, more literate, more capable of engineering complex systems. But our
inherent, base intelligence is not any different. Just applied to different
problems and starting at different bases of knowledge.

Edit: Musing on this, I find a "Matrix"-style hostile takeover of highly
intelligent AI much more likely than humans "transcending" into some super-
computing cloud of blissful hyperintelligence. That's seems much more likely
than humans ever fully shucking our meat bag bodies.

~~~
endtime
You seem very confused about what "Singularity" denotes.

You also seem to be confusing "the only way with current technology" with "the
only way, ever".

You also seem to be claiming that highly intelligent AI couldn't solve the
upload problem. And that it would necessarily be hostile - this is likely if
we were to sample randomly from mind-space, but hopefully we will be careful
about which highly intelligent AIs we create...

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polyfractal
Well first, I'll quote myself:

> _I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's so far from likely that
> being near-immortal due to bio-enhancements is almost certainly more
> practical. Or you can develop some "scanning ray gun" which does the same
> thing without killing you first, I suppose._

Seriously, I see near-immortality due to bio-engineering to be way more likely
in the remote future (next few hundred years) than uploading your brain.
Similarly, I see strong, general AI to be way more likely.

I'll even say that I see full, human brain simulations to be way more likely
than the ability to upload your own into the net.

I'm all for being hopeful and optimistic, but sometimes physics is just not on
your side.

~~~
lukifer
If you described the way modern internet works to an engineer 100 years ago,
they'd pull their hair out too trying to understand such a system using the
technology of their day.

For brain uploading, my money is on pure algorithms. Throw a lifetime of data
on top of base human emulation software, possibly influenced by known genetic
data, and then iterate through an insane number of possible brains using an
insane quantity of CPU until you get a virtual brain that most closely matches
up with the provided data. It'll be at best a crude approximation of the
original human, but just like with MP3s, nobody will really care as long as
their departed loved one _feels_ like the same person.

The "singularity" is just a mathematical abstraction, as with dark energy or
string theory. The math is highly likely to describe a real phenomenon, but
anyone extrapolating further detail based on that math is basically just
guessing.

~~~
doomlaser
Similarly, if you were to ask an engineer 100 years ago to predict the changes
in technology that would shape the future, he would be completely off track as
well. This is another reason Singularity pushes seem so out.

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rowsdower
Christopher Nolan is only producing this film. Wally Pfister, Nolan's longtime
cinematographer, is directing.

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kmfrk
This should go at the top. I was really annoyed to read this.

His career as a producer seems fairly limited, but it's worth considering that
Steven Spielberg was a producer on Transformers.

I didn't see much of a Spielberg touch on that movie.

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rowsdower
It will certainly be interesting to see how much of the "Nolan" aesthetic is
present in this film. I'm definitely excited.

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jpxxx
Still waiting on that Ian M. Banks Culture movie. Or miniseries. Or TV show.
_slow droool_

~~~
Toenex
I hope I live in the universe where this happens.

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jpxxx
Until 'Cloud Atlas' happened out of the blue, I'd no hope.

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shill
Hopefully Nolan rehires Hans Zimmer for the soundtrack. I could use some more
epic coding music.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0kGAz6HYM8>

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Irregardless
Agreed, Gladiator is my favorite soundtrack of all time, and I've never heard
a soundtrack of Zimmer's that I didn't like. I'd put him right up there with
John Williams even though he's only received a fraction of the awards.

~~~
nostrademons
I actually like Hans Zimmer a lot more than John Williams - the latter has a
very distinctive style that can seem very in-your-face, more like an "Oh hey,
this was done by John Williams" than something that best fits the film. Harry
Potter, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones are all recognizable as Williams
soundtracks, even though they're very different films.

Zimmer seems to vary his music a lot more to fit the needs of the film - it's
just universally good, it's not universally Zimmer. The Lion King is very
different from Crimson Tide, which is very different from Gladiator, which is
very different from The Dark Knight and Inception.

BTW, I think Basil Poledouris (The Hunt for Red October, Wind) was another
underrated film composer whose music is much better than his reputation.

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rndmize
> more like an "Oh hey, this was done by John Williams" than something that
> best fits the film

Really? I would be tempted to argue the opposite. The theme for Jaws, for
example, is instantly recognizable and well known precisely because it fit the
movie so well. Star Wars is near-impossible to separate from its music - from
the main theme, to the imperial march - and his use of choral music in Phantom
Menace had a big impact in the years that followed, much the way the
"Inception sound" has been showing up all over the place in the last few
years.

And citing the bigger action-adventure movies doesn't really make a good
point. Williams has done a wide variety of music for movies, all of which is
very good (Hook, Schindler's List, ET, etc.)

I do think music has changed over time in how it's used in film, and that
Zimmer has a more "modern" style, where the soundtrack ties more closely to
the emotional ups and downs than Williams does. (Nothing wrong with that, I
like them both.)

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jasongullickson
"...a scientist whose brain is uploaded into a supercomputer' while trying to
create the first ever sentient computer"

It's hardly creating sentience if you're just installing an existing
intelligence on another piece of hardware...just sayin'....

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Simucal
It says that he goes on to continue his research once he is uploaded. So
perhaps him being uploaded to the machine is distinct from him trying to
create the first sentient computer.

He is trying to create a sentient machine before he dies and his uploaded self
is continuing his research along those same lines.

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jasongullickson
Ah that makes more sense.

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Cowen
Given what's happened with the last two Batman films, I think Christopher
Nolan deserves the benefit of the doubt for all of his casting choices.

When Anne Hathaway was chosen to play Selina Kyle, everyone thought she would
flop. After the movie, many were saying that she had the best performance.

I don't even need to drive home how incredibly, colossally wrong people were
about Heath Ledger being cast as the Joker.

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mullingitover
Oh please tell me the movie will end up being titled Lawnmower Man 2.0.

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dalke
As there's already a "Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace", that title is
unlikely. :)

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Gilly_LDN
My old music teachers favourite claim to fame was that he is in the choir who
made the soundtrack for that movie.

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kmfrk
I am not a Nolan fan, but I respect him for consistently choosing challenging
projects.

~~~
jere
>I am not a Nolan fan

I say this in all seriousness: how? I can't imagine the last 12 years of film
without Memento, Inception, and the Batman trilogy.

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kmfrk
I think The Dark Knight Rises is a great litmus test for people's opinion on
Nolan.

If you think the movie is a masterpiece or remotely close ... agree to
disagree.

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jere
Well, it's relative. Within the context of superhero films, I think it _is_ a
masterpiece if for no other reason than the bar already being set so low.
Outside of that, it's a really great action movie.

I think his films are methodical almost to a fault. They feel like puzzles to
me. I could definitely understand if someone didn't find much value in that.

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DutchessPDX
And what role will Helena Bonham Carter play? ...they come as a pair, right?

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tomrod
This should be entertaining, if nothing else.

Nolan seems to bring a complement of actors between projects (e.g. Inception
vs. Batman trilogy). Will be interesting to see if he continues this trend.

