5 thoughts on “Forbidden Planet”

  1. Interesting concept, I hope he does many more. One of my favorite movies, and my favorite robot, with a still of my least favorite mechanical device there at the end.

    He makes some good points about unintended consequences and ‘helping’ mankind. But he left out how modern elites want to solve all the worlds problems, but never with their own money nor sweat.

    And at least Morbius warns them to stay away. Our elites keep telling us to come on in, the waters fine!

  2. While I agree with Bill when it comes to political power, it’s a little worrying what the implications are for individual economic power. I quote, “the greater the power, the more it should be dispersed.” Great! Millionaires and billionaires are “ultimately driven by base and selfish desires” just like the rest of us, so their power needs to be dispersed more. This is the very basis of socialism that he’s unwittingly advocating here.. they call it “the ills of excess” and “redistribution of wealth”. I also find it odd to hear these words coming out of Bill’s mouth because he regularly says things like “you either trust the people or you don’t” when talking about gun control. If your opinion is that people are fundamentally flawed and can’t be trusted with ultimate power, then allowing them to be armed sounds like exactly the wrong logic.

    I don’t think the unlimited power on the forbidden planet represents political power – any more than say military power which of course can be used for political purposes – it is what it appears to be, the power of technological advancement. The message of this movie, to me, appears to be the virtues of restricting technological progress and keeping it out of the hands of individuals. I can’t get behind that message.

    So how about a little from column A and a little from column B? We can have ongoing technological progress without widespread collectivist control over individual power by ensuring that no individual has exclusive access to any particular technological advancement – in otherwise, by dispersing the individual power of technological progress. How can we do this? It’s called a free market.

  3. I thought Forbidden planet was an enjoyable movie, but didn’t at all agree with the underlying philosophy. If I recall the plot correctly, some aliens managed to wipe themselves out millions of years ago, and an eccentric archaeologist has been attempting to uncover why. Eventually, the protagonists figure it out – these aliens have developed a way to instantly reconfigure matter to suit them, guided by their thoughts alone. They were wiped out when their base unconcious desires were made real. Moral of the story: such power is not for man!

    Except, that isn’t “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, or even the dangers of having power like that in the hands of X or Y part of society. That’s just extremely crappy UI design on the part of the ancient aliens. I’m sure even the Soviets had an “Are you sure?” function before launching an ICBM at New York, just to bring the actions to the concious forefront of the operators mind before functioning.

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