MoviePass … movie subscription?

Movies have become rather expensive these days, no? Why spend $10 or more when I can wait a year and spend $1 renting a disc? It better be a movie I really want to see.

I have argued before that a subscription service would be nice. A monthly fee for unlimited trips to the theater.

And that’s what it looks like the new MoviePass service will provide. According to this article: “MoviePass provides film enthusiasts the ability to attend unlimited [regular 2D] movies for a monthly fee.”

Oh boy!

But elsewhere they say, “MoviePass members are able to see up to one 2D movie per day.” And you can only see a film once. I think these are… gee, what are they called… limits. I would run out of movies every month.

I’d prefer it if the movie theater companies themselves offered such services. This seems a bit clunky:

Right now, the only plan they seem to have is $35 a month for an annual plan. That’s $420 a year. I’d have to see quite a few movies in theaters for that to compete with rentals from Netflix. Doesn’t really seem like that great of a deal. But currently the service is only in a “limited private beta” so perhaps their offerings will improve later on down the road.

I guess we’ll see where it goes… with their current offerings, I think I’ll pass.

Precise probabilities do not imply intelligence

It annoys me when characters on TV shows, especially sci-fi shows, are portrayed as being super-intelligent by being able to ramble off precise probabilities, as if probabilities of natural occurrences are some precise science. “The chances of succeeding are only 34.56 percent!” No, they are either 0 percent or 100 percent. The mathematics of probabilities are a compromise; probabilities provide a way for us to make decisions based on insufficient knowledge. They are not real-world measurements just because we use the word “percent” when talking about them.

“I am 53.45 percent done reading this book.” That’s a real-world measurement.

“There is one bullet left in this gun, so the chance of me shooting you is 16.6… percent.” That’s a measurement of imagined futures based on not knowing which chamber a bullet is in. The bullet is only in one chamber. There is only one possible future.

Truly intelligent characters do not compute precise probabilities in their heads. It is a completely impractical way to go about thinking or making decisions.

This annoys me as much as the idea that emotions and intelligence are somehow naturally at odds, and the price for higher intelligence is the ability to feel emotions.