Hacker Cinema
50 First Dates
2004 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Peter Segal
Henry is a player skilled at seducing women. But when this veterinarian meets Lucy, a girl with a quirky problem when it comes to total recall, he realizes it's possible to fall in love all over again…and again, and again. That's because the delightful Lucy has no short-term memory, so Henry must woo her day after day until he finally sweeps her off her feet.
3 positive2 negative9 neutralfrom 14 commenters
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14 comments on Hacker News
I'm genuinely wondering if your parent comment is correct and the only reason we don't see the behaviour you describe, IE, learning and growth is because of how we do context windows, they're functionally equivalent to someone who has short term memory loss, think Drew Barrymore's character or one of the people in that facility she ends up in in the film 50 first dates.
Their internal state moves them to a place where they "really intend" to help or change their behaviour, a lot of what I see is really consistent with that, and then they just, forget.
If I ever write abt "Markov chains without the Math/Jargon/BS" I'll use the clip from the "Ten Second Tom" scene from 50 First Dates[1] & a host of other Sci Fi movies abt time loops[2,3] to illustrate the Memorylessness[4] Markov property[5]
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1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN_BDcKhtWk
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_loop
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_time_loops
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorylessness
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_property
Reminds me of the movie "50 First Dates"...
I often wondered how to handle such a situation without traumatizing the affected person every single morning. Truly one of the few rom-coms that left a lasting impression (on me).
By this broken logic, "Movies are fungible". Because you can turn money into a John Carter, and you can turn Dune: Part 2 into Money. You can borrow against Star Wars, and you can license out Barbie.
But everyone knows, movies are not fungible, because they are not interchangeable. I can buy oil, or unleaded gasoline, and it's basically the same everywhere, it is "replaceable by another nearly-identical item, mutually interchangeable" -- oil and gasoline are fungible. But "Movies" are not fungible, because "Lord of the Rings" is not a replacement for "50 First Dates", which is not a replacement for "The Matrix", even though they're all movies.
Housing is not like Oil, housing is like Movies. It's not fungible, because a 2bedroom row-home in Foster City, CA is not "nearly-identical/mutually interchangeable" with a 4bed,2bath home in suburban Louisville, nor a 1bedroom condo in the Chicago Loop.
Even when the housing is all in the same zip code, much of it is still not fungible with it's alternatives, because housing is so regularly different and unique in a myriad of different ways. ("this one is on a hill, that one is in a valley, it has a higher risk of flooding. This one is in School District A, this house across the street is School District B, this house is in a city with income taxes, this house on the next block over is in a township with no income taxes, that house will need a new roof sooner, this house is in a HOA neighborhood, that house is near the bus line, this house is close to the freeway onramps, that house has fiber but this one is only Comcast Coax, etc")
You do know you can do what you like outside of work, right?
You have a hyper-idealized version of what is and is not art.
And execution definitely forms part of the talent. We should know that just as well. We all know "the idea guy", the guy who has all the "right" ideas, but just can't seem to actually do the thing required to bring the idea to life.
And that's because most ideas are just half-formed thoughts. I'm almost on the other end of the spectrum. It's mostly about execution and the idea actually means very little. The idea of "what if you couldn't make new memories" is the central struggle in two very different movies. In Memento, it's used to tell a detective noir story where we're told who the killer is in the first scene. In 50 First Dates, it's used to give Adam Sandler a hurdle to plowing Drew Barrymore.
And you can find joy in the doing itself. You can make good commercial art. It is possible. There is craft there. And where there is craft, there is art.
How is LaMDA different from someone with anterograde amnesia?
I don’t know the specific medical details, but from movies (memento, 50 first dates) a person suffering from it would be unable to remember anything that happens after their “training stage”. Just like LaMDA. Are those people sentient? Because they have a bigger buffer than 2048 tokens?
50 First dates is the more romantic story about a guy who meets a girl who has ~~ante-rograde amnesia~~.
e: I forgot, in the movie she has a fictitious disease that's sort of like ante-retrograde amnesia, but wipes her memory when she sleeps.
That entire page and no mention of the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore film 50 First Dates, which came out a year before and covers a woman who wakes up every morning thinking it's the same day?
At the time of release it seemed to be a medical condition that wasn't real, however there have been a couple of instances diagnosed since then.
> he wakes up every morning believing he is still in Germany in 2005, waiting to visit the dentist
That’s some real-life eternal Groundhog Day stuff right there. Hellish :(
> Today, he only knows that there is a problem because he and his wife have written detailed notes on his smartphone, in a file labelled “First thing – read this”.
This is more positive, and reminds me of the movie 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler.
Also, am glad to hear he has someone in his life that is by his side.
Memento.
Just the right movie at the right time with the right themes and tone.
Its sister movie 50 First Dates is pretty fundamental too to certain perspectives.
This page doesn't like the film, and lists some mistakes, but also lists some of the accurate bits.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychologist-the-movies/201212/amnesia-in-50-first-dates
I mentioned this to a psychologist and she laughed at me very hard. She was a professor and said that she uses the movie 50 First Dates in her class -- by having them write down everything that is wrong. She says it's so horribly inaccurate that it makes for a good long discussion.
50 first dates
also Ghajini: the Bollywood remake. I know it shouldn't count but this movie BLEW UP in the box office.
Reminds me of the a scene from the '50 first dates' movie where Adam Sandler asked Alexa a question, and replied, "Then again, there are always ways around such things, for example, if I promised a woman's father I would not see her, I would simply shut my eyes while she serviced my manhood.".
Those people are real people not bots and spammers, blocking them are simply an absurd way to do it, or 'shutting your eyes to get around with it'. A quick solution, but you are not solving the root of the problem.