First off, I just saw Avatar yesterday and thought it was great. I highly recommend it. Even if you haven't seen it, I don't think this comment will spoil anything for you.<p>I have a few problems with this review, because the author assumes that the Na'vi must follow the same cultural development path as humans.<p>I argue that our path to our current culture didn't start with writing, but with agriculture. Agriculture, and later city-building, is all about destroying nature to build a new environment better suited to our needs. What if, because of the deeply interconnected nature of Pandora, the Na'vi evolved to include the surrounding nature in their in-group? That would imply that, for a Na'vi, morality would apply to a tree as much as another Na'vi. Clearing forests for crops would be tantamount to mass murder.<p>The Na'vi culture is definitely a "Noble savage" stereotype, but note that they have a warrior culture. This implies that they must regularly go to war with other tribes, even if they don't show it in the movie. I also object to citing Steven Pinker's <i>The Blank Slate</i> here. His arguments only apply to human cultures.
LARGE SPOILERS AHEAD:<p>I liked Avatar, but to me the obvious science fail was the telepathic connection between the Na'vi and the animals. Evolution doesn't work like that! Rattlesnakes do not grow rattles for your benefit! I'm afraid that yon astrophysicist knows rather a bit more about physics than about evolutionary biology if the <i>inter-species universal complex adaptations</i> didn't jump out at him.<p>As for the planetary tree-mind being able to <i>read out human brain networks using its own standardized equipment</i>, who are they kidding?<p>Yes, the whole plot would have worked without it! The central tree could have been providing a vital nutrient without which the local ecosystem would fail, or something that their women needed to reproduce. There's no reason you need telepathy to ride a horse. The final stampede could have been started by one or more heroes, rather than being magic. And the final body-swap wasn't really necessary (just keep using the old equipment), but it could have been an effect of running the interface for a sufficiently long time (the alien brain gets reprogrammed).<p>And then it would have been <i>hard science fiction</i>, which would have made a visually-awesome, okay-plot movie into one of the greatest SF movies of all time.<p>Also, I will accept pretty alien ladies for the sake of plot, but having them cry tears is going too far, and it's not necessary. That really jumped out at me.<p>Avatar was good, but it could have been so much more if they'd spent five minutes thinking about how to get the plot effect they wanted via science instead of magic.
I like to think that their 'network' of knowledge helped them realize they don't need technology and the chaos that comes from it. Or perhaps they have already been where we are and have moved past it realizing there's a better way to live.<p>Edit - Hmm a downvote for an on topic opinion? Would it have been better had I said "Who cares about the details its a freaking movie and you nerds need to get over yourselves?" :)
<i>So the gas giant in Avatar rotates about 50 times faster than Jupiter. Winds on Jupiter can exceed 100 meters per second, so the winds on Polyphemus would have to exceed 5000 m/s – this is supersonic and clearly implausible.</i><p>That's odd. I don't think there is substantial proof that winds on Jupiter are caused by planetary rotation. In fact, the atmosphere is part of the same inertial system as the rest of the planet. Here's an article suggesting that the winds are actually generated from within Jupiter's interior: <a href="http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jupiters_Massive_Winds_Likely_Generated_From_Deep_Inside_Its_Interior.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jupiters_Massive_Winds_Lik...</a><p>Additionally, I see no inherent problem in supersonic winds. How does it preclude a foreign planet from being 'plausible'? If there is a problem, I'd like for somebody to help me identify it.
This is an excellent article and well worth reading. I would have a couple of nit picks with his nitpicks though, particularly:
<i>Since the Na’vi have had the ability to download information and share
it in a massive network for long periods of time (evolutionary
timescales), they should be way ahead of us in terms of technological
development.</i><p>If the movie ever mentions how long the Na'vi have been around as sentient creatures, I missed it entirely. Even if they would leave the "noble savage" stage much faster than humans did, they certainly would have passed through it and if that happens to be when this movie takes place it is hardly surprising.<p>Also, the type of information that they could pass around in this fashion is never clearly delineated. The Tree of Souls can clearly move everything there is from one mind to another, but it is never shown that this can be done routinely or without price, so it may be less valuable in terms of developing technology than it would seem at first glance.
Another idea about Avatar... maybe this is very loopy, but is it possible that the Na'vi are a metaphor for the internet, and its more democratic culture? Maybe an unconscious one?<p>They live in this world which is literally founded on an information network. People from the default world enter this other world via technology, and by creating avatars which are remotely controlled. There is a power struggle between those who see the communities as something to exploit, and those who see them as something valuable for their own sake.
All other things being equal (natural resources and energy), technological progress is directly proportional to a population's size and density (for degree of progress) and its growth delta (for the rate of progress).<p>More specifically, it is the population's ability to transfer existing information and synthesize new information which lends itself to what we recognize technological progress (you have to have the desire to apply such knowledge too, of course).<p>I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm guessing the Na'vi did not have very large or dense populations. As for their global Gaia network, does the movie explain if it actually transfer chunks of knowledge (memes) or experiential patterns, or is it 'lower level' and works more like sharing emotions?
>But even then the odds against evolution
producing such similar animals on different planets is astronomical.<p>Convergent evolution? Birds, bats, and flying squirrels; sharks, dolphins and penguins; snakes, worms and legless lizards; and so on.
I'm surprised he didn't question how the link between the characters and the avatars worked. Everything else seemed plausible enough, but I struggled to find an explanation for this. Any thoughts?
<i>Since the Na’vi have had the ability to download information and share it in a massive network for long periods of time (evolutionary timescales), they should be way ahead of us in terms of technological development.</i><p>The information they have access to appears to be someone's entire mind/memories/thoughts/whatever... This would be a HUGE amount of completely unsorted data. Sifting through all of this to find usable information would be very difficult.<p>The comparison to writing and the internet is false. In both cases, data is (to some degree) indexed. Want to build a robot? Search for "how to build a robot" and you have a good place to get started.<p>In fact, they only time they show anyone making direct use of the link (as opposed to a spiritual use) is when they ride animals, which is a link with a single animal.
The Na'vi really are little more than noble savages. But they hold out a particular hope that's attractive for technological late-capitalist humans; they feel "connected". In the movie, that metaphor is taken all the way to be a literal connection -- to their communities, to their ancestors, to a spirituality, to their working animals, to the entire ecosystem.<p>I think that's the only way to understand their ponytail USB cables, and the root-mesh information network. It may be amusing to pretend that it's a hard-SF piece and work out the implications, but it's just not. It's a fantasy piece about the longing for connectedness.<p>There is (maybe) a secondary theme of viewing an ecosystem as a giant information exchange. But that wasn't explored well.
I have no intention of seeing the movie, although I may when it's on DVD if I get sufficiently bored. If you can find a copy see Benford's essay "Reactionary Utopias", originally written as a reaction to Ursula Leguin's anti-industrial screeds masquerading as science fiction.