Suspension of disbelief and education

[trappedslider]

So, the nitpick thread got me thinking: Is there a correlation between a person's level or education/knowledge and how much you're willing to give on suspending disbelief in entertainment?

 

[MGibster]

When I went to graduate school, my area of specialization was U.S. History from 1877-1939 mainly concentrating on prohibition and lynching. While I'm not an expert on weapons or technology of the era, I have a pretty good grasp of the era and probably part of the reason why I dislike steampunk so strongly. It just looks so stupid to me. I imagine a lot of medievalist have the same reaction to fantasy in the way weapons, armor, and other technologies are presented.

I don't know if that's generally true though. I understand that in a game like Battletech the weapons have ridiculously short ranges. Seriously, a vehicle mounted machine gun today has an effective range of 2,000 meters but the same weapon in Battletech has a 90 meter range. A lot of table top miniatures war games, like Warhammer 40k, have very short ranges partly due to practical reasons. Most of us don't have a 20 foot table to allow ranges to scale as they should. But despite the ridiculousness I don't mind suspending my disbelief like I do with steampunk.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think it has more to do with personality than experience or education. I've gamed with people who were highly educated in certain topics that have come up in games I've played in who just go with it. I think age may have something to do with it as well. I remember going for hyper-realistic survival mechanics in my D&D games in the 80s due to my experiences living and working in Lassan Volcanic National Park, one summer, and the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness another summer, with the Student Conservation Association. But its a game and a certain amount of abstraction and suspension of disbelief is necessary. Consistency is more important to me than verisimilitude.

 

[RangerWickett]

I don't know if that's generally true though. I understand that in a game like Battletech the weapons have ridiculously short ranges.

Ooh, ooh! I actually have an explanation for this if I ever try to do my own mecha setting!

The short version: forcefields which do not transfer momentum and which do create strong EM interference.

Like, the various reasons Battletech is silly are:

1. Why pilot mecha instead of drones?
2. Why bipeds instead of planes or tanks?
3. Why are ranges so short?

My solution is that basically that the same tech that lets you do FTL (by creating a bubble in space and shunting everything inside somewhere else) can be used on a smaller scale and with lower energy requirements to basically put forcefields around objects.

The thing is, the forcefield has to be a complete shell, and it's almost entirely non-permeable and just a field, not a physical thing that can rotate. It can flex a little bit like if you're moving joints, but if you put a forcefield on a tank, it can't get traction to drive. If you put it on a plane, there's no way for wings to get lift because there's no airflow. But there's enough friction with objects that if you put it on, y'know, a mech, its feet can get purchase, and it swings its legs forward instead of needing to roll.

And the forcefield traps heat, which fits a big trope of Battletech of mechs shutting down and becoming vulnerable when they get too hot.

Also, forcefields mess up complex electronics. Within the field, you can't possibly build a self-operating AI to control the robot. You also can't get very precise signals to transmit much data - scratchy radio can get through, but not with enough fidelity to pilot a drone.

Likewise, battlefields would usually be filled with a lot of EM interference, so you can't use remote controlled missiles or even smart missiles. This pushes engagement ranges much closer.

There would be three main classes of weapons that have different perks.

Lasers go through forcefields, but produce a lot of heat when you fire them, and they don't do much damage.

Missiles pepper the target in multiple locations, which forces the forcefield to have to modulate to resist impacts in numerous spots at once, which is more of a strain than single big hits. Enough simultaneous hits will overload the forcefield, causing it to be weak over a few spots.

Ballistics deal the biggest punch, but you want to conserve them until after the shield is down. So ballistics would have longer range, but you usually need to be within the (1 km) range of missiles to have a good shot of taking down the shield so your ballistics can do their job.

 

[Deset Gled]

I don't know if the question is about "how much" as it is about "what" breaks it for me. On an individual level I find it to be very personal and more than a little unexpected what my brain accepts and what it doesnt.

I've used this as an example before, but I can accept things like the wonky physics in Fringe, but get caught up on the unrealistic traffic they show in Boston. I can accept the bizarre notion Castle gets to play with the NYPD because he's a hilariously rich writer, but get pulled out of the scene when his coffee cup is obviously empty. I didn't care much about the inaccurate helmets in Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, but the part that annoyed me was when they talked about growing corn. I guess you could say it's easier for me to look past a lot of big stuff, but some specific, simple, small details break immersion for me.

FWIW, I'm college educated with a degree in engineering.

 

[MGibster]

I didn't care much about the inaccurate helmets in Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, but the part that annoyed me was when they talked about growing corn. I guess you could say it's easier for me to look past a lot of big stuff, but some specific, simple, small details break immersion for me.

I was once confused about some show on PBS that featured two people in a wheat field when one of them says something about being in a "field of corn." The English word for corn predates the discovery of the New World. i.e. Before they knew about maize. Turns out corn could refer to crops like wheat, oats, rye, etc., etc. So you could indeed be standing in a wheat field and correctly speak about being surrounded by all that corn.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’d say it’s less about education than truly personal nitpicks. I’m an attorney, but don’t have many problems watching legal shows in general…at least, not because of the law/lawyer stuff.

OTOH, my Dad is an MD, and cannot stand most medical shows.

 

[dragoner]

I am an engineer and I like science fiction, most don't because it is fantasy, even hard sf is mostly just a genre.

 

[Retros_x]

Education might be "helping" to find unrealistic aspects, but suspension of disbelief is a personal action. Like the name says: You are the one actively suspending your disbelief. That means you know that something is off, but you decide to ignore it for the sake of enjoying the story. So, no it has nothing to do with education, just with your willingness to ignore stuff that would get you out of immersion.

 

[Ryujin]

Education and personal experience can certainly play into it, but a certain amount of it is going to be due to temperament of the person. There's a point at which inaccuracy can no longer be ignored and that varies from person to person.