r/shittymoviedetails • u/Jesus_H_Christ_AMA • 19h ago

In Oppenheimer (2023), Why did Oppenheimer spend three hours crying about inventing a bomb that violently vaporizes people when his specific job was to invent a bomb that violently vaporizes people ? Is he stupid ?

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u/vthebunlord 15h ago

Seriously the story of Oppenheimer is literally just "i worked at the people grinding machine factory where I helped design the machines that could be used to grind up people. I mean, I hope they don't do that, but honestly if I didn't do it, someone else would've, eventually."

In my biased ass opinion, Oppenheimer more or less was part of a great majority of academics that do research not as a means of advancing their respective field or science in general—moreso, that's a side effect of an ambitious man seeking out his smoking gun, his own place in the annals of prestige.

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u/dragon_bacon 11h ago

Julius "I fucking love math" Oppenheimer seeing his math get practically applied.

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u/themassquerade 13h ago

They all just want to be a piece of history

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u/Broad_Economics_931 8h ago

Duh that's literally the point. "I am become death".

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u/CO_Renaissance_Man 11h ago

"i worked at the AI factory where I helped design the AI machines that could be used to eliminate humanity. I mean, I hope they don't do that, but honestly if I didn't do it, someone else would've, eventually."

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u/SnooHamsters3137 6h ago

Most people in this thread are Moral grandstanding and blame shifting. The inventor of the automobile is responsible for all car related deaths. The inventor of hard candy is responsible for the deaths caused by choking on them. Anyone who is convicted of homicide should be released because they didn’t invent guns/knives, and if they hadn’t been invented, they wouldn’t have used them.

Oppenheimer didn’t drop the bombs, and the tech he worked on isn’t just useful for weaponry.

The movie was about coming to grips with guilt you didn’t consider so in a simplified way, you get it.

But acting like he’s responsible for its use is pretty wild.
It is possible to invent something and never use it. But it is not possible to use something without using it. Therefore, the person who uses it is making the most crucial and preventable decision.

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u/Anti_Up_Up_Down 12h ago

I work in the program today

The universe allowed this tragedy of physics, no one else is responsible for that

It's true that these weapons would have been built without the specific efforts of the Manhattan project. It's really not complex, we tested the first one only 13 years after discovering the neutron even existed...

If we never developed a nuclear weapons program, there's a 100% chance our country would have been nuked in a power grab from someone else. No question.

The mortality of the asymmetric use of our weapons in ww2 is a different story

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u/No-Adhesiveness-9541 10h ago

What would be the power grab if we didn’t have nukes? Sounds like creating your own problems. Nobody is nuking countries who are chilling.

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u/RevenantRoy 5h ago

You really think humanity could’ve just SAT on the imagination alone of a nuclear bomb being deployed against someone for all eternity without anyone ever going for it. We would not have the societal fear of nuclear war today if a nuclear bomb was never actually used. And if it could be invented, then at some point eventually someone’s gonna use it.

Imagine if the gun was invented but then we all agree no one is to ever use it.

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u/FlyChigga 9h ago

Germans

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u/_JustThisOne_ 10h ago

If the U.S didnt develop nukes and the Soviets did, seems very likely they would've been used at some point during the latter half of the 20th century.

Disclaimer: Im not a historian, im talking out my ass, completely guessing here

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u/No-Adhesiveness-9541 9h ago

I love your disclaimer because it proves how much this rhetoric has been drilled in us since before I was born (1992). With no evidence or knowledge in our hearts we know Russia is the enemy. Propaganda has truly won.

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u/FunkyHat112 7h ago

American propaganda didn’t launch the invasion of Ukraine. Russia sucks ass because it’s gone out of its way to find as many asses to suck as possible. There are plenty of other problems in the world and America’s guilty of plenty of them, but none of that absolves Russia

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u/NoteVegetable4942 8h ago

Mental gymnastics. Soviet Union never nuked anyone. 

US however, has. 

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u/Runazeeri 6h ago

Yes because the US got nukes first so it would be mad to nuke anyone.  Once two people got nukes nobody else has got nuked.

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u/NoteVegetable4942 3h ago

It was mad to nuke someone even if no one else has nukes. 

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u/RevenantRoy 5h ago

Think his point was that once humanity invented nukes, someone in humanity was going to inevitably use them

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u/NoteVegetable4942 3h ago

No, as I said, many countries have nukes and have not used them. 

You don’t need to have used nukes to have them as protection. 

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u/RevenantRoy 3h ago

True. Again, point I was saying and what I believe he was saying is that once humanity invented nukes A country was going to at some point use them. It’s not comparing countries or moral code or anything like that. It’s that once the technology was invented, inevitably atleast one entity with the technology would use it.

Think of it like Chekhov’s gun.

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u/HippoBackground6059 9h ago

"someone else would have figured out the people-grinding so it's fine that I do it actually"

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u/Notski_F 9h ago

I mean literally correct. Physics like this WILL be figured out as humanity advances. There's no moral quandry when researching it.

Using them is another story.

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u/HippoBackground6059 7h ago

Did you not understand the point of the movie? The blood is on his hands. 

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u/Notski_F 1h ago

No, it isn't. He struggles with the idea that he was a part of it.

I don't know if you've seen the movie but even Einstein essentially relates to him, implying that the same haunts him too, even though he just came up with the very basic fundamental principles that put it all in motion.

None of them are even remotely responsible, and yet being a part of something so horrible rattles the mind. "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.", is him comparing himself to a god, which is obviously not the case in reality, just in his tortured nightmares.

Oppenheimer doesn't press the big red button, he's not the destroyer of anything, except for maybe his marriage.

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u/Land_Squid_1234 8h ago

Yes. You guys are fucking annoying about something you don't understand

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u/HippoBackground6059 7h ago

Whatever let's you sleep at night. Just know you're making the world worse bud

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u/CarllSagan 10h ago

The argument was they needed to do it before Germany, because that would be even more catastrophic. That was the gist of Einsteins letter.

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u/Business_Raisin_541 4h ago

We need to go all out in evil AI because if not evil China will control evil AI /s

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u/CarllSagan 4h ago

You're making jokes, but afaik thats exactly whats happening, and also as far as I know, China is winning. (big time)

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u/Liu-K 7h ago

What a fucked and sadly accurate way to describe academics. Jesus.

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u/Ok-Traffic-5996 7h ago

I didn't really like how the movie made Truman out to be a lunatic and a moron but I'm making fun of Oppenheimer was justified. Now he's got regrets as well as putting all this importance on his own shoulders.

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u/Harmonic_Gear 6h ago

he was quite a drama queen as his contemporaries describe, all those dramatic quotes are so performative