MovieChat Forums > After the Dark (2013) Discussion > 'Statistically... '. No.

'Statistically... '. No.


The gay guy when asking for a partner said statistically their would be another gay member of their twenty member class. Wrong. Homosexuals account for 1-2% of the population so it was unlikely there were would even one gay member of the class let alone two.

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The actual statistics depend on the area/venue, in some places it's lower than 2%, in other places it may be much higher (for example, Rio de Janeiro - 14.3%). Jack's line is probably based on a wide-held belief that about 10% of the population has some gay interest. This doesn't necessarily mean that all of those 10% would identify themselves as gay, the larger part may have feelings of same-sex attraction or had a same-sex experience, but identify themselves as heterosexual.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation

So when assuming the number of 10%, Jack would expect two other "gay" people among the other 20 people in the classroom. Of which one can be expected to be male, and one female.

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Nuno Bettencourt - "Midnight Express"
https://y2u.be/KaMcf63f7Ic

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Jack's line is probably based on a wide-held belief that about 10% of the population has some gay interest. This doesn't necessarily mean that all of those 10% would identify themselves as gay, the larger part may have feelings of same-sex attraction or had a same-sex experience, but identify themselves as heterosexual.


Exactly right, but it doesn't matter because the sample size is too small for the population average to matter. Jack assumes (incorrectly) that 10% of the population is gay in the sense of being mostly or exclusively homosexual and self-identifying as gay; therefore, he thinks, there must be at least one other gay man among the 9 (or 10 if you count Zimit) other men present.

But with such a small number of people, even if his belief were true, it's not at all unlikely that he could be the only gay man, nor is it unlikely that there could be 2 or 3 others.

It's all hypothetical anyway, so why would he care about finding another gay man to pair off with in this thought experiment that's going to end in an hour or less?

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You're absolutely right, that's an even more accurate and nuanced answer that can be obtained by a deeper understanding of math and probability theory.

As to why Jack would care about finding another gay man in this temperorary classroom experiment, I think Jack was simply being playful. Initially, his reaction to the announcement that they would do a thought experiment on their last day was that "this doesn't sound chill". So if they're going to do some boring Gedankenexperiment, why not make the best of it and throw in some light-hearted facetious issues into the mix, just to make it fun? "Hey, who wants to be gay with me!?", I think that was Jack's mindset. I don't think he would have really minded if it turned out there wasn't another gay man in the room.

However, the scene does serve a point because it reveals and closes Parker's story arc. In the "Blissful Ignorance" thought experiment, Utami survives a fall from a tower, after finding out that her three best friends wouldn't help her. The question was raised whether it would have been better not to bother your friends with your problems, so that you could be sure that you'd still be friends. Parker disagreed and said that he would want to know what his friends are worth, and that he didn't care if he might lose a few friends in the process. So when Jack asked if anyone else was gay, Parker finally put his own words into practice: after all these years, he finally came out of the closet, not worrying any longer about a possible negative reaction from some of his friends. And he felt relieved after that.


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Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
https://y2u.be/VI57QHL6ge0

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that just sounded like gay propaganda to me to make that assumption there are that many gay people out of a population.

And I'm still unsure why or how the movie can justify wasting valuable living space in a bunker which needed procreating couples to re-populate the earth.

I was really annoyed the movie took that angle.

So even during an apocalypse, even when the world has ended, even when you maybe the last 10 people on earth, they had to worry about gay rights?



-things I write on IMDB may come from my blog

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Gay propaganda, huh? I believe his actual concern was being the only person without the possibility of partnering up. If you don't think of that as a pretty basic human urge, you're probably pretty lonely. He didn't say he'd rather die or anything.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

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Then let in fry and bring in one more hot chick.


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I agree with sargasm1. In addition to his points:

And I'm still unsure why or how the movie can justify wasting valuable living space in a bunker which needed procreating couples to re-populate the earth.
The selection in the third iteration consisted of two healthy gay men (Jack and Parker), three healthy heterosexual men (James, Toby and Russell), and five fertile women (Mitzi, Beatrice, Georgina, Utami and Petra). So technically, they can still form five procreating couples. Also, Jack had special genes that Petra wanted to keep in the gene pool. Moreover, even if you'd start out with only four (instead of five) procreating couples, and every couple produces eight children (and after 25 years these kids form new couples and also produce eight children etc.) then after 50 years there can be about 512 great-grandkids (babies) who are not produced by any inbreeding. By that time, Jack will be about 68 years old and able to pass on the valuable knowledge of previous generations for another 35 years. And the group will probably also have made contact with survivors (and their offspring) from the other bunkers. That doesn't look like a problematic situation to me. So what exactly is your concern?

By the way, the movie's underlying theme wasn't really about how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and re-populate the Earth (that was just the premise of the thought experiments), but about the (perceived vs. actual) value of each person within the current society.


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Nuno Bettencourt - "Midnight Express"
https://y2u.be/KaMcf63f7Ic

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I may be wrong about this, but I don't think I am. The "special genes" that Jack had which Petra wanted to keep in the gene pool was the homosexuality gene. She said, "Jack has the beautiful difference," which I took as homosexuality. She went out of her way to try to continue homosexuality in the new human race after the apocalypse. That part of it seemed like 100% homosexual propaganda. Even if you have nothing against homosexuals, why would you go out of your way to make sure that genetic line continued in humanity? There is no benefit to it, from a survival standpoint.

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http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/naturally-selected/201202/is-the-m ale-sex-drive-the-cause-wars

Humankind may need that "gay gene" in order to evolve to a less war-hungry and more collaborative global society.

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Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
https://y2u.be/VI57QHL6ge0

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Agreed, that was ridiculous. A blind devotion to "diversity" for its own sake, regardless of value.

Passion is just insanity in a cashmere sweater!

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^^This.
But you are not allowed to say that, because of PC and all that.

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Ever consider the fact that her choices for the third bunker scenario had less to do about surviving and restoring the human race and more to do with standing up to her teacher and saying that she didn't agree with him and his ideals. I think she was against the practice of boiling people down to two key facts and then judging them based on this from a purely rational point of view. She was making a statement that logic on its own is not enough and that there is no true right or wrong answer in life, that someone can disagree with the things he says and that doesn't automatically make them a failure.

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