How many seasons did that get again? >_> :D

: And the thing is, once you get an idea to stick in the popular consciousness,
: you don't have to explain what it is anymore. In the Matrix, you can't be
: told what the Matrix is, you have to be shown it. Over a decade later,
: Inception built on this. The movie didn't have to spend time explaining
: what a simulated reality is, so it instead lavished attention on
: explaining how the particular simulated reality called shared dreaming
: worked. Ariadne's crash course in shared dreaming is one of my favorite
: scenes, because it's infodumping done properly.

I always thought that "you have to see it for yourself" thing was a policy they had because it sounds too out there for almost anyone who's not mentally unstable to believe without proof, and the only way to prove it's not real is to leave it. Also they didn't give a very accessible explanation of simulated reality, Morpheus had maybe two lines about electric signals interpreted by your brain, and a few more about how machines put all this together and some philosophizing, much of which likely went over the heads of some of the people that were more interested in the action, and that was it.

: The problem, if we call it that, is when everyone continues to model their
: space fights after Star Wars. It's boring and it neglects a lot of the
: stories that can be told with different rules.

That's fair.