Archive for January, 2007

NYT & “Magical Thinking”

Friday, January 26th, 2007

I’m confused why NYT countenances such illogic, unless it’s their effort to balance their oft-castigaged ‘leftward-leaning’ Op-Ed pages.
I deconstructed a similar article here.

Here we go again. First off, the circular reasoning fallacy is repeatedly evoked. The author presents a scenario of “magical thinking”, then tacitly labels it [ridiculous]. Next they state that there’s ‘brain structures’ which somehow must create MT, but that can’t be evolutionary, can it [ie, denying physical evidence]? Then they show that we can fool ppl into MT-based behavior [a similar test, "can we fool tax experts into giving wrong answers", is done each year by Better Business Bureau; they call IRS & ask 20 Agents the exact same question, & get 20 different, usually wrong answers. Oh wait-- is this MT too??].

Then they move right into the perfect example of circular reasoning: “The question is why do people create this illusion of magical power?””. Sorry, did we accidentally neglect how Tiger, Jordan, Lance, Jenner, & etc top peak performers all swear by visualization? And that there’s been multiple double-blind tests confirming that visualization not only helps, but is *essential* to peak performance?

Funny– we all recognize false choice fallacy when Fox News rigs one of their frequent polls (cf. Colbert’s lampooning): “Question: Are you for Supporting the Troops, God, & Country, or Treasonously Retreating from Iraq?”

So why aren’t suitable options made visible here? Perhaps “Magical Thinking” and/or “Magical Power” do in-fact work, but these psych’s & shrinks aren’t very good at measuring it? Not to mention, that psych’s & shrinks have historically been labeled ‘fuzzy science’, & thus are particularly antagonistic to intuitive paths to knowledge.

But it’s particularly jarring when these same ‘clinical psychologists’ and/or university researchers pretend to be objectively studying the matter. Fer crying out loud, wouldn’t the very topic they’re studying (ie, how belief affects physical world), be potentially undermined if they’re starting-out w/ the assumption it doesn’t work?

By the logic they’re using, it’s not implausible to say they’re actually undermining their own experiments. By ‘believing’ MT doesn’t exist, they affect both their test-cases, as well as their logic itself.

I’m esp. amused that they finish-off the article w/ a list of psychiatric disorders which “MT could lead to”, coupled w/ discounting evidence as “coincidental”. First illogic, then ‘you’re crazy”.

And note they carefully distinguish MT from religion, ie “These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history”. What silliness; the average fervent church-goer isn’t thinking of any of those things when they pray… they just want their prayers to work (& the lectant usually gives praise the next week if/when they did).

Hmmm. Closed thinking, hostility, & church-banner waving. Since when did the neo-cons care about ‘magic’? You’d think they were on shaky ground; “faith” in their not being “left behind” sorta sounds like MT to me.

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Scorsese’s Oscar

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Man that guy can bitch.

For such a self-titled scholar, you’d think he’d somehow forgotten this little list of genius auteurs who never got an Oscar… Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles. What true filmmaker wouldn’t kill to be listed in their company?
Scorsese absolutely, no-question, should have got his Oscar for “Raging Bull”. Or before for “Taxi Driver”. But you know what? That’d never happen– directors never get the gold for their early films, unless they’re an ‘actor-director‘, or writers who had help or had famous fathers). Instead, like some kind of interminable macabre high-school prom/homecoming court, the “most important award”[sic] in filmmaking is really just a popularity contest. With a couple of guidelines: the film(maker) must be popular. The film can’t tank. The film must never cover new territory, but rather (re)do something that was done before, w/ a bit more opulence, and/or a somewhat edgy twist. And oh yeah, killing Jews never hurts; after a lifetime of making popcorn movies, it’s telling to note that when Spielberg decided he wanted that golden statuette of his own, even he pulled-out the ovens.

So there’s the quandary– Scorsese hasn’t made a decent film in 25yrs. He tries re-make after remake, getting progressively more ostentatious & blood-thirsty. But at least he kept to remaking old films.

But now comes “Departed”, or its real name: “Infernal Affairs“.

Remaking an old film is not at all like making an original film… just like adaptation is nothing like working from an original script. The adaptation already has a built-in audience; we already know that the characters ‘work’, that the story is moving, & the ending is solid. And similarly with a re-make, we know the entire film works, from story to casting to the shots & the music(!) Really, all you have to do is “not f*** it up”. So why re-make? (I mean, other than for the $$, which I’ll give Scorsese the benefit of the doubt about). Usually, it’s b/c the film has been forgotten, the actors on screen aren’t familiar, &/or the setting/milieu looks anachronistic on video.

But “Infernal Affairs” was none of these things.

The film was made in 2002. It starred a virtual “Who’s Who” of top actors in Southeast Asia. It boasts the talents of Christopher Doyle, one of the best cinematographers working today (consider: “Hero“, “In the Mood for Love“, etc, as well as most of the best of War Kung-Wai’s films). The story is very contemporary, layered in shades-of-grey, while exposing-from-inside facets of asian culture other films promise but never deliver… & for all that is edge-of-your-seat thrilling from start to finish. Like an asian “Heat“, but with even more interesting supporting characters.
So why remake? Simple- Scorsese was looking for a ‘paint-by-numbers’ win, & he landed it. Yet, there must have been part of his (now slumbering) auteur sensibility, if not pride, leaking thru– when questioned about lenses by Doyle, Scorsese blew him off, saying “I’ve never watched the film you made”. Funny, in the “Departed” trailer alone I counted 5 exact duplicate shots from “Affairs”. Or how about when Andy Lau, star of “Affairs”, asked Scorsese for a bit part? You-know, give him 2 lines for his SAG pass & help him cross-over into the H-wood market? It’s not like he can’t act or something; he only carried the picture head-to-head w/ Tony Leung, one of the best actors working today (in Asia or West). Nope, Scorsese blew-off Lau completely, as well. I guess Mr. S couldn’t fit-in an Asian in his Irish New York gangland drama (boy, that sounds familar; I wonder if there were any butchers or planes involved).

You know what? Scorsese already got the highest filmmaking award– the Palme d’Or for “Taxi Driver”, & well-deserved it was. Scorsese already has the words “eminent film authority” wallpapered on his forehead, popping-up as he does in every single retrospective for the past 10yrs, like some kind of demented Ebert who actually once made a watchable film (unlike Ebert’s own contribution to filmmaking). So how many more accolades does the guy need?

All I can say is– for God’s sake, give him the damn thing already. He’s no longer an auteur, no longer has taste, & doesn’t even have originality. I can’t imagine what he’d do if he loses… maybe steal re-make “It’s a Wonderful Life”, in black & white w/ extra blood, a la “Sin City”.

Fellini once noted “you only get 8″, but he was able to scrape-out an extra “1/2″. Scorsese should quit pretending he cares about ‘film’, & go bask in adulation teach in some hoary film academy which churns-out Sundance-wannabes. Or produce Michael Bay & Bret Ratner explode-a-fests. But for the love of God, quit stealing true auteur’s work… it’s beneath you, Mr. S. Please don’t leave me w/ a bad taste when I pull-out your old work; you really were something, once.

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A Thought for the New Year – A pitch for Clear Thinking

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

Hey y’all. Long time no see. I’ve good reason: new house, new job, new teaching assignment(s). But I haven’t been completely buried; I’ve notes a’plenty, so stay tuned for a few words coming up soon.

In the meantime, I’d like to make a pitch for “clear thinking”.

Whaddya mean by that? Simple– the mind is so easily trumped[sic] by emotional, if not egoic, behavior, that it becomes very easy to spew illogical nonsense. Which is fine, really… if you’re at a bar with friends, but not if you’re in a leadership position, eg. publishing in an erstwhile ‘Respected Publication’.

In spiritual pursuits, many disciplines encourage a de-emphasis of the mind, calling it the home of the ego, ie that part of ourselves which believes “everything revolves around me”, & thus makes prettily-turned rationalizations of very self-centered pursuits. The “I meditate so I’m sooo cool” one was termed the ‘golden handcuff’ by Chogyam Trungpa, for example. Similarly, mind-body pursuits such as t’ai ch’i & acting often emphasize “get out of your head”, ie. re-identify yourself with your ‘heart’, if not ‘gut’, rather than ‘mind’. Or my favorite Yogi Berra’ism: “I can’t think & hit at the same time”.

All this is great if you tend to over-analyze (um, guilty). But! “Going with your gut” 100% of the time has its own issues… Essentially, a complete de-emphasis of Mind can sometimes be ‘throwing the baby out w/ the bathwater’, as it were. If nothing else, the mind is good at ‘making sense’ of things, parsing thru lots of different choices, & is pretty good at choosing the right words when you’re talking. Intuition, otoh, is better at ‘jumping’ to the right solution… but not great at explaining why, or helping explicate patterns, let-alone “how can I do that for myself”. IOW, a teacher who tries to completely de-emphasize their Analyzer will find themselves resorting to “just because” or “that’s the way I learned it”. Which is fine enough for many students, but will be lacking calories to those students who are seeking a deeper understanding of the material. Generalizing the larger case from a single example is the hallmark of inductive logic, & is an analytical endeavor… & one which isn’t very common, or rather– not very common using clear thinking.

So on to the story– I drifted over from NYT to WeeklyStandard & NationalReviewOnline.
Ugh! …& i’d thought NYT was ‘pretty liberal’, esp. in their op-ed’s… unabashedly hurling invective w/o rationale. Okay, you think Bush is an idiot. We get it. Now, why not give w/ some hard data to unravel his logic, if not explode that mythos of “My President is Always Right b/c I Am a Patriot!” It’s pretty hard to use logical argument for many neo-conservative stances; add “Texan Oil-Business” mores to Dr. Dobson & you have a refined, completely self-reflexive world-view impervious to outside influence. My philosophy 101 prof. Searle had a great argument against types like these: “you cannot call yourself rational, if there are no grounds under which your [thinking] could be wrong. If you were to say to a Freudian, ‘I’m not sure about Penis Envy’, s/he would reply, ‘You’re just repressing Penis Envy’”.
So, first step to clear thinking: have you considered the opposite case of what you say/think, & can you describe that perspective w/o resorting to invective or moral judgement?

Or here’s an easier determinant: Classical Fallacies.

So there I am at NYT: Op-Ed, Maureen Dowd, etc. And in an effort to see how the ‘others’ think, I slid over to neo-con central. Perhaps they would respect logic more? Egad– I spoke too soon: Inbred, self-aggrandizing, (even-more) over-analytical, & experts all in ‘attacking via irony’; ie. not attacking the character of the proponent, per se, but rather snidely ridiculing their thinking… usually copiously tarred with the ‘liberal’ moniker or its ‘hip variant of the day’ helpfully provided by Fox News.
Must all Op-Ed pieces (liberal, conservative, or whatnot) be oh so very much more satisfied w/ hearing [writing] the sound of their own words than with making a statement based on clear thinking? Or even– perish the thought, logical thinking?

It’s almost like both they & their audience, posit [& need] constant reassurance of their own superiority, both moral & intellectual. They have Spoken; you may agree, or else be ‘unthinking’.
What silliness.

I recommend:

  • go with your gut, sure;
  • follow your Path with Heart, of-course;

…but keep every-so-often testing what you hear vs. the standard list of logical fallacies. It’ll expose much more than you’d expected, both in bias, & in willfull ignorance.

Now excuse me while I go watch Iron Chef. Some things are simply self-evident, & as long as the Chairman picks a suitable Secret Ingredient, Clear Thinking (or at least Stomaching) will be arrayed for all to see. :-)

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