There is an interesting film essay called Everything is a Remix (part I and part II). Part I introduces the idea of remix as legal copying. The author, Kirby Ferguson, does not present the term in a flattering way, but uses it to show a lack of imagination and creativity, especially in the film industry (Part II).
He says 74 out of 100 of the top films for the past 10 years are "sequels, remakes of earlier films, or adaptations of comic books, video games, books, etc." Hollywood, to a large degree, relies on the tried and true. I have no argument thus far. But then he says, "Of the few box offices hits that aren't sequels, remakes, or adaptations, the word 'original' wouldn't spring to mind to describe them." Then he goes on to show how films like Star Wars borrowed heavily from earlier works.
Here is where I differ. There is a fundamental difference between 'legally copying' and creating an original and imaginative work which relies on human and literary tradition.
T.S. Eliot wrote a famous essay on literary criticism entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent where he argues that, indeed, the value of an original work greatly lies in the tradition that has come before. He advances "the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written." It is that tradition that gives richness and value to an original work.
This leads me to the game of "Oh Pshaw", a Harvey tradition for many years, that I believe we found, strangely enough, just by reading it in "Hoyle's Complete Book of Games". As fun as the game is, it has an anti-climatic ending. Not only is 'no trump' more boring than the previous 'trump' hands, but it lends to no dramatic lead changes at the end.
At Prince Gallitzin, Peter came up with an imaginative alternate last hand that I think will solve all our problems, and he borrows from bridge. For the final hand, instead of playing "no trump", you bid for trump. You are allowed to have two rounds of bidding and whoever bids highest gets to name trump. We only tried this once, but I vision new imaginative games arising from old traditions.
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According to Leo Tolstoy, "All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town."
I had an English professor, who was not Tolstoy, who said there are 3 stories: Cinderella (overcome hardships to gain love), Jack the Giant Killer (overcome evil to gain fortune & fame), and…I forget the third.
But if I had to pick the 3rd plot, it would be The Myth of Sisyphus (overcome hardships to gain the chance to overcome more hardships).
After thinking about this, I wish to advance the notion that there is one story. It is embodied in a play which, when I saw it on TV, I thought, "this is the only plot." The play is Into the Woods.
The one and only story is the struggle between what we believe and what God (or the universe or whatever is beyond the veil) believes—our perception versus …well, something else. Our beliefs, desires, fantasies running smack up against what we often call reality, but which, no matter how long we live or how hard we try, we can never adjust our perceptions to 'get it right.'
Hmm…but where does that leave Cinderella) and Jack the Giant Killer. Maybe Tolstoy was right. There are two stories: the first act of Into the Woods and the second act.
It seems to me that one can be awfully creative without inventing a new story out of whole cloth.
We’ve spoken about this before. John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a story set in the Victorian Age told by a modern author. It’s one of those books that you would think could never be translated into a movie. The narrator often breaks into the story making comments upon things like the difficulties of controlling the characters, and also offers analyses of differences in 19th-century customs and class, the theories of Charles Darwin, the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the literature of Thomas Hardy. The narrator himself becomes a character admitting that the story is from his imagination and, just to confirm that, offers three endings to the story: at least one decided Victorian and one decidedly modern.
One of the main themes of the book is how feelings, like species, can become extinct and the narrator frequently points out the vast differences between Victorian emotions and our own. Here, from another book, The Magus, Fowles explains his point:
“We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.”
Well, The French Lieutenant's Woman was in fact made into a movie in 1981, adapted ingeniously by playwright Harold Pinter. Rather than have the story told by a modern omniscient narrator, Pinter creates two stories, one is the original which takes place in Victorian times and other is a modern day story of the filming of the book in which the two starring actors themselves have a love affair. The contrast between Victorian times and our own can be seen, not from the comments of an all-knowing story-teller, but in the contrast of the two stories. The movie even works in the differing endings. Honestly, both the book and movie are brilliant, but it’s foolish to say that the movie lacks creativity because it suffers from “legal copying.” My view is that Kirby Ferguson is being a bit overly simplistic.
Exactly,…and that quote from Fowles was so striking that I wrote it down when I read the book many years ago.
I hate to keep bringing this up, but Fowles' suggestion that the past might have known something that we don't would appear to call into question Dawkins' contention that religion is just an embarrassing relic which arose in a time of human ignorance and has overstayed its welcome. It may well be that, say, because of capitalism's crushing influence and control today -- its reliance on maximum efficiency, rational calculation and bureaucratization -- we have lost sight of earlier wisdom and values.
In any event, it strikes me as hopelessly arrogant to argue that we now occupy the high mark of human understanding, and that all the past human thought were laughably infantile attempts to figure out the world.
If I can challenge just one commonly-held narrative about the trajectory of the world, it would be that we jettison valuable practices of the past at our own peril. Whenever I ask for specific examples, I'm usually met with vague notions of community values or lost innocence or ancient wisdom, as if the world was a Rousseauian paradise with less greed, conflict, and ignorance. Yes, we have much too learn from the past, but mostly to know exactly which mistakes to avoid, and to put into perspective the problems that seem so terrible and intractable now.
That's not to say there aren't trade-offs for human advancement. Ali and I were driving across the Sonaran Desert this weekend and only radio station we got was a Country one. A song-- "Gone" by Montgomery Gentry-- came on. The lyrics lamented the loss of the good things from the good ol' days, specifically that they no longer make Cadillacs like they did in 1959. Sure, they don't make Caddy's like they did in '59 (presumably because of safety improvements), but you know what else we don't have from 1959? Segregation. Or kids with measles, mumps or polio. Or Africa under colonial rule. Or senators in the KKK. Or airbag-less cars. So yeah, there's a trade-off, but it's one I find difficult to be wistful about.
If the worst that critics can say of capitalism is that it is bureaucratic, exploitative, and morally debasing, then we must describe the economic systems of our ancestors in far more stark terms. Imagine life as a human for the first 99 percent of our existence on this planet. Desperately thin hunter-gatherers living and dying in a world of confusing and inexplicable sicknesses. Wars, superstition, and fear were rife. Child mortality was unimaginably high. We experienced the horrors of bottle-neck events. Depending on when you place the emergence of our race, this living nightmare went on for 150,000 to 250,000 years.
Then, with the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, most of us experienced the horrors of slavery and serfdom. And, in the past 50 years (and even up to today in North Korea), people had to live under Stalinist (~20 million deaths) and Maoist (~70 million deaths) economic models.
The fact is, the world has never before been as peaceful, wealthy, or healthy as it is right now. Warfare is less widespread and less devastating. Slavery trends ever downwards. For more societies than ever before, gender apartheid is eliminated.
We were able to invent "leisure time" as we've had to work less for better living standards. The poorest Americans live better than did the richest of royals a few short hundred years ago.
Back to this weekend. As night fell on the high desert, I was able to make out the glowing strip of stars and gas making up the Milky Way. And, as I always do now when I look up at the sky, I became awestruck by the knowledge that I'm seeing hundred-year old light emanating from massive nuclear furnaces in just one galaxy of hundreds of billions. And I remembered that every single atom in my body and mind, every atom in the desert and in the cactii and in my car and in the food I eat; everything, everywhere was forged in the fiery cores of similar but long-since exploded stars. It's truly one of the most mind-blowing and humbling pieces of knowledge that only a tiny fraction of human beings has ever known. There are deep lessons in that knowledge, lessons that countless of my predecessors never had the opportunity to ponder.
I don't think it's pollyannish to say that we're height of human understanding- it's objectively true. We have more accumulated facts about ourselves and universe than in any time in history. And with that knowledge has comes more daunting knowledge: we're far more ignorant about the universe than we ever thought! With each new discovery, the threshold for a Theory of Everything grows ever higher.
I'm willing to bet that we will be looked at from years in the future as hopelessly adrift, needlessly violent and deeply ignorant. And that will be a good thing, because it will mean that human well-being and understanding has improved markedly.
Welcome to the world of the fondly remembered "back in my day." I joined the campaign to jettison looking back with rose colored glasses long ago. Unfortunately, you and I can not win that battle. People want comfort, and their past becomes very, very comfortable.
We have talked and written about how this is the greatest time to be alive in almost all measurable ways. However, I don't think that was what Fowles or Myk, and certainly myself were talking about. What, I believe, all three were saying is that "feelings, like species, can become extinct." It's a thoughtful concept.
Now Myk does introduce a Dawkins' bash which is a different idea. In any event, it strikes me as hopelessly arrogant to argue that we now occupy the high mark of human understanding, and that all the past human thought were laughably infantile attempts to figure out the world.
Certainly there were some infantile attempts to figure out the world in the past. But there were also some incredibly insightful attempts as well. James' and Myk's posts don't contradict each other in my mind. I don't think it controversial to say that, while we stand at the height of human knowledge today, we stand at that height because we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
But that thought is more or less trivial. I like the idea that feelings like species pass away, and that when something is gained, something is lost. To me that is the more profound notion.
I see the distinction, but I'm still not quite convinced that certain feelings have disappeared from human experience. I agree that it is an interesting concept, but I don't think it can really be proved.
Biologically, I'm not sure how feelings can become extinct. I'm sure some Mormons somewhere experience the very same sexual frustration and rationalization that the narrator in The Magus does:
“We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.”
This quote reveals a common Romantic theme about the danger of knowledge, and that something valuable is irretrievably lost when knowledge is gained. To know means to lose mystery and intrigue. But, as I've tried to argue, more knowledge can actually lead to greater awe and mystery. (I also realize that Fowles subject here is romantic love, which may in fact require a certain level of self-delusion and idealism to succeed.)
There was an article not too long ago in the New York Times discussing dark energy: Darkness on the Edge of the Universe. As the article says, "If the dark energy doesn’t degrade over time, then the accelerated expansion of space will continue unabated, dragging away distant galaxies ever farther and ever faster. A hundred billion years from now, any galaxy that’s not resident in our neighborhood will have been swept away by swelling space for so long that it will be racing from us at faster than the speed of light. (Although nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light, there’s no limit on how fast space itself can expand.)" At that point, future astronomers with even the most powerful telescopes will be unable to detect all but the closest stars and galaxies in the sky.
So then the author asks the question: "If astronomers in the far future have records handed down from our era, attesting to an expanding cosmos filled with galaxies, they will face a peculiar choice: Should they believe “primitive” knowledge that speaks of a cosmos very much at odds with what anyone has seen for billions and billions of years? Or should they focus on their own observations and valiantly seek explanations for an island universe containing a small cluster of galaxies floating within an unchanging sea of darkness — a conception of the cosmos that we know definitively to be wrong?"
This comment is related to the Brian Greene's article-
After reading Darkness on the Edge of the Universe, I thought I had Déjà vu (or reading plagiarism) until I realized Brian Greene had just taken 2 pages out of his book Fabric of the Cosmos (good book) and gave it to the New York Times.
His question is only applicable to intelligences that develop away from human knowledge a couple of billions of years later (and that would not necessarily be the case they just might have less observable evidence at the outset, discovery of dark matter/energy could show the future that everything is expanding-don't need to see the entire universe to make the claim- We don't see the entire universe to make the Big Bang claim, though in the future we will see more and thus have more evidence).
Unless the future intelligence of earth becomes science deniers or humans wipe out itself and its records, there is "primitive" knowledge and also evidence. Future scientists' own observations would include a static universe (not the case if they discover dark energy) and also yottabytes upon yottabytes of non-static cosmic data collected over millions of years. Future inhabitants could look at Cosmic Background Radiation of their time and its constant decay and trace it backwards matching our time giving merit to our evidence. If the future takes a look at Hubble Deep Field photograph (probable the most famous photo along with CBR photo) and choose to ignore it is akin to Moon landing deniers watching the video of the moonlanding and claiming it as a fake.
There is a different between knowledge and evidence, evidence is unchanging, knowledge is the interpretation of the sum of evidence. The future will have way way too much information in support of the theory of a non-static universe.
Fabric of the Cosmos is incredible. Did anyone hear Brian Greene on NPR a few days ago?
To James: Yes. He presents plenty to think about.
To Pete: Not to speak for Myk, but I think his point was that one's unique viewing of 'things' (the universe or the human condition or whatever) at a specific time and space (spacetime if you will) can yield insights that may be lost or, as you say, more difficult to grasp when observed at a different spacetime. The Greene quote is just a clever and remarkable adaptation of that notion in science.
Hopefully Fahrenheit 541 is as bogus as I think it is, and people in the future will not suddenly become stupid but will continue to remember and rely on the knowledge of the past.
Also, the difference between knowledge and evidence has come up in various forms many times on the blog. We all believe there is what I will call 'Reality' and we all believe that we perceive Reality. When you say knowledge, I sure that you refer to our perception of Reality. But when you say evidence I'm not sure whether you are referring to Reality itself or our perception of it. I've never heard any scientist say we have any other access to Reality other than by our observations (perceptions). Perhaps by evidence you are referring to direct, experimental observations which hopefully are not influenced by preconceived ideas.
I wanted to weigh in on the debate regarding are we better off today than yesterday. I think generally yes. But it’s a complicated picture and continued progress is far from assured. The scariest bit of progress of course is that humans very recently achieved the distinction of being able to destroy their species and every other. This seems sort of important and I find it hard to argue that a world with weapons of mass destruction is better than one without them. The world may be more peaceful than at any time, but the steady march of peaceful progress over the last couple of centuries seems to have had some serious blips. Despite the savagery of pre-industrial warfare, prior to the modern era it just wasn’t possible to butcher millions. The power of a mounted knight was considerable in its day, but is laughable compared to the fire power of the modern state. And there are smaller blips: the percentage of black males behind bars grows, some school districts are re- segregating, supermarket bananas no longer seem to have much taste, train service in the US is worse than 50 years ago, it takes a lot longer to get through airport security than it did 10 years ago, the Pirates were better 40 years ago.
Another perspective I have is from the traditional societies in which I have lived – those societies that we’ve lost. Generally speaking, personal connections are paramount in those societies. In our culture, we say, “Johnny you’d better go home now, we’re going to eat dinner.” In traditional cultures this would be unconscionable as would things like not caring directly for the elderly. In a traditional village culture other people’s problems are yours. You could not let your neighbor starve. I certainly was able to identify many, many aspects of village life which were not life-affirming. But my point is the destruction of the past is not a uniformly good thing. Millions of people today have many things that enable them to lead healthy, comfortable, fulfilling lives, but the gap between those you can and those you can’t has never been greater. Medieval kings were not significantly better off than peasants both being subject to the many harsh realities of the physical world, but I live in a different galaxy than millions of those in the developing world, and we have progressed to a point where their welfare has no bearing on mine. They can be invisible to me. Yes, it’s true, I can help them with the click of a mouse, but I don’t have to live with them either. In short, was the enclosure movement a good thing?
Peter always provides a new perspective. At the very least he doesn't use "vague notions of community values or lost innocence or ancient wisdom, as if the world was a Rousseauian paradise with less greed, conflict, and ignorance." — especially about the Pirates.
It's funny, but I'm normally on the opposite side of this discussion. I have a running argument with a few uber-conservatives in my office about whether things are looking up or are going to the dogs. I take the positive side. I mostly make the same arguments that James makes, plus despite recent setbacks, democracy has been steadily spreading in the world.
And I certainly see the dead-end thinking of the conservative dream of the idyllic past to which we must return. "In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them."
But, what bothers me is the idea that everyone in the past -- especially when they disagree with our notions -- were either idiots or infants.
For extra credit, Fowles does not mean to praise the past because of its ignorance or innocence, but for the opposite: for its knowledge and understanding. You can disagree with Fowles on this particular point, but the idea that a prior age could know more than a subsequent age, especially about certain things, is not impossible to imagine. I can think of one area where a whole species of feeling has been lost: the joy of a child getting up early on a Saturday morning and, while the world is still asleep, sneaking out his window and down the side of the house just to be outside.
Really off topic-
Sorry, Jim. I wasn't too clear. I was going off on a tangent of Greene's thought experiment. I wasn't commenting on Greene's or Myk's points (though looking over my comment it appears as though I am trying).
Instead, I find the improbability of the Greene thought experiment far more interesting. Intelligence will be forced to disregard what they observe (viewing a supposed static universe) instead will rely on science (the overwhelming evidence contrary to a static universe)to get the correct interpretation of the universe. Which is why science is such an awesome endeavor, understanding the world by eliminating as much of our human behavior/perceptions as possible.
Ignore the following paragraphs since we have discussed this in circles many times(precede at your peril)
I understand your point that a third person point view of a system in that very system can only be a level above what actually is and therefore observation/evidence is only the viewer's perception of reality. I think you are right in a sense, our brains didn't evolve to view universe/reality in its entirety (damn natural selection). For us to understand micro and macro aspects of the universe we need models that allow our brains to understand (we can't perceive reality in 11 dimensions so we use strings, not to say there won't be intelligences that can).
The argument- that our understanding of the universe is not the actual universe but reality is just human perceptive is like arguing every time I sleep reality ceases to be because I no longer perceive the world. There atoms, protons, rocks etc (semantics aside on human designations) with or without human perspective. When a tree falls in a forest with no one around the air molecules will still compress and transfer energy in waves. While human models of the universe will inevitable change, the universe itself will not, aka where evidence is from (this is more of a conjecture, I think intelligence 100 billion years from now will be apart of the same universe (a universe that exist and not dependent on human perception).
Finally, another interesting Greene thought-
"After decades of closely studying quantum mechanics, and after having accumulated a wealth of data confirming its probabilistic predictions, no one has been able to explain why only one of the many possible outcomes in any given situation actually happens. When we do experiments, when we examine the world, we all agree that we encounter a single definite reality."
This is way off-topic and should be brought to another place or, better, just dropped, but it is important and I don't think we differ in our understanding that much. However, "The argument- that our understanding of the universe is not the actual universe but reality is just human perceptive" is NOT "like arguing every time I sleep reality ceases to be because I no longer perceive the world." I strongly disagree with both the first part of that statement and the analogy.
Reality is what we are perceiving and trying to understand. As you imply, it doesn't "cease to be." And to confuse Reality with our understanding can lead to reduce science from an endeavor of inquiry to a system of belief (See "The Religious Case Against Belief" on this blog).
"There atoms, protons, rocks etc (semantics aside on human designations) with or without human perspective." This is a statement we could write volumes on, but the bottom line is we both believe there is a Reality.
Over the last 2,500 years the atom has changed from Democritus' model to Dalton's model to J. J. Thompson's plum pudding (raisons were electrons) model to Rutherford to Bohr to Heisenberg, where we have probability clouds rather than electrons, to Greene and his fellows where electrons are not probability clouds, but string loops. I have no doubt that the atom will change change in the future; perhaps so much that we will no longer call it an atom. But, as you say, semantics aside, the Reality behind all those changing models remains the same. But it is important not to confuse our understanding with Reality itself.
Someday, as you say, we may have a near complete picture of Reality, but that is further away than the wildest science fiction.
As an aside:
Greene's statement is not actually correct that "no one has been able to explain why only one of the many possible outcomes in any given situation actually happens" One popular explanation is the Many-worlds interpretation. In this explanation many realities emerge. He would be correct if he said "no one has been able to explain satisfactorily", but that is true for any quantum theory interpretation.
Gah! I can't write without editing:
"to reduce science" s/b "to reducing science"
and
"change change" is just "change"
…and "raison" is not French but should be "raisin".
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