The Dark Knight review (long analysis)

[reapersaurus]

The Dark Knight is the most overrated "superhero" film of all time.
I can't believe the incredibly overblown, unjustified hype this film is getting.

I say "superhero" because TDK is quite simply, a super-spy film/crime drama. They basically turned the genre into The Bourne Identity. Lots of people plotting and double-crossing and out-guessing the out

Comments

[rpmiller]

You know, having read through the thread, I think it's one of those things that I've been thinking about recently regarding communication in internet fora, and I think it has to do with memory formation and top-down vs. bottom up processing in our minds and how neural networks work.

One of the things about being a behavioral scientist is that you learn a lot about related fields that you wouldn't expect to have to learn--computer science is one of those things that you don't normally associate with psychology, but the two have informed each other a lot over the years, and I think will continue to do so.

I'm going to pull back from that thread specifically because I tend to think more clearly about meta-concepts in many instances. Where I think it will help, I'll bring it back to earth...

In top-down processing, we have an expectation, and our processing of information is heavily influenced by that expectation. Thus all the information is filtered by that expectation, and we don't even get all the information.

Bottom up processing works in the opposite way, of course, starting from the pure information and processing it unil a conclusion is reached, with no filtering.

In the human experience, VERY LITTLE bottom-up processing seems to done, and in fact some researchers once presumed that we didn't do any at all. More recently it seems to be more reasonable to guess that we do a bit of both most of the time.

Here's were it gets tricky--memory formation. There are two types of memories: gist memories and episodic memories. Gist memories contain the essence of a situation or information, while episodic memories contain the specifics--who, what, when, how much they weighed, what color shirt they weighed, etc.

Here's the problem: when we both encoding memories and retrieving memories top-down processing applies to the situation. Especially when it is related to gist memories. Because gist memories are more efficient storage-wise, they are much more accessible to the mind than episodic memories (like keeping them on the local hard-drive while relegating the episodic memory to tape backup). In many cases, the gist memory is ALL we have--there IS NO EPISODIC MEMORY. Typically the only events that are retained in long-term episodic memory are those with unusually strong emotional attachments or which are rehearsed frequently as they are being encoded. Those with emotional attachments are likely to be suspect for a variety of reasons I won't go into.

In internet fora, what I suspect often happens is this: a person reads something quickly and has an expectation that the world is populated with hostile actors. Thus every post is top-down processed as potentially hostile. Even on this forum, which is about as friendly as it gets. Then, because it is not terribly emotional (moderate emotion in most cases), the person only scans it for the gist. The details they don't want are filtered out because of the top-down processing, and they ignore everything else. Then when they compose a response, they actually use the same process for recall and composition: access the gist of what was said via top-down processing (filtering even more details), and then reply, essentially, to what they want the other person to have said.

This results in massive miscommunications. Of course, because we want to justify our behavior, when we are called on it, cognitive dissonance does come into play, because we are being told that we have done something rude by our words. Then we can either change our beliefs about what we consider rude, or we can change our behavior in the future.

Overall, I think what largely happened in the DK thread is that folks started down a path, then their expectations were set, and they couldn't break out of that road. Which seems to be fairly typical.

[rpmiller]

And the remainder of what he said because it wouldn't fit in one reply:

In addition to that, numerous people have overlooked the reasons that have been posted as to why a change was made. The reason? Because like I said, they are filtering top-down, and don't want to see that.

Oddly enough, I don't think this is new, and unfortunately, I don't think that merely being aware of it is enough to end its frustrating effect. I suspect that as long as people have been talking, this has happened. Furthermore being aware of it simply makes you want to smack people around just a bit more--or maybe that's just me.

[reapersaurus]

Thanks for that fascinating info!
The way that people (especially on the internet) process information IS a big problem. Nice to read some studied descriptors for what we see all the time.

I'm curious if you would relate more about what people said to you on the boards you frequent. "summarily virtually hung"? let me hear about that... ;)

It's always fascinating to me when fanboys obliterate reality, displaying their sycophantic delusions, all the while telling you that you were an idiot and missed all the answers or "didn't get it", of course they don't answer the questions/problems you brought up which becomes all the more interesting when the others gang up and make-believe that your points were discredited (when they just ignored what you actually spent the time making clear).

It's an unreal social dynamic - one that has to be seen to be believed.

[rpmiller]

Like that phrasing did you? :) Yea, it wasn't an all at flame war, but a few select individuals took it upon themselves to make excuses for every point I brought up and then kill my character (not the rpg kind) but saying that I was contentious and didn't know how to communicate and that my statements were contradictory. Of course when I called that individual out and asked for even a couple examples he said that he didn't want to bother and then when I asked again he said he wasn't about to "be anyone's monkey". I thought it ironic that he was doing exactly that by being the writer's and director's monkey.