(Untitled)

[paulhope]

There's a lot I've been meaning to write about here, but I've been too stressed out to sit down to write any new free and deep thoughts. Instead, I've been tinkering endlessly with the GUI for the experiment I'm supposed to already have five participants' worth of data for. I finally thought I had settled on something, and so ran Katie through it

Comments

[doclabyrinth]

To be fair, any sort of historical accuracy would be out the window if the Spartans were Black and preferred to settle conflict with trade embargos. Although if I remember my history correctly, there was plenty of man-boy sex in ancient Sparta, so straight wouldn't be accurate.

[paulhope]

That's true.

That would be a pretty interesting movie though. (Black pedophile Spartans using trade embargos)

[rachiestar]

My friend katranna talks about 300 here.

[paulhope]

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[force_of_will]

In reference to Wilbur I want to ask this

[paulhope]

We have generated a whole culture that both wants to hear both sides of the argument, and then bake and sell their own opinion.

I think there is a lot of truth in what you say about the commodification of opinion, but there are important ways in that opinion is not always a commodity (=def something produced for sale.) There are a lot of people who produce opinions not for sale, but to satisfy their own ego at hearing or having others hear their own voice. I think this complicates the market metaphor.

But here's another problem: so, it may be true that you and Wilbur have roughly the same ideas. So do, I'm sure, a lot of people. It doesn't seem to take any expertise to come up with those ideas, just a varied background and dissatisfaction with reductionism. But then why, to use the market metaphor, doesn't the glut of this opinion drive it drive Wilbur's profits to zero? How does he get money for this institute of his with the slick website

The Purchasing Power of Ignorance

[force_of_will]

One thing that I see rarely if ever mentioned is the thirst for culture, and by extension knowledge in youth. It is only because children are born into ignorance (if not a blank slate) that many careers and professions exist. So there is always a market for any idea be it old or new, full or reduced, especially one which affords "answers' to the problem of living correctly. Again I might tie these comments up now with your post on ethics and ethical behavior, and I might theorize this is why we seek to know the future at all. To make predictions for our lives. Youth is the age where taking ones place in the world and society appears in reflection and imagination

[vaguelyweird]

haha. dan says you have to turn in your penis. (PA reference, of course)

[paulhope]

Haha.

Yeah, on the way back up the hill, I was talking about all this stuff, and H.P. was like "Well, I really liked the movie," as if for some reason my "I thought it was a good movie...[then pokes fun at it]" wasn't sufficient. I brought up the same PA comic.

[neatwithatwist]

On one level, it was just a pretty action film. But the temptation to read into it was overwhelming: did anybody else find it comically conservative in its themes? I.e. straight white men defend their freedom and families via violence against assorted persons of color, who are of course allied with the physically deformed in a conveniently Other axis of evil. To top it off, we're pretty sure that the depicted Xerxes was gay.

this sounds like the way i read movies! glad to know someone else sees right-wing conspiracies everywhere. just kidding (about the right-wing conspiracies being everywhere, and the suggestion that that is what you're saying. i do actually have this reaction to a lot of films. am i making sense? i am rather low on sleep). :).

[paulhope]

I figured you might be sympathetic to this. However, when I read movies in this way, I don't think my heart is really into it the way I'd expect it to be for you.