At that time, I immediately defended the name Hulu, calling it a “great name”, based on it’s close auditory association with the candy known as Bing Tang Hu Lu.  (Yes, I beat Alex Bosworth to the punch on that one).  Now with the name “Bing”, we have appropriated the other part of that tasty treat’s name.  I can hardly contain my excitement!  Look at pictures of Bing Tang Hu Lu on Bing!

We should call it “Bing Bing” in China.  And we should hire the actress Bing Bing to be the spokesperson.

Some have theorized that the name comes from Groundhog Day’s “Ned Ryerson – Bing!” skit.  Others think it might be a riff on Mitch Kapor’s old project, Chandler.  Or Monty Python.  Yet others have pointed out the possible reference to the bar in The Sopranos or the sidekick in the Lethal Weapon series.  Jon Stewart has already “Disrespected the Bing!”

While the “bada boom, bada bing” reference seems to be hinted in our marketing materials, I believe that the Stallmanesque explanation probably holds some truth: The name is a recursive acronym, “Bing Is Not Google”.  How incredibly geeky.

His philosophy and approach reminded me a lot of Barfield, but I couldn’t find an explicit link. 

Here is an excerpt from a review of his book Hieroglyphics, describing his theory of “ecstasy”:

"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature, brilliantly exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion : "If ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature."

There is something slightly incongruous about trying to rationally explain why great ideas cannot be communicated purely rationally.  This of course hasn’t stopped Aristotle with Poetics, Coleridge on Wordsworth, Steiner on Goethe, Bandler on Erickson, or countless others.  And Machen seems to practice what he preaches.  For example, this passage from Machen’s “Hill of Dreams”:

"Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and further removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself.  Here lay hidden the secret of suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words."

You can easily see the influence on Lovecraft, who went on to influence Neal Stephenson’s “Nam-Shub of Enki”.  Machen’s friend A.E. Waite and Waite’s Golden Dawn colleagues were familiar with the stories of the Golem of Rabbi Judah Loew, which was perhaps the first variant of the “nam-shub” story in print 50-100 years before Lovecraft, and could be seen as a superior predecessor to Shelly’s “Frankenstein”.

Google Books has the full text of Hieroglyphics online.  The opening is delightful; I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

The project initially started with the goal of creating a low-cost tool for helping people learn to read.  The literacy rate across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Afghanistan is about 60% in urban areas, and as low as 10% in the target areas for this tool.  The goals for the project rapidly adapted to reality as they began researching in the field.  In some ways, the goals and the design became simpler, but also laser-focused on the needs of the villagers in a way that couldn’t really be achieved in any existing devices.

Here is a video interview with Cliff that has a demo.  During the demo today, I was impressed with the audio quality of the device and microphone, and the design of the software driving the interface.  Cliff talked about some of the user experience changes that had been made so far, supported by a very flexible underlying software architecture.

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Learning about the evolution of the Talking Book reminded me of the Talking Signs project created by my good friend (and cabal organizer) William Loughborough.  Over the years, as we’ve discussed accessibility and semantic information exchange, he’s always provided a moderating pragmatism.  Geeks like to imagine systems built of RFID and GPS combined with always-on access to RDF, and things like this.  William would gently point out that directional infrared, as low-tech as it is, can be superior for many purposes.  William was the one who first helped me realize that cognitive disabilities and illiteracy are a form of accessibility challenge just like vision impairment or deafness.  Interestingly, Cliff has found that impaired vision is far more common in the developing world, and Talking Books need to be useful for people with these disabilities.

~

Lately I have been thinking a lot about literacy and accessibility, as I attempt to pass on great ideas to the next generation.  We run into these issues when we try to teach Shakespeare, Homer, or even Torah or Talmud to children.  Basic literacy is not enough.  And even if you can expand a kid’s vocabulary to the point of having a linguistic understanding of the text, there are many additional dimensions of “literacy” that are required to really appreciate and internalize these works.  All of these works require an ability to imagine and to participate in the works.

Perhaps this is why I’ve been fascinated with George MacDonald, who is considered by Madeline L’Engle and J.R.R. Tolkien to be the grandfather of the fantasy genre.  MacDonald’s stories are much like Homer or Shakespeare, in that he is a master of symbolism, imagery, and stories within stories.  His are the sort of stories which retain their power even if retold in different words.  In fact, MacDonald’s prose skills are not the best by any means, which makes it all the more remarkable that his tales are so powerful.

MacDonald’s stories were written in the late 1800’s, and are now public domain, so you can find them easily online.  However, they are not really accessible to children (or even most adults) today, because of the old style of English used.  I’ve recently worked on translating some of them into contemporary kid-friendly English, and they really don’t lose their appeal.

This, I think, is the power of the whole “fairy tale” genre.  Good fairy tales depend on the story line, and not on the authoring ability of the person recording the tale, or the literacy of the person receiving it.  Today The Guardian ran a story arguing that the whole “fairy tale” genre evolved as a result of the printing press, rather than as a result of oral tradition.  The article quotes George MacDonald a few times, and is worth a read.  One is reminded of Theseus’s line in Midsummer Night’s Dream:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Of course, the idea that “fairy tales” originated in 1550 is absurd, unless you take a hopelessly restrictive definition.  Homer himself was a master of the fairy tale, and even if you limit yourself to stories like Cinderella, you must admit that The Story of Sinuhe, written 4000 years ago, is of that genre.

In any case, it certainly was a big deal when talk became books, empowered by the printing press.  But now we have books that become talk.  Great works like the Quran and Homer’s epics were spread primarily by spoken word at first.  How might history have been different if these had been spread as talking books? 

~

This was one of the most fascinating things Cliff discovered in his research.  Cliff is primarily trying to expand access to practical information about basic survival needs.  But when given the chance to record their own content to these talking books, Cliff found that villagers would sometimes start recording folk stories.  At first glance, nothing could seem less practical than folk tales, but I believe this is actually very important – maybe the most important type of “book” that can be shared.  And the impulse of the villagers to share this content shows that they know it to be important.  The other information is undoubtedly important.  But perhaps we’ll find that the “talking book” does far more than just virally disseminate agricultural and how-to advice.  Perhaps we’ll see the local fairy tales evolve and disseminate to create deeper shared contextual meaning, and layers of culture from which even better things can grow.

However, appreciation can turn to slavish religion and the blessing becomes a curse.  In today’s world, the very word “subjective” is often considered synonymous with “untrustworthy”, and this bias is to our own detriment.  I believe that our skewed focus on “objectivity” has led many modern people to vastly underappreciate subjectivity and introspection – and that our failure to appreciate subjectivity is impairing our ability to appreciate reality.

~

To understand how, let’s take a look at an experiment performed by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, head of the delightfully named “Center for Advanced Hindsight” at MIT, and documented in his must-read book, “Predictably Irrational”.

In summary, the researchers gave students a task which would earn money, divided the students into groups with varying levels of ability to cover up any misdeeds, and tempted the students with the opportunity to cheat.   When asked to predict how much the students would cheat, people predicted that the students with more opportunity to cover up the “crime” would cheat more.  But empirical testing showed that students all cheated exactly the same amount, regardless of whether or not they could easily cover their tracks.

~

Dan Ariely’s career has contributed impressively to our understanding of human nature, and his book is a masterpiece.  I felt that every experiment and conclusion were reasoned with impeccably disciplined judgment – except for this one example.

In the book, the results of experiment are used to argue that we cannot trust our intuitions (since nobody predicted the outcome).  But then Ariely resorts to introspection in attempting to explain why the results were what they were.  His explanation “after the fact” isn’t all that bad, and might even be correct, but that isn’t the point.

~

If you wanted to know why students cheated the same regardless of opportunity to hide it, you’d probably start by asking someone who actually predicted the outcome.  You might congratulate him or her for being right, and then ask, “how did you know?”  It’s possible that the explanation offered would be pure rationalization, but it would certainly be less suspect than an “after the fact” rationalization by someone who got the answer wrong in the first place.

This search can be performed even after the experiment has been completed.  In essence, you are looking for people who have a good understanding of human nature, who have not been exposed to the experimental evidence.

~

I believe that there is good reason that Dan Ariely did not find anyone who could predict the results in advance, and thus lend credibility to the explanation – he didn’t find these people because he didn’t look for them.

This is no surprise, because the empirical mindset assumes that any predictions made without hard experimental evidence are, essentially, random.  Why spend any significant effort looking for something which you don’t believe is there?  Incentives were offered for cheating, but there was no credible incentive offered for making correct predictions.

The question was posed to people at a university, operating in a context where a tendency to think subjectively and empathically would have been suppressed long ago.  If you are a student, scientist, or engineer, introspection is probably an unused muscle, and you’re not likely to spend much time exercising it to make a prediction – especially if there is no serious reward or punishment offered.

Furthermore, the question was posed in a moral context, where a perverted emphasis on objectivity could easily lead a person to mistrust the applicability of introspection beyond themselves: “Well, I don’t think that *I* would cheat much, but I cannot predict what *other* people would do.”

I have found that young children are generally better at answering questions like these, because they are naturally introspective, have better imaginations, and do not hesitate to project onto others.  We literally have to indoctrinate this superior ability out of children, and the retention of these skills seems to be negatively correlated with education.

~

The point here is that this is a perfect example of something which can be understood via introspection, and which should be understood via introspection.  Introspection, when well-trained and exercised, is far faster and more enlightening than empirical experimentation. 

Yes, introspection can lie.  But this is not a reason to distrust all introspection.  This is a reason to train people to use introspection wisely and honestly.  It’s smart to use objective methods to test the subjective conclusions, but don’t completely abandon subjectivity as a tool.

The Story

The story is about a young man named Werther who becomes obsessed with a woman he knows to be taken, and he eventually destroys himself over his inability to possess her.  It was partially based on Goethe’s real-life obsession with a woman he met, and the story became wildly popular during Goethe’s lifetime. 

It has widely been seen as a celebration and of the tortured and passionate “romantic” spirit, based in large part on the readers’ appreciation of Goethe’s genius and the autobiographical nature of the story.  The entire “romantic” movement in Western European literature owes a large and well-chronicled debt to this story, as do many obsessive lovers to this very day.  However, I believe that this particular popular interpretation is exactly wrong.  The story is in fact a cautionary allegory about pride and will, and Goethe creates Werther explicitly as a caricature to drive home this point.

The Haggadah

There are many ways to demonstrate my point, including Shakespeare, or Werther’s beloved Homer, but in honor of Passover, let’s use the tradition of Haggadah, which would have been quite familiar and important to Goethe, and was directly alluded in Werther.  Every year during Passover, millions of families around the world read Haggadah: the story of the Exodus from Egypt, embellished with commentary.  The story itself is foundational to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.  Even for the non-religious, the story is central to many civil rights and liberation movements.  Some families see the story as being an accurate chronicle of history faithfully recorded by the story’s protagonist, while many see it as being more or less embellished; just as with the readers of Werther.  Despite the divergent opinions about how strictly autobiographical the story is, these families all agree that the story is full of profound insights.

Different families may choose to focus on different parts of the story, and may emphasize different conclusions from the story.  This diversity is part of the beauty of the story.  The story as told in the book of Exodus is rather short, but the inspired Haggadot could fill many volumes.

Enter Pharaoh

Werther’s genius is that it focuses on only one part of the story – a part which is normally glossed over and misunderstood – and does so with exquisite clarity.  In short, Werther is Haggadah seen from Pharaoh’s perspective.

When most people read the story of the Exodus, they typically focus on the themes of redemption and deliverance, from the perspective of those delivered from bondage.  We gloss over the fact that there were many other actors in this story: the Hebrew slaves who chose to stay in Egypt, those who were unfaithful and died (or were killed) along the way, the Egyptian people who were punished and in some cases died, and the Pharaoh himself. 

To the Pharaoh and many others, the story is not a story of redemption and deliverance – it is a story of condemnation and destruction.

To ignore these other characters is to do a grave injustice to the story, and turns the story into a children’s fable with little credibility or depth.  It is easy to identify with the gratitude of the slaves who were delivered from bondage, but we convince ourselves that it is more difficult to understand the supremely powerful leader who would throw himself to destruction.  After thousands of years, we have grown into the habit of treating these characters, and especially the Pharaoh, simply as cartoonish cardboard props.

Goethe shows us that this assumption is dangerously false.  In fact, the Pharaoh’s attitude is all too believable, and the condemned were perhaps the most human and least remarkable characters in the story.  Indeed, Goethe’s portrayal of Pharaoh’s motivation is so impeccable that two centuries of readers have unwittingly identified Pharaoh as the true hero and role model of the story. 

It was not Goethe’s intention to make Pharaoh out to be a role model – in fact, it was quite the opposite.  Goethe wanted to show just how dangerous it is to flirt with these attitudes, and how easily they become a slippery slope.  The fact that so many have identified with young Werther, and use him as an excuse to glorify a “romantic” attachment to sensuality and self-destruction, is a testament to Goethe’s epic genius, and shows that Haggadah remains sympathetic to the modern human condition.

Werther as Pharaoh

When attempting to understand Pharaoh, we are faced with a number of questions.  Moses and Pharaoh were raised together from childhood as brothers, so we wonder how Pharaoh’s heart could change so dramatically, replacing these fraternal bonds of love with self-destructive hatred of his brother.  Why was he so possessive and unwilling to cede control?  And why did he ignore so many vivid signs foretelling his own destruction?  We find all three questions examined  in Werther: selfish and possessive will, vivid warnings ignored, and a thorough hardening of the heart.

Although Werther learns in the very beginning that Lotte is promised to another man, it becomes clear that he does not care about Lotte’s wishes or that of anyone else.  (Lotte represents Moses and the Hebrew people – her name sounds like “Lot”, the protagonist of the first great story of deliverance.)  Werther repeatedly compares her to a sister, admitting that their many hours together allow them to understand one another.  But this closeness does not deter him from wanting to force his desire upon her.

Like Pharaoh, Werther considers himself the supreme author of this narrative, and is incapable of considering any will but his own.  Goethe underscores this point brilliantly by creating the tale as a series of letters written by Werther.  By crafting the tale as a series of letters, Werther deposes the narrator and takes full control of the story.  None of the other characters are permitted to speak for themselves, they are given life only through Werther’s pen.  Just as Egyptian history was written by the Pharaoh, Werther feels that he alone can write Lotte’s heart:

“Oh, dare I utter the words, those words that contain all heaven for me? – I can feel that she loves me!  She loves me! – And I have grown in stature in my own eyes, – I can tell you this, you who understand such things – I worship myself, ever since she loves me!”

This exchange comes early in the book, when Lotte most certainly does not love Werther.  It’s a remarkably self-centered declaration, which demonstrates that Lotte is merely a prop which Werther uses to feed his narcissism.  Several passages attest to Werther’s belief that his obsession with Lotte – whether she returns his feelings or not – is the source of his powers to create.

Goethe goes to great lengths to demonstrate how one-sided and possessive this obsession is, and the entire story is littered with allusions to Werther’s high opinion of his own power and will.  Once, when reprimanded by his friend, Werther replies:

“Forgive me then, if I concede your entire argument and still try to find a loophole between the either and the or.”

He pretends to be concerned about obtaining his friend’s forgiveness while simultaneously demonstrating that he cares only about his own desires – selfish will masked as concern for others which is Werther’s modus operandi throughout the story.  In fact, he sees it as something of a game:

“if I indulged myself in the sport, I could compose an entire litany of antitheses.”

It is clear that he takes great pride in his strong will.  For example, he is offended when he is complimented for something so trifling as intellect:

“I am disturbed that he values my mind and abilities more highly than my heart, which is my only source of pride, and indeed, of everything, all my strength and happiness and misery.  The things I know, anyone can know – but my heart is mine, and mine alone.”

The wording Goethe chooses here is very unambiguous.  By “heart” and “passion”, Werther is talking about the selfish will.

So we begin to see how the slippery slope begins.  Not only does Werther resist and avoid coming to terms with the wills of others, he takes great pride in having a dominant will.  Far from seeing this prideful will as a source of potential trouble, he sees it as the source of his happiness.  Soon, we learn more:

“And yet, whenever she speaks of her intended, speaks of him with such warmth and love, I feel as if I had been stripped of all honor and rank and had my sword taken from me.”

He uses his fantasies of illegitimate dominion over Lotte to sustain his ego, but when he is forced to face the fact that she is promised to another, Werther’s ego is crushed.  He speaks as if he has been victimized and humiliated, and his very identity is imploding.

Likewise, Pharaoh spent his entire life assuming that he was destined for dominion over his brother Moses and the Hebrew slaves.  We can imagine the demands to “let my people go”, cutting like a knife.

Ultimately, Werther stops pretending to care about whether he is right, and honestly speaks his resolve to get his way no matter what the cost.  His climactic declaration could just as well have been spoken by Pharaoh:

“What use is it if I repeat over and over to myself that he is a good and worthy man?  It is tearing my heart in two; I cannot be just.”

The Warnings

Just as in the story of the Exodus, there are repeated and vivid warnings of the fate to come.  And just like Pharaoh, Werther at first admits his wrong and appears to turn back from the path of destruction, but is ultimately sucked in.  At the beginning of the story, Werther in fact takes the role of moral instructor and declares himself to be above the sort of error which later befalls him. 

First, Werther relates to his friend the story of a young woman who became attached to sensual things, made poor choices in love and became so emotionally distraught that she committed suicide.  Werther lucidly explains to his friend how such situations are to be avoided and escaped.

Later, Werther encounters a person who has “ill-humour”, which is the “human evil” which Werther “despises above all others”.  Werther confronts this person and condemns him for not having better command of his emotions, and for making others unhappy.  Werther, still relatively lucid, narrates his observations about maintaining good humour.

As his condition deteriorates into the very diseases he has condemned, he has a flash of clarity.  The very letters and journals he has been using to create his own reality are now the evidence that might cause him to come to his senses:

“Today I happened upon my diary, which I have been neglecting for some time, and I am astounded to see how I went ahead in all this, step by step, in full awareness of what I was doing!”

Alas, like Pharaoh, Werther’s sense of remorse is short-lived, soon to be suppressed by the will.  The Warnings become even more pointed and explicit.

Eventually, Werther comes across a man who has gone mentally insane over unrequited love of Lotte.  Like many readers of Goethe who sympathize with Werther, Werther fails to take this man’s insanity as a warning, and instead begins to sympathize with him.

The most vivid warning comes in the death of a peasant named Hans who Werther met at the very beginning, and who he has grown to respect and esteem almost as a son.  Hans has been rejected in his bid to love a certain widow, and one of the widow’s other jilted lovers murders him.  The scene mirrors the final sign to Pharaoh – the death of the firstborn of Egypt and the events of the Passover:

“To reach the inn, where the body had been carried, he had to pass the linden trees, and now he felt horror for the place he had loved so dearly.  That threshold where the children of the neighborhood had so often played was splashed with blood.  Love and constancy, the most beautiful of human emotions, had been transformed into violence and murder.”

The symbol of Passover is the blood splashed on the threshold of the homes of the children.  And while this sign symbolized redemption to the protagonists of Haggadah, it symbolized violence and murder to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

Just as he sympathizes with Hans’s romantic obsession, Werther sympathizes with the romantic obsession of the man who killed Hans.  Blurring the men together, he attempts to save the murderer.  His failure to save the man is symbolic of his powerlessness, and foreshadows his inability to save himself.

Lotte’s Faithfulness

Throughout the story, Lotte is compassionate and respectful toward Werther, but remains firm in her obedience to her commitments.  It is not the purpose of this Haggadah to examine the motivations of the chosen onese, but the following passage is a good example of how the story portrays the same “compassionate but firm” orientation that Moses held with his brother:

“One thing is certain: that she was quite determined to do everything she could to remove Werther from her presence; and any hesitation was due to her heartfelt wish to spare her friend, since she knew how much it would cost him, and indeed that he would find it well-nigh impossible.  Yet during this period she was under increased pressure to be firm … she felt all the more need to prove by her actions that her feelings were worthy of her husband’s respect.”

Hardened Heart

We have already seen how Werther, like Pharaoh, grew successively more stubborn and unyielding after ignoring several warnings.  In the story of the Exodus, this is described as “hardened heart”.  In fact, the story of the Exodus makes a very important distinction in telling this tale – at first, it is reported that “Pharaoh hardened his heart”, but at some point the locus of control is changed, and the record then says “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”.

This linguistic twist has been subject of many intellectual exegeses over the past two thousand years.  Did Pharaoh freely disobey, or was his disobedience orchestrated by God?  Do humans operate in a sphere of free will, or under predestination?

This question is the central theme of Werther.  Werther begins by celebrating the power of free will, and ends by submitting to cruel destiny.  Every major event in the story combines the tension of free will with predestination.

Goethe’s answer to this apparent paradox is most lucidly expounded in the very beginning of the story, with Werther’s narrative of the romantically obsessed young lady.  Werther describes how the freely made alliances with physical or sensual things become a slippery slope, and eventually free will is lost.  Werther makes it clear that freedom to seek redemption can be sacrificed before death – that there is a “point of no turning back” which can be passed well before the actual moment of death.

This insight about Pharaoh’s “point of no turning back” is triumphantly underscored in the very structure of Gothe’s story of Werther.

At the point when Werther is no longer hardening his own heart – at the point where there is no longer any possibility for him to change course – the story abruptly stops being narrated by him.  Although he is still alive, and there are many pages left in the story, the rest of the story is narrated by others.  The roles are reversed.  No longer are the other characters at the mercy of his pen; no longer is Werther the author of his own story.  Now Werther is being interpreted and defined by the pens of those who will ultimately survive him, and this transition is introduced with an acknowledgement of the subjectivity now being introduced into the portrait of Werther.

~

This narrative inversion at the end is awe-inspiring genius, and standing on its own could justify Goethe’s reputation.  But it would be wrong to think that Haggadah is the only theme in Werther.  The use of the silhouette is worth an essay of its own, as would be an examination of the role of self-fulfilling expectations.  However, these are all beyond the scope of this post, and I doubt I will make a habit of sharing literary exegeses.

On his condition in the world, Werther sounds exactly like Marcus Fenix (And no, I am not paraphrasing – this is verbatim from Hulse’s classic translation of Goethe)”:

“There is not one moment that does not wear you away, and those who are close to you, nor any one moment when you are not a destroyer, of necessity: the most innocent of walks costs thousands of wretched grubs their lives”

In Gears of War, it is never your primary objective to kill the creatures known as “grubs”, but you have to kill large numbers of them at every stage if you want to accomplish anything at all.

“And so I go my fearful way betwixt heaven and earth, and all their fearful forces; and all I can see is a monster, forever devouring, regurgitating, chewing and gorging”.

The gameplay of Gears of War 2 alternates twixt heaven and earth, and a central theme is the leviathan beast which devours everything in its path at the crust of the earth.  Here is the movie of the beast’s death.

The game even makes obsessive romance and death a central part of the storyline, which is very unique for a blockbuster video game, and was certainly not accidental.  The moment when Dom sees that Maria does not match the idealized image he holds parallels the moment when Werther begins to corrupt Lotte and can no longer see her as a silhouette.

Even more telling is the ultimate goal of the game – at first the goal is to rise up to victory, but it soon becomes apparent that victory can only be obtained through self-destruction.  In the end, you must destroy your civilization’s last outpost, and bury it in the abyss.  This theme of the abyss is constant throughout Werther.  The moment he decides that victory with Lotte can be achieved only though self-destruction, he describes it thus:

“It is as if a curtain has been drawn before my soul, and this scene of infinite life had been transformed into the abyss of the grave, forever open wide.”

The scenes of Dom and Maria are strategically aligned at the same point of the game where the abyss becomes the objective, driving home this parallel to Werther.

In fact, Werther’s favorite place of comfort beneath the linden tree, like Marcus Fenix’s city of Jacinto, is submerged beneath a symbolic flood at the end.  Here is the closing scene of Gears of War 2, showing Jacinto sinking into the abyss and being submerged beneath a flood.

~

Although not quite as “literary”, I did notice another interesting reference in Gears of War 2.  Take a look at the final boss scene again, and notice the direct visual parallels to Urotsukodoji, another story about obsessive love and destruction.  Urotsukodoji was pre-Web, so I cannot find YouTube clips of the climactic battle scenes.  But if you have seen the movie, you will know that the large climactic battle scenes in Urutsukodoji look exactly like the final boss battle of Gears of War 2.  Here is a video trailer of Urotsukodoji will give you some quick glimpses of the visual motif, though it doesn’t do justice to how integral the visual pattern is to the movie.

The NYT piece discusses a recent IMF report published by an economist at the organization, which purports to show that evangelical Christians engaged in less speculative behavior during the bubble, and subsequently have experienced less financial loss.

The “delightful” part was the author’s use of eschatology to explain resilience to a bubble which was caused by massive, widespread, institutionalized epistemological error.

Of course, it’s not just evangelical Christians who are concerned with these two themes.  Christians, Jews, and Muslims share the ten commandments, and the first two commandments are simply commandments about epistemological error.  To a huge chunk of the world, epistemological sin is the greatest sin.

In addition, every Christian, Jew, or Muslim knows that the consequence of flawed epistemology is always a bitter dose of eschaton.  Any well-bred Christian, Jew, or Muslim will grow up being taught that history is a long series of local eschatons induced by poor epistemology, all leading up to an eventual and inevitable all-encompassing Eschaton.

Even if you aren’t a practicing member of one of these three “Abraham” faiths, you’re probably affected by this obsession more than you readily know.  If you live and work in the Western world or the Muslim world, you’re operating in a culture and society (with all of its values, norms, and social structures) that has spent the last 2,000 years obsessing about the interplay between epistemology and eschatology.  China is the only modern power than has never really possessed or institutionalized this obsession.

Having said that, I am not entirely convinced by the author’s reasoning.  The fact that evangelicals were less harmed is self-evident, but I don’t think you need to drag in Armageddon to explain that fact.  There are too many problems with that explanation.  In my opinion, it would be sufficient enough to say that “Conservatives were more conservative during the bubble”, by way of explanation.

~

While it’s always delightful to use epistemology as an excuse to talk about Armageddon, it would be even more delightful to see people using a minor armageddon as an excuse to learn about epistemology.  The collapse of the global economy might make people eager to know “why did we never see this coming?”  People might be expected to be slightly more humble when making predictions, and slightly less eager to stereotype or argue based on rhetoric and wishful thinking.

Judging by the comments thread to the NYT piece, these lessons haven’t yet been learned.  Clearly, the first 100 or so commenters didn’t even bother to read the study – they simply used the article as an excuse to advocate for their own epistemological viewpoint (“fundies suck!” or “atheists suck!”).

Several argued that evangelicals are less likely to live in cities, and are less educated, and that this somehow explained the discrepancy.  They of course failed to mention (or indeed, even know) that the poorest and least educated in the furthest exurbs have been hit the hardest by the housing bubble collapse and have experienced the largest percentage fluctuations.

This is the same mental flaw that led Lance Knobel and others to suggest that the bubble collapse was a gift from us rich people to the poorer people, saying essentially that, “I don’t mind that my house lost $100,000 of value, because now it will be cheaper for poor people to buy houses in the future, and it’s the least I could do for mankind.”  It would be noble if it was true, but it is unfortunately false.

In any case, it would have been easy to avoid looking like a fool by simply reading the author’s study and understanding how he controlled for these extraneous factors.  I notice that the guy from NYT actually updated the post today with a response from the author which refutes these arguments.  Kudos to NYT for elevating the intelligence level of the discussion.

The reactions to me initial post can be lumped into three general categories, all of which I will address here.

1. “I love Jon Stewart!  Jon Stewart is really smart; why are you picking on him?!?”

This was the most common response by far, but also the most perplexing.  I never argued that Stewart is stupid or unethical, nor that he never makes good points.  In fact, quite the opposite.

What I claimed is that YOU are not made any smarter about the issues that matter by watching Stewart.

2. “Well, he is a better journalist than ‘Oprah’, and he never claimed to be a news guy anyway!”

This was nearly as common as the first, and only slightly less bewildering.  You’ll notice that there are two mutually contradictory claims here: A) Jon Stewart does a better job of journalism than <insert_name>, and B) Jon Stewart is not a journalist.  Strangely, these two mutually contradictory claims are almost always made in tandem.

Perhaps this is a way of saying, “Professional journalists suck so badly that we might as well get our news from a guy who makes fart noises for a living”, and some of my correspondents would no doubt agree with that sentiment.  But this is setting a very low bar, and is not exactly a rebuttal of my claim that Jon Stewart doesn’t make you smarter about the issues that matter.  Saying, “everyone else makes me stupider” is not equivalent to proving that “Stewart makes me smarter”.

Another way that this argument was used was to argue, essentially, “nobody trusts what Stewart says, anyway, so you are just tilting at windmills.”  One correspondent, overcome by a paroxysm of sophomoric literary allusion, even used the phrase “Quixotic”.

Luckily, Rasmussen rode to my defense by publishing this survey the very next day.  Some choice tidbits:

Nearly one-third of Americans under the age of 40 say satirical news-oriented television programs like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are taking the place of traditional news outlets.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of adults say programs of this nature are making Americans more informed about news events, while 21% believe they make people less informed. Twelve percent (12%) say they have no impact.

So, given that a growing number of people consider Jon Stewart to be a superior substitute for “real” journalism, we should be interested in data that can test this hypothesis.  Luckily, the Pew Research  Center has just what we need.

The survey asked a random sampling of people to answer 23 questions about current events, and then rated the people “high”, “medium”, or “low” depending on how many questions they answered correctly.

Impressively, viewers of Colbert and Stewart are far less likely to score “low” knowledge than viewers of network news.  Only viewers of Bill O’Reilly have higher knowledge of current events than people who watch Colbert and Stewart.  Since I lumped Colbert and Stewart with O’Reilly in my initial post, I can consider them as a group here – and as a group, they outperform all of the other news outlets tested by the Pew Center.

Before I completely concede this point, though, it is important to note that the Pew Center test appears to show a significant decline in overall knowledge since 1989, and the decline is summarily explained away with some rather specious rhetoric.  And more importantly, the survey simply tested for knowledge of what is essentially trivia.  That is, viewers of Stewart, Colbert, and O’Reilly are more likely than average to be able to correctly say that the economy DID collapse.  But none of the three programs covered any of the voices who warned about it before the fact.

However, if we allow ourselves to indulge in the psychological bias known as “anchoring effect”, I’m perfectly comfortable saying that viewers of John Stewart are more informed than viewers of Oprah.  I simply dispute how relevant that fact is.

3. Nothing is knowable

This all-too-common argument was the most annoying to me.  Several correspondents maintained, in paraphrase, “The only liar is someone who claims to be helping you to understand the truth.  Nothing is knowable, so the only guy who I trust is the guy who says that all ‘truth’ is a lie.”

This seems reasonable, and even vaguely moral, until you think about it for two seconds.  For example, all of these people previously believed that “housing prices will continue to go up indefinitely”.  They all believed that “money invested in an index fund will double every 18 years or sooner”.  Not only did they all have very concrete beliefs about reality; they backed those beliefs up with action – by investing in certain ways.  And many of them took a bath based on their beliefs.

Claiming to believe (or not believe) a thing, and behaving in a different manner, is the definition of hypocrisy.  And claiming to believe nothing at all is just moronic sophistry.

~

As always, South Park has the best commentary on the current economic mess.  “And …. it’s gone!”  Not only is it spot-on; it has the added benefit of not being considered “journalism” by 30% of the population.

The web sites today are abuzz with the news that Jon Stewart “destroyed” CNBC’s Jim Cramer on The Daily Show.  Jon Stewart, aping Bill O’Reilly, set aside his customary joking and became the “angry sanctimonious white man”, channeling populist outrage at financial “experts” and abusing a guest.  All good fun, except that all of the coverage is lionizing Stewart for being “the only one who asks tough questions”, and anointing him as the chosen one to “save journalism”.

Of course, Cramer is a clown and a fraud, just like 99% of other financial “experts”.  So I’m not defending Cramer.  And I’m usually the first to quote South Park or The Simpsons to make some wise financial point.  But here’s the thing:

• If it took a Jon Stewart show for you to realize that Cramer is a clown, you are not the sharpest pencil in the box, and you have no right to feel smug.  Cramer’s “Mad Hatter” act, on a show titled “Mad Money” might have been a giveaway.  Or … I don’t know … the fact that the ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY HAS COLLAPSED, based on advice from people much smarter and “respectable” than Cramer.  Everyone can see that the “experts” were frauds.
• I’ve heard several otherwise intelligent people cite the Stewart interview as proof of how smart they are; “see, that’s why I don’t watch CNBC!” (“I watch BBC, CNN, etc.”).  That’s the effect that people like Jon Stewart or Bill O’Reilly have – they put others down to make you think you’re smart.  If you think that Cramer being a clown proves that you are better off watching CNN, Bloomberg, or Jon Stewart for financial information, I pity you.
• Where was Jon Stewart in March 2008 when Harper’s predicted a bubble collapse?  Where was Jon Stewart when Soros, Taleb, Roubini, and others were warning everyone of the risks and dangers?  Oh, that’s right: he was “making fart noises and funny faces”.  That’s understandable, given that “fart noises and funny faces” are Jon Stewart’s profession, but it is the height of hypocrisy for him to hold himself up as an expert now (when hindsight is 20/20) and excoriate others for not having seen it coming.
• WTF does Stewart hope to accomplish by picking on Cramer?  That seems almost as effective as having Cramer pick on Stewart.  What could be more farcical that two comedians fighting over journalistic integrity, when there are no journalists left?  Since you were too busy watching Stewart’s asinine show, you probably didn’t see that The Washington Post laid off most of their business and finance reporters yesterday.  Or that most news organizations have already cut the vast majority of their business and finance reporting.  Did you know that all of the good business and finance reporting is now accessible only to a small fraction of the population who pay thousands of dollars a month for access?  Probably not, since you’d rather convince yourself that you can get good news accompanied by “fart noises and funny faces”.  Or that most of the large news bureaus in America will soon be bankrupt.  NEWS IS BANKRUPT.  Good luck finding journalistic integrity when there are no journalists.
• Poynter and Romanesko have been reporting on the decline of journalism for more than a decade (and linked from this blog for almost a decade).  It’s funny that Jon Stewart only just now realized that journalism is at risk, after it’s too late to do anything about it.  It’s funny that Jon Stewart’s boogey-man keeps changing – first it was Republicans corrupting journalism, now it’s bankers.  By the time he figures out what is *really* killing journalism, it’ll definitely be too late.  But maybe he doesn’t really care about saving journalism.  Trust me, Jon Stewart is laughing *at* you, not *with* you.  He can afford to buy accurate business and finance news, you can’t.

The only reason I can find for Jon Stewart’s increasingly O’Reilly-esque behavior is that Stewart has decided to run for governor of Minnesota.  Finding examples of lapses of journalistic integrity is like shooting fish in a barrel, and will only get easier as journalism continues to collapse.  Stewart can cherry pick random ex-post-facto anecdotes and make himself out to be “the only honest man America”.

The book combines three great topics: evolutionary biology, poetry, and morality.  The author starts out by making a startling claim – he claims that humans love fiction, not (as you might assume) because fiction is similar to reality, but instead that humans behave the way we do because we evolved to love fiction.  In other words, he makes the outrageous claim that love of fiction is a more fundamental biological impulse than our desire for justice and vindication (among other things).

He spends the first couple of chapters resolving this apparently absurd claim, and does so convincingly.  You eventually realize that he crafted his initial claim for maximum dramatic effect, and is really just making a common-sense claim.  In essence, he argues that emotional responses like anger, thirst for vengeance, and happiness at seeing innocents vindicated, evolved in humans to encourage “prosocial” behavior.  That is, humans evolved to punish defectors and reward cooperators – and this extends to punishing those who fail to punish defectors, and rewarding those who reward cooperators.  He further observes that such emotions depend on someone remembering an event that is not currently happening (in the past), and looking forward to a punishment or reward in the future. 

Since the event and the resolution are both “nonactual”, and indeed, might have even been heard second or  third hand by the punisher, they are always, in essence, “fiction”.

He draws on common understanding of evolutionary biology and altruism; there is nothing really controversial in his explanation.  Sure, he fooled the readers a bit when stating the original thesis, but there’s no harm in it.  It makes things fun.  And it draws attention sharply to the way that memory and perception are involved – something I loved about “De La Mettrie’s Ghost”.  The author states that he wishes to “demur” from absurdly reductionist commentators (like E.O. Wilson, who I’ve also blogged about here).  This dramatic flourish is an excellent way to counter the reductionist.  Even if you already have a firm grasp on evolutionary biology approaches to altruism, it is worth reading the first two chapters, just for the good storytelling.

~

After firmly establishing that human evolution predisposes us to love to anticipate vindication in the future for past injustices, the author takes us on a whirlwind tour of the greatest western literature and how these themes play.  I really enjoyed this part, as I felt that he was able to extract many fresh insights from old classics.  I have only read about half of the works he cites, however.  This portion of the book is structured as a couple of in-depth essays exploring particular facets of vicarious experience and vindication.

~

Finally, he winds things down by analyzing the role of storyteller in the relationship matrix.  This is the part where I felt the analogy became a bit overwrought and no longer credible, but I could appreciate the line of reasoning and don’t discard it entirely.  In short, he argues that storytelling itself is an altruistic and costly signal (he starts with Superman, moves on to the Bullfighter, and ends with the Storyteller).

The author argues that a storyteller must grapple with truth and reality to be able to construct stories which are plausible (“verisimilitudinous”), and grappling with truth is very dangerous and painful, like bullfighting is dangerous, because “truth is violence”.  Yes, it comes across as hopelessly presumptuous, but I’m sympathetic to this argument.  In fact, I grant that this is the case in many circumstances.

And with this, having tied the storyteller back to the biologically glorified “altruistic punisher and costly signaler”, our storyteller closes the book.

~

The elephant in the room, which the author never addresses, is the distinction between fantasy and reality.

He does go to great lengths to cover the ways that punishment can go awry, and how a desire to see the wrongs redressed motivates our interest in fiction.  But in all of these cases, the strong desire of the reader is to see the record set straight.

In fact, the key lies in his early refusal to distinguish between “nonactual” and “no longer actual”.  By refusing to make such a distinction, he equates truth and fiction, and is able to argue dramatically that we evolved to love fiction.  And this refusal to make the distinction between truth and fiction was not just a parlor trick to add rhetorical flourish; it pervades the whole book.

Although the distinction between truth and fiction is paramount in the real world, for the purposes of this book, the distinction is irrelevant.  If you think of this book as being a book about how to write fiction, and why fiction pleases us, you’ll understand why.

My other beef with the book is that it could give the impression that altruism and costly signaling are the *only* higher-order biological imperatives reflected in fiction.  I can think of a few others which deserve treatment. 

One, which the author hints at, and leaves out of scope, is the capacity to be enthralled by aesthetic beauty.  It’s innate, so it must have a biological component.

Another, which I think should be very relevant to this book, is the human propensity toward “happily ever after” in stories.  We are predisposed strongly to want to believe in perfect answers, “final solutions”, and other such nonsense which precludes future free will.  The truth is “toil and sorrow for all of your days”, but nobody wants to hear that.