“I can't stop comparing everything to Black Mirror”(theverge.com)
theverge.com
“I can't stop comparing everything to Black Mirror”
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-comparing-everything-to-black-mirror
61 comments
I've just watched two first episodes out of curiosity... they were so heavy-handed, especially the second one, that it was nauseating. Does it get better later on?
I thought 15 million points was by far the best. TV shows like Big Brother, X-factor, etc, all pray on the vulnerability that certain people have for wanting to seek out fame and notoriety.
Incidentally, Sony had a recent patent for interactive advertisement, that only disappears after user interaction: http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terri...
Incidentally, Sony had a recent patent for interactive advertisement, that only disappears after user interaction: http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terri...
The first episode, in the first series, I think does a great job of shocking you.
For me, I enjoy that for the most part, the plots are plausible and not that far fetched. It doesn't require a huge leap of the imagination to get to scenarios that are outlined.
Plus I think the special effects are fantastic in their subtlety.
For me, I enjoy that for the most part, the plots are plausible and not that far fetched. It doesn't require a huge leap of the imagination to get to scenarios that are outlined.
Plus I think the special effects are fantastic in their subtlety.
If you like this, you might like...
Charlie Brooker has a regular column in The Guardian, which is, I believe, available to non-British people via something called The Internet: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/charliebrooker
Charlie Brooker has a regular column in The Guardian, which is, I believe, available to non-British people via something called The Internet: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/charliebrooker
Fans of Black Mirror desperate for more would be better served watching Dead Set, a gory satire of reality television, and perhaps Nathan Barley, the series that "The Waldo Moment" was originally written for, before they head for Charlie Brooker's column in The Guardian. I found the content of the column too mired in British partisan politics for me to enjoy.
Brass Eye is very much worth a watch as well, if you're mentioning [the excellent] Nathan Barley. And Four Lions.
Black Mirror reminds me a lot of Jam, also by Chris Morris.
Jam is IMO fantastic, I always hesitate to recommend it due to how brutally black the comedy is, though. The radio original, Blue Jam, is great as well.
While we're recommending Charlie Brooker stuff, be sure to watch "2014 Wipe" as well. My favorite part was a thought-provoking bit by Adam Curtis about how we're being bombarded with conflicting messages, which he explains is why a lot of feel so confused these days.
I also heartily recommend "How TV Ruined Your Life" which serves as sort of a capstone volume to the entire run of "Screenwipe".
If you like Black Mirror, you might also like Charlie Brooker's Wipe, now a yearly summary of news. A bit UK centric but very good. This year's is just out:
UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-brooke...
World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EoNsGHZD0
UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-brooke...
World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EoNsGHZD0
I live in London. My wife being Spanish I get to travel to Spain a lot, at times I stay in Spain for a few weeks.
I'd always notice a certain level of relief whenever I'd set foot in Spain. Like a great weight was being lifted off my shoulders. And then one day I realised what it was... I don't want to sound too doomy but it was the fact that one is constantly under watch in a place like the UK.
On average, you're caught 300 times on camera every day. All my messages and emails go through GCHQ proxies, if anything is left unwatched NSA will make sure it's all on record. HMRC knows every little details of financial information. All my Amazon purchases, my online grocery orders, the games I play on my console, damn I'm not sure Kinect is not somehow recording all the conversations in my house in some server.
The point is, for me the dystopian future I'd always worry about is here. It's creeping into every aspect of my life and already taking away any calm in life I'm left with.
I'd always notice a certain level of relief whenever I'd set foot in Spain. Like a great weight was being lifted off my shoulders. And then one day I realised what it was... I don't want to sound too doomy but it was the fact that one is constantly under watch in a place like the UK.
On average, you're caught 300 times on camera every day. All my messages and emails go through GCHQ proxies, if anything is left unwatched NSA will make sure it's all on record. HMRC knows every little details of financial information. All my Amazon purchases, my online grocery orders, the games I play on my console, damn I'm not sure Kinect is not somehow recording all the conversations in my house in some server.
The point is, for me the dystopian future I'd always worry about is here. It's creeping into every aspect of my life and already taking away any calm in life I'm left with.
There's also Dead Set, a one-off from the same team (or at least writer) which is the contestants on a Big Brother reality show unaware that a zombie apocalypse has started while they are sealed in the house. Available on 4oD I think.
Slightly OT but if you have access to iplayer and missed it yesterday, Charlie Brooker's "2014 Wipe" was brilliant (including the sneak preview half way through of Adam Curtis' latest documentary due out next month which looks fantastic).
Missed that, thanks. Direct link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-brooke...
I feel this way about mobile phones. Everyone's supposed to carry one of those random disruption devices.
Since this discussion turned pretty much into a poll of which's your favorite episode, I'll go. Fifteen million merits was by far the best for me, not only that, it is one of the best short stories I've ever seen on TV. The fact that the series was produced and distributed by Endemol it's even more appealing.
Black Mirror is awesome. My favorite episode is "15 Million Merits", which reminds me of the John Maynard Keynes discussion about digging holes in the desert and putting jars filled with banknotes for people to dig up, or Paul Krugman's suggestion about makework preparing for an alien invasion (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/coalmines-and-al...). In the future, is any work (even if not that productive, like riding a bike and accumulating points) better than no work and potential social costs?
I thought the bike riding was generating electricity and the points were really just dollars.
The deeper point being, I think, that money in a sense is no more "real" than points on a screen.
Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-world efficacy.
I thought the deeper point was, perhaps, that everyone has their price. That nothing, not even the very things people think are "radical" or "revolutionary", escapes the logic of money. That everything can be commodified and turned to serve the very system they try to escape.
I thought the deeper point was, perhaps, that everyone has their price. That nothing, not even the very things people think are "radical" or "revolutionary", escapes the logic of money. That everything can be commodified and turned to serve the very system they try to escape.
> Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-world efficacy.
But so would couches. Without humans they're just ... things, without any implied use of being sat on.
But so would couches. Without humans they're just ... things, without any implied use of being sat on.
I think he means not necessarily that it's a social construct but that it is intrinsically valueless and serves no purpose without human existance whereas a couch could be used for at least some other purpose than sitting on.
Well, if by "real" you don't mean "constrained by the limitations of physical reality" then sure. But that also depends on what your definition of money is. Note, it might not be the same as others'.
That's what I got out of the episode, too. And when you look into it there is quite a bit of truth to it. At least in the US, the vast majority of our currency only exists in electronic formats.
The works of Beethoven or greatest chess games of all times could only exist in electronic format as well, without affecting their value.
The fact that the value of something is abstracted away from actual physical entities doesn't (by itself) make it in any way inferior.
Quite the contrary - it's the ability to grasp the concept of virtual value, rather than only recognizing it in bananas etc. that makes us human.
(Sorry about the English, that's a tad too abstract for my working command of the language :/ )
The fact that the value of something is abstracted away from actual physical entities doesn't (by itself) make it in any way inferior.
Quite the contrary - it's the ability to grasp the concept of virtual value, rather than only recognizing it in bananas etc. that makes us human.
(Sorry about the English, that's a tad too abstract for my working command of the language :/ )
I will say that in ancient times building pyramids was this kind of useless job just to keep everyone busy.
15 Million Merits brought this article to mind.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/HAPPIDROME-Part-...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/HAPPIDROME-Part-...
I think you missed Krugman's point entirely.
"what about the theory of the second best? This theory — which is just basic micro — says that when some markets are distorted, for whatever reason, social costs and benefits across the economy don’t correspond to private costs, so that unprofitable, even seemingly wasteful activities can sometimes be beneficial. And an economy in which millions of willing workers can’t find work is surely one with massive distortions of some kind."
Yes, notice the part
> And an economy in which millions of willing workers can’t find work is surely one with massive distortions of some kind.
He is talking about very specific economic circumstances (defined by macroeconomic conditions, and which should happen only rarely), whereas you are talking about "any work in the future".
> And an economy in which millions of willing workers can’t find work is surely one with massive distortions of some kind.
He is talking about very specific economic circumstances (defined by macroeconomic conditions, and which should happen only rarely), whereas you are talking about "any work in the future".
Black Mirror is about the way our current and near-future technologies expose and amplify our psychologies, and it's absolutely brilliant about it.
Brilliant and brutal.
Brilliant and brutal.
If you want more reading along this line, I cannot recommend JG Ballard highly enough.
As Neil Gaiman put it, "The only person out of all the science fiction writers who was completely right was Ballard." http://thequietus.com/articles/01631-neil-gaiman-interviewed
Don't forget Huxley and Orwell.
which of his books would you recommend ?
High Rise is possibly his most readable. The Elements series (The Drowned World, The Crystal World, The Drought and The Wind From Nowhere) is very good, Drowned World being the best, IMO. Unlimited Dream Company is well worth reading, as is Crash. His short stories are generally excellent, and maybe the best intro: Vermilion Sands is brilliant, but the best value is the (two volume) Complete Short Stories collection.
Empire of the Sun is pretty much essential if you want to understand why he wrote the way he did; why his characters are drawn and act the way they do. There's also a short essay he did for the Guardian a few years before he died, on modernism and death, which is informative (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/mar/20/architec...).
Also, this site is good: http://www.ballardian.com/
Empire of the Sun is pretty much essential if you want to understand why he wrote the way he did; why his characters are drawn and act the way they do. There's also a short essay he did for the Guardian a few years before he died, on modernism and death, which is informative (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/mar/20/architec...).
Also, this site is good: http://www.ballardian.com/
From the short stories, you might start with the following:
The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, The 60 Minute Zoom, The Secret History of World War 3, The Intensive Care Unit, The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon
The novella, Running Wild, might be a good place to start.
With his novels, I would read the big three from the 70's (Crash!, Concrete Island, High Rise), and then maybe the two best of his latter period (Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes).
The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, The 60 Minute Zoom, The Secret History of World War 3, The Intensive Care Unit, The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon
The novella, Running Wild, might be a good place to start.
With his novels, I would read the big three from the 70's (Crash!, Concrete Island, High Rise), and then maybe the two best of his latter period (Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes).
"High Rise" is accessible. It was written in 1975 so might be a bit dated.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/underappreciated-masterpieces...
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/underappreciated-masterpieces...
Ben Wheatley's film adaptation is in post-production now, and is getting a lot of hype from people I know in the UK film/TV industry.
Really looking forward to seeing Jeremy Irons in it!
Really looking forward to seeing Jeremy Irons in it!
Ah wow, that's fantastic news; I didn't know that was coming. Ben Wheatley's great as well.
Short stories, then Crash, then the Atrocity Exhibition. The last is almost incomprehensible until you're familiar with his themes (and you'll still need the annotations), but Crash and AE are his crowning glories.
My favourites are his short stories. There's a "complete collection" available.
Also, Greg Egan. Much of his stuff is far-out hard SF, but many of the short stories are near-future stuff that could easily be a Black Mirror episode. The 'cookie' in White Christmas is very similar to the 'ndoli jewel' of several of Egan's stories.
Spoilers ahead.
"Fifteen Million Merits": This one probably hit the hardest, because that is Corporate America. People are doing work that is fundamentally useless (the energy they'll produce, on these bikes, is less than they'll consume in food) to be kept busy for no clear purpose, and the ultimate conclusion is that those in control just enjoy the exercise of power. (See: the humiliation of Abi Khan.) This is most terrifying and poignant because the in-app-purchase existence is actually a plausible future of corporatized consumer capitalism.
"White Bear" and "White Christmas", two episodes both invoking the concept of human-created hell, are brilliant because they show an overblown sense of mob justice. In White Bear, the woman doesn't remember the crime and has been tortured and memory-wiped beyond recognition, so she's essentially not the same person who committed it and effectively innocent. In White Christmas, the most disturbing and bizarre thing about the end is that it's not the criminal, but a copied consciousness that did nothing wrong because it didn't exist when the crime occurred, the one created for the interrogation, who suffers in the "1000 years per minute" auto-hell. The actual criminal just spends Christmas in jail.
"National Anthem" is brilliant but hard to evaluate for plausibility because the U.S. doesn't have the same class system. We have severe inequality, but no one would fault a U.S. President for choosing not to fuck a pig at the risk of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Still brilliant, and an interesting take on the Streisand Effect (if he chooses to fight the publicity, he increases it, and the image of him fucking a pig can't really be erased). I also like the dig at "modern art" because most of it is trolling. [0]
[0] Actually, there's a lot of great art being made, even now. The problem with "modern art" is that there's a weird inversion where the gold remains obscure, and absolute junk sells for millions to rich people, because "making a statement" has taken more value than craftsmanship and aesthetic value in that joke of a scene.
"Entire History of You" kinda defeated its own point, if you ask me. His wife actually was unfaithful and he figured it out. Sure, it was emotionally unpleasant for him-- no news there-- but would he have been better off not knowing and raising that douchebag's kids? The main plot one wasn't really about the perils of technology. The moral was, "Don't marry a cheating harlot", but that one's over 9000 years old.
"Be Right Back" I found to be a luke-warm exploitation of the uncanny valley. I can see why that episode would appeal to people, and I won't say that it wasn't well done because all of these have been excellent; it just didn't hit me.
"The Waldo Moment" I found hilarious because I enjoy crass and obnoxious humor as much as anyone. That said, the ending wasn't plausible. People develop an immunity to that shit over time. It could unseat one political candidate, sure, but Waldo would lose its punch and its extortive capabilities. Mockery has power, for sure, but eventually people learn to tune it out. Not plausible to its full extent, but still poignant, and a bit funny for the sheer obnoxiousness ("breaching experiments") and stupidity of the Waldo character.
"Fifteen Million Merits": This one probably hit the hardest, because that is Corporate America. People are doing work that is fundamentally useless (the energy they'll produce, on these bikes, is less than they'll consume in food) to be kept busy for no clear purpose, and the ultimate conclusion is that those in control just enjoy the exercise of power. (See: the humiliation of Abi Khan.) This is most terrifying and poignant because the in-app-purchase existence is actually a plausible future of corporatized consumer capitalism.
"White Bear" and "White Christmas", two episodes both invoking the concept of human-created hell, are brilliant because they show an overblown sense of mob justice. In White Bear, the woman doesn't remember the crime and has been tortured and memory-wiped beyond recognition, so she's essentially not the same person who committed it and effectively innocent. In White Christmas, the most disturbing and bizarre thing about the end is that it's not the criminal, but a copied consciousness that did nothing wrong because it didn't exist when the crime occurred, the one created for the interrogation, who suffers in the "1000 years per minute" auto-hell. The actual criminal just spends Christmas in jail.
"National Anthem" is brilliant but hard to evaluate for plausibility because the U.S. doesn't have the same class system. We have severe inequality, but no one would fault a U.S. President for choosing not to fuck a pig at the risk of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Still brilliant, and an interesting take on the Streisand Effect (if he chooses to fight the publicity, he increases it, and the image of him fucking a pig can't really be erased). I also like the dig at "modern art" because most of it is trolling. [0]
[0] Actually, there's a lot of great art being made, even now. The problem with "modern art" is that there's a weird inversion where the gold remains obscure, and absolute junk sells for millions to rich people, because "making a statement" has taken more value than craftsmanship and aesthetic value in that joke of a scene.
"Entire History of You" kinda defeated its own point, if you ask me. His wife actually was unfaithful and he figured it out. Sure, it was emotionally unpleasant for him-- no news there-- but would he have been better off not knowing and raising that douchebag's kids? The main plot one wasn't really about the perils of technology. The moral was, "Don't marry a cheating harlot", but that one's over 9000 years old.
"Be Right Back" I found to be a luke-warm exploitation of the uncanny valley. I can see why that episode would appeal to people, and I won't say that it wasn't well done because all of these have been excellent; it just didn't hit me.
"The Waldo Moment" I found hilarious because I enjoy crass and obnoxious humor as much as anyone. That said, the ending wasn't plausible. People develop an immunity to that shit over time. It could unseat one political candidate, sure, but Waldo would lose its punch and its extortive capabilities. Mockery has power, for sure, but eventually people learn to tune it out. Not plausible to its full extent, but still poignant, and a bit funny for the sheer obnoxiousness ("breaching experiments") and stupidity of the Waldo character.
The point of "The entire history of you" was not to be wary of people who lie or cheat. It was to show how different people might react to the power of this kind of technology. Some people would use it benignly, some people would choose to go without it, some people would choose to use it to live in their past while shutting out the present, others, I.e. the cheated on man would choose to use it to blackmail, torture and destroy others around them. It's not a story about the perils of cheating on a partner, but falling under the influence of powerful technology either directly or indirectly via those around you.
> the ultimate conclusion is that those in control just enjoy the exercise of power. (See: the humiliation of Abi Khan)
I think the people selling the 'adult channels' in that episode mainly want money, which they know the masses will provide. It's not so much a criticism of those in power as the whole system, including those who watch all the humiliation (the x-factor show and the rough sex show) and make these things financially viable.
Random other Black Mirror trivia: the guy who rallies against the system and then becomes part of it seems to be Charlie Brooker reflecting on himself. People tuned in to Black Mirror to see a David Cameron clone fuck a pig (yes that was actually the plot) in much the same way they tune in to the humiliation channels in 15 Million Merits.
I think the people selling the 'adult channels' in that episode mainly want money, which they know the masses will provide. It's not so much a criticism of those in power as the whole system, including those who watch all the humiliation (the x-factor show and the rough sex show) and make these things financially viable.
Random other Black Mirror trivia: the guy who rallies against the system and then becomes part of it seems to be Charlie Brooker reflecting on himself. People tuned in to Black Mirror to see a David Cameron clone fuck a pig (yes that was actually the plot) in much the same way they tune in to the humiliation channels in 15 Million Merits.
Part of the humiliation voyeur effect is that notion that, "my life sucks, but they have it worse than I do". One thing in 15 Million Merits that I found interesting too is that in the first-person shooter game, the player is killing the 'lower class' annoyances versus aliens, other factions/countries, enemies - it actually creates an even greater sense of claustrophobia in this world and emphasizes that whoever is in power is not even part of the consideration set for "revolution".
In White Christmas, the most disturbing and bizarre thing about the end is that it's not the criminal, but a copied consciousness that did nothing wrong because it didn't exist when the crime occurred, the one created for the interrogation, who suffers in the "1000 years per minute" auto-hell. The actual criminal just spends Christmas in jail.
I'll disagree with you on this one point. The copy didn't exist at the time the crime was committed - crimes don't 'occur,' by definition someone carries them out - but it was a copy of the criminal's guilty consciousness as opposed to some dormant passenger.
So if you kill me for no good reason, and then you stumble into a booth and get cloned, both you and your clone are guilty, notwithstanding the nonexistence of your clone at the time of my death. By definition, the clone's identity originates with you, as opposed to being someone that looks exactly like you but has no idea who he is or where he came from, or even the ability to walk and talk. To see why, imagine again that you've murdered me and are running away with a guilty conscience. Instead of stumbling into a cloning booth, you stumble into a dark Y-shaped corridor (with an instant cloning machine in the middle - a Y decombinator?) and you and your clone emerge from different exits, unaware of each others' existence. Both of you would still be on the run and worrying about being fingered for the crime.
Mind you I agree that the proposed outcome is considerably more unjust, but sadly it reflects all too well our hamfisted social approach to punishment.
I'll disagree with you on this one point. The copy didn't exist at the time the crime was committed - crimes don't 'occur,' by definition someone carries them out - but it was a copy of the criminal's guilty consciousness as opposed to some dormant passenger.
So if you kill me for no good reason, and then you stumble into a booth and get cloned, both you and your clone are guilty, notwithstanding the nonexistence of your clone at the time of my death. By definition, the clone's identity originates with you, as opposed to being someone that looks exactly like you but has no idea who he is or where he came from, or even the ability to walk and talk. To see why, imagine again that you've murdered me and are running away with a guilty conscience. Instead of stumbling into a cloning booth, you stumble into a dark Y-shaped corridor (with an instant cloning machine in the middle - a Y decombinator?) and you and your clone emerge from different exits, unaware of each others' existence. Both of you would still be on the run and worrying about being fingered for the crime.
Mind you I agree that the proposed outcome is considerably more unjust, but sadly it reflects all too well our hamfisted social approach to punishment.
I agree with you on this. By nature of being a clone, it would have the explicit memory of committing the crime due to the crime having been committed before the clone existed which makes it just as responsible and punishable as the original. The clone was a copied consciousness but it was not one that did nothing wrong.
To clarify, the clone did not commit the murder but the clone is a copy of an original that did so the clone committed the murder by proxy. If you make a copy of a counterfeit bill then does that make the copy any less illegal than the original counterfeit?
Furthermore, I'd argue that the opposite is true regarding the clone. If the clone existed before the commission of the crime then it would have not been the clone that committed the crime but just a being that happens to share all traits and links to the original, however, still capable of its own free will and thus not punishable for the crime of the original.
To clarify, the clone did not commit the murder but the clone is a copy of an original that did so the clone committed the murder by proxy. If you make a copy of a counterfeit bill then does that make the copy any less illegal than the original counterfeit?
Furthermore, I'd argue that the opposite is true regarding the clone. If the clone existed before the commission of the crime then it would have not been the clone that committed the crime but just a being that happens to share all traits and links to the original, however, still capable of its own free will and thus not punishable for the crime of the original.
I really like those reviews micheal, but I wanted to comment on a point you made - about White Bear and White Christmas, there is a lot of very deep and interesting philosophy about what it means to be alive, and what it means to be someone. Parfit (there is an excellent profile of him in the New Yorker here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good) was a philosopher who tackled this issue and had some incredibly interesting thought experiments. You might enjoy it.
> "Entire History of You" kinda defeated its own point, if you ask me. His wife actually was unfaithful and he figured it out...The moral was, "Don't marry a cheating harlot", but that one's over 9000 years old.
I hear this point of view often from those who don't realize that people (even women!) are human and make mistakes. Sometimes everybody is better off when we can forget momentary transgressions, or perhaps even if the one partner never learns about the past mistakes of the other. The theme of the episode being that this can never happen due to this new technology.
I hear this point of view often from those who don't realize that people (even women!) are human and make mistakes. Sometimes everybody is better off when we can forget momentary transgressions, or perhaps even if the one partner never learns about the past mistakes of the other. The theme of the episode being that this can never happen due to this new technology.
The technology allowed him to confirm all of his already-existing suspicions. He'd already noticed that his wife was fawning all over the man that she was apparently really sorry about having slept with - a man who also had dumped her hard in the past and didn't really give much of a shit about her, going so far as to make a joke about their affair in front of her husband. I agree with Michael that following the logic of the episode the technology just sped up what was probably going to happen anyways. (There's also the fact that the main character probably gets obsessed for reasons involving his murky career failure.)
Not sure what you're implying with the "even women!" comment.
Not sure what you're implying with the "even women!" comment.
There's a more tragic example in the news today, which I was just discussing with my wife. A woman was shopping in a Walmart with her 2 year old son, and had a loaded handgun in her purse. She had a concealed carry permit and the gun was inside some sort of gun-safety purse which she had received for Christmas, which I presume is designed to prevent fingers accidentally catching in triggers and so on. Unfortunately her toddler reached into the purse, managed somehow to discharge the gun, and it killed the mom.
So we were wondering what do you tell the kid, and how, in a case like that when he gets older, because the psychological burden of having killed your own parent is pretty crushing. I was speculating that a few decades back, everyone might have agreed to bury the exact details and just write it up as an accidental discharge caused by the woman herself that would be just as tragic but not as disturbing for the kid, whereas today that simply isn't possible - at some point in the future the kid will consult a search engine to find out where his birth mother went (or to see what search engines say about him) and come across the facts of the situation, at which point he'll presumably have some sort of psychological crisis if he wasn't fully aware of them.
I'm not sure what the 'right' course is here. On the one hand we tend to assume that having more information is better than being deceived, but on the other Plato may have been right to suggest that society functions better thanks to the existence of a 'noble lie' - if we're constantly beset with evidence about how awful people are then it's hard to avoid falling into cynicism - arguably this is one of the big problems facing Western democracy at the moment. We know the danger in idealizing leaders and institutions and overlooking their actual shortcomings - that is, their capacity for acts which result in socially undesirable outcomes as opposed to some inherent flaw. By facing this, we can identify the circumstances which incentivize such acts and see that they might be emergent from systematic structures within which we operate, rather than being coordinated or planned by a malign central agency or guided by any overarching philosophy. On the other hand, we want out political representatives and institutions to operate effectively on our behalf, and if they keep collectively letting us down then there's a decline in our socioeconomic stability and ultimately our personal safety. We need to believe in the possibility of a higher ideal if we are not going to give up hope for the present. The tension between our rational apprehension of the a flawed social model and our idealistic wish for one within which we would enjoy a reasonable balance of freedom and security is both a strength and a weakness of our current social structures. If we have reached or breached the operational limitations of our democratic/republican (small d/r) models of governance, then what comes next? Proposals for widespread individual digital sovereignty do not sound so different from Hobbes' notion of 'the war of all against all.' I worry that we're headed into an era of craptastic social institutions that don't work well at all, and turbo-charged economic ones that work very well above a certain threshold but which involve an ever-increasing computational security burden to stave off incidental attacks.
/handwave
So we were wondering what do you tell the kid, and how, in a case like that when he gets older, because the psychological burden of having killed your own parent is pretty crushing. I was speculating that a few decades back, everyone might have agreed to bury the exact details and just write it up as an accidental discharge caused by the woman herself that would be just as tragic but not as disturbing for the kid, whereas today that simply isn't possible - at some point in the future the kid will consult a search engine to find out where his birth mother went (or to see what search engines say about him) and come across the facts of the situation, at which point he'll presumably have some sort of psychological crisis if he wasn't fully aware of them.
I'm not sure what the 'right' course is here. On the one hand we tend to assume that having more information is better than being deceived, but on the other Plato may have been right to suggest that society functions better thanks to the existence of a 'noble lie' - if we're constantly beset with evidence about how awful people are then it's hard to avoid falling into cynicism - arguably this is one of the big problems facing Western democracy at the moment. We know the danger in idealizing leaders and institutions and overlooking their actual shortcomings - that is, their capacity for acts which result in socially undesirable outcomes as opposed to some inherent flaw. By facing this, we can identify the circumstances which incentivize such acts and see that they might be emergent from systematic structures within which we operate, rather than being coordinated or planned by a malign central agency or guided by any overarching philosophy. On the other hand, we want out political representatives and institutions to operate effectively on our behalf, and if they keep collectively letting us down then there's a decline in our socioeconomic stability and ultimately our personal safety. We need to believe in the possibility of a higher ideal if we are not going to give up hope for the present. The tension between our rational apprehension of the a flawed social model and our idealistic wish for one within which we would enjoy a reasonable balance of freedom and security is both a strength and a weakness of our current social structures. If we have reached or breached the operational limitations of our democratic/republican (small d/r) models of governance, then what comes next? Proposals for widespread individual digital sovereignty do not sound so different from Hobbes' notion of 'the war of all against all.' I worry that we're headed into an era of craptastic social institutions that don't work well at all, and turbo-charged economic ones that work very well above a certain threshold but which involve an ever-increasing computational security burden to stave off incidental attacks.
/handwave
> "National Anthem" is brilliant but hard to evaluate for plausibility because the U.S. doesn't have the same class system. We have severe inequality, but no one would fault a U.S. President for choosing not to fuck a pig at the risk of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton.
In the UK, a member of the royal family would not be viewed as similar to "Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton". It's better to think of it backwards "Who would have to be kidnapped to make the US President seriously consider fucing a pig for? OK just replace that person there." (e.g. what if the presidents daughter was kidnapped?)
In the UK, a member of the royal family would not be viewed as similar to "Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton". It's better to think of it backwards "Who would have to be kidnapped to make the US President seriously consider fucing a pig for? OK just replace that person there." (e.g. what if the presidents daughter was kidnapped?)
RE: The Waldo Moment
Having seen the show and reading your reviews just made me realize what I do not like about the cartoon South Park. While I realize that Matt and Tre have had excellent resolutions in their show and have occasionally tackled issues in a daring and unique way, I feel as if the net effect was to lower the level of discourse to potty humour and political cynicism.
Having seen the show and reading your reviews just made me realize what I do not like about the cartoon South Park. While I realize that Matt and Tre have had excellent resolutions in their show and have occasionally tackled issues in a daring and unique way, I feel as if the net effect was to lower the level of discourse to potty humour and political cynicism.
If you feel the objective is precisely to parody the situation and make fun of how absurd it is so on that note I'd say they've been wildly successful.
If you feel the objective is to create intellectual discourse on a situation then I don't think you're watching the same South Park that we are.
If you feel the objective is to create intellectual discourse on a situation then I don't think you're watching the same South Park that we are.
"The Waldo Moment" I found hilarious because I enjoy crass and obnoxious humor as much as anyone. That said, the ending wasn't plausible. People develop an immunity to that shit over time. It could unseat one political candidate, sure, but Waldo would lose its punch and its extortive capabilities. Mockery has power, for sure, but eventually people learn to tune it out. Not plausible to its full extent, but still poignant, and a bit funny for the sheer obnoxiousness ("breaching experiments") and stupidity of the Waldo character.
This is exactly what happened when Waldo defeats Gwendolyn but not Liam. Apparently his impact wasn't sufficient to sway the masses and/or the masses realized how ridiculous and impractical it would be to vote for a blue cartoon bear.
This is exactly what happened when Waldo defeats Gwendolyn but not Liam. Apparently his impact wasn't sufficient to sway the masses and/or the masses realized how ridiculous and impractical it would be to vote for a blue cartoon bear.
Highly recommended but be prepared to be shocked in unpleasant ways. The entire history of you is imo the best one so far, with 15 million merit points a close second.