The Tragedy of Common Errors.

The world is complicated place. Just keeping up with everyday life is an exercise in the ability to simplify everything we have to deal with. All the new people we meet, the things we learn, the new concepts we are introduced to; it’s honestly a miracle that we are able to make any kind of sense out of the ever-growing-and-already-unmanageably-large web of things that surround us and how they all interact with each other. Our natural process for dealing with all this complexity is elegant in its simplicity, all we have to do is deal with everything in a really general way until it becomes necessary to deal with specifics. We have a lot of ways of doing this. Like, for example, if I ask you to give me a list of all of your friends, you probably don’t have a big list memorized and ready to rattle off, instead, you go through your life, section by section and give the names of the people who come to mind. First maybe where you work, then maybe church or some other semi-regular gathering, then who you still know from past friend groups, then that one guy you’ve known from the internet for years but never really met. Bam, a task that would have been much more difficult if you had to just pull from one large lump became nearly trivial because you broke it down.

Our minds do this type of thing all the time. We simply don’t have the time or brain-power to process everything in its full complexity all of the time.

This is what your Facebook friend list would look like if it was designed by Rain Man

 

But this process of simplification isn’t without its dangers. Often, we find it much easier to label and categorize the sections we place things into in order to speed up our ability to critically analyze related things. And sometimes we let these labels begin to define the category, instead of the other way around. You see, these compartments that we put things into to simplify them are just collections of information, they can’t tell us anything we don’t already know, so when we start to apply these labels to new information going into a compartment, we run into trouble. This is how we get things like racism and prejudice: we get some kind of new information, and instead of trying to learn about it by itself, we simply look for whatever compartment we should put it in, and then just apply all of the already established assumptions about that compartment to the new information. Meet someone new? Chances are you make a ton of assumptions about them before you know anywhere near the amount of information you would demand someone know about you before making those same assumptions. And on the off-chance you actually get to know that person better, even if your assumptions were completely wrong, it’s going to take a fair amount of time before your interactions with that person are completely free of those initial labels.

These negative effects of simplification aren’t always as extreme or damaging as things like racism, but there are a host of them that we all are vulnerable to, and while it probably isn’t possible to fix all (or any) of them completely, we can at least be aware of their existence so that we can deal with them as we see them happen.

 

The First Common Error: Dogma

I’ve heard more than a few people in my life tell me that I “think that i’m always right.” While I probably deserved that comment in that particular moment, I find it hard to believe that not EVERYONE thinks they are right more or less all the time. I mean, no one thinks they know everything, but i’m decently sure no one assumes that the majority of their opinions are wrong. Believing you are right is just part of being a normal person. The problem comes when we start making assumptions about WHY we are right. We’d all like to think that our opinions are not only correct, but informed by evidence that would be enough to convince any reasonable person to also believe that we are correct.

When you put it that way, Twilight really IS the series of our generation.

 

But obviously we aren’t all right all of the time. Sometimes we are wrong, and slightly less often, we even admit to being wrong.

– – – Taking Your Medicine

Admitting that you’re wrong is hard. This is in part due to the fact that often, when we do admit that we are wrong, we look for a way to justify our wrongness. “Yes I was wrong, but my wrongness was completely understandable given my situation!” This type of statement does nothing other than make us feel better about being wrong. Which is counter productive since we should be motivated to be right as often as possible. Instead of jumping directly to justification, when we discover we are wrong about something we should look to understand both why we were wrong, and what we were wrong about.

Understanding why we were wrong is paramount to being right more often in the future. There are many things that can cause us to accept wrong information without applying the filters that we apply to most of the information that comes to us. Oftentimes the reason we accept wrong information is bias. We all have biases, and we are all secretly terrified that we are dead wrong about them. We assert our biases daily, and they are often reinforced by our observations, which is why those biases stick to our minds like feet to a movie theater floor.

It is as hard to stop being biased as it is to… START FLOSSING

 

But when those biases are challenged, we naturally retreat to all of the times those same biases have been reinforced by our daily experiences. We look to the times when someone important, or even just some random third party, said something that confirmed our biases, and we elevate that above any experience that goes against what we want to believe. Or, to say it all simply: “We prefer to believe information we already believe” Remember: we all like to think our beliefs are informed and supported by reason, so when someone tells us we are wrong, we rarely are accepting of such statements with any speed.

 

– – – The Solution

The solution to dogma is relievingly simple. We simply have to take advantage of our natural motivation to be right all the time, but in a different way. Instead of using said motivation to deny being wrong, we should use it to look for where we are wrong. Challenge all of our own beliefs so that we can systematically eliminate all of the things that are only there because we want them to be there. After doing that for a while, we will not only have a more correct understanding of more things, but have the ammunition to explain why you believe what you believe, thus spreading informed ideas to more people.

 

 

More common errors coming in the future!

Cheers!

~Ben

Y u heff 2 b mad?

I want you to think for a second about what makes you you. Think of influential people who had an impact on you, communities you’ve identified with, things you’ve experienced, etc. Whatever you’ve thought of here is what i’m going to refer to as “Your List”. Your list is very special; a perfectly made list is, by definition, the combination of nature and nurture that makes you a unique individual.

Cartoons, Reddit, World of Warcraft. Yep, that about right.

          Being a unique individual is really quite important to us as a nation. We no longer really like being part of a larger group first and foremost as much as we like being a recognizable individual who is completely distinguishable from everyone else (even people in all the same groups as us). So it would make sense that if anyone were to disparage or diminish anything on your list, you would be upset that someone is making light of something that makes you unique, and by projection, insulting you.

1. I’m Not touching you, I’m not touching you

          But there is another side to this. Anything NOT on your list shouldn’t affect you in the same way. You don’t attach yourself to anything else the some way that you do with things that are on your list, so if someone were to downtalk such a thing, you normally wouldn’t take it personally.

Don’t tell Becky, but Planking is stupid

         So why is it that there are many things that are considered “offensive” when they have absolutely nothing to do with most peoples lists? You know, something like…

2. Swearing

         Swearing is probably the most baffling thing to ever be considered offensive. Words only mean what we let them mean. If you don’t believe me, go look up the word “Literally” in an Oxford dictionary; one of the definitions is “An intensive used before a figurative expression”, which essentially means that “literally” can mean the exact opposite of the word “literally”.

Nick Cage is literally the best actor ever.

          Or take this webpage. To anyone who doesn’t speak or read english, this is a page of random-looking meaningless squiggles. And this is why getting offended by swearing is silly. If I said F*** B******, you probably won’t get offended, but I actually just made you think of the two words that would fill those blanks. And putting the word and its meaning in your head is EXACTLY WHAT SAYING THE WORDS WOULD DO. So why is it okay to asterisk them out?

I thought you said “Feed Brazilians”

          Or what about if someone who didn’t speak english swore at you? It’s just making noises to them, they can’t possibly mean anything by it, would it still be offensive? Why are we so preoccupied with the words being used and not the intent behind them? If you had a child, and they told you “f*** off”, would you be more angry that they dropped an f-bomb, or that they disrespected you by dismissing you angrily? Because addressing one of those issues would solve the problem, addressing the other wouldn’t.  Any “bad” word only has power because people who are offended by them give them that power. Don’t let yourself be affected by it, and bam it’s just noises.

3. Boobies

         Another rather strange tendency we have is to be especially off-put by nudity. Now this one does have some merit, since we a society are very protective of our children, and exposing them to anything that may rob them of their “innocence” is considered very bad. The confusing part is that we seem to think that gratuitous violence is completely fine.

“At least he was wearing clothes when they murdered him, or this would be gross.”

           God forbid we show a VIctoria’s Secret commercial before 10PM, but watch any episode of the Walking Dead (just the first season, just don’t bother after that), and try to justify that being okay when 80% of a boob isn’t. Not to be contrary, but the vast majority of people who claim to have seen someone naked seem to be pretty okay with it, whereas ask a war veteran what their opinion on graphic violence is, and you’ll probably get less positive feedback.

Now i’m not advocating banning violence on TV, but I think we should really evaluate why we have the opinions we have. You shouldn’t be offended by something just because you’ve always been told to be. In fact, the next time you find yourself feeling offended, stop and think about why you feel that way, and try to engage it. Heck, if possible, try to engage the person who offended you. I’d be willing to bet a lot of productive and edifying conversation would happen if people did that.

Narcissism: The Future of Entertainment

          It’s always fascinating to watch entertainment trends as they morph from one thing to another over surprisingly short amounts of time. Escapism, nationalism, and geek culture have all been common themes in the past decade or so and have elevated each to a level of common acceptance that we take for granted today. And that’s more or less how it’s always been: find a topic that resonates with the national audience and run it into the ground by making as many games, movies and books about it as possible. But a sneaky trend that has flown under the general radar for quite a while now is a very different kind of theme. It isn’t a subject matter of the story that matters, it’s the way the user interacts with that story. 

Pictured: College Textbooks of the Future

 

1. We’re all Tired of Other People Having all the Fun

          Technology has move forward at a blistering speed since I first started using computers, and because so many daily tasks are becoming so fast and easy, we have way more time as a society to enjoy and become immersed in the fictional worlds of our books, movies, and games. This means we have become relatively discerning when it comes to our entertainment; we are no longer satisfied with the same ol’ thing we’ve been seeing over and over again.

Transformers 5: The Transformering

 

We’ve seen the all the action movies, romantic comedies, and gory horror films, and we’ve all found ourselves putting ourselves into the shoes of the main characters. We all somehow don’t find it weird that we collectively think we are interesting enough to have a monster stalk us, or terrorists try to assassinate us, or Jennifer Aniston fall in love with us. And the people behind making our entertainment haven’t been blind to this weirdness.

 

2. It’s not you, it’s me me me me me. 

          I’d be willing to bet no matter who you are, you’ve heard of either Twilight, or Half-Life. In fact, if you’re reading this blog, I’d put my money on you knowing both. But let’s say you don’t know much about either of these and look at what made these properties so crazy popular.

Pictured: Your house

 

We’ll start with Half-Life. Half-Life is one of the most universally loved video game franchises in history. Other than its aging graphics and a couple clunky gameplay mechanics you’d be hard pressed to find a common complaint about this franchise. Among its highest praises is the story. Everyone loves the story in Half-Life. Now, if I were to describe to you the bare bones of the story to you, it probably wouldn’t sound that interesting.

Guy hits things with crowbar and jumps a lot

 

So why is it so loved? I mean, Gordon Freeman (The game’s main character) doesn’t say a single word throughout the entire game, how could a story with a mute MAIN CHARACTER have any artistic merit? Well, that’s actually the point, not only does Gordon never speak, never once does the game pull you out from behind his eyes. For 100% of the game, you are controlling his every action, even during the “cutscenes”. And because he never says anything, whatever you as the player think about something becomes Gordon’s thoughts; whatever you say is what Gordon says. Putting it simply: You are Gordon Freeman. The game doesn’t revolve around some space-marine badass, it revolves around you.

Now for something completely different

 

Twilight. We all have our opinions about Twilight. Chances are if you like Half-Life, you probably aren’t a big fan of Twilight (and the other way around). But you may be surprised to learn that a large part of why Twilight became so wildly popular is the same as the one for Half-Life. Bella, the main character of Twilight isn’t described with any specific detail until about 3/4ths of the way through the first book. The vast majority of the physical descriptions in the book are directed toward describing the main love interest: Edward. And up until the point when Bella is profiled, she is a amorphous everygirl who almost every adolescent (or older) girl who allows themselves to become immersed in the story is inevitably going to place themselves in place of Bella. Experiencing what happens to her as though it were happening to them in real life.

 

3. Team You

          Both of these properties were/are incredibly popular with their target audience. I can’t claim it’s solely because of the largely empty shell type main character, but it’s a common theme that can’t be ignored. We simply love to put ourselves into the story and not have the game or movie itself fight us when we do. Most of us will never experience anything remotely as interesting as what happens to Gordon or Bella, or even become actors to play make-believe that we’re interesting. 

Or both?

 

But we sure as hell can keep putting ourselves in the shoes of characters that allow us to. From Fifty Shades of Grey to a Paladin in World of Warcraft, we are going to continue to enjoy being the agent of action and change in the worlds we choose to immerse ourselves in. 

 

Maybe one day we’ll invent the holodeck and we can all wither away while crowbarring headcrabs and banging sparkly vampires, or at least we can hope. 

 

  

Why do we hate everything we love?

Hipsters have been around for a while now. Even though the term “hipster” doesn’t have the pointed meaning that it used to, it still carries the same general concept that it originated from: that popularity directly affects quality. Not in a good way either.

Obviously whatever is going on here is horrible.

But why? Why hate something something that so many people seem to like? Doesn’t the fact that something attracts hoards of people mean it might be something worth checking out?

1. Sometimes unpopular things are the best things.

           Listen, I’m not trying to claim that there is some universal absolute that says if something has a large following it must be terrible. But lets take a quick look at entertainment properties that did poorly despite being huge hits with critics:

• Joss Whedon’s        Firely (goo.gl/XbTOLq)
• Dan Harmon’s        Community (goo.gl/2zCvnT)
• Frank Darabont’s   The Shawshank Redemption (goo.gl/CWPqBo)
• David Fincher’s      Fight Club (goo.gl/S4cByP)
• Frank Capra’s         It’s A Wonderful Life (goo.gl/eOxjYU)
• Mike Judge’s           Office Space (goo.gl/LGEizs)
• Capcom’s                Okami (goo.gl/DbSsfZ)
• Tim Schafer’s         Psychonauts (goo.gl/X4FSOj)

All of these properties are now considered to be classics or excellent examples of their medium, but in their time either barely made back the money it cost to make them (Shawshank, FIght Club), or outright bankrupt the publisher that supported it (Psychonauts).

Why don’t you love me?

Now no one’s claiming that these properties are good because they were unpopular, but they are undoubtedly good despite being unpopular, which means maybe…

2. Popular things can suck

         Think of something in entertainment that you love. Something that you not only enjoy, but something you feel like you identify with on a personal level. Chances are a few real blockbusters would make your top 10 list, but theres a good chance your #1 wasn’t something hugely popular. That isn’t to say that there aren’t a ton of popular franchises that you enjoy, but I bet your favorite thing is something that has a medium-sized following at best.

Nickelback doesn’t count. Shame on you.

It doesn’t mean you’re hipster. It means you’re a person. Generally one of the reasons something doesn’t hit a mainstream audience is because it simply doesn’t appeal to that broad of an audience. But you aren’t a wide audience; you’re you, and if you enjoy any certain type of thing that someone most people don’t (horror films, indie music/games, Quentin Tarantino), then you’re probably also aware of what happens when one of those properties becomes commercially successful and suddenly takes a steep dive into terribleness.

My new movie is called “This doesn’t suck”, but there’s a twist

3. Dumbass of all Trades, Master of None.

          A lot of people think that the common phrase goes “Money is the root of all evil”, but the actual quote is “The love of money is the root of all evil”. And that’s kinda where our problem lies. Many small independent projects begin with nothing but a small budget and a passion for the medium. But every now and then one becomes outrageously popular. Remember the original SAW or Paranormal Activity? They were extremely low budget films ($11,000 for Paranormal) but caught on and made an ass-ton of money. Which is great! Those films deserved to be successful. But of course, a successful film nine times out of ten is going to spawn a sequel. And the sequel isn’t going to be restricted by money the same way the original was.

Pools of money are scary, right?

This isn’t a bad thing either! More money to throw at special effects, better set management and the like is how movie series like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter achieve the quality that they do. But there’s still a kicker. In order to support the inflated budget the movie has to make as much if not more than the original did. And making lightning strike twice isn’t easy. So what do they do?

Make it rain?

They look at market stats and focus groups and make sure that their sequel appeals to as many people as possible.

Focus Group: “The first 30 minutes of the movie are too slow”

Moviemaker: “Well, the slow start helped build tension, but if people don’t like it, we’ll pitch it”

Focus Group: “And there isn’t enough gore”

Moviemaker: “Well too much gore makes the movie more campy, but if that’s what the kids are diggin these days.”

Focus Group: “Sex sells, we need a sexy female lead. And add more jump scares. And tired horror tropes like cell phones dying!”

Moviemaker: “…”

And in a lot of ways, this process works. And by “a lot of ways” I mean it makes more money. But it loses the focus and soul that it began with. It no longer has any of the things that made it popular, but because it now has what the general public expects it remains in the public eye for a time before the public quickly becomes tired of more of the same and move on to the next big thing.

4. Don’t Worry About What Other People Think

          In all honesty, paying too much attention to how popular something is means you’re worrying about how your opinion stacks up against everyone else’s. And ceasing to like something simply because it has become popular is probably going too far. But paying attention to how things evolve once they’ve caught the eye of the general public is a way to keep our entertainment industry honest. Support things that you like, and ignore things that are simply trying to get your money and not your lasting interest.

Thanks for sticking with me, that was long.

~Ben