The book urges---science teaches--to go through life shedding prejudice, seeking a more convenient basis for one's representations, and deconstructing emergent phenomena into their constituent parts. Science (at least on fast forward and with Sean Carroll's voice at 1.25x) reads as a suspense story, which happens to be true, where "true" stands for "critically appraised."
Truth is not a necessary ingredient for entertainment; a certain amount of internal consistency is. One could imagine public support a theory (or a political candidate) on the false equivalence stemming from the sentiment evoked by good entertainment, a sense of poetry, a sense of mystery, the immensity of the starring phenomena, and a granting of trust.
The cast of the book's characters includes free will, volition attributed to a system that one can predict only imperfectly; Everett's many worlds, which ferry animate and inanimate observers along deterministic timelines; particles that do not really exist, in a space that is an emergent (pixelated?) at best; the initially modest entropy; and time, which can only be recovered from the readings of a clock hidden on each page of an indubitably real manuscript scattered all over the floor.
The surprise chapter 8, in the dialogue form, is a fantastic interlude, bound to be imitated, even by the classics.
28 September 2019
17 September 2019
"Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell (2019)
The audiobook version is, on balance, a success. The narrator's---the author's---voice is pleasant and lively enough (at least at 1.25x). The voice actors do not act out episodes from a 2000s TV show. The occasional musical accompaniment (are these ambulance sirens on repeat?), ever so slightly audible but audible enough to niggle, fade into background when drowned in traffic noise of right proportions.
While not denying individual agency, the book invites the reader to critically assess the game before blindly blaming the player. Misfits is the norm. Conformism is the fiction marketed to bind audiences to mediocre TV. Virtue signalling through conformism is not worthy and is not worth the damage it inflicts on the society by muffling the critical discourse and dehumanising fellow travellers.
The suspension of disbelief---trust---is responsible for the success of modern societies. Allowing oneself to be occasionally deceived is a fair price for the majority of individuals to pay for this success. The residual minority are paid to be skeptical.
While not denying individual agency, the book invites the reader to critically assess the game before blindly blaming the player. Misfits is the norm. Conformism is the fiction marketed to bind audiences to mediocre TV. Virtue signalling through conformism is not worthy and is not worth the damage it inflicts on the society by muffling the critical discourse and dehumanising fellow travellers.
The suspension of disbelief---trust---is responsible for the success of modern societies. Allowing oneself to be occasionally deceived is a fair price for the majority of individuals to pay for this success. The residual minority are paid to be skeptical.
24 August 2019
Once Upon a Time In… Hollywood (2019)
The movie is infused with its marker's obsessions and perspective and, so, is alive and personal. Tarantino's suspense is Lynchian and Hitchcockian. His drama is the mystery that life becomes once its characters approach it as detectives, as they should.
It is easy to be generous when one is rich. To be generous when one is poor and ambitious is the true nobility.
It is easy to be generous when one is rich. To be generous when one is poor and ambitious is the true nobility.
15 August 2019
Chernobyl (2019)
The redeeming feature of the series is that it motivates one to consult Wikipedia, with which the series competes in dramatic depth and to which it loses in factual accuracy. There is nothing particularly Russian or Soviet about the characters, who are presented as generic Europeans, as if recreated by a creative committee from images on ancient vases and poems scribbled in a tongue long foreign to the modern ear. The visuals are compelling.
14 August 2019
Carol (2015)
It is one of those rare movies whose protagonists one cannot imagine portrayed by anyone but the movie’s actual stars. One sees immediately why Carol (Cate Blanchett) falls in love with Therese (Rooney Mara), from the first sight. One sees immediately what Therese finds so irresistible about Carol. What follows is a sequence of yeses, to oneself and to each other, that—that, and cash—infuse the film with a much greater sense of freedom than would have been warranted by the stifling attitudes of the times and the timeless prejudice against personal happiness alone. One can be decisive in one’s choices because they reflect examined preferences or because they reflect a firm commitment to such examination. It was this decisiveness that both lovers found so attractive in each other—that, and the class transcending the circumstance. Each one had a version of the other live inside her mind long before their meeting in flesh.
31 July 2019
Kumu Art Museum
(23 July 2019)
Perestroika art is a revolt against political establishment, not art establishment. Revolts against art establishment strive to seduce the audience away from the canon. Revolts against the system strive to offend the elites and are often ugly; the audience is the collateral damage.
Rick Owens’s dresses, without imitating Alexander McQueen, borrow his ideal: freedom as the ultimate value. The freedom to entertain and express an idea is also the freedom from being identified with this idea. A dress is a vehicle for an idea.
To a greater extent without than within the museum, Tallinn is strangely subservient to its Soviet past. Are the displays of souvenir busts of former leaders of a purportedly oppressive regime the best way the town can appeal to tourists? Has not the town built a new identity? (The country has, so why not the town?) Perhaps, Tallinn attracts the Northerners who seek the thrill of the past that they themselves have narrowly escaped, instead of attracting those who would value the town for its defiance towards that past. The new identity is also probably slow to percolate into the Old Town due to its peripheral location.
Perestroika art is a revolt against political establishment, not art establishment. Revolts against art establishment strive to seduce the audience away from the canon. Revolts against the system strive to offend the elites and are often ugly; the audience is the collateral damage.
Rick Owens’s dresses, without imitating Alexander McQueen, borrow his ideal: freedom as the ultimate value. The freedom to entertain and express an idea is also the freedom from being identified with this idea. A dress is a vehicle for an idea.
To a greater extent without than within the museum, Tallinn is strangely subservient to its Soviet past. Are the displays of souvenir busts of former leaders of a purportedly oppressive regime the best way the town can appeal to tourists? Has not the town built a new identity? (The country has, so why not the town?) Perhaps, Tallinn attracts the Northerners who seek the thrill of the past that they themselves have narrowly escaped, instead of attracting those who would value the town for its defiance towards that past. The new identity is also probably slow to percolate into the Old Town due to its peripheral location.
"Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" by Peter Godfrey-Smith (2016)
The book asks what it feels like to be the Internet, what it feels like to be a tentacle of an octopus, what it feels like to be Canada, what it feels like to be David Lynch. It all feels about the same.
What distinguishes the nervous system is that it is “fast.” Other cells communicate with other cells—inside or outside the organism—but slowly. Reaction speed is a defining characteristic of intelligence. Complexity, to be preserved in the face of competition, requires speed, which calls for centralisation: a nervous system, a brain. (The observation may also very well apply to social organisms: companies and states.)
One can partition human mind into two selves: the sleeping, dreaming, self and the awake self. This partition may serve as a metaphor for the multiple brains and, so, “selves” of an octopus. Each self thinks it is the principal one; while it may act in concert with other selves, in a kind of a dance, ultimately, the narrative is its own. Or so it thinks. When awake, an individual sticks to the awake narrative. Who knows what life the sleeping self imagines for itself? It would be unwise for either self to ignore the other, just as it would be unwise for a tentacle of an octopus to seek autonomy.
One can also partition human mind differently: the left-hemisphere self and the right-hemisphere self. To some extent, experiences within each such self are compartmentalised (more so in pigeons than in humans). Yet the subjective human experience is emphatically devoid of split personalities, at least most of the time. In a similar vein, even though the brain remembers events and feelings one associates with, say, one’s co-worker in distinct ways, one rarely recognises the tenuousness of the connection between the two kinds of memories. Human consciousness—and that of the Internet, an octopus, Canada, and David Lynch—is alarmingly unexceptional.
What distinguishes the nervous system is that it is “fast.” Other cells communicate with other cells—inside or outside the organism—but slowly. Reaction speed is a defining characteristic of intelligence. Complexity, to be preserved in the face of competition, requires speed, which calls for centralisation: a nervous system, a brain. (The observation may also very well apply to social organisms: companies and states.)
One can partition human mind into two selves: the sleeping, dreaming, self and the awake self. This partition may serve as a metaphor for the multiple brains and, so, “selves” of an octopus. Each self thinks it is the principal one; while it may act in concert with other selves, in a kind of a dance, ultimately, the narrative is its own. Or so it thinks. When awake, an individual sticks to the awake narrative. Who knows what life the sleeping self imagines for itself? It would be unwise for either self to ignore the other, just as it would be unwise for a tentacle of an octopus to seek autonomy.
One can also partition human mind differently: the left-hemisphere self and the right-hemisphere self. To some extent, experiences within each such self are compartmentalised (more so in pigeons than in humans). Yet the subjective human experience is emphatically devoid of split personalities, at least most of the time. In a similar vein, even though the brain remembers events and feelings one associates with, say, one’s co-worker in distinct ways, one rarely recognises the tenuousness of the connection between the two kinds of memories. Human consciousness—and that of the Internet, an octopus, Canada, and David Lynch—is alarmingly unexceptional.
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