TV is Bad (part 3)

In part 1 I like tv and movies which are powerful mediums for storytelling. In part 2 tv compresses the range of our emotions and keeps us safely inside.

If stories are how we learn (without the pain of experience) and modern cinema is the most powerful story medium then you can be sure we are absorbing all sorts of information about how to live.  Particularly we learn social skills through watching people, including the people on tv. Which isn't bad in itself.  But what if characters are written (intentionally or unintentionally) unrealistically?  And what if we lack the real world experience to recognize it. We're in for a surprise when our learned social interaction doesn't get the response we were taught to expect.  (What if you got your social skills from Star Trek? Explains a lot doesn't it?) Worse, because we all watch the same tv shows the real world conversation might follow the faulty model completely and while this wouldn't cause the cognitive dissonance problem both participants are left wanting despite following the script. The magic words that get the tv character to the act break somehow miss the heart issue entirely.  I wonder if this is why so many relationships are so dysfunctional. Are we all operating under false premises and faulty social conventions? Have we gotten to the end of our lines wondering why we haven't lived happily ever after yet?

Eventually if dysfunctional behavior is widespread enough it becomes self-reinforcing.  Poor screenwriting is now true-to-life screenwriting.  The meme becomes culture and functional behavior becomes weird.  I bet you can come up with your own examples of this effect.

Screenwriters and actors have a responsibility to culture to display an accurate picture of human nature.  But we as consumers should refuse to be passive. We can learn useful social skills from tv but we have to be careful to fact check.  For instance, I know all sorts of things about being married from reading books and comics and watching movies and tv despite never having experienced it.  I know all the right and wrong things to say and I figure I would never make those rather obvious mistakes. Of course I'm in for all manner of surprises as a real relationship isn't subject to the rules of tv comedy.  On the other hand, if I ever get beamed up to an alien spaceship I'll probably say something smart alecky because that's what Col. O'Neill would do.

TV is Bad (part 2)

In part 1 I like tv and movies, they are a powerful medium for storytelling but they tend to surpress the imagination and turn us into emotionally regulated passive zombies.

As a generation we would rather watch tv than actually do anything we see on tv (or perhaps something genuinely out of the box). This addiction like symptom is because tv gives us maybe 50% of the emotions of real life with none of the risk.  We can feel a little sad without tasting real sorrow and with the knowledge that the credits will roll in about 7 minutes so we never have to deal with it again (well, I'm still upset about Wash dying but you know...).  We can feel the exhilaration of flying a banshee without the risk of breaking our necks in a fall from Pandora's floating unobtainium mountains.

The result is our life's emotional experience is compressed into a narrow range where we are safe from failure but also safe from ever doing something. But we are able to delude ourselves with simulated ups and down at the click of a button. If stories teach us anything they should teach us that adventure is worth the risk and discomfort and painful emotions.  It's time to stop watching other people's stories and start living our own stories.

Tv has also substituted for human interaction to a great extent hindering our attempts to venture into the world. Robin Dunbar theorized that the brain has a limit to the number of relationships it can maintain (somewhere around 150). I would be interested in seeing research on this but it would seem like the complicated relationships we absorb from the ensemble of a tv show would count against this limit bumping off real people whom we could be building relationships with. For instance, if you've watched a season of The Office you can tell me how Jim feels about every other person and how they feel about him (if you haven't seen The Office, pick your favorite show).  That's brain space that could have been used for real people.  (I would think that once you stop watching a show you brain archives everything making room again but how many shows are you watching at one time?)

Tv teaches us functional and dysfunctional behavior and shapes culture in part 3.

TV is Bad (part 1)

I love tv and movies. And you probably do too. I love the medium, the technology, the technique, the stories. I'm a content creator and consumer.  So this isn't an anti-tv scree. I'm not going to tell you to boycott anything or try to convince you that good Christians don't go to movies. But we can't afford to be ignorant of the far reaching power of the medium.

The "talking pictures" are the most sophisticated form of storytelling to date. Storytelling is essential to human culture. Knowing they affect us so powerfully, most of what Jesus taught was in the form of stories.  Stories are powerful because they fit the way our brains work.  They use the same capabilities that are critical for maintaining relationships. Verbal and written storytelling (the earlier forms) require the participation of the imagination by co-opting the audience to be co-creators. But as performance art has progressed from stage play to feature film the audience becomes a passive consumer.

Once upon a time your Minas Tirith looked very different from my Minas Tirith but now they both look the same (despite this I still love the LotR movies btw). Characters no longer exist in the imagination but inhabit the pixels they have been captured on with no curtain call to shatter the illusion.  The imperfections of reality are swept away and now everyone is perfectly lit with a flowing soundtrack in the background to put you in the right emotional state. But the most imagination-destroying part of modern storytelling is cinematography.  Even in a stage play you control what you see but when every frame is a Rembrandt even that simple act of volition is replaced with blissful passive perfection.

The result is a brain subdued, unable to imagine beyond the limits of the frame, dependent on the steady pattern of stimulation provided by the three act structure. Ever watch a tv marathon? You know that zombie feeling afterward?  The problem isn't just intellectual--it's emotional.

Tv compresses our emotions replacing the real thing with a zero-risk substitute while occupying limited relationship space in our brains in part 2 and teaches us functional and dysfunctional behavior while shaping culture in part 3.

What I learned as a disaster relief volunteer

After the tornados hit Alabama and adjacent states on I made three trips to the affected areas--two within a week of the storm. I helped to clear roads, transport supplies, and organize distribution centers along with some friends from Atlanta. (Shoutouts to the B'ham Dream Center and the RAFT teams from Perimiter) Here's what I learned about disaster relief:

Tornados are not like hurricanes
Growing up in Mobile I am very familiar with hurricane damage. This was very different. Driving up there were no signs that anything had happened. Even inside Tuscaloosa nothing looked affected. Then I drove for another block and an entire neighborhood was just gone. You could see blue sky where you shouldn't. Unlike a major hurricane though, gas and food were available in the area within a couple of days.

Information goes out of date quickly
In an emergency the situation changes quickly and communications are largely uncoordinated. This means you can't count on information being valid for very long--no more than a day within the first week--and you need to plan flexibly to compensate. In one case we were told that an area was inaccessible without government escort (the National Guard had it locked down due to looters). Turns out that was true the previous day but by the time we got there they just let us in without question. Immediately after the tornado the water in Tuscaloosa was unsafe so bottled water was in great demand. But a month later people are still bringing cases of bottled water. I have never seen so much bottled water in my life. The Internet and twitter are improving the relevancy of information. I hope distribution centers will use them even more in the future to communicate current needs.

Donate pallets
After being a warehouse manager for a day I have a request: donate a quantity of one item. Many people went to the store and bought a dozen different items to put together as kits. As thoughtful as this was it just meant that I had to sort lots of individual items. Also, don't give things in bags. Bags don't stack and are hard to move. If you really want to donate something helpful, pick an item (based on the most recent need you can determine), buy it in bulk, and keep it in the box.

Mission work is a lot like work
I don't know about you but I tend to think that doing missions work--serving those in dire need--will be some sort of feel-good spiritual experience. Maybe this is because we tend to give people the highlights when telling them about our work. "Doesn't it just feel good to help people?" Well maybe sometimes. And sometimes it just feels like work. Hard work. Let me tell you, moving boxes is not a great spiritual experience. Doing "everything as unto the Lord" means sacrifice, not a way to feel better about yourself.

The person giving the orders is the one in charge
In an emergency situation the chain of command is largely irrelevant. Whoever is giving the orders is de facto in charge--no ceremony or commission or special appointment needed. My friend Ashley practically took over a distribution center for a day and did a great job getting it organized.

Don't wait for someone to tell you what needs to be done
The reason Ashley took over was that he saw a need and he just went to work to lead a team to fill it without waiting for someone to micromanage him. He was careful to work with the people who had been there from day 1 to make sure we were working toward the same goal. The cool thing is that when everyone shares the same goal, very little management is needed. All that's needed is the ability to see what needs to be done and the willingness to do it.

You can still help
While the crisis period is past, over a thousand families have lost their homes and neighborhoods are full of debris. In addition, FEMA's funding is running out. It's been so good to see almost every church in north Alabama doing something to help and teams from across the country have come to help. But there's plenty of work for you to do if you are able to volunteer. To find a place to help contact area churches or the Christian Service Mission (which is also a great place to send supplies).

School Lunches and the National Institute of Health

Many people believe science tells us the best way to live and therefore we should obey the edicts of the scientific experts. The human race, being a rather ornery bunch, tends to rebel against such enlightened proclamations so the power of government must be wielded if we are to see progress.

I present for your consideration the following example of progress.

"We should bring our own lunch!" chanted dozens of Chicago seventh graders.
Principle Elsa Carmona says she banned students from bringing lunch from home so they would eat the healthy food served in the cafeteria. (Chicago Tribune)
Everyone wins: the parents don't have to fool with packing a lunch, the students eat healthy according to the best government standards, and the food provider gets lots of federal money to mash up some beans and flour into something that looks like dog food.

With obesity becoming an epidemic among junk food-loving school children government schools must compel their wards to eat only the provided expert-approved lunch. Only those experts know enough to hand down the one true healthy diet.

Nothing here is shocking. Indeed it is conventional thinking. A lengthy NYT article* however questions the conventional wisdom (and government experts) on nutrition.

Among the many interesting data points in the article is a story about the National Institute of Health's (NIH) guidance on eating less fat starting in 1984. The objective was to lower the heart disease rate.

Reality has not cooperated.

In the past 30 years the heart disease rate has remained unaffected. However obesity has grown from 14% in the 60s and 70s to 22% by the end of the 80s and has continued unabated. It has gotten so bad among children that they renamed "adult-onset diabetes" to "Type II diabetes" and the First Lady has made childhood obesity her number one cause.

It's possible that the obesity epidemic is unrelated to our government's insistence on fat free diets. However evidence is building for an alternative hypothesis. Harvard Endocrinologist David Ludwig explains to the NYT how carbohydrates affect insulin and blood sugar which in turn affect appetite. The simple version is that carbohydrates provoke a spike in insulin which burns though the carbs quickly lowering blood sugar and causing ravenous hunger only a few hours later.

"[This] strongly suggests that the ongoing epidemic of obesity in America and elsewhere is not, as we are constantly told, due simply to a collective lack of will power and a failure to exercise. Rather it occurred...because the public health authorities told us unwittingly, but with the best of intentions, to eat precisely those foods that would make us fat, and we did. We ate more fat-free carbohydrates, which, in turn, made us hungrier and then heavier."

There is much about this incredibly complex process that scientists still don't understand. It is also important things to keep in mind that different people react differently to different food so a particular diet may not be appropriate for you though it's fine for someone else. But these points only serve to reinforce the conclusion that well meaning government intervention in our lives can have disastrous repercussions even though it is based on the latest in scientific research. If nothing else we see the danger of putting all the eggs in one basket. But more than that we should not allow flawed government to so intimately control us.

Better to take responsibility for making our own choices as we are the ones that must live or die with the consequences, not the government bureaucrat.

*The NYT article while containing fascinating information may be in your tl;dr range. It's poorly organized and goes back over previous points from time to time. However, I found its account of the history of diet and government recommendations as well as the scientific information on the endocrinological process very enlightening and worth the effort.

Truth in SOTU Infographics?

[see this site for the original criticism]


I can't believe such a high profile infographic would be less than truthful!

Nah, I'm just being silly. Infographics have no relation at all to truth. They just trick people into thinking they are seeing real facts because they resemble that statistics stuff. Which is math so it must be right. Or something. But it's not scary like math is. It's pretty like art. We like art. And shiny. And pudding. Mmmmm, pudding.

In this case, apparently they scaled the diameter, not the area. Perhaps this was unintentional. Regardless of the technical accuracy, actual visual comparisons, and therefore comprehension, are not facilitated because it very hard to compare areas unless they are overlapping (and often not even then). Some times circles are a good way to display secondary information where larger or smaller is much more important than how much larger. For this application there are far more useful ways to comunicate the same information. The most obvious is a bar chart. To eliminate the unsightly gridlines and make it easier to see multiples the bars could be segmented (small gaps every $2 trillion perhaps).

But this would be a bar chart, not an infographic and therefore appear "technical". Circles with pretty gradients look more aesthetic even if they do obfuscate the very information they purportedly convey.

And we do live in a world that values style over substance.

The Problem with Laws

Actions have consequences.
Acts of congress have unintended consequences.

Which is why I'm not thrilled that the outgoing 111th Congress has been so prolific.

As bureaucrats and analysts continue to pore over the thousands of pages of new law this year they will discover new taxes and new regulations. Among the millions of interactions with existing law some will be problematical and some will be bizarre.

And some provisions will have the exact opposite effect of that intended. Which is the theme of this video from reason.tv

Making good law is hard.

And quantity is no substitute for quality.

Frist Post!

EXCOGITATE, vb. to consider or think something out carefully and thoroughly

Having capitulated to peer pressure, I have resigned myself to attempting to maintain a blog for a year. The plan is to foist pretentious posts with lots of big words on an unsuspecting public whenever I'm not having an existential crisis (which is pretty often these days). Or maybe I'll just try to start interesting discussions on topics ranging from Politics, to my problems with church, to technology and sociology.

I'll try to put up one essay a month plus an couple of posts commenting on only the most interesting stuff I run into on the internets.

Because I couldn't decide on a platform, I'm going to just do both blogger and tumblr for now. (the other one is at excogitator.tumblr.com)

And there's still the ol twitter @marshalldsmith.