I’ve been a supporter of this theory for a long time. People usually tend to ignore the good they could do to larger number of people when they find themselves confronted with the bad luck of an individual, and in most cases they decide to help the individual. Paradox there, of course. Yet, that’s how people act and it is what they say is noble, too.
In this month’s Wired magazine, columnist Clive Thompson makes a thought-provoking claim: Geeks like Bill Gates are better suited to understand the world’s problems than non-geeks.
I couldn’t agree more. While most people would help a single stranger who has been hit by a bad blow of fate, they’re just as good at ignoring the equally bad or worse situations of millions. People who can think in giant numbers, on the other hand, are more likely to see the misery of the masses in Africa, for example.
“The problem isn’t a moral failing: It’s a cognitive one. We’re very good at processing the plight of tiny groups of people but horrible at conceptualizing the suffering of large ones,” says Thompson. “The guy [Bill Gates] is practically a social cripple, and at times he has seemed to lack human empathy. But he’s also a geek, and geeks are incredibly good at thinking concretely about giant numbers. Their imagination can scale up and down the powers of 10 — mega, giga, tera, peta — because their jobs demand it. So maybe that’s why he is able to truly understand mass disease in Africa. We look at the huge numbers and go numb. Gates looks at them and runs the moral algorithm: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad.“
Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro, is one of the more interesting fantasy movies that made it to the big screen in the last few years. It’s a movie that is fascinating, because it ropes you into a world that is both as beautiful as a fairy tale and sadistic. Here’s the trailer:
George Phillips of Meridian, Mississippi, was going up to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?” and he said “no”. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said, “Okay,” hung up, counted to 30 , and phoned the police again “Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I’ve just shot them.” Then he hung up. Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response Unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence and caught the burglars red-handed. One of the Policemen said to George: “I thought you said that you’d shot them!” George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”
I’m feeling adventurous, risky-businessy, sort of weary-of-my-bloggy-lifyy today. That is why I will upgrade this blog to the software’s new beta version later today, just to see what happens, and if it will crash. Stay tuned. See the light at the end of the tunnel, a commonplace apocalypse or the beginning of a new era at smoky/glass.
The director of The Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass, likes shaky camera movements and quick cuts, because he thinks it makes the filmgoing experience more real, but many people feel annoyed by the non-stop cutting and back and forth of the action scenes.
Movie critic Roger Ebert quotes a filmgoer who had a particularly violent reaction:
We went to see BU on the IMAX in San Francisco. Near the end, when Webb is having the flashback to when he is forced to show his commitment to the project, the lady next to me spontaneously unleashes a huge amount of vomit all over my leg and all over the floor in front of her! I have never experienced anything like it in my life! Now all the action sequences, the nauseating use of moving cameras, and the relentless score were enough to make anyone dizzy, but to throw up?
