Some movies are good enough that you buy the DVD and watch it again, maybe even again. I have a big stack of those. Some surprise you as they don’t lose any of their appeal. I know some of them nearly by heart and even after many reruns they still please. One of those is, Enemy Of The State, a 1998 action flick about government surveillance with Gene Hackman and Will Smith. Hackman has a great line he delivers to Smith, “You are either really smart or really stupid.” Then he gets to say it again near the end of the movie. Their situation and the timing make it both entertaining and hard to forget.
I have written and then rejected several pieces intended to fill this space. For one reason or another, during the final edit they all fell short of anything I wanted my name on. Not changing the subject, just taking another tack: I remember when my kids had shoe boxes full of matchbox cars. They had their favorites but they kept them all busy in the mix, all at the same time. Lying prone on the floor or propped up on one elbow they motored miniature cars, trucks and busses around a masking tape grid I had put down on the floor. It didn’t take much imagination with wood building blocks and books for buildings to create a small town. Most of their motoring amounted to moving vehicles from one parking place to another. The crucial, critical element was vocal sound effects. Without the vroom-vroom engine sounds, horns beeping and tires screeching, who would want to have any of it?.
I don’t play with matchbox cars on the floor anymore but I do play with words, trying to fashion believable, interesting stories. Like my kids, I have favorite subjects or ideas that I fall back on instinctively, the same way they made their tires squeal. They never got tired of their repetition but I tire of mine. Finding a different or better way to make the same observation or to uncomplicate a particularly knotty puzzle, I feel stuck in a rut, like wasted time. Still I come back to dig in the same hole just like my boys went back to their vroom-vrooming.
Like a big Bluegill guarding its nest, I have taken the bait, swallowed the hook. Human behavior is the bait I cannot resist. It is not so simple as Monkey-see Monkey-do. To even approach that mystery one need know how the brain works and that is more complicated, more challenging than most people care to take on. But I am one of those people who take it on. Common sense (Monkey-see Monkey-do) and the naked eye have been sufficient to perceive a wannabe-wise, world view. But common sense perception can be both insufficient and misinformed and in the case of human behavior, it certainly is.
Sailors knew for a very long time that the world was not flat but civilization just wasn’t ready for it. Its time would come but it had to wait. Likewise the human behavior paradox is on hold, apparently until the time is right. Still, what is very well understood currently and exploited as well is that; if you have enough data, the right algorithm and a powerful enough computer, you can correctly predict any one person’s behavior (decisions) on anything with about 95% accuracy. What does that say about free will and decision making? In most cases you, me, everyone’s decisions have been framed before you even consider the issue. With such a high percentage of probability, there is nothing to debate. Most decisions come preassembled and quality controlled with noting left to do but make believe you did it all by yourself and take credit for being so astute.
That is the bait I have swallowed, the hole I keep digging in and I can’t seem to leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to matter what idea I start writing about, it defaults back to brain based science and human behavior (decision making). I would appreciate some sympathy but that has been short coming, as if I deserve my fate. At the end of the day I am about to drift off to sleep, thinking about a 25 year-old experiment with vampire bats. One mother is deprived of food and cannot feed her baby. Another unrelated mother bat (that is important) she notices and helps, she feeds the unfed baby. Then the tables are turned and the first mother feeds the unfed baby of the mother who had filled in for her. The pattern is repeated. Then one of the mothers is captured before she can feed, the pouches where she carries blood back to the roost are inflated with air so it looks like she has food but she has nothing to share. The hungry baby goes hungry. After that, the mother of the most recent hungry baby refused to continue the collaboration, (if you don’t help me I’m not going to help you). Sisters may cooperate regardless from a familial bond. But when it happens between unrelated individuals we humans call that, ‘Tit for Tat’ a uniquely human behavior, or so common sense would suggest.
So there I am about to fall asleep, thinking about a vampire bat experiment and someone sneaks up to whisper in my ear. It sounds like Gene Hackman telling me, “You are either really smart or really stupid.”
I have written and then rejected several pieces intended to fill this space. For one reason or another, during the final edit they all fell short of anything I wanted my name on. Not changing the subject, just taking another tack: I remember when my kids had shoe boxes full of matchbox cars. They had their favorites but they kept them all busy in the mix, all at the same time. Lying prone on the floor or propped up on one elbow they motored miniature cars, trucks and busses around a masking tape grid I had put down on the floor. It didn’t take much imagination with wood building blocks and books for buildings to create a small town. Most of their motoring amounted to moving vehicles from one parking place to another. The crucial, critical element was vocal sound effects. Without the vroom-vroom engine sounds, horns beeping and tires screeching, who would want to have any of it?.
I don’t play with matchbox cars on the floor anymore but I do play with words, trying to fashion believable, interesting stories. Like my kids, I have favorite subjects or ideas that I fall back on instinctively, the same way they made their tires squeal. They never got tired of their repetition but I tire of mine. Finding a different or better way to make the same observation or to uncomplicate a particularly knotty puzzle, I feel stuck in a rut, like wasted time. Still I come back to dig in the same hole just like my boys went back to their vroom-vrooming.
Like a big Bluegill guarding its nest, I have taken the bait, swallowed the hook. Human behavior is the bait I cannot resist. It is not so simple as Monkey-see Monkey-do. To even approach that mystery one need know how the brain works and that is more complicated, more challenging than most people care to take on. But I am one of those people who take it on. Common sense (Monkey-see Monkey-do) and the naked eye have been sufficient to perceive a wannabe-wise, world view. But common sense perception can be both insufficient and misinformed and in the case of human behavior, it certainly is.
Sailors knew for a very long time that the world was not flat but civilization just wasn’t ready for it. Its time would come but it had to wait. Likewise the human behavior paradox is on hold, apparently until the time is right. Still, what is very well understood currently and exploited as well is that; if you have enough data, the right algorithm and a powerful enough computer, you can correctly predict any one person’s behavior (decisions) on anything with about 95% accuracy. What does that say about free will and decision making? In most cases you, me, everyone’s decisions have been framed before you even consider the issue. With such a high percentage of probability, there is nothing to debate. Most decisions come preassembled and quality controlled with noting left to do but make believe you did it all by yourself and take credit for being so astute.
That is the bait I have swallowed, the hole I keep digging in and I can’t seem to leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to matter what idea I start writing about, it defaults back to brain based science and human behavior (decision making). I would appreciate some sympathy but that has been short coming, as if I deserve my fate. At the end of the day I am about to drift off to sleep, thinking about a 25 year-old experiment with vampire bats. One mother is deprived of food and cannot feed her baby. Another unrelated mother bat (that is important) she notices and helps, she feeds the unfed baby. Then the tables are turned and the first mother feeds the unfed baby of the mother who had filled in for her. The pattern is repeated. Then one of the mothers is captured before she can feed, the pouches where she carries blood back to the roost are inflated with air so it looks like she has food but she has nothing to share. The hungry baby goes hungry. After that, the mother of the most recent hungry baby refused to continue the collaboration, (if you don’t help me I’m not going to help you). Sisters may cooperate regardless from a familial bond. But when it happens between unrelated individuals we humans call that, ‘Tit for Tat’ a uniquely human behavior, or so common sense would suggest.
So there I am about to fall asleep, thinking about a vampire bat experiment and someone sneaks up to whisper in my ear. It sounds like Gene Hackman telling me, “You are either really smart or really stupid.”
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