Being In The World is a new movie by Tao Ruspoli, and, as is common these days, there’s a website devoted to it.

This is not a review, of either the movie or the website. It’s just my reaction to some of the things said on the site, and you should definitely have a look at it, whether before or after reading the rest of this post.

The main message of the film is very humanistic and very positive. It’s about finding meaning and happiness in skilled activity, as well as in relation to other people. I’m all for it, what they have to say in this regard is not only very true but very important. That’s why I say that the film’s heart is in the right place, but as for its head…

The philosophy seems to come mainly from Hubert Dreyfus (@Wikipedia), a high profile critic of artificial intelligence from the 1960s to the present day. This is not place, nor do I have the resources, to deal with Dreyfus as he deserves. But the Wikipedia page on his best known book seems to me reasonably even-handed, if you read the whole thing.

The movie seems to consist largely of clips of “talking heads” and performers, edited together. Philosophers and what are called “masters” appear, the philosophers talking and the masters performing their particular skill, and also talking. Remember, I’ve seen only what’s on the website, and not all of that. The following quotes are from a luthier (guitar maker).

Why are guitars that aren’t handmade so bad?

Are they really? I understand that some people of a romantic disposition would like to think so, and I’m sure that most handmade guitars are better than most machine made ones, but consider this: machines are much cheaper to keep than people, and so instruments that are designed down to a target price are made using them, whereas those that are designed up to a target quality are made by hand, so a machine-made guitar is generally a cheap one. But here’s another thing: is it reasonable to suppose there has never been a bad handmade guitar? I’m sure there have been many, and I’d go so far as to suggest that, of all the guitars made in the world during any particular period, the best machine made ones will always be better than the worst handmade ones. And, as the technology continues to improve, the proportion of machine made guitars that are better than some handmade ones will continue to increase. In my opinion, if somebody insists that everything handmade is inherently superior to everything machine-made, all they’re telling you about is their own mind. “That’s the sort of person I am, you know, a born romantic!” (And I’m sure the fact that this luthier makes his guitars by hand has absolutely no bearing on what he says about machine made ones. )

When a table is made by hand, the food eaten off it tastes different.

Oh really? Well, for some people, if, as they roll the food around in their mouth, they’re also rolling around in their mind the idea that, yes, the table is handmade, as is all the furniture in this beautiful little old bistro in the heart of the old town—yes, the food will taste different, and probably better than anything they’ve eaten in ages! That’s psychology for you, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, as long as you don’t start rolling your eyes and (wonderful, wo-onderful!) insisting on the mystical influence of the genuinely handmade table, as against the one that’s merely designed to look handmade but succeeds in convincing you. (And you’d get the same effect on your sense of taste, or better, without all the emoting, by practising mindfulness while eating.)

Or take a plate that’s machine made, and compare it to a plate made of clay that comes from the earth and was touched by human hands

Presumably the food off the latter plate tastes better, though he doesn’t actually say.

Why, because there’s dedication… The machine is distinct from the human in that… precisely by virtue of the fact that a man is not a machine.

OK, so it’s the dedication of the table and plate makers that makes the food taste better. Now, I’m quite prepared to believe the making of tables and plates and all kinds of things by hand is better than by machine in lots of different ways. An obvious one is to give presumably rewarding employment to someone, but there may be many more, I haven’t given that much thought, and maybe I should. But I don’t believe it makes the food taste better!

Now, if this was just an advert for handmade tables and plates, maybe it wouldn’t matter much. (Or maybe it would, and I should probably think about that!) But this film has the imprimatur of a well known philosopher, and it’s full of crap!

OK, I probably shouldn’t have said that, I’ve seen so little of it, and it’s hardly what you’d call a philosophical response, but it is an honest expression of my spontaneous reaction, so I’m going to leave it in, just like a good romantic should do. Authenticity, you know.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, go have a look at the site and see what you think. All these quotes come from the New Trailer. As I say, the main message is great, it’s just a pity they used mumbo jumbo to back it up. And this is not the place to mention Continental Philosophers!

By the way, I’ve yet to find any mention on the site of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (@Wikipedia), who said most of the positive things they have to say many years ago. (Later: used Google to do a site-specific search, still no mention.)

The last I heard about this, admittedly several years ago, was from a media studies academic, who insisted that no such link had ever been shown. However, Hurley cites many studies, including meta-studies (reviews of multiple studies), and the overall effect is very convincing. This bit particularly impressed me:

What is the magnitude of the effects of media violence? The effect sizes shown in the 1994 meta-analysis are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass, lead exposure on IQ in children, or asbestos exposure to cancer… (p303)

So why isn’t this widely known? IMHO, the main reason is that there are connections between news and entertainment media businesses, and it’s not in their interests to publicise it. After all, what’s more important, to reduce the level of violence in society, or to maintain the profitability of big business? What do you think they think?

Exposure to robots in the movies and television could affect our ability to empathise with synthetic beings, suggests a study of the brain regions thought to be responsible for our ability to relate to each other.

The team found that the MNS [mirror neuron system] was activated when the robot performed actions – but only when the actions were robotic, not when the robot’s motion was smooth and human-like.

When they watched the virtual human, exactly the opposite was true – the MNS was activated when the movements were human-like, but not when they were robotic – and the contrast was even greater between these two scenarios.

What, exactly, is this “machine”? A few minutes spent studying the politics of the group who took the coveted Christmas Number One slot in the UK Singles Chart in 2009 (see Rage Against the Machine on Wikipedia) makes it clear that what they’re against is the political-military-industrial power structure, or what’s sometimes called “the system”. And let me say here quite clearly that, in terms of general political orientation, I’m entirely with them, as is anyone who instinctively sides with the underdog and finds him or herself alienated from much of modern culture, in my opinion. But they go too far—not in their analysis, because analysis should be pursued as far as it will go, and if that takes you far beyond the current consensus, so be it—but in their reaction to it. Rage, or anger, is a destructive emotion.

It’s also entirely inappropriate when what you’re dealing with is machinery. I share Philip K Dick’s view (though it took me many, many years to come around to it). In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (filmed as Blade Runner), the only way to tell the most sophisticated humanoid robots from humans—short of opening them up—is to test their ability to empathise, because the robots lack that, though they can fake it to some degree. This aspect of his philosophy seems to have been quite consistent. In 1976, commenting on a story written in 1953, he wrote “It’s not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It’s how kind you are. The quality of kindness, to me, distinguishes us from rocks and sticks and metal, and will forever, whatever shape we take, wherever we go, whatever we become.” To lack empathy is to be inhuman. And that’s true of all of us: whenever we speak or act without empathy, we are behaving mechanically, regardless of how humane we might be at other times. And for me, as for Dick, that’s not just a metaphor, but the literal truth (see the post No wonder people don’t like Dennett on this).

But what about “the system”? Well, it is a machine, and the people who work within it are just its components, machine parts, as long as they do so, no matter how kind they are to their children when they get home. When I started writing this I intended, after a little web research, to explain organisations and institutions as memetic machines, but my googling has brought up nothing relevant so far, and I have several other things that I should be getting on with (like the good little component that I am).

I’ll say just a little about “destructive emotions” before closing for now. That is the title of a book by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. The subtitle of the emotions book is “A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama”, and Goleman’s thinking is very Buddhist-oriented as well as being quite thoroughly science-based. Anger is not one of Buddhism’s traditional “mind poisons”, but Goleman rates it as one of “the big three toxic emotions: anger, anxiety and depression” (see Daniel Goleman on emotions and your health). I must admit I’ve yet to read the book, but I’m fairly familiar with the Buddhist take on this sort of thing, and it looks like he’s promoting his concept of the “toxic emotions” as a modern and more scientific version of the “mind poisons”.

I’m going to have to return to this another time, but I’ll publish anyway, and see if there’s any response.

(Later: if not anger, what’s to motivate us to do the right thing? Compassion: see the next post.)

Neuroscience, culture, empathy, eastern philosophy, etc, etc. All in about seven minutes. Amazing.