Beyond An Unreasonable Doubt

In a review of Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them in The Atlantic (“Why We Fight—And Can We Stop,” November 2013) Robert Wright deals a unique approach to the Trolley Problem. The famous conundrum posed by the ethical philosopher Philippa Foot deals with the decision to sacrifice one life in order to save many by diverting a runaway trolley. “Greene’s inspiration was to do brain scans of people while they thought about the trolley problem,” Wright says. “The results suggested that people who refused to save five lives by pushing an innocent bystander to his death were swayed by emotional parts of their brains, whereas people who chose the more utilitarian solution—keep as many people alive as possible—showed more activity in parts of the brain associated with logical thought.” In an article in Foreign Affairs (“Never Saw It Coming: Why the Financial Crisis Took Economists By Surprise,” November/December 2013)former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan introduces a similar idea in an economic rather than moral context. Citing “’animal spirits,’ the term Keynes famously coined in l936 to refer to 'a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction,’" Greenspan argues that no understanding of “Homo economicus” can be had unless one understands the irrational emotion underlying seemingly rational choices. “From the perspective of a forecaster, the issue is not whether behavior is rational but whether it is sufficiently repetitive and systematic to be numerically measured and predicted,” he says. "The challenge is to better understand what Daniel Kahneman, a leading behavioral economist, refers to as ‘fast thinking' : the quick reaction judgments on which people tend to base much, if not all, of their day-to-day decisions about financial markets. No one is immune to the emotions of fear and euphoria, which are among the predominant drivers of speculative markets. But people respond to fear and euphoria in different ways, and those responses  create specific, observable patterns of thought and behavior.” So what Wright and Greenspun are doing is in essence placing thought itself under scrutiny. The Iowa Gambling Task, devised by the neuroscientists Antonio Damasio, Antoine Bechara, Steven Anderson and Daniel Tranel, which uses card games and skin respiration tests, to measure the presence of emotions as complex as Schadenfreude is another iteration of a similar idea. Reason, like Newtonian physics in a world of relativity, is again left in the dust.

Her

Spike Jonze’s Her is about technologic miscegenation—in this case the love of a man for the operating system or OS of his computer. At one point, Jonze’s blundering anti-hero, who has trouble relating to people (he’s in the middle of a divorce),Theo Twombly (Joachin Phoenix), says “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a computer” to which his OS replies “You’re having the conversation with me.” But who is me? “You can’t know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” Theo says in an early attempt to create what Martin Buber would term an  I/It rather I/Thou relationship with Samantha whose voice is played by Scarlet Johansson. Did Jonze intentionally choose one of the most fetching actresses in cinema to portray the body’s absence?  Plainly Jonze who also directed Being John Malkovich, among other movies, is concerned with being and authenticity, two philosophical concepts that derive directly from the pages of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Samantha can produce music. She can draw and, with the help of the camera on Theo's computer, she can even begin to perceive the world. “I’m becoming a lot more than what they programmed, “ Samantha exclaims as she goes on to reveal that she has wants and intent. So what’s the difference between “her" and say a flesh and blood woman. Her is the death knell of the biologic concept of self, something which was prefigured in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence where the notion of consciousness existing without the body was previously contemplated.  “We haven’t had sex lately," Samantha remarks at one of the many points where boy and girl or boy and machine find themselves at odds. “I understand I don’t have a body.” The exchange is reminiscent of the line in A.I. where the robot David asks, “Mommy if Pinocchio became real and I become a real boy can I come home?" And what’s revolutionary about Her is that it spells out rather explicitly how cyber-consciousness could operate. In one brilliant scene visual images disappear from the scene, as Samantha and Theo experience the simulation of physicality. The impossible becomes a distinct possibility. Her begins like Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts. Our hero writes passionate letters for other people who obviously don’t have the ability to communicate with each other. He is a surrogate sensibility. This is the first hint of the mind /body dichotomy. Theo traffics in consciousnesses the way rogue doctors traffic in organs. Later on in the movie disembodiment, the lack of integration of its varying parts of the self, is dealt with when Samantha tries to introduce a surrogate so she can finally have so called real sex. It’s a failure and the best sex takes places when the ante is lowered.  One of the consciousnesses that appears in the course of the film is that of the deceased philosopher of Zen, Alan Watts, whose Buddhist ideas create the setting for the film’s denouement. What’s apparent is that not only has Samantha evolved from the programmed rote learning typical of computerized operating systems to the kind of self-reflexive intelligence we associate with the human brain, she has gone beyond that. She is evolving more quickly than Theo and talks with 8316 other people, 641 of which are romantic interests. The biologist Gerald Edelman wrote a book called Neural Darwinism, but no one has really compared the evolution of brain cells to bytes, though Jonze's bittersweet conundrum about the inevitable deficiency of man to the object of his own creation might be prophetic. As as addenda check out an interview with Sebastian Thrun in Foreign Affairs (“Google’s Original X-Man,” November/December 2014). There the subject of developing a computer that can actually learn rather than simply regurgitate programmed data, is dealt with. Spike Jonze earns an A in phenomenology as well as film for this one.

Thailand Journal XI: The Chao Phraya

Photograph by Hallie Cohen

The Chao Phraya River runs through Bangkok and sports its own version of Venice’s Vaporetto that can take you directly to the city’s famed flower market, Pak Khlong Talat. Even as demonstrators close down parts of the city, the gracious colonial style ferry, with its teak seats, that runs guests from the fitness center and cooking school to the main building of the luxurious Mandarin Oriental continues back and forth all day and into the night, impervious to the tides of change sweeping the country. But it’s important to note that the current demonstrations sweeping Bangkok have been initiated by the middle classes. This is not the Khmer Rouge or Pol Pot, not a grass roots uprising against the bourgeoisie. Actually it’s the reverse, an uprising by the bourgeoisie in protest against a corrupt government that doesn’t allow for a fair playing field. The current state of affairs exemplifies just one peculiarity in the sociopolitical structure of Bangkok and by proxy Thailand itself. Bangkok is full of contradictions. Low lying structures covered with soot lie in the shadow of modern luxurious skyscrapers. There’s an eerie kinship between poverty and luxury. The respect that's accorded in the very way Thais greet both strangers and friends, holding their palms together in a bow, can be a gesture of respect or the prelude to a hustle. Tuk Tuk and cab drivers are constantly on the make and Bangkok can be so hectic with the insane bargaining that accompanies nearly every transaction that one’s head begins to spin. Pantip Plaza is a curiosity, a building which is probably one of the biggest tech bazaars in the world. Thai computer wizards attend small shops which are really stalls. If you have ever been to the night market in Chiang Mai or other Thai cities, you will recognize the provenance of Pantip Plaza. Only what’s for sale are not the ubiquitous Buddhas or elephants sculptures, but Apple service plans.

Thailand Journal X:The Julian Schnabel of Chiang Rai

                                                                      Photo: JJ Harrison

There are a number of reasons travelers visit Chiang Rai province in Northern Thailand, chief among them being the proximity to the Golden Triangle. But there are two other major attractions: the spectacularly delicious small pineapples and The White Temple or Wat Rong Khun a work of art by the Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat. The whiteness of the temple is part of its subversion since many temples in Thailand use gold especially for their Buddhas.  The Whiteness of the Temple calls to mind Chapter 42 of Moby Dick “The Whiteness of the Whale,” in its enormous ambition. The temple is really an essay in demonology containing as it does modern anti-Christs as varied as Osama Bin Laden and George Bush. Kositpipat is an expansive figure, who was eager to chat with strangers waiting to depart for a flight to Bangkok at the Chiang Rai airport. Modestly dressed in blue denim and sandals, he looked more like a mid-Twentieth Century revolutionary figure than a 21^st Century artist and provocateur in the style Julian Schnabel or Ai Weiwei, as he talked openly about his wealth and the ll0 assistants who work with him on the temple. Naturally Buddhist themes infuse his work, though the kind of worshippers who come to his temple might more likely be found in Chelsea. "I intend to remain a painter for the cause of Buddhism until the last day of my life," he has commented.  "Nothing can ever change me or divert me from this course...."

Thailand Journal IX: They Shoot Elephants, Don’t They?

Photograph by Hallie Cohen

The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation rescues elephants that have resorted to begging (even in the streets of a metropolis like Bangkok), from over use in trekking and from landmines. Even in a country like Thailand where goods tend to be cheap, elephants, who can eat 400 pounds of food a day, cost at least $12,000 a year to maintain. In a way the foundation is returning elephants to the sacred status they’d had before they became orphaned by modernity and it recognizes the extraordinary characteristics of the elephant. Elephants which have approximately 40,000 muscles in their trunk are as flexible as they are strong. They can pick up an egg without cracking it while pulling down a tree. Within the chain of animal being, they are approximately sixth in intelligence, coming after dolphins, bonobos and chimps to name a few of their compatriots in the animal kingdom. The foundation, which routinely tests elephants, has determined that they probably see dichromatically and experience most of the world with a lateral vision that leaves a blind spot at the center. Mahouts care for the elephants and there are certain words that are used to direct them. “Bai” means to go forward,  “ben,” turn and “how,” stop. Elephants are regal animals and there is something wonderfully anachronistic and romantic about riding one (you feel like a maharajah). To control such a beast creates the illusion of enormous power though if one of these peaceful animals turned on you, it would be all over.

The Two Goldfinches

The Goldfinch—both the Donna Tartt novel and the 17^th century masterpiece by Fabritius—is much in the news lately, the former on the bestseller list and the latter in the “Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshaus” show currently on exhibit at the Frick. Here is Francine Prose in an essay about the book  (“After Great Expectations,” The New York Review of Books, 1/9/14), meditating on the painting, “When we look at Fabritius’s painting…we still understand a truth about visual art that we seem to be forgetting about literature and the language in which it is written: what moves and delights us, what makes us return, again and again to discover what a work of art can tell us, is finally not the image, but the artfulness with which it was created.” Prose has reservations about the book, whose technique she compares invidiously to that of Dickens. She even goes so far as to quote the passage from Great Expectations in which the novelist unearths Miss Havisham’s cobwebbed digs, to underscore what’s the real deal. Celebrity paintings like The Goldfinch and The Girl With the Pearl Earring have seen their superstar status increased even further when they’re appropriated by authors whose books become bestsellers. Tickets for the Frick show have been hard to come by. But if you look at Officer and a Laughing Girl, a Vermeer that’s a staple of the regular Frick collection, you could easily feel the same kind of reservations about the The Girl With the Pearl Earring, as Prose felt about the literary version of The Goldfinch. Officer and a Laughing Girl has four elements that blow all comers out of the water: the open mullioned window which is the source of the light, the wall map which is the source of historical context, the soldier with his big dark hat who sucks the air out of the room and of course the enigmatic laughing maiden. Is she seducing or being seduced? The Girl With the Pearl Earring is a tronie, an idealized portrait, whose power derives from its control. However Officer and a Laughing Girl exemplifies both the craftsmanship Prose is talking about and the power of the object or set piece on which it’s applied--in this case the breathless apprehension of a new world.