Totalitarianism Today

TOTALITARIANISM TODAY

Friday, December 20, 2002

Good movies for game-theory conversations.

Nothing excites me more than the thought of a movie which combines what I love most about economics (game theory, experimental economics), philosophy (hermenuetics, ordinary language, and context), and stimulus for conversation. Off the top of my head, several movies immediately come to mind under this rubric. Who can forget the thrill of discussing the zero-sum assumptions of that coketale classic, "Wall Street"? Or the strategic bets at the base of "Hunt for Red October"? Or how "Artificial Intelligence" presented a challenge to mainstream notions of agency and rational actor models? And there are more.

Director Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind", most compellingly reviewed by A.O. Scott for The New York Times, attempts to script the mental landscape of John Nash, who discovered the Nash equilibrium. Towards the end of the film, you will either kick yourself for presuming Jennifer Connelly's prior state of reason, or admire her for the strength of her love.

Pulitzer-prize winning playwright David Mamet's directorial debut, "House of Games", explores the world of professional gamblers and confidence men. Roger Ebert has a few interesting things to say about this film, until his comments dissolve into insipid whining-- Ebert's characterstic tone:

"The basic idea is this," the con man (Joe Mantegna) explains to the woman who has become his student (Lindsay Crouse). "It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine."

He demonstrates. They are in a Western Union office, pretending to wait for money to be wired to him. A man enters and asks the clerk if his money has arrived. It has not. He sits down. Mantegna gets him into conversation, finds out he is a Marine who needs bus fare to get back to Camp Pendleton, and smoothly says, "You're in the Corps? I was in the Corps." Having established this bond, Mantegna offers to give the guy the bus fare, just as soon as Mantegna's own wire arrives. He gives his confidence. He shows he trusts the other guy. Of course, the other man's wire arrives first, and of course he offers Mantegna money. The beauty of it is, in the entire transaction, Mantegna has never asked for money--only offered it.

This fraudulent offering of trust underlies one Mamet film after another, and yet is never repetitive because it unlocks unlimited dramatic possibilities. There is hardly ever a slow moment in Mamet's films because even small talk, even passing the time of day, is fraught with the hidden motives of the speakers. Even when nothing seems to be happening, our attention is held by the illusion that something must be happening, but we can't spot it. This is Mamet's con on us. He offers us his confidence that we can follow his plot.

How might game theory approach the classic "cat and mouse"? Given all the overlay of games in this film, what intrigues me the most is trying to discover the rules or assumptions to which the chacacters respond at any given time.

Another game-theory-thinking film is French director's Alain Resnais "Last Year at Marienbad", which has been called everything from "surrealist" to "avant-garde" to "non-linear"-- how about just French? Surprisingly enough, Roger Ebert waxed poetic about this art-house film:

Yes, it's easy to smile at Alain Resnais' 1961 film, which inspired so much satire and yet made such a lasting impression. Incredible to think that students actually did stand in the rain to be baffled by it, and then to argue for hours about its meaning--even though the director claimed it had none. I hadn't seen ``Marienbad'' in years, and when I saw the new digitized video disc edition in a video store, I reached out automatically: I wanted to see it again, to see if it was silly or profound, and perhaps even to recapture an earlier self--a 19-year-old who hoped Truth could be found in Art.

Viewing the film again, I expected to have a cerebral experience, to see a film more fun to talk about than to watch. What I was not prepared for was the voluptuous quality of ``Marienbad,'' its command of tone and mood, its hypnotic way of drawing us into its puzzle, its austere visual beauty. Yes, it involves a story that remains a mystery, even to the characters themselves. But one would not want to know the answer to this mystery. Storybooks with happy endings are for children. Adults know that stories keep on unfolding, repeating, turning back on themselves, on and on until that end that no story can evade.

The film itself presents a riddle of seduction, "a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge". The characters evade stereotyping; the gambler, M, is a particularly ravishing figure for analysis.

Who is "he"? M, the gambler, the apparent husband of the Woman? It certainly fits the narrative paradigm. The Gambler is the master of the Seven Game, one which he never loses. He quickly engages the Stranger in the Game... and of course the Stranger loses. As an anonymous guest later observes, "The beginner always wins. Simply take an even number... the lowest whole uneven number. It's a logarthmic series. You pick a different row each time, divide by three... seven times seven equals forty-nine."

Resnais makes it all the more captivating through his inclusion of the game of nim.

Other notables include: "Pi", which approaches markets from the position of numbers theory; political drama "Return to Paradise" presents a prisoner's dilemma with a twist, in which neither criminal faces jail time if he refuses to confess, but if neither confesses, a friend will be put to death; and the possibly most poignant "War Games", showing a defense department computer, which, after repeatedly playing tic-tac-toe, discovers grim trigger strategies and concludes that nuclear war is a "strange game - the only winning move is not to play."

We are all actors. Some of us, however, seem more mindful of our scripts than others. Awareness and rational engagement provide two very sexy ways in which to explain human agency and behavior.

Friday, December 20, 2002

Americans need a number of rights divisible by 3.

According to America's most reputable newspaper, the Bush administration and the Rehnquist Court are looking to reduce the the bill of rights to what has been termed "a manageable six". Maybe this will cut down delays in the legal system.

Friday, December 20, 2002

Watch where you protest, lest you show up as an "enemy of the state".

Brian Debose reports for the Washington Times on a new network of surveillance cameras planned for the city.

The Metropolitan Police Department will activate surveillance cameras next month along city streets for the first time since city officials passed new legislation. Department officials made the announcement yesterday on their Web site, stating they would activate the network of 14 cameras and install more to monitor the International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER, march from Jan. 17 to 19 and the D.C. March for Life on Jan. 22.

Friday, December 20, 2002

Reasons to hit the hot tub.

Disgusting.

Friday, December 20, 2002

Fixing the economy.

What better way to stimulate the economy than by having American taxpayers bail out Worldcom, courtesy of a State Department contract for $360 million.

The latest contract, announced today, is a 10-year agreement for WorldCom to provide as much as $360 million worth of data and Internet services to the State Department.

This is the third government contract Worldcom has recieved since November. Just goes to show how nicely the US government rewards good business practice.

Thursday, December 19, 2002

What kind of war will it be?

The latest turf battle concessions will be made in the debates over what kind of strategy to pursue in the war on Iraq. So far, the chicken-hawks appear much more optimistic about this war than the generals. Of course, optimism is always easier if your idea of participation involves sitting on the sidelines.

Pentagoners are divided on the issue, as Toby Harnden reports from Washington:

Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon deputy, believes that Saddam's government will collapse swiftly. But Gen Eric Shineski, chief of the US army, and Gen James Jones, head of the Marine Corps, are said to have questioned his view.

They have argued that there should be planning for a worst-case scenario called "Fortress Baghdad" in which Saddam and his elite forces withdraw to the capital and lure American troops into street fighting that could involve chemical or biological weapons.

The Pentagon's current battle plan involves a "rolling start" in which a highly mobile ground attack is combined with aerial bombardment, US special forces and SAS raids plus psychological operations designed to persuade Iraqis to defect.

Senior officers in the Pentagon are worried that there might not be enough reinforcements on hand if things go wrong. But hawks like Mr Wolfowitz accuse the generals of being overly cautious.

Meanwhile, the Vatican's position on this war is no longer ambiguous, as it has condemned any so-called "preventive war" against Iraq as "aggression". Archbishop Renato Martino, who heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said: "Preventive war is a war of aggression and does not come under the definition of a just war." The Vatican also called for weapons inspections of Israel too:

The Vatican yesterday said the operations of the international inspection in Iraq should also include other countries like Israel "which the UN had taken a decision against it that has been forgotten."

The Vatican also stressed that the "fighting of brothers taking place in the holy lands on daily basis" requires embarking on a policy "based on honoring man's dignity and rights."

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Why I am relieved to no longer be classified as an "illegal alien"

Jill Sergeant reports:

Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars.

Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000.

So much for the benefits of complying with the law...

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Look what the cat dragged in...

I was looking at Joanne's sitemeter yesterday when I noticed a funny boolean phrase that went something like this-- "Virginia Postrel brilliant". Hmmmm-- now there's a mystery worth solving. I wonder if Virginia Postrel is still seeking self-affimation on the web? Well Virginia, search no more. And merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 19, 2002

I wish my city loved me.

Two more cities decided to opt out of the US Patriot Act due to concerns about constitutional rights being violated. If both resolutions pass, the Oakland, California and Flagstaff, Arizona would become the 19th and 20th local governments to formalize their opposition to provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

Some of the other other-minded cities recently passed resolutions calling the Patriot Act "a threat to the civil rights of the residents of their communities. These cities include the Massachusetts cities of Cambridge, Northampton and Amherst and the township of Leverett, as well as the town of Carrboro, North Carolina.

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Your braver, better, bigger new world.

The French would be shocked to discover the US government's latest strategy in genetic identification-- identification by body odor. The DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has begun soliciting scientists for assistance in this project, which they hope to complete by 2006. Why does this sound like something out of a bad, cheesy sci-fi flick?

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Digging for gold.

Mark Lewis writes about conspiracy to suppress the price of gold. Blanchard, of New Orleans recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Barrick Gold and J.P. Morgan Chase, accusing them of conspiring to suppress the price so they could profit by short-selling.

Stoked by war jitters, the falling dollar and concerns about the global economy, gold has soared past the $345-per-ounce level, its highest point since 1997. But Donald Doyle, who runs privately held Blanchard, alleges the current price is less than half of what it would have been if Barrick, one of the world's biggest producers, had not worked with J.P. Morgan to surreptitiously dump bullion on the market.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Park City, Utah.

The slopes were great-- nothing like the sound of skis screeching across blue ice to remind you that you are alive. Always adrenaline. And there is nothing in the universe that beats sitting down in front of a warm fire after a long day of skiing, armed with only a fresh cold beer and freshly-chapped lips.

So I sat down with a local beer called Polygamy Porter brewed right here in Park City. What better way to stimulate the local economy while simultaneously warming my toes? Alas, in Utah, relaxation comes with a price. Apparently, the Mormons in Utah have taken offense to an alcohol named after a pratice promulgated by their famous founder, Joseph Smith. An outdoor advertising agency that did business with Wasbath beers even refused to put up billboard featuring Polygamy Porter's six-pack of wives, as Mormons expressed annoyance at the caption, "You can't have just one". Mormons need to learn how to have fun.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Noble Nobels

In his Nobel Prize lecture, author Imre Kertesz talked about God, intellectual independence, the sacred private sanctuary that is writing, and life after communism. Notably, he commented:

Here the notion that the world is an objective reality existing independently of us was an axiomatic philosophical truth. Whereas I, on a lovely spring day in 1955, suddenly came to the realization that there exists only one reality, and that is me, my own life, this fragile gift bestowed for an uncertain time, which had been seized, expropriated by alien forces, and circumscribed, marked up, branded - and which I had to take back from "History", this dreadful Moloch, because it was mine and mine alone, and I had to manage it accordingly.

Needless to say, all this turned me sharply against everything in that world, which, though not objective, was undeniably a reality. I am speaking of Communist Hungary, of "thriving and flourishing" Socialism. If the world is an objective reality that exists independently of us, then humans themselves, even in their own eyes, are nothing more than objects, and their life stories merely a series of disconnected historical accidents, which they may wonder at, but which they themselves have nothing to do with. It would make no sense to arrange the fragments in a coherent whole, because some of it may be far too objective for the subjective Self to be held responsible for it.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Bravado-boasting babes.

David Brooks, more commonly known as editor of The Weekly Standard, discusses love and success on American university campuses. It seems that success and love aren't too compatible by Brooks' standards.

One young man from a small farm town on the other side of me heard the exchange and for the next few minutes I could see him brooding. Finally he let forth with a little tirade on how the women on his campus had destroyed romance by making it so transactional. He didn't quite call the woman and her friends sluts, but he was heading in that direction. As he spoke, I could feel the three women on my left shaking with rage, making little growls of protest but politely not interrupting him. I knew they were only waiting to explode. Eventually they let him have it. They didn't deny his version of reality, that sex is sometimes transactional. Their main point was that guys have been acting this way all along, so why shouldn't they.

I'll give Brooks some credit for catching this. Girls haven't gotten more comfortable with casual sex-- they've just gotten more comfortable with talking about it. Like the boys in the locker room, educated women have the balls to boast and swagger, advertising their sexual conquests shamelessly.

Now the first thing to be said about this state of affairs is that every recent survey of youth sexual activity I've seen over the past several years reveals that young people are having less sex than their predecessors were 10 and 20 years ago. Young women may talk more baldly about sex, but it is simply not true that they are more promiscuous or casual about it.

Instead, their conversational style is a reflection of the amazing self-confidence of the women on these campuses. The single most striking--if hard to define--difference between college campuses today and college campuses 20 years ago is in the nature and character of the female students. They are not only self-confident socially. They are self-confident academically, athletically, organizationally, and in every other way.

There are far more women than men enrolled in America's colleges. In 1997, women earned 25 percent more bachelor's degrees and 33 percent more master's degrees than men, and that gap widens every year. In general the women carry themselves with an appearance of ease that must have been matched only by that of the old WASP bluebloods when these schools were oriented around their desires. Twenty years ago, if memory serves, it was mostly us men who performed the role of seminar baboons--speaking up and showing off our knowledge, just as today it is mostly men who fill the op-ed pages with ideas and pontifications.

Unfortunately for these ballsy ladies, everyone knows the truth about locker-room bragging rights-- the one who boasts the most gets the least. The men who are really comfortable with casual sex don't ever consider it a conquest-- it's too casual for that. Men and women that have to brag who they do aren't doing very much.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude.

Fareed Zakaria explores changes in the Bush administration's foreign policy credo since September 11th, and comes to some sad conclusions.

For Rice�and the president�September 11, 2001, completely changed American policy. As my source explained, �People who say that a single event can�t produce that much change are wrong. Pearl Harbor caused a massive shift in America�s engagement with the world. So did 9-11.� The official also noted the shift in Washington�s attitudes toward nation-building. "Nothing now is in the category of unimportant. Small countries, failing states, all become crucial in the war against terror."

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Joyce Carol Oates, Memento, and the muse of memory.

In Oates' short story, "What Then, My Life?", the protagonist struggles with memory and the essential subjectivity it arouses:

"Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live."

Indeed, reminiscing often reveals precisely how tricky memory can be. When a group of old friends sit down to reminisce about "back then", it is always surprising to note the difference in what they remember and what meanings they attributed to these various memories. The fact that we base our cognitive interpretation of the present on the meaning of our memories suddenly seems more troublesome.

In the movie, Memento, the director shows the events in reverse order, partly to put us in the shoes of the protagonist, and partly to show us precisely why we can never be in the shoes of the protagonist. Charles Taylor explains the problem of memory in Memento as follows:

Since mysteries show us things before we can make sense of them, Nolan's method makes a kind of sense; he sustains our desire to see what happens at a low, steady simmer. His detective is Leonard Shelby, a former insurance investigator whose short-term memory has been decimated since finding his wife raped and murdered. He can focus in chunks of about 15 minutes.

After that, no matter how many times he's met someone, it's as if he's meeting them for the first time. To help him remember, he takes Polaroids of people and places, with relevant information jotted down on the back. And he's turned his body into a giant memo pad, with the important clues he's discovered tattooed on his flesh. The catch, of course, is that he relies on any information that he's written down as gospel. He can't process anything he learns later on that might contradict it.

The brilliance of this movie lies in the director's vision of a film hijacked by memory-- a film in which the protagonist reverts to near tabula rasa every fifteen minutes. Director Christopher Nolan's ingenuity even dazzled the likes of Steven Soderberg, who offered to be the executive producer for Nolan's next film.

Leonard, or Lenny, as his wife liked to call him, is the rebel without intuition, and his attempts to avenge his wife's death find their foil in this foible for forgetting. At one point, Lenny remarks: "Memory is just an interpretation--it's not a record. Memory changes the color of a room..." or the smell of an afternoon.

Building on this view later in the film, Lenny makes a self-contradictory comment:

"Memory is unreliable. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Memories can be distorted; they're irrelevant if you have the facts".

The last statement does not follow from Lenny's preceding statements. There can be no question that memory is unreliable, that cases based on eyewitness testimony are prone to error, that we often agree to see things a certain way if pressured by figures of authority, or if an external reward might be gained for a different perception. Rattner (1983) estimated that 0.5% of people arrested and charged with "indexed crimes" are wrongfully convicted (8,500 wrongful convictions in the USA in a single year. Out of over 200 cases, 52.3% were from eyewitness misidentifications. Indeed, eyewitness testimony is practically useless where issues of fact are concerned.

The extent to which memories are unreliable does not, however, stand in direct relation to the extent to which memories are "irrelevant". In fact, memories are exactly what allow us to place facts in a relevant context. For example, when a state prosecutor attacks the character of the defendant for the purpose of showing that he/she could commit the crime in question, the prosecutor often relies of other witnesses to describe their memories of intercations with the defendant.

Memory also plays an important role in our ethical lives through its relation to conscience. The nagging feeling that we have done something wrong cannot be objectively severed from the memory of wrong. In Memento, memory's relation to conscience comes up towards the end, when Teddy tells Lenny:

"You don't want the truth. You create your own truth. You live in a dream-- a dead wife to pine for, a purpose to give meaning to things."

The lies Hitler told himself to justify the Holocaust, the lies Muhammed Atta believed to crash his plane into the world trade center, the lies a husband tells himself when he visits his mistress-- all of these essential lies that keep things whole, even as a worm rots them from within. Lenny's biggest problem is reconciling memory and reality, or rather, deciding whether such a reconciliation would hurt more than it might help. At the end of the film, Lenny thinks aloud:

"I have to believe in a world outside my won mind. I have to believe my actions have meaning-- even if I can't remember. We all need mirrors to remind us of who we are."

In Andy Klein's review for Salon, the extent to which memory defines this film can be observed in the audience's reaction to it-- a hunger for reinterpretating the events in light of new discoveries.

That is, its puzzles are so intriguing and so impenetrable at first viewing that filmgoers are almost forced to go back for a second look if they want to figure out just what the hell was going on. "Memento" is like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects" in that nearly every scene takes on a different meaning once you know where the film is going.

Exactly. It is so much easier to know where we've been when we have decided where we are going.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

The latest trends in British lager-lout circles

Leave it to the Brits to perfect the art of cheap drinking and brothelitizing. PraguePissUp now centralizes crucial information for the louts who seek a nice weekend of vice at low price abroad. Don't miss this stag heaven, now affordable due to an increased number of budget flights from Britain to Prague.