Rational fiction and emotional fiction

Posted by שי שפירא on June 26, 2017
Posted in: Books, Morals. Leave a comment

I’ve recently finished reading “The Architect’s Apprentice” by Elif Shafak, which made me think about the difference between the kind of fiction enjoyed by computer geeks like myself, versus the kind of fiction enjoyed by other people. It’s remarkable how different the two groups are – When I meet a computer programmer, or some other person who seems clearly versed in the world of computer geeks, there is a striking amount of books I can be sure they read (or are at least strongly aware of), movies they watched, ideas they know, vocabulary they will understand. And most or all of those things tend to be completely foreign to anyone else. What is it that makes some stories appeal to this particular group? This book made me think about a possible answer.

The book is very well written – in many ways, her writing style is exactly the kind of writing style I would want to use if I ever write fiction. Focused, dynamic, chaotic. But there is one important difference between this book and the kind of books that get put into a geek’s reading list – her characters are, without exception, motivated by emotions. This combines into a theory that’s been developing in my mind about what makes computer geeks into such a defined subculture – geeks read about people motivated by goals, ideas and ideologies. Non-geeks read about people motivated by feelings.

(Note: Some spoilers ahead for The Architect’s Apprentice and for Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I’ll try to keep them as vague as possible)

I really started realizing this at the end of the book, where it turns into a kind of detective story, making me draw some parallels to what I consider to be the best detective story I’ve ever read – The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. While The Architect’s Apprentice (unlike The Name of the Rose) does not start as a detective story, the final act in both books is quite similar. And that is where the difference comes to play.

Umberto Eco’s William of Baskerville is a quintessential geek’s protagonist. He is an outside observer – he has no emotional investment in his investigation. He is rational to the point of exaggeration, avoiding any part of his personal life being put into the story. We know very little about him not because he hides anything, but because it’s not important. He does not want the story to be about him; he wants it to be about the investigation. Adso of Melk is slightly less rational than him, but not for lack of trying. He clearly looks up to William as the proper model for how to behave. And most importantly, this is not true only for heroes, but also for villains – the story is full of ideological debates, and the final act reveals the ideological debate behind the entire mystery. I believe that was not too much of a spoiler, because a geek would not expect otherwise – of course a murder mystery would be about ideology, why else would you have a great story?

Compare this with the final act of The Architect’s Apprentice, so similar in style – the protagonist learns the truth, connects the dots and confronts the antagonist to learn the whole story. But that story is based on completely different motivations. Jahan does not seem to believe in anything. He does not care about the world around him, other than his love or admiration for some people, his hatred or fear towards others (love, admiration, hatred, fear – in other words, emotions). He does the work he is ordered to do, and tries to get better at it – though any inspiration he feels towards the professional learning of architecture seems secondary to his admiration towards his master, which gives him the real motivation to advance. When he discovers the conspiracy in the final act, he does not want to fight it to protect the empire, or to destroy the empire, or to make some change in the world; he wants to uncover the conspiracy out of anger (again, an emotion) at the wrongs done to him and his loved ones. It’s not that he lacks empathy or desire to help others, but he does it in a fundamentally emotional way – he wants to help people after seeing their suffering. Several times in the book he encounters a suffering character and tries to help them; Once the sufferer is out of sight, the issue is over. In the final act, we also get to learn the antagonists’ motives: again, emotions. Every single one of them. Anger, love, revenge; Every action of the antagonists is motivated by the desire to hurt someone they are personally angry at, for a personal issue between them.

These two are only representative examples of this difference. Let’s consider some other works of fiction that are considered part of the “geek bookshelf”, so to speak: Frodo Baggins‘s main emotion is fear, and his story is all about conquering it to act for the greater good, to which he is directed by a stream of stoic, rational people who rarely express any emotion at all – Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond, etc. His antagonist is basically pure evil – Sauron does not seem to be insulted, or angry, or greedy: He is simply pure evil, and acts as if it is a force of nature with no emotions. Emotions do exist in their story, but as secondary phenomena that can be enjoyed where possible, or must be conquered when necessary – the successful character growth for each of the younger characters is being able to control their emotions. Frodo his fear, Pippin his hastiness, Boromir his pride.

Eddard Stark is fully motivated by maintaining the traditional justice of his kingdom, and even his duty to his family does not take precedence over it. Stannis Baratheon, Daenaris Targaryen and their followers all do the same, though for different traditions. Of those who don’t act to preserve traditional power, many act to overthrow it in the name of some moral worldview – Varys, Beric, Mance. The few characters who are working for pure personal gain either try to hide it, or are seen as mindless pawns in other people’s stories. How about Neo? His choice of “red pill versus blue pill” became a universal symbol for choosing the greater good over the personal gain, but in reality that greater good meant abandoning everything and everyone he knew (and loved, and hated, and felt any emotion towards); Yet it is obviously the right choice, for the geeky audience. Sarah Connor certainly has no time emotional decisions as she’s running for her life, much like countless other rational heroes.

Meanwhile, who do non-geeks watch? James Bond is just as preoccupied with saving the world as Neo or Frodo, but he has no need to conquer his emotions; To the contrary, he
celebrates them. He is loved for being so powerful, that he does not even need to fight his weaknesses and personal interests. Superman has little trouble in interrupting his attempts to save the world to do something for the woman he loves, and Spiderman is much more famous for his emotional breakdowns than for anything he did for the world. This goes a long way back in time: Achilles makes his decisions regarding the life or death of countless others, based on his anger towards Agamemnon or his love towards Patroclus. This would make him a ridiculous (or possibly tragic) side character in a rational story, but is celebrated in an emotional story.

And these are just the rare examples of emotional heroes going to save the world. Saving the world is an extremely common motivation in geeky works of fiction, but extremely rare in others. Because saving the world requires strength and sacrifice; those come at the expense of indulging one’s emotions. It’s not only loving relationships that suffer – indeed, John Sheridan‘s love for Delenn or Benjamin Sisko‘s love for his son must be put at second place as they risk their lives to save the universe; But other emotions can be equally tempting – Indulging in one’s depression, anxiety, envy: while these don’t sound like “pleasurable” things to do, they are easier choices than taking responsibility. The emotional protagonist will not go to save the world because saving the world means they cannot stop at any point and complain of how unfair their situation is; they cannot be angry at their commanding officer and decide not to work with them anymore. When they fail, they must accept it and move on; no time to doubt themselves and punish themselves for their failures. When they need help, they must try to solve their own problems if possible; If not possible, they’d swallow their pride and ask help from others, rather than (as an emotional character would do) stubbornly stay alone and suffer. The emotional hero will have none of that, and is celebrated for it: sacrificing the world for their love, wallowing in angst over their difficulties, maintaining grudges against others, and refusing to ask for help even when it is clearly the right thing to do – all of these are integral parts of the behaviour of the emotional hero, and often described and praised as “human” reactions, unlike the “robotic” reactions of the rational hero.

It’s not that emotions don’t exists in rational fiction, or that rationality does not exist in emotional fiction; the difference is in what the characters aspire to. In a rational story, a
character’s story arc will be about them conquering their emotions to achieve their goals. In an emotional story, the story arc would have them indulging in their emotions; sometimes while achieving their goals, sometimes while failing, sometimes without having a goal at all – because for these stories, the emotions are the center, and people are the center. For geeks – it’s about the bigger picture. More often than not, it’s about saving the world, no matter the personal cost.

In defense of the human mind

Posted by שי שפירא on June 12, 2017
Posted in: Democracy, Software. Leave a comment

Lately, three trends have been becoming stronger and stronger in technological and political news; all three coming from different sources and representing different ideas, but in my opinion all three share a very important and fundamental characteristic – the loss of trust in the human mind, and in its capability of making decisions and managing its own life.

One trend is the increasing worry about the dangers of artificial intelligence research eventually creating a superintelligent being that makes humans obsolete. Of the three trends, this is the only one with which I don’t disagree in principle, only in some details, and I will write a separate post about that soon.

The second is the rising estimation of the power wielded by big Internet companies, especially Facebook and Google – estimation expressed both by their admirers, who describe their algorithms as some sort of magic powers, and even more by their critics, who describe them as some sort of dystopia coming to consume us. What hasn’t been said about them? They know everything about us. They can convince us of anything. They are omnipresent, we cannot escape them. See for example Tristan Harris’s appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast, or Tim Berners-Lee’s letter for the 28th birthday of the World Wide Web.

The third is the increasing tendency of intellectuals throughout the developed world to speak, either explicitly or in hints, against democracy. I don’t know if it can be said to have started there, but the UK brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA have definitely opened the floodgates, with countless people complaining about the idea of “uneducated” people making important decisions by themselves. This includes some people I greatly appreciate and respect (most notably and unfortunately Richard Dawkins, for example).

All three add up to a fairly consistent future: Humans are primitive and unnecessary, and will eventually be replaced by something better. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m definitely not an idealist who will speak poetically about the “majestic” nature of human thought. If it is true that humans are powerless against some algorithms stumbled upon by some Google engineers, we need to accept that and respond accordingly. But how true is that? My very strong impression is that people accept it as true without much scrutiny, and with very little will to fight for the future of their human brains. I suspect there’s something comforting for our current generations in thinking that they are powerless cogs in some machine that runs very well without them, releasing them of any responsibility.

Let’s look at Tristan Harris’s worries (sorry for picking on him; it’s because he’s the one giving the most rational, detailed claim about this that makes it possible to argue with, unlike the simple alarmism that constitutes most of this discourse). He talks about our instincts being “abused to control us“. About technology “hijacking our psychological vulnerabilities“. Why is that? because websites are getting better and better at using tricks to get our attention. He lists a series of methods, backed by psychological studies, that can be used to persuade people of things without them understanding how those work.

The problem is, there is nothing new about this. The idea that persuasion can be done not only by logical debate but also by mind tricks is thousands of years old, as are the complaints against it. Rhetorics have been considered a field of study at least since Aristotle, and I cannot see any way in which Facebook’s “manipulation” methods are any different than the ones described by him – the same techniques Harris describes can be used by a human just as well as by an algorithm, and the absurd thing is that Harris himself admits that, by comparing it to his own past occupation as a magician. In that sense, the idea that “manipulating” algorithms and “fake news” must be made to stop, or that they prove that democracy is unsustainable, becomes amazingly repetitive – it’s the same old anti-democratic argument raised against the first democracy in the world. The intellectuals offering these complaints are again playing the role of Plato or Aristotle complaining about the “sophists” who can convince the masses of everything, clarifying the need for the wise philosopher king to educate the masses in the true virtue. While that has always sounded good in theory, millennia have proven how wrong this kind of thinking is, and how democracy, despite its (very real) shortcomings, is still the best system to rule our societies.

And here is the advantage of understanding how old this problem actually is – we don’t need to invent new solutions. We can look at the old ones and see which works. How can we deal with sophists? Harris’s solution is to make a list of behavioural flaws we should demand them not to make; a reasonable thing to do, but hardly a solution. Just like we don’t expect every person we meet to adopt a series of demands we made from him just like that, so we should not expect it from every software company. Tim Berners-Lee’s suggestions of asking Google and Facebook to act as “gatekeepers” are even worse, when we think about it in this way – would we want to assign any company do decide who gets to talk to us and who doesn’t? This is basically the philosopher king coming back, in CEO form.

So what does work? For many centuries, the answer has been one of the most fundamental ideas of western political philosophy – the way to defeat bad ideas is not by outlawing them, but by debating them and suggesting good ideas instead. Few people argue with this philosophy in general, but it’s very easy to forget to apply it every time the bad idea puts on different clothing – in this case, we are supposed to believe that the fact these bad ideas come from algorithms rather than people somehow makes a difference. I’m still waiting to hear what that difference is. Advetisements have existed as long as capitalism has, and our society survived them. Now the advertisers have more information about us? So does a door-to-door salesman who sees where you live, what you look like, and how you speak as they try to convince you to buy some garbage. Harris is worried about studies showing you can trick people to eat 73% more soup. How much more soup can a sophist convince you to eat? How much soup can Tristan Harris the magician convince you to eat? I want to see those studies. If you don’t compare the algorithms’ persuasion power to a sophist’s persuasion power, you cannot say that the former deserves a different treatment than the latter.

So many people want us to think we’re powerless against a scary world – some tell us politics is too complicated so we should just stay in our little corner and let the experts do the thinking for us, and some tell us that advertisements are too clever so we need to close our eyes until the experts decide what we can be trusted to see. I say – if you’re going to say that human beings cannot handle an advertisement without being brainwashed, you’ll need some better evidence than what we have today. And if that’s not the case, I say let’s do something else – let’s take responsibility for our own minds and our own lives. Let’s learn more about our political systems and make better choices about them. Let’s learn more about the mind tricks used by advertisers so we won’t fall for them. A good place to start (other than Daniel Kahneman’s fantastic books), ironically, is Tristan Harris’s own essays – he gives a very nice description of some of those marketing tactics. I only wish it ended not with “If you want your Agency, you need to tell these companies that that’s what you want from them”; I wish it ended with “now you know what to watch out for; so let’s take some personal responsibility and think for ourselves”. Convincing you to buy a toaster or to vote for a candidate is a small victory for advertisers; Making you think you have no agency until you ask it from them – that’s a huge victory for them, and a loss for you.

Welcome

Posted by שי שפירא on May 30, 2017
Posted in: Blog. 3 Comments

After almost a year of blogging in Hebrew, I’ve decided it’s time to move on to the big league. Too many interesting topics just don’t have a big enough audience in my mother tongue, and if I’m going to be part of the interesting and relevant discussion about these issues, English is the way to go.

So, for all you new readers, who am I?

My name is Shai Shapira. I’m a computer programmer and writer, originally from Israel, but have been moving from place to place constantly for many years now. I’ve worked on information systems and gaming in the past (and still some in the present), but my real passion is to use programming and other engineering skills to make the world a better place, and to advance human knowledge. Which is part of what I’m going to be talking about in this blog.

My interests:

I’m fascinated with understanding how the world works. My Hebrew blog focuses mostly on politics and economy, which I love to study from an engineering point of view – understanding the facts and numbers that make everything run. While I try to do more observation and less debate, I’m definitely not impartial – I’m a staunch supporter of liberty, peace and democracy (of course, all three words have different meaning for different people, you’ll need to read me for a while to understand what I mean by them), and that is often the lens through which I observe the political world.

Other than the human world, I’m fascinated even more with the natural world. Every stone, leaf or insect around us is a complex machine, and I want to understand them. Many people like to approach nature in awe, talking about the majestic power of it; I prefer to be amazed by how rational and simple things become when understood to a low anough level. Reaching this low level where things start to make sense requires a lot of learning, and one of my goals is to reach and simplify that learning.

I’m fascinated with technology, but not the popular kind; I’ve learned the satisfaction of making something (in my case, computer code) and seeing it working by itself probably before I was 10 years old. My interest in computing, as well as in physical machines, has only grown stronger since, but is getting increasingly separate from the commercial world of “technology”, whose trends seem to me ridiculous at best, frightening at worst. I tend to assume that one day, I’ll be the information age equivalent of the Hollywood archetype of the middle-aged man working in his garage on a decades old car, insisting to fix and create things by himself rather than use the commercial options. And hopefully I’ll be better at it.

Most of all, I’m fascinated with the process of knowledge acquisition itself. Our time on Earth is too limited to learn all the things I would like to learn, but only if we assume our current way of learning is the only one. One of my ancestors from 10,000 years ago would probably think they would need all their lives to learn all the information we currently learn by the end of elementary school; Different ways of representing, acquiring and using knowledge makes it much easier for us. And I strongly believe there is more to be done for that, and our descendants will someday be amazed by our ignorance. My prototype is language learning; Becoming a hyperpolyglot serves as my testing ground for understanding how to acquire information more efficiently, using information theory, mnemonics, or any other tool I can harness for it.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading.