I was going to wait ’till the whole series was finished before mentioning the new Adam Curtis Documentary, The Trap, that’s showing on BBC 2 (and presumably being repeated on BBC 4) at the moment, for reasons which will become clear later on. But I’ve decided to because I got so enraged by this article in The Guardian, the bit that specifically annoyed me was this…
Human beings were driven by genes, programmed for survival, Richard Dawkins’s 1976 book The Selfish Gene argued. As Dawkins put it, “our DNA is an encoded description of the worlds in which our ancestors lived”.
…which tells me that Madeleine Bunting hasn’t read Dawkins’ book or if she has she’s not understood it. As Dawkins points out at length within the pages of the book, and many other times since, it’s the genes that are selfish not the organism (people). It’s a real shame that people don’t read this book because if it shows anything about Dawkins’ views on human nature it’s that he is an optimist and regards cooperation as a key feature. People who haven’t read Dawkins tend to use the selfishness is good argument from Dawkins purely based on the title of the book and then use this as a stick to beat science in general. The idea that Darwinism is somehow all about violent selfish competition is just nonsense infact the metaphor of selfishness as Dawkins uses it doesn’t even preclude co-operation on a genetic level let alone on an organism or species level.
Anyway, the reason I wasn’t going to say anything about this series is because it’s not over yet and if it follows the pattern of Curtis’s previous documentaries commenting on the content of the first part is a bit like commenting on a book that you’ve not finished. i.e. liekly to make you look a bit silly.
Having said that, things that stood out:
- Use of the Assault on Precinct 13 theme on the sound track.
- A rather strange example of the prisoners dilemma was used to explain it, crucially (I’m guessing) a formulation which doesn’t allow iteration (because one of the actors is dead for certain results) crucially unlike Dawkins use of the dilemma in The Selfish Gene (guess my theory*)
- Curtis repeatedly saying such and such was “proved by science”. As all good Popperians know; you don’t prove stuff correct in science, you only prove stuff incorrect.
… anyway, I expect I’ll say more in a couple of weeks, suffice it to say that whether or not you agree with the premise or conclusions drawn The Trap is polemic documentary film making at its best, intelligent and expertly crafted.
*In addition to the theory that you have to guess as I think it’s going to be a spoiler if I write it down here, I also have another theory about how the iterated prisoners dilemma might apply to US presidential politics, ask me about it in the pub maybe…
And then Charlie said:
OK, I haven’t seen the documentary yet, but given Charlie Brooker’s wildly enthusiastic review in the Guardian, I’ll definitely be getting it off UKNova.
On Madeleine Bunting’s article, the thing that really jumped out at me was “It’s an ideology of freedom that has also created violent chaos. In Iraq, the US believed it had only to remove Saddam Hussein and liberate the people, and order would spontaneously emerge.” Which, to me, is a perfect example of a lazy journalist crowbarring an anecdotal supporting argument which sounds vaguely plausible, but of course, has nothing to do with the overarching themes that she’s really trying to discuss. Yes, perhaps the US’s complete lack of planning for post-war rebuilding derives from a misunderstanding of human nature, or perhaps it was just because the US was never very interested in nation building, but only in securing strategic economic resouces, I don’t know. The point is it’s an open question, not a settled one, and to blindly assert it in an article to back up a fairly speculative historical thesis is a fairly irritating trick I see in a lot of op-ed, especially the Guardian and the Telegraph (ooh, don’t get me started on the Telegraph; if only it wasn’t for their seductively enjoyable crossword I’d be able to boycott it effectively).
N.B. Popper’s falsificationism: I yield to no-one in my admiration for Popper’s contributions to the philosophy of science, but it is more for falsificationism’s approach to demarcating science from pseudo-science that I admire it. So, at least science can in principle be falsified, whereas pseudo-science can not. But this does not mean that that’s all there is to science. I’m not trying to push any particular Kuhnian / Lakatosian alternative to “what science is”, as I think, like a lot of exact definitions, it’s really quite hazy. My main point is that there are things that can be “proved by science” in quite a day-to-day, looser sense of “proved” rather than in a really robust epistemological sense (which is too strong for a lot of other stuff, such as going from statistical correlations to causal hypotheses).
“Proved by science” does sound a bit wishy-washy though, and I’m sure you’re right that Curtis is drawing stronger conclusions than the scientists he quotes would like him to. It was just that I’ve been thinking about Popper’s view of science for quite a long time, and this seemed a good opportunity for me to go on in a lazy, slightly uninformed way about it.
And then tom said:Awesome. the more lazy uninformed commenting the better, this is after all a weblog, not a respected national newspaper.
The term proven by science always leaps out at me because I tend to say it quite a lot as a joke.
Anyway, hooray for UK Nova (not the official opinion of my employer). James or Abbie pointed out last night that although they’d not seen the documentary the idea sounded a bit like putting the horse before the cart i.e. the conclusions that people derived from game theory results were informed by the unique geopolitical set up of the cold war rather than causing it …
And then Charlie said:Does the Beeb have a particularly strong view on UK Nova? I’d always assumed that it was indulgently tolerated by Auntie, as I’ve occasionally seen programme-makers post there, and UK Nova has not competing with DVDs as a house rule.
And then tom said:yeah, as far as I can tell the BBC doesn’t really pursue these things (esp. UK Nova; as you say their strict UK only and no DVD policy means their pretty safe) unless rights holders complain i.e. if some music or a picture of Michael Jackson or something is used, stuff that you pay for on a per-broadcast basis.
And then tom said:… though for obvious reasons that’s not the official line.
Also, I was directed to this article about how scientists/engineers use language, specific meaning for words etc. in a way that can confuse things. Seemed relevant.
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