We went to a talk the other day about logic in human decision-making and

it’s application for solving conflicts such as the Israel/Palestine

conflict. It was basically full of taking simple things that people do all

the time and putting them into technical terms for computer programmers and

mathematicians. The speaker, Prof Kowalski, went through the Prisoners

Dilemma to show how logic requires probability. Apparently, the most

logical thing to do is to turn on your fellow prisoner. Then he went

through his method of logic, which involves identifying goals and subgoals

and “decompiling” from beliefs and intentions and showed how it was applied

in a proposed solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

The most interesting part of the talk was when people started asking

questions at the end – questions like “what about the role of emotion and

other illogical human characteristics?” and “do humans really have the

capability to treat things in such a logical way?”. the best one really was

“what is the ultimate goal of humanity?” aka – “what is the meaning of

life?”. The professor answered that the biologists say it is to survive and

procreate. someone in the back called out – “well, we’re all on a loser

then!”. While it is true that we are all free to procreate, none of us will

ever be able to survive forever. not in these bodies, anyway…

Last week, we went to see the movie “Adaptation” with Nicolas Cage. It is

made by the same people who made “Being John Malkovitch” which is brilliant,

and this movie followed along in the same footsteps. These moviemakers

excel at getting inside people’s heads, showing what life is like from

someone else’s perspective. It shows what it is like to suffer from social

insecurity, writers block, low self-esteem. It shows a lonely writer, and

how she attaches herself to people who feel passionately about things

because she feels an inability to feel passion herself. It shows how life

can be ordinary one moment and upside down the next, it shows how creation

necessitates destruction. my favorite line (well, there are a few really)

is “you are what you love, not what loves you” and “it is so hard to adapt

as a human, there is some kind of shame in leaving something behind”. The

movie itself takes on the structure of the oruborus – the snake eating it’s

own tail. It is an excellent movie, and I say – go out and see it now!

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