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[Previously recorded April 20 & May 11, 2018] Viewpoint Diversity gets you closer to the truth, makes you more persuasive, and fosters your growth.
Answers, insights, and commentary on:
- Assimilation vs. Accommodation
- Avoiding Accommodation with Rejection or Manipulation
- Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Confirmation Bias
- Dissent in Myth and Neuroscience
- Foundations of Persuasion and Trust
- Domain knowledge and understanding rebuttals
- How to build trust
- Defining Courage
- Opportunities for Growth and Learning
To learn more:
The Wisdom and/or Madness of The Crowd
Jean Piaget | Wikipedia
Active Information Avoidance | David McRaney
The Power of Myth | Wikipedia
On Liberty | John Stuart Mill
Why Do We Follow The Crowd? | BBC CrowdScience
The Indispensable Milton Friedman | Milton Friedman
How to Build Trust | Frances Frei
Everyone Is Different | Lanny Sherwin
Web: ManOfSteelAnswers.com
Twitter: @mosanswers
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / RSS / Stitcher / YouTube 
#freeyourmind
Long time no see Doc. How have you been doing? I have enjoyed your Ramble Road series so much that I have started practising the same thing during my commute to work. I travel by bus so instead of recording, I write down all my idea about the Trinity films. One thing I realised was the fact that Wondy might have been responsible for the death of people at Veld. Had she not charged in and rescued them earlier, would the German target them for retaliation? Of course, if this is true, Patty Jenkin wouldn’t have explored the idea since it is not the point of the movie or Wondy chose not to talk about it since the whole movie is her bedtime story for the audience (learned this idea from you as well). Are you excited for SDCC this year? Chances of seeing Snyder on stage? Thank you for your work Doc and wish you the best.
Lots going on IRL but good. Glad you’re enjoying a more mindful commute, that’s great!
Absolutely possible interpretation. I edited and softened by WW episode so many times I can’t remember if I ever actually mentioned it in anything actually published. It was definitely in my list of “hypocrisies” on how audiences easily hold Superman responsible for Zod but quickly absolve Wonder Woman of any deaths involving Veld. It’s not impossible to distinguish the two but they’re closer than the GA gives them credit and even if the wholesale destruction of the town by way of super-weapon wasn’t a foreseeable future, the destruction of the town in retaliation by CONVENTIONAL forces should have been ENTIRELY expected. Freeing Veld should have been followed by IMMEDIATE AND INSTANT EVACUATION, irrespective of Ares or a doomsday gas, not sitting on your laurels and enjoyment. Why?
“Next safe crossing is at least a day away.”
That means, rationally, that there’s fighting up and down the trench line stretching a days-worth of travel in one direction and as much at least in the other. What happens if you PIERCE that line? Does the other side say, “Good job, you earned that, wow!” And leave you alone for a night to recuperate? Of course not! After watching WW, the War Buff and I “sketched” out the battle lines with our french fries at the diner debriefing. No, the rest of the German line can’t tolerate a breach of the line because of all the issues it represents. It allows Allied forces to flow through and flank the rest of the the German lines, attack them from behind, cut off their supplies, travel freely behind enemy lines, attack targets of opportunity, run espionage and sabotage (basically what happened!), etc. Which means the German line would have converged on Veld immediately! The Allies would have known that and encouraged everyone to evac while they still held Veld.
Historically, the one of the best examples of managing to break the German line was 1917 Battle of Cambrai, where British Tank Corps (474 tanks in all) smashed 12 MILES of German line only to be completed cancelled out by the German counter-attack because the Tank Corps lacked the infantry to exploit and hold the breach created (akin to WW at Veld). Haha, I’m getting to mired in stuff I said I’d keep away from WW….
The point is: What is more foreseeable? A) An alien race sends 1 lone asthmatic infant in last 30 years… is going to come and violently invade suddenly because you breach a ship that’s 20,000 years old?; or B) The Germans immediately and violently counter-attack a vulnerability in their line once breached? So logistics of the superweapon aside, there’s some issues there, but the superweapon can add some causation too (but not likely foreseeable responsibility in my thinking).
All of these technical and historical details make the bedtime story a bit of a mess so a streamlined story is much more sensible for that sake.
For the DC films going forwards I’ll wait to watch them before waxing on them.
Thanks for the response Doc. Not sure where are you going with the main topic in Ep 61 but I guess it might be a tough pill to swallow for us since you feel the need to make a whole primer episode like this. Anyway, I am ready for new ideas, new “viewpoints”. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait 5 months. Haha. Have a nice day ahead Doc. you will always have my support.
Thanks John! Sorry but it’s a whole primer mini-series! 😛 The mini-series is a few eps (so not 61, though that’s probably the “heaviest” one), but I’m not in the tough pill business. The fandom has it hard enough without me criticizing it (too much). I focus on sharing my esoteric interests and, if you’re interested, you’re welcome to come along, else no worries if you’re not. Just after the mini series the esoteric is in some ways less broadly applicable than prior episodes based in science, or established literary analysis, or history, etc. Basically easier to dismiss outright, so you can view the mini-series more as self-defense than preemptive attack, haha.
In the latter realm, I feel like my RRSSS blogs basically linked to all the stuff already… there’s the classic CGPGrey video and ViHart just did a concise one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
Sorry doc I’m repeating this question as my previous comment seem to be not posting due to awaiting for the moderation
Then what do you think of wonder woman line in the end about I believe in love? Some people I talk to said it is jarring when the film all of sudden transition from being serious and gritty to fairy tale like sailormoon haha.
Anyway that is the reason why most people said that wonder woman is more hopeful and optimistic than superman himself and much more successful representing that aspect in the movie than snyder did.
I’m not seeing the other comment so it may have been eaten by the automod / spam filter?
I thought I commented on “I believe in love” in my WW ep? Sorry, the WW is one of my fuzziest hard-to-remember episodes because how many times I changed it. I don’t think I took issue with it tonally because I accepted the fairy story framework. If you impale a man with a sword… there’s going to be LOTS of blood… but WW is bloodless like The Princess Bride is- properly and appropriately- basically bloodless (I’m not being literal, I recall “Hello, my name is…” quite clearly, haha).
My issue was with the lack of rigor behind the concept. After fairly challenging films, “I believe in love” is a bit of a truism… a little cheap, a little easy, unconfrontational, and accepted even if no one has any idea what she means or what she’s talking about… so, I believe (again I can’t remember fully) I pushed back on it a little in the episode to challenge the listener: WHAT is she saying? WHAT does she mean? How would this be translated in another language? How is HER love stronger than LITERAL GODS OF LOVE- Aphrodite and (Cupid? Eros? I don’t remember who I used)? How is her love stronger than Zeus’s “I give up my life and last bit of power” sacrificial love? Etc.
To be honest, I don’t remember if I answered this because an answer doesn’t come to mind. Does this make WW a bad film? No, of course not, but if we think critically we should spot cheap tricks like this (or use them deftly ourselves, haha, shhhh). I agree that sometimes people will agree, nod, and insist upon things not fully thought through… and that can be frustrating if you see through it or see agreement without understanding or see some underlying contradiction. I think I raised that in one of the Briefs. Somehow the audience is very comfortable with the JL letting Steppenwolf die when he could be saved and captured. Why? What is it about saying “love” that suddenly makes all your actions and motives OK? Etc.
That said, given that those practices are so ingrained in mainstream storytelling, I don’t blame WW for it… it was TRYING to tell that kind of story and employ those types of tools and devices and it basically WORKED. I’m more inclined to be frustrated when it’s assumed that ALL movies are trying to follow a Spielberg template and that they’ve FAILED if they use ambiguity, disorientation, dissonance, challenge, symbol, and reference… instead of tugging on heart-strings and banal truisms. Different works and different artists should be afforded the courtesy to be looked at on their terms. So I don’t tear apart WW’s logic or historical reality because it’s NOT a documentary. It’s then crazy to criticize an R-Rated BvS trip by All Ages Four-Quadrant Film metrics. Anyways, not saying anything new! Maybe a little loopy from the paint fumes! I need to take a nap if I’m going to work on putting something out this weekend! Thanks for writing! 🙂