Passing thoughts on Rise of the Planet of the Apes 14 Aug 201114 Aug 2011 Spoilers. Look away. As usual Hollywood cannot present how scientists actually do their work. But Rise is a much better film than I expected. For a start, the social dominance behaviours of primates was well presented, along with submission behaviours, threat stares, reciprocal altruism and a host of documented behaviours. And that was just the humans… Seriously, one of the major things about this film that I liked was that the three keepers of the chimp (and orang and gorilla; more on this in a minute) facility behaved exactly like the chimps. Moreover, the only moral actor in that facility was the lead chimp Caesar, who several times prevented innocent humans from being killed by other primates. The gene therapy aspect was well done, and even dealt with the adaptability of the immune response to viral infections. The final sequence over the credits is also a reminder of how epidemiology works (which reminds me, I am looking forward to Contagion). The moral aspect of this film was uppermost, and the science was put in its service, understandably. But apart from the incompetent scientists (I have seen science done this bad in medical research, but not often) and the stereotypical Big Pharma suits (really? We need this sort of moral dichotomy? Things are much more interesting when the characters are conflicted or complex), overall it was a damned good movie. And what is even more impressive is that it retrospectively made sense of the appalling Planet of the Apes. Generally if you make a film it should stand alone as a narrative, but there were so many McGuffins in that film that this one was necessary. What is so good about this one is that it does stand on its own. I give it a B+. General Science Pop culture Social dominance
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Read More
General Science Vale Wheeler, and Libet updated 14 Apr 2008 Daniel Holz at Cosmic Variance has a beautifully written obit for John Wheeler. We are grateful for the time the great thinkers spend on us students. Wired has an article on the updating of the classic experiments by Benjamin Libet on the fact that conscious choices occur after the brain… Read More
Freedom Phobosophy 14 Aug 201714 Aug 2017 As everyone knows, philosophy comes from the two Greek words philo and sophos, and means, roughly, the love of wisdom, although as everyone also knows, Socrates declared his wisdom was his knowledge that he knew nothing. In recent years (by which I mean increasingly since the 1970s), there has been… Read More
A B from me. The most interesting behavior I observed was from the man three rows in front of me, who kept shouting ‘stupid monkeys’ throughout. He stood up toward the end to explain to the audience he liked monkeys really. He was about 15 years older than you’d expect, given the behavior. What annoyed me most about the film – apart from him, of course – was the main moral argument, which consisted in the repeated assertion that you need to accept the ways things are. It’s probably the dominant one in these films. Homer’s argument – if there was a law, it would be against it – is slightly better.
Okay, I did not see the movie and I’m not going to, but if the TV ads tell me anything (which is questionable), how are there enough apes to overcome superior human numbers and technology? I will understand if you do not want to publish spoilers, but please at least send an owl delivered note.
Think conquistadors, Susan (interesting and tangential comment: we always think of the Spanish as having superior technology to the Incas – firearms and all – but the Inca woven armor was better able to stop a bullet than the Spanish armor was able to stop an arrow, and the Incas could shoot two arrows in the time it took the Spanish to reload).