Abstract: Inception is not a smart movie because as far as I can tell the director intended it to "blow people's minds" with a focus on the metaphysical themes. But that debate is old hat. Fortunately, with art you get out what you put in--in garbled form. For me, it is a movie about ideas and purpose. It's a morality play about not living in the past and about choosing what to make of your future.
Inception ends on an intentionally puzzling note. Is Cobb in the real world or not? If it's a dream (almost) anything can happen, so the hypothesis (effectively) can't be falsified. The one piece of evidence that could possibly lead us to reject the theory is the top falling down, but we don't know if it does. If he's not dreaming it is strange that the kids are close to the same age and wearing very similar clothes, that he wakes up without cords attached, that he somehow woke up at all, and that everyone nods at him but no one talks to him, etc. All of this seems left intentionally to draw into question the reality of what we see.
Nolan is drawing our attention to the reality, but he should be hoping that we're mindful enough to draw our attention away, to acknowledge we'll never know if it was real of not--we can't--and that we shouldn't care. We shouldn't care because we don't want to live a life that's "real," we want to experience a certain kind of life: one filled with love, compassion, family, sacrifice, and pleasure. That is the life Cobb finds (we believe) at the end of the movie and the life we should leave the theater intent on creating (not having).
The reality, no pun intended, is that the entire movie is an inception on us. It's a "dream" that helps us to discover the importance of living as opposed to obsessing over trivialities. Much of the movie doesn't make sense (why is Cobb being chased by corporations? where did it start? why do the rules change all the time? and why is the ending ambiguous aside from one hard-to-spot clue?) and we're meant to learn that doesn't matter. We learn movies don't have to be realistic to be thrilling. (They just need copious amounts of violence and explosives. Inception would be a bad movie without them.) We learn that your life might be a computer simulation or a dream, but that doesn't imply it can't be meaningful.
Things matter because we make them matter. The movie is a movie--it isn't real. But we argue about how it "really" ended because we choose to make that important, to make it "real." Inception isn't about metaphysics, it's about ethics. It should be about seeing the world is new ways. It's should be about the power of ideas (our mind) to shape our reality, about how our choices determine what is important and what feels real. We understand on a visceral level that the ending is a happy ending whether it's "real" or not.
Despite the comparisons to The Matrix, Inception is really a counterpoint. The Matrix, like Nozick's experience machine, is about how we live for more than just pleasure (or happiness), and about making the right choices to become the kind of person you want (are meant?) to be. In contrast, Inception shows how what is "real" isn't important. We don't want to be in the "real" world so we can see our "real" kids and have "real" accomplishments. We want to live in the "real" world because the people we care about are there. The real Mal is dead because her projection lacks her vitality, Cobb learns. Limbo (like the experience machine) becomes hell for Mal and Cobb because we need social connections--friends and family--to be happy. We don't need them because they are "real" but because that is how we want to experience life. That's why Cobb needs to be with his kids and why, though the camera draws us to the totem and our frontal lobe draws us to hackneyed metaphysics, we are really being guided toward the inception of a novel idea of why and how to live.
Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
More on Inception
Written 7/23, but on delayed post avoid spoilers.
In a famous experiment subjects were asked for rank 5 jams. Their rankings were pretty consistent, most people preferred one of the two jams you'd expect since they were the most expensive and best-selling. Another set of subjects were asked to rank the same jams--and explain why they preferred their favorite. Same results? No. When people had to think about which jam they liked they couldn't pin down what was so great about the two the first subjects preferred. Instead they tended to pick one of the two jams that were particularly sweet as their favorite, despite the fact that these jams ranked 4th and 5th in the first experiment.
Sometimes it's easy to know the truth about how you feel--as long as you don't think. Your subconscious supercomputer just knows. But you can short that circuit and let your conscious brain take over. And when that happens your liable to "overthink."
I think that's what happened to nearly half the population that saw the end of Inception. You can intuit that the ending is a happy one--your brain knows Cobb is reunited with his kids. But it can't explain why. So some people let their rational brain take over and start spinning yarns. The result:
So with that said here are some thoughts (written after my second viewing) on points of contention in the blogosphere and with things I felt were muddled or confusing.
1. Cobb did get out of the dream at the end. The top was just about to fall. The audience's totem is Cobb's wedding ring. Watch closely and you can see that whenever it's a dream he's wearing it and whenever he's in reality he's not. Also apply Ockham's Razor.
In a famous experiment subjects were asked for rank 5 jams. Their rankings were pretty consistent, most people preferred one of the two jams you'd expect since they were the most expensive and best-selling. Another set of subjects were asked to rank the same jams--and explain why they preferred their favorite. Same results? No. When people had to think about which jam they liked they couldn't pin down what was so great about the two the first subjects preferred. Instead they tended to pick one of the two jams that were particularly sweet as their favorite, despite the fact that these jams ranked 4th and 5th in the first experiment.
Sometimes it's easy to know the truth about how you feel--as long as you don't think. Your subconscious supercomputer just knows. But you can short that circuit and let your conscious brain take over. And when that happens your liable to "overthink."
I think that's what happened to nearly half the population that saw the end of Inception. You can intuit that the ending is a happy one--your brain knows Cobb is reunited with his kids. But it can't explain why. So some people let their rational brain take over and start spinning yarns. The result:
So with that said here are some thoughts (written after my second viewing) on points of contention in the blogosphere and with things I felt were muddled or confusing.
1. Cobb did get out of the dream at the end. The top was just about to fall. The audience's totem is Cobb's wedding ring. Watch closely and you can see that whenever it's a dream he's wearing it and whenever he's in reality he's not. Also apply Ockham's Razor.
2. Where does Ariadne get the dream machine in the hospital dream? Is it there just in case?
3. I don't think the hospital dream having gravity is a plot hole. There's no acceleration on Eames. The fact that the hospital collapses when it appears the character are accelerating in the elevator may be a plot hole. The throughout the movie the synching of the dream's time is a bit fuzzy. Lee "I'm the best editor of all time" Smith and co. needed some leeway.
4. Some people say that the top spins for an inordinately long period of time at the end. But it spins forever earlier in the film, when Cobb is in his hotel room.
5. When Ariadne and Cobb enter "limbo" they are really in a shared dream with Fischer. They don't lose their minds because they aren't in Limbo, and what happens to Fischer in the hospital affects their world because they are in his dream. That's why when they try to resuscitate him it starts lightening and why when he wakes up the dream collapses. Cobb dies and goes to the real limbo, where he does start to lose his mind, as Arthur(?) said he would earlier in the movie.
6. If you have doubts Nolan intended the ring to be our totem consider that he placed a long shot of Cobbs fingers at the beginning of the movie when he's eating rice. When he wakes up and has his hand resting on the arm rest we get another long shot of his fingers.
7. I don't understood why the dreamer can't just do whatever he wants as Ariande does in her dream. It risks turning Fischer's subconscious against them, but that happened already. Shouldn't Yusef be willing to take a risk and bend the dream rules to get security off his ass in the city? And in the snow fortress level Fischer knows he's dreaming so what is the risk? Then again, Eames does seem to have superpowers in that dream . . .
8. I don't think there is a clear explanation for why Saito is so much older than Cobb. He entered limbo a few seconds or minutes later in Hospital level-time. I think time is just meant to move super fast.
7. I don't understood why the dreamer can't just do whatever he wants as Ariande does in her dream. It risks turning Fischer's subconscious against them, but that happened already. Shouldn't Yusef be willing to take a risk and bend the dream rules to get security off his ass in the city? And in the snow fortress level Fischer knows he's dreaming so what is the risk? Then again, Eames does seem to have superpowers in that dream . . .
8. I don't think there is a clear explanation for why Saito is so much older than Cobb. He entered limbo a few seconds or minutes later in Hospital level-time. I think time is just meant to move super fast.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Metaphysics
Like most "literal-minded" people, I'm not that interested in metaphysics. I think the questions are interesting: Do we have free will? What is real? Is there a God? They seem self-evidently important.
Yet there's something wrong with most metaphysical speculation. I can't say it as eloquently as Hume so I'll just dig up the famous quote to express my sentiments:
If philosophy departments are sophistry plants, then metaphysicists are the 20% in the 80/20 rule.
Still, Hume's statement contradicts itself. He wants us to avoid questions that can't be settled scientifically, yet his basis for the claim isn't scientific. There's something inescapable about questions of reality, purpose, and free will.
Free will is the easiest to settle. Everything in the universe seems pretty easy to explain in deterministic or at least probabilistic terms at a quantum level. There doesn't seem to be any scope for choice at the level of the tissues and organs, so it seems unlikely our brains can really make choices. Free will is a myth. But it's a myth that we should believe in. Stories are important to our lives, even if they are delusions. "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more." We deserve free will.
The fact that I casually advocate deluding yourself suggests I don't care much about reality. That is mostly true. I don't think subjective idealism is refutable. I don't think you can prove anything is "real" or even care what word "real" means. But I do, of course, have implicit views. As far as I'm concerned what's real is what our intuition, the principle of parsimony, and scientific experiments combine to tell us is real. The ground we stand on is real, by intuition. Electrons are real, by experimental evidence. God is not real, by the principle of parsimony. There is no higher purpose in the universe, no set of criteria for deciding what is right and wrong or what we should do. There's just what's in our heads.
This is why delusions are ok. What's "really real" is whatever we can construct in our minds. We can give ourselves goals and set rules for telling right from wrong. We can give these goals and rules meaning. And we should--for our own health and happiness (the two "goods" I give meaning to start with).
Thus my metaphysic says, in short, we are probably just clumps of matter that somehow, through some strange loop, became self-aware. We don't have any objective purpose, but we shouldn't care. We should invest some purpose--then ignore the ladder of reasoning we used to arrive at that purpose and pursue it as a given most of the time. That's how we'll be happiest.
I don't have use for thought experiments like the experience machine or questions about whether we live in a computer simulation, or even whether we have free will. We shouldn't care.
"Of course it is [just] happening inside your head . . . but why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?"
Other interesting ideas in metaphysics I didn't get to mention:
1. In I am a Strange Loop Douglas Hofstadter makes an analogy for the interaction of neurons in our brain and our thoughts. I recommend reading the book because I can't explain it here but his basic point is that we can just as well say that our thoughts and feelings "cause" the neurons to fire in certain patterns as saying that those patterns "cause" us to feel the way we do. It's a semantic point about the meaning of "cause" but it's interesting.
2. In The Big Questions, Steve Landsburg notes that math is a universal. We're compelled by logic to agree with provable propositions. Perhaps, then, he proposes a sort of Platonism where math is the reality. It sounds better in the book.
3. The latter two films in The Matrix trilogy have an interesting "worldview." In the world of The Matrix there is an anomaly in the universe that is otherwise governed by (I guess) mathematical laws. This anomaly represents something like incompleteness or the halting program, and is represented in human form by Neo. Neo is the only person in the movies who can make choices, though he only ever makes one choice, because all the other "choices" are caused by this or that rationale. Neo gets caught in a fight with Smith that is analogous to the halting program, and he chooses to halt. Smith asks why, but there is no rationale, he does it simply "because [he] choose[s] to."
Yet there's something wrong with most metaphysical speculation. I can't say it as eloquently as Hume so I'll just dig up the famous quote to express my sentiments:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
If philosophy departments are sophistry plants, then metaphysicists are the 20% in the 80/20 rule.
Still, Hume's statement contradicts itself. He wants us to avoid questions that can't be settled scientifically, yet his basis for the claim isn't scientific. There's something inescapable about questions of reality, purpose, and free will.
Free will is the easiest to settle. Everything in the universe seems pretty easy to explain in deterministic or at least probabilistic terms at a quantum level. There doesn't seem to be any scope for choice at the level of the tissues and organs, so it seems unlikely our brains can really make choices. Free will is a myth. But it's a myth that we should believe in. Stories are important to our lives, even if they are delusions. "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more." We deserve free will.
The fact that I casually advocate deluding yourself suggests I don't care much about reality. That is mostly true. I don't think subjective idealism is refutable. I don't think you can prove anything is "real" or even care what word "real" means. But I do, of course, have implicit views. As far as I'm concerned what's real is what our intuition, the principle of parsimony, and scientific experiments combine to tell us is real. The ground we stand on is real, by intuition. Electrons are real, by experimental evidence. God is not real, by the principle of parsimony. There is no higher purpose in the universe, no set of criteria for deciding what is right and wrong or what we should do. There's just what's in our heads.
This is why delusions are ok. What's "really real" is whatever we can construct in our minds. We can give ourselves goals and set rules for telling right from wrong. We can give these goals and rules meaning. And we should--for our own health and happiness (the two "goods" I give meaning to start with).
Thus my metaphysic says, in short, we are probably just clumps of matter that somehow, through some strange loop, became self-aware. We don't have any objective purpose, but we shouldn't care. We should invest some purpose--then ignore the ladder of reasoning we used to arrive at that purpose and pursue it as a given most of the time. That's how we'll be happiest.
I don't have use for thought experiments like the experience machine or questions about whether we live in a computer simulation, or even whether we have free will. We shouldn't care.
"Of course it is [just] happening inside your head . . . but why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?"
Other interesting ideas in metaphysics I didn't get to mention:
1. In I am a Strange Loop Douglas Hofstadter makes an analogy for the interaction of neurons in our brain and our thoughts. I recommend reading the book because I can't explain it here but his basic point is that we can just as well say that our thoughts and feelings "cause" the neurons to fire in certain patterns as saying that those patterns "cause" us to feel the way we do. It's a semantic point about the meaning of "cause" but it's interesting.
2. In The Big Questions, Steve Landsburg notes that math is a universal. We're compelled by logic to agree with provable propositions. Perhaps, then, he proposes a sort of Platonism where math is the reality. It sounds better in the book.
3. The latter two films in The Matrix trilogy have an interesting "worldview." In the world of The Matrix there is an anomaly in the universe that is otherwise governed by (I guess) mathematical laws. This anomaly represents something like incompleteness or the halting program, and is represented in human form by Neo. Neo is the only person in the movies who can make choices, though he only ever makes one choice, because all the other "choices" are caused by this or that rationale. Neo gets caught in a fight with Smith that is analogous to the halting program, and he chooses to halt. Smith asks why, but there is no rationale, he does it simply "because [he] choose[s] to."
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