This and That (4)

Should those who love you tell you the truth?

1.

My grand overview of the science of the mind is now on sale in paperback. Lighter, more affordable, and three errors have been fixed. (If you own the hardcover, toss it out immediately—it has the wrong year for when Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize.)

2.

An enjoyable talk with Bob Wright. We got more political than unusual, and I made some strong claims about free speech on campus, which I might amplify in a later post.

3.

Last month, I saw “You Hurt My Feelings”, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Tobias Menzies.

Based on the trailer, I figured it would be a modest and pleasant movie with a small cast of excellent actors. And this is just what it was. It takes place in the Bizarro New York City where people have normal jobs but live in spacious apartments; there is no violence or anything else disturbing (though someone does get her feelings hurt); and everyone is kind to everyone else.

I liked it a lot more than I expected, though. The movie explores a specific issue. How honest should you be with those you love? The big thing that happens (not a spoiler; it happens early in the movie, and is hinted at in the trailer) is that Beth overhears her husband Don telling a friend that he doesn’t like her new novel, though he has previously told her that he loves it, and Beth feels hurt and betrayed.

A similar tension between honesty and … niceness? support? encouragement? … plays out in other relationships. For instance, Beth and Don’s adult son Elliot is angry because his parents have always encouraged him to think that he’s special, and he feels they haven’t been honest and have cursed him with unrealistic expectations.

You Hurt My Feelings does a good job of exploring the implications of these choices, showing how the right sort of strategic dishonesty can have positive motivating effects, but might erode trust in the long run. I know this is odd praise for a movie, and would make for terrible ad copy, but You Hurt My Feelings is a thoughtful exploration of an interesting and humanly relevant issue. I still think about it sometimes.

As a side note, I liked the character of Don, who is a therapist. He is a decent man—a good husband, father, and friend—but the interesting thing is that he’s bad at his job. His patients make little progress; he’s often at a loss about what to say; and, in one excruciating scene, he gets one patient’s history mixed up with another’s. (But I get along fine with my father, she says to him, confused.) We’ve seen a lot of deranged and murderous shrinks in movies (Hannibal Lecter at number #1, of course); it’s a nice change to see one who is just not very competent.

4.

My friend Graeme Wood wrote me to discuss my post on The Experience Machine, The post was about the thought experiment by Robert Nozick, which goes like this (this is my slightly modified version.)

Suppose superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would have experiences of immense pleasure and satisfaction—far more than you would ever have in your own life. And not just corporeal pleasures—you will have the experiences of being deeply and passionately in love, having exciting adventures, creating great empires (if that’s your thing), being honored and respected. Your life will be filled with challenges and excitement and you will never be bored. And, of course, you would not know that you are plugged into this Experience Machine. You will live as long as you would have otherwise lived, and at the moment before your death, you will think back with great satisfaction on an extraordinary life. 

Would you plug yourself in? Nozick argued, and I agree, that if the answer is no—and some people do answer no—it’s a refutation of psychological hedonism. We want more out of life than pleasure. (Not everyone buys this. If you’re interested in the arguments pro and con, check out the post.)

Graeme reminded me of a story by Anton Chekhov that he recommended to me a while ago, called The Bet. After fifteen years in solitary confinement where he mostly just reads books, the prisoner writes to his jailer and boasts about his adventures:

I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women ... Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God ... In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms …

It does seem pretty good. But then there’s a shift in tone, and now (with his permission) I’m quoting Graeme:

But the prisoner concludes, after his time in the (nineteenth-century version of the) Experience Machine, that "it is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage." What I find striking about his conclusion is that it seems to condemn not just the counterfeit experience but the real as well.

You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

It’s relevant that years ago, the prisoner had found Christ—”Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel.” I interpret this section, then, similar to how Graeme does. The prisoner is castigating his jailer (a man who cares nothing about God) for taking too seriously the secular world and all of its pleasures. It’s nothing but another Experience Machine.

5.

Graeme and I have a shared love for fiction within fiction, and there’s a sub-genre where (fictional) people get trapped in alternative worlds, as in Inception, where the characters run the risk of getting forever stuck in a dream.

My favorite example is Woody Allen's comic short story The Kugelmass Episode, where Kugelmass, a professor of Humanities at City College, gets access to a machine that lets him enter novels and interact with the characters. It goes as well at first—he has a torrid romantic adventure with Madame Bovary—but ends horribly when he enters the machine and it suddenly breaks down.

Kugelmass, unaware of this catastrophe, had his own problems. He had not been thrust into Portnoy's Complaint, or into any other novel, for that matter. He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener ("to have")-a large and hairy irregular verb- raced after him on its spindly legs.

6.

This is it for 2023, my first year as a Substacker. I’m hugely grateful for all of those who subscribe to Small Potatoes, with extra love for those who write comments and send me emails.

I have a lot planned for 2024, including posts where I talk about the hidden pleasures of showing and sharing, defend (a weak version of) longtermism against its many critics, argue that VR sucks as an empathy machine, and provide some truly idiosyncratic writing tips. And, with some trepidation, I’m considering putting out a “paid” tier—more about this later.

But I’ll just end by sending out my warmest wishes for the holidays. See you next year!

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