Ted Tschopp's Blog

Thoughts on Narrative

I am in the middle of reading a book written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the Black Swan. The book itself is basically about the problems with inductive reasoning. In the book he parses these ideas out into several more specific fallacies.

• The Narrative fallacy: creating a story post-hoc to create an identifiable cause for a given event.
• The Ludic fallacy: believing that the structured randomness found in games resembles the unstructured randomness found in life
• The Statistical regress fallacy: believing that the probability of future events is predictable by examining occurrences of past events.

The fallacy I want to concentrate on is the narrative fallacy. What fascinates me the most about this is that religions use Narrative to communicate their ideas. Christianity, the religion I feel is true, even goes to the point of stating that the only way that God communicates to people today is mediated via the Bible, a large collection of stories. When we are told to communicate the Gospel, we are told to tell a story. This story is summed up as follows: The creator of the universe entered reality as a human born of a woman in a small town at the center of the known world. He lived a short life, and then was put to death. Three days later he was alive again. When he was alive he claimed that those be swore fealty to Him as Lord would be able to give Him all the bad things they had done in life and have them killed as he was killed. They would also receive the life he received after being dead for three days.

I guess what fascinates me the most is that Taleb tells us that this narrative fallacy is one of the strongest and easiest fallacies for us to fall into. How is it that one of our weakest points in our intellectual armor is also one of the most critical. The book of Romans calls for us to renew our minds. We are called to be crafty as serpents. So we are called as Christians to be ready for this type of post-hoc fallacy.

I guess we can take this in several different directions. The first is that narrative is the mediated way God communicates, therefore it's not wholly evil. Another direction is that narrative is definitely screwed up I wonder what it looked like before the fall. I also wonder if this fallacy is becoming more and more common as time passes.

Christmas in August....

It’s August already and it seems that yesterday was January.  Most of my plans for this year have been dashed to pieces to lay neglected on the side of the speeding highway that this last year has turned into. 

Over the last couple of weeks I have taken time to slow down and simplify my life.  I have thrown out 6 trash bags of stuff many of which was one of a kind Lord of the Rings crap I had collected over the years when I ran The One Ring.  In this process of letting go I have come across things that I needed to pick up and keep a hold of.  This story is one of the things I found laying at the side of the road neglected.  It was a story that needs to be told.

I’m not very big on gifts, getting or receiving; when I do get a gift it’s a big deal.  This last year I exchanged gifts with a couple of friends.  One gift that stood out was a book from my friend Nikki.

Nikki got me a book for Christmas, a non fiction book; a book I had seen several times in the book store, but it seemed to only be mildly interesting too me. Well seeing the book, I thanked her for it and threw it into my car with every intention of adding it to the stack of books I am reading.  Time passed and the book stayed in the car.  I would come across it in manic bouts of car cleaning.  The book soon rotated to the trunk.

One day around May, I found myself in my car, waiting on one of my other friends to show up for something.  I fired up my iPod looking to listen to another pod cast.  Curses!  I had listened to all my podcasts.  I saw my bible and thought about doing my homework for my bible study.  No, I could put that off.  Then the thought occurred to me.  I could go to the trunk of the car and get Nikki’s present out of the trunk.  I got the book and read the cover “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”. It asked a couple questions.

• What do sumo wrestlers and teacher have in common.
• What does the KKK and real estate agents have in common?
• Why do crack cocaine dealers live with their parents?
• What effect does legalized abortion have on the crime rate.

Well, that sure seems interesting.  I cracked the book, and I couldn’t put it down.  About 30 minutes later my friend showed up and I had to put it down.  Over the next week I would race home from work and devour the book.  It was the best non fiction book I have read in a long time. 

Then it hit me.  I had totally overlooked this gift.  These hours of pleasure and enjoyment had been given to me by Nikki and I had not trusted her to know me enough to get me a good book.  I had not thanked her for it.  I had made a mess of one of the best gifts I had been given in a long time.

Over the next couple of days I finished the book.  The next time I met with Nikki I thanked her for the book and told her how bad I felt about not reading it sooner.   I also told her I would post a review of the book to my web site. 

Time has passed and it is no longer late spring, it’s now late summer and I have yet to post the review.  Let the above be my Mea maxima culpa as well as my review and recommendation for the book. 

August is a strange and unfitting time for Christmas, as it is a strange and unfitting time to thank someone for one of the top 10 gifts I have ever received from my friends and family.  But like Christmas, thanks and apologies for mistakes are never too late, they are like Christmas in August.

Spielberg and Jackson to direct Tintin

OK, so most of my friends don’t know this, but in my youth I was a huge fan of Tintin.  I own a bunch of the books.  Additionally, I would check the books out of the library over and over and over again.  While the books are a bit more European / Global, I enjoyed them as an American boy.  In addition to Tintin, I also enjoyed Asterix, and I own many of the books as well. 

So when I saw this news today I reacted the way many of my friends probably did when they first heard that HellBoy or the 300 was being made into a movie.  Anyway, here are the details

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have teamed to produce a trilogy of Tintin feature films, with each director helming at least one of the features.

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'U Suxorz!' and for the other 20% of you 'Why We Suck!'

80% of Americans want to write a Novel.

33% of people who graduate from high school never read a book again.

42% of people who graduate from college never read a book again.

80% of US families did not purchase or read a book in a given year.

The stats could go on.  This is according to a study conducted by the Jenkins Group.  But the most amazing thing is the seeming cognitive dissonance between that first 80% and the last 80%.  If you want to write a novel, how about reading one, or reading one to your family.

On the bright side to the 80% of you who want to write a novel, that means that a successful fiction book needs to sell only 5,000 copies and a successful nonfiction book needs to only sell 7,500 copies.  Good luck at finding those 5,000 people.

All this from this web site here via Digg.

Computerized Story Telling

I found an article today on Digg about computers writing stories.  While I do think this is possible, I have yet to hear anyone getting close.  Music has been done, and done so well that it’s causing people in to rethink what creativity means.

Anyway, this is being posted so I don’t have to hunt down the paper again, and I can read it when I have time to think about it.

File Attachment: mexica_jetai.pdf (135 KB)

File Attachment: Three Computer-Based Mopdels of Storytelling Brutus, Minstrel, and Mexica.pdf (510 KB)

HBO to do Fire and Ice series... and George Cloony to do Diamond Age

Did you hear that?  That was the sound of a million geeks falling over dead with pleasure comas.

Here is the information about Diamond Age and Cloony, and here is the information about Fire and Ice.

I personally feel that its final proof the world is going to end soon as there is some holy and devout geek out there who has been praying “God please don’t destroy the human race until ________ has been made into a movie.”  Of course that blank would be, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Fire and Ice, and Diamond Age.

For all of you who have not read George R. R. Martin or Neal Stephenson, you are missing out on some of the best fiction written in the last 20 years.  Just a word of caution, both books are rated a strong R if they were to be movies.

Shadows and Symbols

I am reading Lilith by George MacDonald.  The book, so far, is typical George MacDonald, and I don’t want to go into the details until I’m finished; but my mind keeps focusing on something from the introduction: 

“It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought — almost unwilling, for I had looked at the column on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions — the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist deep in Romanticism, and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity.”  — C.S. Lewis Preface to George MacDonald: an Anthology

Many people who get to know me soon find out that I’m a lover of things that are fantastic.  I was first introduced to the worlds of the imagination when my mother use to read to me the books that had won Newbery awards.  I can still remember Island of the Blue Dolphins, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, and A Wrinkle in Time.  In these she would sprinkled Chronicles of Narnia and the Hobbit.  It should be no wonder that I adore stories of strange beasts and noble kings.  If I ever met a talking rodent my first thought would not be to question my sanity, but to question my new friend if he had ever heard of Reepicheep. 

As I have grown older I have gravitated towards individuals who also have a love for these things.  In some of these people, instead of finding that same “childish” love of the new I find they resonate with the perversity and darkness that the author mentions above.  I had never thought of the descent into perversity and darkness as a process that started with the love of Romanticism.  But I can’t help shake statements above.  It starts to explain the reason why so many fellow fanboy and girls struggle with some very dark and deviant behaviours. 

Over the years, I have read and watched some very dark and strange things in the hope of reconnecting with the feelings I got when I first heard that there was a hobbit who lived in a hole in the ground.  After a while I realized the foolishness in exploring more adult and darker themed fictions which were said to match my age or demographic.  I realized that I was chasing shadows.  I would stare at the shapes and marvel how they twisted.  I would revel in the way they could make me shudder. 

I look back on those days in amazement and wonder. How could I be so chilish, when I was thinking I was so adult.  It wasn’t the dark shadows that were so fascinating.  It wasn’t their twisting and writhing that was so hypnotizing.  It’s not the shadows that are so finely detailed, its the symbols and shapes that cast the shadows that hold the intricacies.   It’s not that the shadows slither, it’s an illusion caused by the shapes and symbols as they bow down and worship the light.  As life moves towards its conculsion, I’m finding that what is really facinating is the light who is the Father of the lights, with whom there is no variation, or shadow of turning.

Ice in Los Angeles - A Time for Winter Activities

Last night was cold.  Very cold. This morning as I made my way towards Irwindale and work I noticed that all the north facing roofs were covered in ice.  Winter has arrived.  This makes me think of two “Winter” things I want to do this year.

The first thing is I want to stick a pole into the ground on December 21^st and record the shadow at noon local solar time.  Then return on subsequent days and mark the shadow at noon local solar time.  I would keep this up until the next December 21^st.  This could then give me an accurate solar calendar and clock, but it would probably be way to small.  At this point I could calculate the height of the pole needed to make the annual solar clock that would be the right size. 

The second thing I need to do this year is get a copy of Wagner's Ring Cycle and read it.  I want this edition which has the traditional pictures by Arthur Rackham which has inspired several of my literary favourites including Lewis and Tolkien.  Like hiking and camping, reading is something one must train themselves for.  I think I’m now mature enough to read and understand these pieces. 

 

 

Google Posts Collection of Classic Halloween Tales

You can go to google.com/scarystories, and rediscover Halloween classics like Bram Stoker’s  Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as less well-known tales like Thomas Hardy’s Victorian ghost story, "The Withered Arm".  If you have not read these classics, do so.  You will be a better more educated and well rounded person.

Unfinished Tolkien Work to Be Published

An unfinished tale by J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son Christopher into a completed work. The work titled "The Children of Hurin" will be released next spring, the American and British publishers announced on September 18th.

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