4 ms·

What sense does getting wiped out by a plague make?

newsbinator 5y ago
You could look at it a dozen different ways, depending on your sense-making framework: * God did it (makes sense- God does cataclysmic stuff) * Nature did it (makes sense- biology is a jerk and we haven't mastered it yet) * Humans did it by mistake (makes sense- we make huge errors all the time) * etc
- troutwine 5y ago
  Sure. In the context of Lynch's work things that happen without sense are often intra-textual in his work or hint at some interior sense that is obscure to the characters, audience. Why do characters (dead!) from Twin Peaks show up in Mulholland Drive? Well, that _might_ be touched on in Twin Peaks season 3 or maybe it isn't. Kinda up to you. Seems to me that's Lynch's point. In daily life we're all willing to accept on some level that we need to make sense of things ourselves so why should we expect art to be direct?
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    In daily life, we have faith that there is some sense out there to be made of things. This is generally justified by the lawful nature of nature. In comparison, Lynch can do whatever he likes. In other words, I disagree with Mark Twain: Reality has to make sense, whereas fiction can be made arbitrarily nonsensical. (However, doing so may make it bad fiction, whereas reality is not subject to any such appeal.)
gambiting 5y ago
A lot of religious people I know would just say that god had his reasons and that's good enough. You don't need to understand why, the very core of religion is to believe that god "acts in misterious ways" and if something happened then it's because god wanted it to happen. Maybe those people have sinned. Maybe that's god's way to teach people a lesson. Or maybe it's something entirely else and we just don't know yet - you just need to trust that god knows what they are doing. Really, it's as deep/shallow as this, not much else to it.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  For most of history this was how people viewed life and death. If you tried telling them it was just nature, bad luck, and an uncaring universe they would have viewed you as a naive simpleton.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    > uncaring universe What "caring universe" do you measure things against to see it's not caring? How can you have yin without yang, in other words?
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      This is a classic philosophical argument that was dispensed with in the middle ages. The usual form of it is "how can you know what infinity is if infinity doesn't exist?" The answer is as simple as "I take the word finite and put the word not in front of it." We are perfectly capable of synthesizing concepts that do not exist in our experience of reality.
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        >We are perfectly capable of synthesizing concepts that do not exist in our experience of reality. I am not sure exactly what this means, but I don't think I asserted anything to the contrary. An automaton or a parrot can place words next to each other without "synthesizing concepts". Can an intelligent being not do that too? As another application of my original point, "synthesizing concepts" would not mean anything unless it was possible (and I think it is) to not synthesize a concept when a string of symbols is put together. It's not that we have to have a caring universe to imagine one, it's that we have to at least imagine one in order to say the universe is not caring. One way to look at the universe we live in is that it seems to be faithful. Every atom follows physical law perfectly, at least we assume. Maybe that's not exactly proven, but it's the conventional faith today, and we certainly can imagine the world otherwise, with lots of miracles.
SkittyDog 5y ago
The GP is just making assertions about cultural anthropology, with basically zero evidence or argument supporting their assertions. I wouldnt bother trying to argue with them, directly... I would not expect them to have any real expertise on the subject, so I expect you'll just get more of the same quality.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  The quote about "the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense" has been around in some form for around two centuries in western culture. References: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/15/truth-stranger/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/15/truth-stranger/ https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/RealityIsUnrealistic https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/RealityIsUnrea... The quote from Lynch makes it sound as though the obvious way to get people to accept an implausible story didn't occur to him. Simply have some small print at the beginning that says "based on a true story". As I recall, that's what was done with the movie Fargo. "Important point: just because it has happened in real life does not make it believable in a story. If a reader says she didn’t believe such a thing would happen, it is no defence for you to say, "Oh, but that did happen! In 1982 I was walking along..." — Nicola Morgan, Write To Be Published https://xkcd.com/2115/ https://xkcd.com/2115/
  - SkittyDog 5y ago
    I'm familiar with both quotes, but I think we're barking up the wrong tree by trying to intepret them literally. "Based on a true story" is not what makes a film plausible to us... We instinctively engage in a willing suspension of disbelief when we're prompted by literature, even when we directly know that the story is false. Fargo includes that text because the film is an homage to the hardboiled crime fiction genre, which frequently featured that style of blurb on book covers as a marketing tool. But people consume books & films, near universally where we have the means to do so, with or without claims that the stories within are factual. You've misunderstood what Nicola Morgan is talking about, in that quote. In context, "believable" means that the author's job is to reduce obstacles that get in the way of our willing suspension of disbelief... Empathy, context, proportionality, etc. See my other comments, re: the David Lynch quote. His meaning needs to be taken in context of some film theory.

You could look at it a dozen different ways, depending on your sense-making framework: * God did it (makes sense- God does cataclysmic stuff) * Nature did it (makes sense- biology is a jerk and we haven't mastered it yet) * Humans did it by mistake (makes sense- we make huge errors all the time) * etc

troutwine 5y ago
Sure. In the context of Lynch's work things that happen without sense are often intra-textual in his work or hint at some interior sense that is obscure to the characters, audience. Why do characters (dead!) from Twin Peaks show up in Mulholland Drive? Well, that _might_ be touched on in Twin Peaks season 3 or maybe it isn't. Kinda up to you. Seems to me that's Lynch's point. In daily life we're all willing to accept on some level that we need to make sense of things ourselves so why should we expect art to be direct?
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  In daily life, we have faith that there is some sense out there to be made of things. This is generally justified by the lawful nature of nature. In comparison, Lynch can do whatever he likes. In other words, I disagree with Mark Twain: Reality has to make sense, whereas fiction can be made arbitrarily nonsensical. (However, doing so may make it bad fiction, whereas reality is not subject to any such appeal.)

gambiting 5y ago

A lot of religious people I know would just say that god had his reasons and that's good enough. You don't need to understand why, the very core of religion is to believe that god "acts in misterious ways" and if something happened then it's because god wanted it to happen. Maybe those people have sinned. Maybe that's god's way to teach people a lesson. Or maybe it's something entirely else and we just don't know yet - you just need to trust that god knows what they are doing. Really, it's as deep/shallow as this, not much else to it.

mr_toad 5y ago
For most of history this was how people viewed life and death. If you tried telling them it was just nature, bad luck, and an uncaring universe they would have viewed you as a naive simpleton.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  > uncaring universe What "caring universe" do you measure things against to see it's not caring? How can you have yin without yang, in other words?
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    This is a classic philosophical argument that was dispensed with in the middle ages. The usual form of it is "how can you know what infinity is if infinity doesn't exist?" The answer is as simple as "I take the word finite and put the word not in front of it." We are perfectly capable of synthesizing concepts that do not exist in our experience of reality.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >We are perfectly capable of synthesizing concepts that do not exist in our experience of reality. I am not sure exactly what this means, but I don't think I asserted anything to the contrary. An automaton or a parrot can place words next to each other without "synthesizing concepts". Can an intelligent being not do that too? As another application of my original point, "synthesizing concepts" would not mean anything unless it was possible (and I think it is) to not synthesize a concept when a string of symbols is put together. It's not that we have to have a caring universe to imagine one, it's that we have to at least imagine one in order to say the universe is not caring. One way to look at the universe we live in is that it seems to be faithful. Every atom follows physical law perfectly, at least we assume. Maybe that's not exactly proven, but it's the conventional faith today, and we certainly can imagine the world otherwise, with lots of miracles.

SkittyDog 5y ago

The GP is just making assertions about cultural anthropology, with basically zero evidence or argument supporting their assertions. I wouldnt bother trying to argue with them, directly... I would not expect them to have any real expertise on the subject, so I expect you'll just get more of the same quality.

perl4ever 5y ago
The quote about "the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense" has been around in some form for around two centuries in western culture. References: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/15/truth-stranger/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/15/truth-stranger/ https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/RealityIsUnrealistic https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/RealityIsUnrea... The quote from Lynch makes it sound as though the obvious way to get people to accept an implausible story didn't occur to him. Simply have some small print at the beginning that says "based on a true story". As I recall, that's what was done with the movie Fargo. "Important point: just because it has happened in real life does not make it believable in a story. If a reader says she didn’t believe such a thing would happen, it is no defence for you to say, "Oh, but that did happen! In 1982 I was walking along..." — Nicola Morgan, Write To Be Published https://xkcd.com/2115/ https://xkcd.com/2115/
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  I'm familiar with both quotes, but I think we're barking up the wrong tree by trying to intepret them literally. "Based on a true story" is not what makes a film plausible to us... We instinctively engage in a willing suspension of disbelief when we're prompted by literature, even when we directly know that the story is false. Fargo includes that text because the film is an homage to the hardboiled crime fiction genre, which frequently featured that style of blurb on book covers as a marketing tool. But people consume books & films, near universally where we have the means to do so, with or without claims that the stories within are factual. You've misunderstood what Nicola Morgan is talking about, in that quote. In context, "believable" means that the author's job is to reduce obstacles that get in the way of our willing suspension of disbelief... Empathy, context, proportionality, etc. See my other comments, re: the David Lynch quote. His meaning needs to be taken in context of some film theory.