(no subject)

[moon_custafer]

Cracked actually runs some pretty good commentary these days. Here's one about the problematic portrayal of geniuses on tv; and yes, I've heard of the "CSI Effect" on juries.

Comments

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

Writing about anything that's actually beyond the skills of the writer is really hard so it's not surprising that it just ends up being a plot device. The worse case is when they try to portray super-writing skills: either musical or script!

One of the reasons that I like the ancient "Lensman" series is that their super-geniuses do a *lot* of work to out-smart the opposing team of super-geniuses even though Second-Stage lensmen have total recall, telepathy and sort of a Superman's X-ray vision as entry-level competencies. Nadreck's plot to fake his own death, for example, includes a 300 page lab report on the alleged wreck of his spaceship "accurate to within the statistical error of a reasonably competent analyst". His previous plot, which is described as taking "many months" is a total failure due to some unknowable difference between his mathematical models and reality. One of the other character's impersonations involves a lot of fiddling with High School yearbook pictures and driver's licence pictures but all it gets is a diss'ing from one villain on the basis that it's *too* perfect and should have contained a realistic number of anomalies.

I think that the Cracked guys miss out on the main reasons for Genius Crankiness though. If there's a difference between your opinions and those of the unwashed masses the possibilities are that you're smarter than they are or that you're dumber than they are and/or mad. Guess which one everyone around you *always* picks in Western Culture. The very existence of genius is pretty much totally denied in real life: authority comes only from tenure and conformity; and decades of perspiration to go with your inspiration is dismissed as "a freak memory" with no intellect behind it or as luck. I think the Mad Scientist in "Werewolves of London" says it best "They said I was mad!! Mad am I?! I'll show those senile dolts at the institute!! My theories of (X) will be vindicated!"

Chinese culture, on the other hand, has a handy slot ready for eerie mental powers and is, as everything is in China, terribly practical. You use your geniuses as part of a team of people with other attributes like nerve and physical ability. You don't put the geniuses out in the field as they're too valuable and that field work contaminates their analysis anyway. When I was in Taiwan I related a shot-by-shot reconstruction of a scene in Totoro for some friends of slightly better than average IQ who had all seen the movie a million times as kids. For my entire life up to that point I'd have had to follow it with a disclaimer that I wasn't emotionally obsessed with the movie and didn't view it every night: in fact having seen it once four years ago. They *all* immediately realised the *other* possibility: that I had a very good memory and immediately asked questions to see if I did.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

their super-geniuses do a *lot* of work to out-smart the opposing team of super-geniuses

Probably because Smith actually *did* work in a lab and knew how involved these things are.

Chinese culture, on the other hand, has a handy slot ready for eerie mental powers

One of the things in handful_ofdust's Hexslinger universe is that while most of the Western world burns hexes at the stake, and several others go "ooh, a shaman," the Chinese have apparently been studying their powers since the 9th century or earlier, and selectively breeding them as weapons (although it looks as though the Opium Wars still happened, so the presence of generals with super-powers evidently wasn't enough to counter the decadence of the imperial government.)

One of my new co-workers seemed unduly impressed yesterday when, after seeing him check a website with sports news, then exclaim "I've made $170!" I asked, "oh, did you win a bet on a baseball game?"

I mean, it was no "I see, Watson, you have decided not to invest in South African stocks after all;" and the co-worker was by no means dim -- I'd seen him at work on the phone.

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

Well really, that's hardly even on par with the time that you, arriving late at a party, immediately upon entering the room thanked me for having supplied the sushi platter: having scanned the occupants and determined that I was the only one with non-take-out chopsticks and therefore the only one with advance knowledge of the sushi.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is, you recall that but I barely do - I'm not even sure it was a conscious process for me - and, knowing the Diners as I do now, might just as easily have been wrong: a lot of us travel with our own chopsticks.

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

But it was only about 11 years ago! ;-) It was at some anniversary at Lloyd & Yvonne's so there were a lot of non-Diners but your point is well taken as SF fans in general are like that as well.

As for it not being a conscious process - well, as another Master Detective put it "...I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps however." which you had to stop and think about when questioned.

Of course I remember it. We Boswells are bound to remember many such things of no interest to you lot. We pick them out for their dramatic effect whereas to you they are but simple exercises of not even passing technical interest.

[leave-harmony.livejournal.com]

I loved Cracked...I actually have a weird crush on Daniel O'Brien <3

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I then read their "5 TV Shows you wouldn't believe saved someone's life." Most of them were cases where people recognized their own symptoms in a tv storyline, or a kid saw someone choking and did the Heimlich manoeuvre from having seen it in a cartoon; which seems* like a good reason for TV writers to get the details as right as they can.


* Also a nice change from the "someone got themselves killed trying to replicate a stunt they saw on tv" stories.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Excellent article. Of course writers have to invent supergeniuses for TV shows because everything has to be solved in forty-two minutes, but since the audiences are far from geniuses, people believe it's not fiction.

Though Angela doesn't identify people through bone fragments. Skulls, yes.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I never watched "Murder One" but I gather it dramatized one case per season, and could therefore show the investigation proceeding at a more realistic pace?

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch it, but I think that's the case. I guess The Killing is the same idea?

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

I've never seen "Murder One" but "Criminal Minds" seems to follow me around a lot. I like how their super-genius is portrayed as coming from a Tesla-type family with a lot of members who've wandered across the line into madness. He's constantly worried that one day he'll stop being visionary and just start seeing things. One of the other guys admits he can't begin to understand how it would be to live in that hailstorm of data and associations but manages to be of emotional comfort anyway.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

It also helps that he has a Watson - his partner is not the same sort of genius, but she's above-average in intelligence and she's emotionally very stable.

Goren is also implied to be very knowledgeable about some things, while other times he bones up on subjects that are relevant to the case at hand -- whether those remain in his head long-term is unknown.