Movie Night Spring 2010

Philosophy 100 Danielson

The Trap: F**K You Buddy

Here are several questions to keep in mind while watching the film. These can be used for discussion the night of the film or to write on for those who watch on their own. If you are writing answers because you did not attend the film, or because you are writing this for more extra credit, please answer one or more of the questions with a two-page response. You have until the date of the next film, May 14^th, to submit your responses. Here are some links if you wish to watch “The Trap” on your own. Part 1: Part 2: Part 3.

(The questions are the first 15 items below. After that is a summary of the ideas from the film. If you print it out there are many pages; but only the first two pages have the questions.)

1. What is the main argument that Adam Curtis is making in the film?

2. The assumptions about humans as rationally self-interested are understandable as a model of human behavior. Do you think this is an accurate description of human motivation? Why? Why not? What are the down sides of considering people this way?

3. Do you think that you would act according to the Game Theory / Prisoner’s Dilemma model predictions? Why or why not? i.e. would you betray your partner or would you cooperate? (Include Professor Schwartz’s comments about how the system may work on the initial round of choices, but will fail in the long run since we learn over time how others choose.)

4. What are the effects of using the objective model on how we think of ourselves?

5. What are/might be other areas of life in which these theories, Game Theory etc. play a role?

6. How do Marx’s views of alienation relate to the documentary?

7. Examine how Economics, Politics, Psychology, Mathematics etc., as presented in “The Trap”, are an example of Sonya’s discussion of interrelationship from Mindwalk. (Feel free to draw a diagram to display the relationships.) Does her perspective help illuminate or confuse the ideas? Why?

8. Are Cartesian notions of the world as a machine related to the argument of the film? How so?

9. How are the ideas of Paolo Freire and his criticism of the “Banking System” of education further illuminated by the film?

10. What would Sonya from “Mindwalk” say about Game Theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Public choice?

11. Discuss how the secretaries at RAND did not cheat on each other but rather cooperated. Include the ideas of Germaine Greer, whose article “Womanpower” we will read soon. Does this display a difference between the way women and men think and act in the world? (Also reflect how Stanley Milgram’s experiments show that women and men equally follow the orders given by those in power.)

12. We will read an article by R. D Laing in a week. Assess his ideas in light of the film.

13. The section on Psychiatry asked about the definitions of normal and sanity. Is there an objective definition of normal? Can there be? Is the definition culturally bound and created? What are the implications of such definitions? (The film “King of Hearts” addresses this question. If all the world is rationally fighting a war, is the choice of resisting that war abnormal? Can one be sane in an insane situation?)

14. What are the implications of these ideas on the issues of scarcity of which William Ophuls writes – particularly the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear power?

15. Is the freedom described in the film truly freedom as you conceive of it? Why? Why not?

The following is a summary of the ideas from the film film. Feel free to use these ideas as a reminder of the film. There are no questions below.

16. The film makes an analysis of how certain theories have come to dominate the modern world. The main claim is that a management system based on the objectivity of numbers has found its way into political power and controls us today.

17. A major claim of the documentary is that the freedom we seek today, politically, is born out of cold war paranoia and suspicion. Politicians and scientists believed they had discovered a description of human nature. It was called “freedom” but it is really a system of control. It traps us in a narrow world.

18. At the end of WWII we thought freedom meant escape from economic chaos and fascism. It was believed that government should control the economy to avoid the avarice at the heart of capitalism. But economist Friedrich von Hayek was more concerned with Communism and its totalitarian control of the economy. (Here is a link to his book The Road to Serfdom) He argued that the only way to be free was to go back to a completely free market. (A self-directing automatic system.) Individuals striving for their own individual gain will lead to freedom. There is no altruism in his system. Social order is achieved by releasing self interest. (Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine examines the current implications of this. These ideas are also addressed in Part 3 of the documentary.)

19. The link between von Hayek and game theory was the scientists who were trying to deal with the possibility of nuclear war. The strategists turned to game theory as a model for understanding how to deal with the Soviets. Game theory began by looking at how poker players reason. Game theory explains how the players play rationally to win by evaluating how their opponents play. In a similar way, there is a rational way to approach thinking about war by incorporating your enemies into your thinking. The RAND Corporation made mathematical models to describe how they believed the Russians would act based on our actions. (Just the way poker players strategize.)

20. In the cold war we had hundreds of bombers in the air, missiles at the ready, strategic moves to convince the Soviets we would always have enough missiles to hit them no matter how many they shot at us. In the rules of the game, fear and self interest stopped the Russians from attacking. It created a stable equilibrium called “the delicate balance of terror.” It stopped a war from happening by creating powerful incentives for the other not to start the war. The presupposition which Game Theory rests on is the view of the human being as driven only by self interest and distrustful of others, i.e. you can create stability through suspicion and self interest, not only in war, but in all of society. John Nash.

21. Nash used Game Theory to explain all kinds of human interaction. He assumed that all behavior was that of the hostile world of the nuclear standoff. Humans watch and monitor others and adjust. A system based on suspicion and betrayal did not, however, lead to chaos. Everyone’s self interest is perfectly balanced against each other. It assumes each person is separate and alone. If people cooperate, then the result is unpredictable. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the game to display this. The question is will two players work together or betray each other? In the dilemma you are willing to exchange something with another. But you could cheat. You also know the other could cheat as well. The rational choice was always to cheat. It’s the logic of the cold war. Giving up nuclear weapons would be the sucker bet because you can’t trust the other will do so as well. So you go for stability by a balance of weapons. Nash said all society works this way and thus you could have individual freedom which does not degenerate into chaos. The price, however, is everyone is distrustful of their fellow citizens.

22. The result is paranoia, a complete distrust of others. But the Nash predictions did not correlate with how people actually behave in the real world. The secretaries at RAND did not play the rational strategy, they cooperated. Nash was a paranoid schizophrenic. But his equations provide scientific support for the vision of rational self interest that Friedrich von Hayek championed.

23. R.D. Laing wanted to free people from the controls that restrain people. His work claimed to undermined the ideas of trust and love. He asked about the circumstances that incubates madness. He investigated families and how they relate. He wanted to stop the methods of Psychiatry of the time: drugs and electro-shock therapy. He used radical new treatments to address the “pressure cooker” of family life. He used the techniques of game theory to examine how families relate. (He went to Stanford Research Institute and learned about it there.) He thought he found a way to see the secret games people play, a new scientific methodology to determine how they relate. Couples use their everyday actions to control and manipulate others. Families use ‘love’ to dominate each other. “There’s nothing you can do to earn my love, even though I’m telling you that you have to earn my love.”

24. The modern family, Laing concluded, is a dark arena where people play games with each other and lead to a bleak existence. The “normal family” is like a gas chamber. Laing is radicalized into thinking the family controls people in the violent and corrupt society in which we live. This is an objective reality he believed. But it contained assumptions about who people really are. His ideas leaked into greater society. Laing became a leader in the counter culture revolution. The people who claim they are acting from benevolent intensions are in fact trying to control you. Always be on guard. Don’t trust the people who say they love you.

25. Laing and the counter culture were joined from the political right by economists who agreed with von Hayek. They used game theory, and complex mathematical / scientific models to prove that public duty was a sham and a corrupt hypocrisy. They introduced the paranoid assumptions into public policy. In the 1970s in Britain the institutions which served people were no longer really helping people as they claimed.

26. Institutions began to be destructive due to self interest. (Game theory explained it.) These economists claimed that when bureaucrats say they work for ‘the public good’, it is a fantasy. To work for the good of others required a world of shared goals and sacrifice and altruism. But that’s not true because people are suspicious self seeking individuals; thus it can’t exist. Public choice was the solution they provided.

27. Public interest doesn’t exist. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took these ideas and ran with them. James Buchanan could explain why the British state was failing using game theory. There is no such thing as the Public good, so the bureaucrats and politicians schemed to maximize their own self interest. Public choice theory explains why the self interest creates the chaos of society. “Yes Minister” the TV program fostered the ideas of Public Choice (Was it propaganda?) Laing was also attacking the corrupt elites – the Medical and Psychiatric system. The results of his critique produced a new system of order and control driven by the objective power of numbers. The Anti-Psychiatry movement claimed that Psychiatry was a means of control using terms like “madness” and sanity, normalcy, as a means of control of the people.

28. The test of psychiatry came when David Rosenhan found 8 people to present themselves at mental hospitals and claim they heard a voice in their head saying the word “Thud.” That was the only lie they should tell. All the people were admitted and judged insane. Rosenhan stayed for 2 months. Several were diagnosed with schizophrenia and one as bi-polar. They eventually agreed they had the disease and were getting better to get out. Rosenhan got out and reported it. It was a scandal. He was asked to repeat the experiment and he agreed. The hospital reported that they had found 41 fakes in the next few months. But none were attempted. They effect was “a disaster for American Psychiatry”. Another way had to be found to manage people’s inner feelings. A scientific, quantifiable means to determine mental illness was created. New measurable means tests based on surface behaviors was developed –new names OCD, ADHD, PTSD were developed. We don’t know the causes, but this is what they look like. (Look to the number of diseases defined in the DSM. It starts out somewhat small and has become quite large.)

29. Whether these diseases exist or not didn’t matter, this is what they look like. What matters is that they can be observed and thus recorded. The symptoms are described behaviorally; the mechanical questions can be asked by a computer. People are asked, do you have these characteristics? The computer makes the diagnosis. Psychiatrists decided to test the method. 100,000 people were asked the questions. Instead of people coming to psychiatrists, now everyday people were being asked. The results, processed by machines, were that more than 50% of people suffered some mental disorder - a hidden epidemic of mental illness. It was concluded that under the surface people are living with high levels of mental disorder. The checklist is a godsend since now people have objective confirmation of their suffering. New categories were now in the public mind. But this had consequences.

30. People used the system to identify their aberrant in the feeling and behavior. It also gave a model of the feelings they should have and aspire to. More and more people came to psychiatrists to be made normal. Now people have an ideal in mind and see themselves as not meeting it. This new mood had begun as an attack on the arrogance and power of psychiatry in the name of freedom, but a new form of control emerged. The checklists were an objective guide to the correct feelings in an age of individualism. People aren’t told how to behave by elites. People now monitor themselves according to the model. These new categories can be checked by the power of numbers.

31. In 1979 Thatcher promised a new society based on the dream of individual freedom. Released from the power of bureaucrats and elites, she needed to manage and control the people to avoid chaos. She used systems based on numbers which relied on the vision of people as suspicious and only self interested. Thatcher sold off the state owned businesses. She instituted management by self interest. She used Buchanan’s ideas to get rid of the managers who thought they acted in the public interest: Buchanan called them the “Zealots”; he believed that we are safer with greedy, self interested politicians. If politicians are “for sale”, then we know their position. Then you can use incentives to guide their behavior. If the success depends on the goodness of politicians, then it will fail according to Buchanan. Thatcher reformed the British Health Service in1988 as an overthrow of the power of the medical institution. Alain Enthoven, a nuclear strategist, was hired to rework the National Health Service. He used sets of charts and models - systems analysis. It is a form of management to be used in any endeavor. Get rid of emotions and subjective values and replace them with rational, objective methods, mathematically defined targets and incentives.

32. Enthoven had used them in 1960s to transform the Pentagon under the direction of Robert McNamera. Their goal was to get rid of Patriotism as a test and replace it with a rational system based on numbers. McNamera used it in Vietnam and it was a disaster. (See the film “The Fog of War” which examines McNamera’s reflections on Vietnam.) Performance targets and incentives – e.g. the body count – were used as a rational measure of success. Enthoven applied similar systems to health care in Britain. He reconfigured the system with incentives so that the elites don’t run things but the people rationally do a better job. Reward efficiency with individual freedom, and we can measure it. Make it an Internal Market, a mathematical model to create measureable outputs and performance targets at all levels. (Think of the Education systems in the United States under “No Child Left Behind” and the testing regimen.) Competition is created, driven by a system of incentives to mirror the pressures of the free market. It liberates the individuals, thus creating a new freedom, by using an objective method with set targets, allowing people to find any way to meet the goals. Now people are motivated to be creative to solve the problems. People owned the targets. This sheds all ideas of working for the public good. But it’s a narrow freedom. I am now an individual calculating what is to my advantage – as defined by numbers. (It assumes simple, self interested people to make game theory work.) It works to create people who are only interested in themselves.

33. Thus the idea that people might care about others is taken to be a naïve view of humans.

34. In 1989 the Berlin wall fell and the cold war was over. The victors now set the stage for the new world order. But the view of people was modeled on the suspicious paranoid person - this idea spreads to take over politics since it seemed to offer a better alternative to Democracy. What it actually leads to is corruption, growing rigidity and growing inequality. We will come to believe we are the strange, isolated beings the cold war scientists invented to make the models work. These ideas will be the cage – the trap.

35. The second and third parts of the documentary trace out the implications and actions of the Clinton and Blair administrations on political change. They are well worth watching.