Week of July 2, 2001
[Note: Some now-dead links have been removed from archived items.]

THE SCENE (a.k.a. vpostrel.com)
Comments on current ideas and events

MORE A.I.: I hadn't seen any reviews of A.I. by actual mothers, so it's good to find one of America's most commonsensical ones weighing in on the movie, which has fallen to third at the box office. Joanne Jacobs writes:

The thesis of "AI" is that loving mommy makes robo-David a real boy. But he has no free will. Once imprinted on his foster mom, he's programmed to love her mindlessly and endlessly, like a cyber-stalker. Spielberg doesn't seem to get the creepiness of David's obsession with mom. The promos say: "His love is real. He is not." The problem is that David's love is not real.

Joanne, an old Silicon Valley hand, also turns up a clever local take on the movie: The San Jose Mercury News invites a real A.I. expert, pioneering Stanford researcher John McCarthy, to a showing. "What a crazy idea, to make a half-boy,'' says McCarthy, who has many insights on the movie's psychological and technical flaws, as well as the future of A.I. [Posted 7/6.]

LOOK AND FLOP: Surprising no one, Apple has discontinued its beautiful G4 Cube. The machine inspired plenty of desire—I'd still love to have one—but, according to the Los Angeles Times, only 148,000 actual sales. The Industry Standard calls it "too pretty to live." But that's exactly backwards. The only reasons to buy the Cube were its looks and its tiny footprint (good for small desks, like my husband's at SMU, where Steve's Cube gets lots of oohs and aahs). If the Cube hadn't been beautiful, it wouldn't have lasted even this long. The basic problem, which has plagued Apple for most of its corporate life: The machine was just too damned expensive. It didn't take a lot of upgrades to cross the $3,000 barrier, and people spending their own money or spending tight budgets, which is to say most potential customers, could do better with other machines.

What, then, is the value of stunning design in what I argue in my book-in-process is a new age of aesthetics? It is value on the margin—an addition to basic functionality. It's the deciding factor that answers the questions, "What have you done for me lately? Why should I switch from what I already have?" Style commands a premium, but only if it comes as an addition to function, not as an alternative to it.

Apple skimped on the basics. As Bruce Schwartz wrote in his USA Today review, "There is no excuse for a machine billed as a 'supercomputer' to come with only 64 megabytes of memory." And since Steve Jobs' doesn't believe in backup disks, there was no floppy or integrated Zip drive and, in the early models, only a DVD-ROM rather than a writeable CD. The Cube gave users a choice: trust your work to the vagaries of hard disks or add on a clunky peripheral. Power users didn't like the Cube because it wasn't made for tinkering, and most other people couldn't justify the price. (A typical assessment of the type that doomed the Cube is the Macworld review here.) Apple offered less and expected customers to pay more. That formula doesn't work, even in an era of look and feel. [Posted 7/6.]

GOOD READING: Miscellaneous virtual clippings you should check out: Joanne Jacobs takes apart Newsweek's gullible reporting on charter schools in San Francisco. My Reason colleague Sara Rimensnyder argues that debate over whether oral contraceptives should be covered by insurance misses the real point (the real point being an old favorite of mine). Ken Foskett of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers a rare—and three-part—profile of Clarence Thomas, with Thomas' cooperation. Pete du Pont repeats World War II remembrances of a less-innocent America (my words, not Pete's). The Library of Congress recreates extraordinary color (yes, color) turn-of-the-20th-century photos of Russian life. (Thanks to Cosmo Wenman, who created my site's graphics, for calling this to my attention.) And for those with more ambitious reading habits, the works of David Hume online. (Thanks to reader Kevin Parker for this reference.) [Posted 7/3.]

"POLITICAL REACTIONS": Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web" calls my assessment of A.I. a "political reaction," lumping it in with Jim Bowman's complaint about the movie's global-warming backstory. I appreciate the plug. But my reaction isn't political—it's artistic. I can't stand critics who evaluate movies based on whether they meet political tests. A.I. is an incoherent mess that fails to create a believable world. Politics is its least important flaw. [Posted 7/2.]

"ORDINARY SADNESS": Since Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her five kids in the bathtub, apologists for her (alleged) crimes have argued that her severe postpartum depression explains her deeds. And, in reply, commentators who rightly want no such excuses have pooh-poohed the very idea of depression.

"Whether called postpartum depression or psychosis, however, such diagnoses are the result not of objective tests, such as those that track blood sugar levels or cholesterol counts," writes my Reason colleague Brian Doherty, taking the Thomas Szasz line that deems most mental illness a social construct. "It seems reasonable," writes Brian, "to think that the psychiatric diagnosis of 'postpartum depression' merely describes a perfectly understandable human reaction: feeling unhappy or out-or-sorts after a major life change or the adoption of a huge new responsibility, one that stretches ahead for a lifetime."

Stanley Kurtz of National Review Online puts the issue in a broader context—"a new culture war" between those who see mental states as grounded in biology ("brains") and those who prefer a more "complex" explanation, something that leaves room for traditional dualism ("minds"). "Brainers build their cultural castles on the rock of cutting-edge science: genetics, brain biology, and evolutionary psychology," writes Kurtz. "Minders craft a worldview the old-fashioned way, by drawing on religion, philosophy, and classic social science." In Kurtz's view, which is informed by other authors, biochemically treating mood disorders like depression creates phony happiness: "[D]rugs like Prozac are just very sophisticated versions of alcohol. They don't really create 'happiness.' Instead they alter our mood indirectly, by blocking mental access to our real-world problems. So the inner peace we gain from Prozac comes at the cost of a subtle but powerful detachment from both our authentic inner life and our place in the world around us." (Kurtz gives himself an out, conceding that "for those who are legitimately diagnosed with clinical depression or severe hyperactivity, drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin can be both beneficial and important." What constitutes a "legitimate" diagnosis is, of course, the fundamental question.)

Consciousness is a complicated thing, which is why I don't buy the notion, popular among techies, that all you need to emulate the human mind is enough computing power. (One of the unremarked aspects of Bill Joy's famous anti-technology screed is that he starts out in a bar with Ray Kurzweil and John Searle, but once he hears Kurzweil's hardware-determined prophecies, he loses all interest in the philosopher of consciousness.) Still, consciousness surely has some connection to the body—to our experiences as sensory creatures, as well as to the biological processes of our brain. We are not minds separate from our bodies.

And our bodies constantly alter our mental states with chemicals. It is perfectly possible to have a happy life and yet be debilitated by enervating black moods. Kurtz's prescription of "religious, spiritual, or other cultural guides" can no more cure such states than it can relieve migraines. Cultural guides, and necessity, can certainly spur otherwise strong-willed people to overcome depression-induced inertia; Winston Churchill, after all, suffered from terrible depression he called a "black dog." But I suspect the saving grace of their activity is that, like the drugs Kurtz denounces, it detaches the depressed from contemplating their "authentic inner life."

And what of Yates? Is the only way to hold her morally culpable to pretend that depression, postpartum or otherwise, does not exist? Millions of people, after all, manage to be depressed, even severely so, without harming others. Andrew Sullivan puts it well, in a critique of Anna Quindlen's self-indulgent defense of Yates:

It seems to me that even the severity of post-partum depression doesn't excuse or mitigate this evil. I speak from some experience. My own mother had acute post-partum depression after my younger brother was born, and was hospitalized for months for it when I was four. She suffered terribly from a recurrence of this disease for many years, was hospitalized several times, and watching her long and dreadful ordeal close-up was one of the most searing experiences of my life. But she was still a mother—an amazing one, who loved her children beyond measure and did everything she possibly could for us despite her illness. Quindlen calls this achievement 'the insidious cult of motherhood.' Well, sign me up then please. When I read Quindlen's glib posturing, even equating her own privileged motherhood with Yates' or with others' who have had to deal with real mental illness as well as rearing kids, I felt like someone had gut-punched my sense of moral order. Yes, empathy for someone dealing with extreme stress and isolation is well and good. But nothing—nothing—can excuse what Andrea Yates has been accused of doing. If killing five young kids in a bath-tub cannot be simply and roundly condemned, what can?

"Brainer" discoveries about the physical sources of human nature(s) aren't going away. As I argue in chapter six of The Future and Its Enemies, contemporary biology makes it all the more imperative to legally separate causes from consequences—to hold evildoers responsible for what they do, regardless of whether they did it because of childhood abuse, chemical dependency, jealousy, or greed. (The traditional argument for excusing the insane is that they have no sense of what they're doing, not that they're feeling terrible and think hurting others will salve their pain.) The problem with the "minders" is that their moral worldview depends on separating humanity and nature. Nature becomes, in this view, either a source of moral absolutes or a source of excuses. And if human actions are subject to natural forces, they are beyond moral judgment. A dangerous idea in a biological age. [Posted 7/2.]

CONGRATULATIONS: To Walter Olson's Overlawyered.com, on its second anniversary. It's an often depressing site, but an excellent one. [Posted 7/2.]

TRAFFIC AND TIPS: Thanks to readers who've sent payments via Amazon, PayPal, or check to support this site. The Amazon box now tracks the number and total of contributions so far (before Amazon's rather hefty commissions). To give, or see the totals, click to box to the left. If you'd like to send a check, please email me for the mailbox address. As for the traffic, I'd like to report that, like Kausfiles, The Scene had 114,000 page visits in June. But I can't. The real number is 17,000 page visits. If you like this site, please spread the word. [Posted 7/2.]

BAD MOVIE ALERT: It may not be the worst movie of the summer—I'm skipping Pearl Harbor—but A.I. is truly dreadful. I wasn't expecting rigorous science fiction, but the plot and its premises didn't even make internal sense. The whole thing felt like it was being made up as the filmmakers went along, often just to get an interesting scene with no idea of how it related to the rest of the film.

A few of the many questions that came to mind: What kind of family would want a child who never grew up and was eternally, clingingly dependent? This is supposed to be a viable commercial product? Why is David so stupid when he arrives? He seems to know less about the world than the primitive A.I. of Doug Lenat's Cyc project. Who gives people a pseudo-7-year-old who doesn't know enough to stay out of the bathroom when Mom's on the john? Why does he imprint only on his mother and not on both parents? What do these robots run on? They supposedly consume no resources once they're manufactured, but they certainly move around as if they're getting energy from somewhere. Why are prostitute robots wandering the streets? They don't seem to have owners/pimps. Do they work for free, as a public service? If so, why are there "establishments" in Rouge City? The robots aren't self-repairing—we know that from the famous junkyard scene. So how do they last for thousands of years without wearing out? Why does a future home look exactly like a present one? Why do "resurrected" humans created from DNA samples come back as adults, rather than cloned babies, and with conveniently selective memories of their past lives? What the hell is that mumbo-jumbo about the space-time continuum? There's no end to the stupidity. It's as though the filmmakers didn't even try to create a believable world with consistent rules—the first requirement not only of science fiction but of any fiction.

There are the more fundamental questions, like why a one-child policy is supposed to lead to prosperity (and how it's enforced), why humanity is inevitably doomed, and why the rigid separation of mechas from orgas is the center of a movie made in 2001. Nowadays, merger of mecha and orga looks more likely and is creepier—witness the Borg. A.I. screams 1969, which is, in fact, when the original short story was written.

A.I. has drawn praise, occasionally from smart people. How can this be? One reason, I think, is that they're so underexposed to the idea-rich worlds of contemporary science fiction that they're easily impressed. They aren't used to seeing the sorts of moral dilemmas at the movie's heart worked out in believable, textured societies. They're excited to see them contemplated at all. So they settle for hocum. Take my advice: Unless you're in it for the research, see Memento, or Shrek, or Tomb Raider, or Moulin Rouge. Or rent Blade Runner. [Posted 7/2.]

—Virginia Postrel
virginia@dynamist.com

Previous weeks of The Scene