A Miscellany of Avatar Thoughts

1. The first thought in my head after the film was that it reminded me forcefully of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, both in plot and in visuals. The next thought was of "Call Me Joe," a classic sci-fi novella by Poul Anderson about a human paraplegic who (as part of a scientific mission) inhabits a blue centaur-like body on the surface of Jupiter and eventually elects to transfer himself permanently into this altogether better embodiment. Then I realized that all of these plot themes probably appear in hundreds of other works of fiction, and decided to let go of being indignant about it.

2. I did not interpret the movie as being about 'race' so much as about what invariably happens when a technologically-sophisticated culture wants something possessed by a technologically-primitive culture. Maybe I don't understand what these folks mean by 'race'.

3. I was interested in the analogy of the Pandora planet to a vast, possibly intelligent network. It's possible that this was just a way of talking about it without coming out and saying "magic," but I'm more interested in what it would be like if the Na'vi really are inhabiting a planet-wide neural network. It might mean that, rather than being technologically primitive (i.e., at an early stage in the development of tools), they're technologically naive: they have zero need for tools to mediate their interactions with their environment, since they're able to interface directly with the 'mind' of their planet and accomplish what they need in that way.

4. One of the most striking images for me was when Neytiri, the hot daughter of the Na'vi chief, is holding protagonist Jake Sully in his (injured) human form. We're used to images of huge male monsters/aliens picking up human-sized (often blonde) female characters; it was so unexpected to see a larger, more powerful female character holding/protecting a weakened, child-like male hero. The only analogy available for me here was the Pietá, which come to think of it, isn't inappropriate; in fact, maybe it was an intentional bit of cinematography.

5. Lore Sjöberg writes:

Spock ears may be the driving force behind the Trek phenomenon. Roddenberry apparently tapped into one of the strongest symbols in the Universal Geek Unconscious. Somewhere in the back of the mind of every D&D-playing junior-high-schooler is the equation "pointy ears = cool." Elves, Vulcans, Yoda, six-breasted Cat Women -- wherever you find dweeby wish-fulfillment, you find pointy ears.

Pointy ears, check. Also, they swivel, which is cool.

6. People keep saying this film is the Star Wars of generation Y. This seems true in terms of representing a quantum leap in special effects. But Star Wars came packaged with an entire mythology and backstory that just isn't present in Avatar. The film is making so much money that I can't imagine they won't want to make a sequel, but I can't see it becoming part of the American collective unconscious the way Star Wars has, or even the way The Matrix has.

Friday fun links: time travel and economics

Tyler Cowen and Glen Whitman think about the effects of time travel on, respectively, interest rates and immigration. The conversation started when Tyler linked to Paul Krugman's 1978 paper, The Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF).

Friday 'philosophy of sci-fi' links:

Several interesting bits of writing on the purpose and meaning of science fiction:

Clive Thompson on Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing (Wired)

Ender's Game: The Book That Cannot Be Adapted (Nerd World blog)

Was Kipling the first modern SF writer? (Biology in Science Fiction blog)

Books, intelligence, and SAT scores

Via Marginal Revolution, I found books that make you dumb, a website using Facebook to correlate a college's most popular books with its average SAT/ACT scores. It's clear from the methodology that there are quite a few problems with this, including but not limited to correlation vs. causation. But it's a fun list anyway.

-Lolita, 100 Years of Solitude and Atlas Shrugged are some of my favorite books that are linked to high SAT scores. Ender's Game, The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books are in the high-ish middle area.

-"The Holy Bible" is linked to low scores, while "The Bible" and the Book of Mormon fall squarely in the middle.

-Most surprising low-score correlation: Fahrenheit 451.

How to: bioengineer mosquitoes to stop spread of disease

Via Wired, I learned about Oxitec, a UK company making improvements on the 'sterile insect technique' currently used for some types of for pest management. In standard SIT, radiation-sterilized male mosquitoes are released into the wild, where they'll mate with wild-type females but cause the females' eggs to be non-viable. This has worked okay, but is not that scalable because the radiation step is tricky and tends to deplete your stock of male mosquitoes. In Oxitec's technique, the males are genetically altered to be dependent on tetracycline, which they are fed until release into the wild. Their offspring will also be tetracycline-dependent, and so will die before reaching reproductive maturity. Ultimately, this is all in the service of eradicating mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue fever, malaria, and so on.

Like many experiments in genetic engineering, this has the potential to be a pretty environmentally-friendly way to do the job (compared to, say, massive use of pesticides) but like most people I have a hard time shaking the feeling that somehow, it could all go terribly wrong. I'm inclined to call this vague sense of impending bio-engineered doom "Jurassic Park Syndrome."

Libertarian archetype: the stubborn old coot

Wired's Tony Long on libertarianism. An odd piece, mostly about how Ron Paul is a wacko. In general I'm on board with the sentiment behind this -- I'd be both embarrassed and alarmed to have RP as our chief executive. But not great journalism, as it takes Ron to be representative of actual libertarians, who are usually a bit more intellectually sophisticated. Tony Long is kind of like somebody's cantankerous grandpa -- some of what comes out of his mouth is blatantly offensive and incorrect, some is surprisingly insightful, all of it is delivered in a patented 'independent old coot' style. Come to think of it, Mr. Long bears a striking resemblance to (and shares a last name with) a certain famous fictional libertarian old coot.

It's, like, the circle of life or something.

From Neurophilosophy:

The spores of the fungus attach themselves to the external surface of the ant, where they germinate. They then enter the ant's body through the tracheae (the tubes through which insects breathe), via holes in the exoskeleton called spiracles. Fine fungal filaments called mycelia then start to grow inside the ant's body cavity, absorbing the host's soft tissues but avoiding its vital organs.

When the fungus is ready to sporulate, the mycelia grow into the ant's brain. The fungus then produces chemicals which act on the host's brain and alter its perception of pheromones. This causes the ant to climb a plant and, upon reaching the top, to clamp its mandibles around a leaf or leaf stem, thus securing it firmly to what will be its final resting place.

The fungus then devours the ant's brain, killing the host. The fruiting bodies of the fungus sprout from the ant's head, through gaps in the joints of the exoskeleton. Once mature, the fruiting bodies burst, releasing clusters of capsules into the air. These in turn explode on their descent, spreading airborne spores over the surrounding area. These spores then infect other ants, completing the life cycle of the fungus.

The original post has video of this. This fungus, and many other varieties of bug-killing parasites, are used as environmentally-friendly pest control. (The other brainwashing parasite mentioned in the post: the gordian worm, which as a juvenile takes up residence inside a grasshopper or beetle, then induces the insect to drown itself so that the adult worm can emerge and reproduce.)

I think I found this post especially vivid because I just finished reading the Worlds trilogy (Joe Haldeman), in which humans colonizing a new planet are terrorized by the Eveloi, a parasitic species that directs its hosts' actions by means of a tiny filament accessing the brain through a hole in the skull. (An interesting thing I noticed about the Worlds books -- there are references throughout, in character and place names, to giants of sci-fi/futurism like Asimov, Heinlein, and some others that seemed familiar but I couldn't place.)

Star Trek: The Newly Enhanced, But Still Corny, Original Series

Good news for ST enthusiasts: TOS is being given a cosmetic makeover to add better backgrounds and effects. In other words: not every planetary surface will bear a striking resemblance to southern California! But every improvement comes with a cost:

Remastering the show has also given every scene a crisper, more vibrant look that will thrive in the brave new HDTV world, although there is a downside: Enhanced visual information renders a too-much-information view of Capt. Kirk's ripped-shirt torso and confirms his nondigitally enhanced pate.

I need a DVR.

Bio science fiction

From Nature: science fiction writers interviewed about why sci-fi tends to focus on technologies from the physical sciences, and why the genre is good for exploring tough questions in (bio)science ethics. In my case, they're preaching to the choir: in college, I organized an entire philosophy seminar course around Is Data Human? The Metaphysics of Star Trek. Sure, the in-class dialogue sounded a little silly, but I'm pretty sure that class was where I learned how to actually think about philosophical issues (as opposed to how to read and interpret philosophy texts).

Paging Robert Heinlein...

Tyler Cowen at MR wants to know, would immortals be libertarian? More precisely, would human 'post-mortals' who had eliminated aging and could only die from unnatural causes, become libertarian? Tyler thinks they would, especially around social issues: "Immortals are going to want to try everything, and why not?"

I think this is true for social issues, less true for safety and security issues -- if you don't have to die, you're motivated to try pretty hard to eliminate dangers that could cause your unnatural demise. (MR commenters make this point clear.)

Another aspect to think about: once people quit dying of old age, we're talking about a major lebensraum problem, solvable only by space colonization (more efficient use of urban space can only get us so far). In other words, a post-mortal society has to become a pioneer society. And pioneer societies tend to be libertarian, bordering on anarchist, partly because they attract independent types, partly because law enforcement gets trickier when the population is dispersed, and partly because there's plenty of space between you and your neighbors. Plus, a diasporized human race has the opportunity to experiment with lots of different legal and cultural arrangements -- so even if post-mortal humans aren't more libertarian on average, this would still be a more libertarian-friendly world.