[HN Gopher] Montage fallacy
___________________________________________________________________
Montage fallacy
Author : bschne
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-02-27 10:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (herbertlui.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (herbertlui.net)
| csours wrote:
| While I do agree, I think there's another effect that runs in
| reverse of this:
|
| I had a goal to get to a certain weight. I passed that goal, but
| I don't know when. I was putting forth real effort, I was doing
| all the things you need to do. It wasn't a montage, I wasn't
| skipping anything.
|
| Here's what I think happened: Small effects are huge in the long
| term. Every day I was losing a few grams of fat, to the point
| that it was never a dramatic swing that I could say "I made it!".
| From day to day, the number on the scale went up and down, and at
| some point, it never went above my goal number again.
|
| NOTE: I actually don't encourage losing weight to a certain
| number - this is just for simplicity. The number is a small part
| of the goal. I actually have goal pants and shirt next to the
| scale and lately the scale hasn't moved, but the clothes fit
| better.
|
| If health is your goal, please track more than one thing.
| bschne wrote:
| Interesting, for me that sounds like exactly the montage thing,
| just without the set endpoint necessarily. But if you focus on
| your goal number too much, you may get disheartened by the slow
| progress there, or the brief setbacks along the way, whereas if
| you learn to enjoy the underlying process, you're just doing
| your thing and then before you know it your weight is sort of
| where you want it.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| To be fair, some transformations are microwavable, in the sense
| that there's a well known process that gets you to the end, you
| "just" need the discipline to follow thru.
| csours wrote:
| > you "just" need the discipline to follow thru.
|
| I think "discipline"/"motivation" is difficult to communicate
| for a few reasons -
|
| 1. It's different for everyone.
|
| 2. It's the product of internal work that can't be seen.
|
| 3. It's an internal perception of an internal process.
|
| 4. It feels like a real thing that other people should be able
| to understand.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Ok but I was distinguishes processes for which a recipe
| exists vs processes for which is doesn't. For example, if I
| was to be fit vs if I want to be Mr Olympia. For the latter
| there's no process that guarantees that at the end you'll
| achieve it.
|
| So in a sense, some transformations are microwavable.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| I think his point was that "microwaveable" requires the
| magic pixie dust that is _motivation_ , and ... things that
| require magic pixie dust aren't actually "microwaveable".
| CipherThrowaway wrote:
| If you need discipline, then it's not microwaveable. That
| sounds like more of a slow cook.
| samatman wrote:
| This is going to maybe sound dumb, but hear me out: I've found a
| good hack to get around the montage fallacy, which is: the
| montage playlist.
|
| For whatever thing you're trying to improve, which would be a
| montage in your personal movie, make a playlist. Stick with it:
| it's fine to swap songs in or out, but don't overdo it, maintain
| the continuity.
|
| Memory is episodic, and for my brain type at least, sound,
| specifically musical sound, really ties it together. Listening to
| music from bygone decades is the best tool I have to really put
| myself in my memories of those times.
|
| The montage playlist works the same way: it compresses all the
| slow, repetitive, boring work that goes into improving yourself
| into a montage. It feels less like dozens to hundreds of hours,
| and more like the same hour but getting a bit better each time.
| bschne wrote:
| I think this is great! It may not work if you're trying to
| build a five-minute-a-day daily habit, it may not work for
| everyone, but there's def something to it! There's also a
| pattern of some pretty productive people making playlists of a
| few upbeat but simple songs they'd never listen to otherwise,
| and putting that on repeat when they go heads-down on
| something, see e.g. one of my favorite examples:
| https://ryanholiday.net/the-guilty-crazy-secret-that-helps-m...
| enobrev wrote:
| In the case of a 5-minute-a-day daily habit, you might
| consider choosing a specific song (maybe changing it weekly
| or monthly) for said habit.
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| Yes! I like Paganini's Caprice No. 24
| Karellen wrote:
| 5:32, Swinging on a Star?
| bschne wrote:
| Rituals work!
| hosh wrote:
| It does not sound dumb. Ideas like this crossed my mind and I
| had even put a playlist together too.
|
| However, mindfulness and being present is a huge part of the
| practice. You get a lot more out of something if you are able
| to be more present during the boring parts than your
| consciousness leaving.
| samatman wrote:
| Whether or not music takes you out of the present or not
| varies a lot by person. If you're the sort that finds it
| distracting then this isn't for you, and that's fine.
| hosh wrote:
| Sure, although the sensations themselves are not the cause
| of being present or not.
|
| The idea of having music in the background to evoke a
| montage scene is a kind of fantasizing on what it feels
| like to be ... montaging. My mind does something similar
| without a montage playlist. In both cases, the power of
| being present is partially siphoned off to sustain that
| fantasizing, rather than sensing and experiencing what is
| happening in the training.
|
| There is an alternate thing that can happen -- the use of
| music to artificially create a proxy for the external,
| social conditioning. That is also a support, and if that is
| what someone need, sure. However, there is much to be said
| when someone is able to tap into the internal drive and
| passion, without relying on an external social
| conditioning.
|
| There are also skills that, you cannot develop without
| jettisoning supports like that.
| samatman wrote:
| > _There are also skills that, you cannot develop_
|
| I believe we've never met? That would make this
| presumptuous, or more likely, projection.
| satisfice wrote:
| I have worked out every day this year (after two years of
| effectively no exercise). I put it all in a spreadsheet, and
| glancing over the 58 exercise sessions, I see progress.
|
| Had I not thought to memorialize it, I believe I would be sitting
| here thinking that working out is doing nothing. My montage
| memory finds no higlights.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The basic gist is: Everything worthwhile takes time and effort;
| often, sacrifice, too.
|
| At least, that's been my experience, and I have a fair bit of
| that (scars from doing stupid stuff, too).
| pfdietz wrote:
| XKCD: Science Montage
|
| https://xkcd.com/683/
| Karellen wrote:
| Team America: World Police - Montage
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFrMLRQIT_k
| gensym wrote:
| The Mountain Goats: Training Montage
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxU1tKph7WQ
| xyzelement wrote:
| I was recently reading the book of Exodus, in particular where
| G-d tells Moses and the Jewish people about the construction of
| the tabernacle and the altar. The striking thing about the altar
| is the description of _daily_ sacrifices that are required.
|
| As a metaphor, this resonates to what we're talking about there.
| The nature of the universe is such that change happens much more
| through compounding than through one-time miracles (eg, if you
| want an extra 100K in the bank, the easiest way to do that is to
| have saved $27 every day over the last 10 years than somehow to
| wish for the 100K to land in your account in one shot, the way to
| lose 10 lbs is to cut out 100 calories a day for a year, etc.)
|
| Back to Exodus - you can think of "$27/day" or "100 calories/day"
| as a form of sacrifice. You can always spend that money on
| something, you an always eat an extra treat - to not do that
| requires consistent, daily, sacrifice, albeit small.
|
| That's why when someone does something consistently, we say he
| does it "religiously" - religion teaches you daily consistency in
| many ways. We don't sacrifice on the altar nowadays, but think
| about daily morning prayer for example - if you can be consistent
| with that you can be consistent with a lot of other things.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| +1, fantastic comment. This really resonates. I was recently
| looking at the app I use to manage my workouts and realized
| I've done over 150,000 pushups using the app. I'm pretty strong
| for a middle-aged tech worker, and it's because of the
| consistency. Same deal w/ guitar - I try hard to play for at
| least 10m nearly every day (which sometimes expands to a much
| longer session) and it really pays dividends.
| mmkhd wrote:
| No, this is not really a fantastic comment because the
| comment initially supports the thesis of the article, which
| is "change is slow progress, not a burst of activity" and it
| does this quite well with a biblical comparison, but then it
| veers off to "daily praying, helps with success in other
| areas", which is a totally different thesis. That's
| proselytizing instead of commenting on the article.
|
| And your "+1, fantastic comment" smells, too; because you do
| not address the content of the comment, but only the original
| thesis of the posted article. So it should have been "+1,
| fantastic article". You don't even say what's so good in the
| comment that you praise.
|
| Is this an attack by missionaries with day jobs in marketing?
| :-)
|
| (And it is not really a fantastic article either, because it
| has a nice start with the Rocky comparison and a nice ending
| (sans post script) that fits the start but the middle is a
| muddle just like this run-on sentence.)
| xyzelement wrote:
| (I am the GP whose comment you're criticizing.)
|
| I think you're trying to follow the analogy/point so maybe
| I can be more explicit.
|
| Consistency is _difficult_ - everyone knows that you "have
| to" save money consistently, or cut back on calories, or
| exercise daily, or whatever. The gap from "knowledge" to
| "able to do it" is quite big - as evidenced by the fact
| _most_ people aren 't able to be consistent about much in
| our lives.
|
| And that's not because of some sort of "privilege" - people
| spend time on social media where they could be exercising,
| they are spending money on stuff they don't strictly need,
| etc. There's a large cohort of people who (1) know they can
| make their lives better through consistency (2) have the
| underlying opportunity to do it and (3) fail to actually
| capitalize on those opportunities constantly.
|
| The connection to religion is that religious practice is by
| its nature consistent (you go to your house of worship
| weekly, you pray daily, whatever the case may be) - which
| is a great exercise in the muscle of consistency. I suspect
| that if someone is trained in ability to do religious
| things daily, they are much better positioned to apply this
| skill to other domains of their life (similar to how
| someone who is a trained weight lifter can apply their
| strength to other domains like carrying their kids or
| physical work.)
|
| What takes my comment from "true" to "fantastic" (just
| kidding) is the connection to the applicability of
| seemingly arcane religious practice to a very-much-relevant
| modern day skillset, which I also believe is less available
| in society than it was previously. You may not resonate
| with this on a religious level, but perhaps there's some
| room to recognize ancient wisdom applicable to today,
| anyways.
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| There is certainly validity in conistency. Some might
| find it easier with religion.
|
| But the main core concept doesn't require any ritualistic
| pagentry to work.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Somebody found it a fantastic comment. Someone else did not
| find it fantastic.
|
| I find a comment stating it _is_ good/bad/fantastic as if
| that is the ground truth, a lot less convincing, it lacks
| the nuance of a point-of-view.
|
| The quite firm reply seems to stem from the word "prayer".
| Some people pray, others not. What's wrong with that?
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| Sorry about the off topic, but why the G-d spelling?
| panosfilianos wrote:
| "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain"
| likely.
| marketerinland wrote:
| It's something Jewish people do, and is occasionally adopted
| by others.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Marketing attaches to the cause-effect regardless of the message
| like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putG9hFDYGw
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Watching Rocky run up the stairs every day might well be boring
| for long stretches, especially to people not used to looking
| closely and patiently at the world, but that's fine. It would
| elevate the movie into something fundamentally better than what
| it is. A movie need not be entertaining to be good; in trying to
| be entertaining, it often makes itself worse, and worse, makes
| its viewers worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| You seem to be mixing documentary and movie. To me at least
| they are different.
|
| The purpose of a documentary is to educate viewers. If people
| are not entertained that is okay, but if the don't go away
| educated in some way it failed.
|
| The purpose of a movie is to entertain, so it if isn't
| entertaining it also isn't good. It might also be educational,
| but that isn't the purpose.
|
| What documentary directors know is that if you are not at least
| somewhat entertaining viewers will not watch and so they put in
| some entertainment aspects even though that isn't the purpose.
| Movie directors know that they need not tell the truth, though
| often they will just because viewers will believe the movie and
| potentially change behavior despite that not being intended and
| so morally they sometime feel a need to show someone doing
| something that works even though it isn't required and some do
| not.
|
| Of course where the line is, is often blurry. Some movies are
| intended as documentary except that they are propaganda and so
| we would call them fiction. Many documentary are primarily
| entertainment, with the minimum education to claim documentary.
|
| Rocky was clearly intended as an entertaining movie. The
| directors put enough effort into finding truth about boxing
| training that you won't go too wrong treating it as a
| documentary - but if you really want to be a boxer there are
| better sources to learn how and you will discover some things
| they got wrong for plot reasons.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| No, I confuse nothing, you have Hollywood-induced brain rot
| :)
|
| The purpose of a movie is not to entertain. Or rather, that
| is one possible and valid and fine purpose, but it is
| certainly not the only such purpose. To believe that it is,
| THAT is the real confusion.
|
| The difference between a documentary and a movie isn't about
| purpose, it's about method: how they try to get at the truth.
| The documentary tries to do it by looking at a specific case;
| the movie (and fiction in general) tries to get at truth via
| an imagined aggregate (although of course usually embodied in
| a single fictional character, like Rocky).
| nottorp wrote:
| Neither the documentary nor the movie care about the truth.
|
| The movie doesn't have to. The documentary cares about
| engagement.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| The first line of your comment doesn't seem necessary to
| make your point.
|
| There is a guideline that says "don't be snarky"[0] and I
| think it applies here.
|
| Having produced a documentary (and being in the process of
| creating another one), I can't say that I agree with your
| view on purpose at all.
|
| The purpose of either documentary or fiction movie is
| whatever the movie maker aims at. There is no reason for
| anyone to abide by your standard of "trying to get at the
| truth" when writing the scenario for Once Upon A Time in
| America, Jurassic Park, The Simpsons (the movie), or
| Bowling for Columbine.
|
| I'd say most movies have an intent behind them. Further
| than that, we're art amateurs trying to interpret the
| meaning of abstract paintings in a gallery. Maybe the
| painter wanted to denunce the patriarchy. Or maybe they had
| food poisoning that day. Who knows.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| snapcaster wrote:
| You don't actually believe this right?
|
| edit: you would actually rather watch a version of rocky where
| they show thousands of hours of running? this sounds like
| nonsense
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Well, with AI, we're now able to make that movie!
|
| And, let's be honest, someone somewhere will watch it.
|
| And make a YouTube reaction video of themselves watching it.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I get the _why_ of movies using montages, but I agree with the
| author in that it can stylize /"sexify" the experience away so
| that susceptible viewers can think they can just dreamily get
| from one end to the other, when reality is much more sharp-
| edged/clunky than smooth most of the time. To me, progress is
| about consistency above all else- It's all about getting your ass
| to the gym on those days you REALLY don't want to, it's raining
| out, and all the music on your playlist is just not hitting for
| you that day.
| hosh wrote:
| In the Chinese culture, there is a word for that -- gongfu, Gong
| Fu , which means mastery accumulated over time. Although it is
| used these days in English to refer to Chinese martial arts
| (kungfu), it's something that can be developed for any skill, and
| is closer to what people say when they say "10,000 hours of
| deliberate practice).
|
| There's a meditation teacher named Adyashanti. He used to be a
| competitive bike racer. In one of his talks, he had talked about
| winning races. The audience ate it up and loved the idea, so he
| said, no, you don't really want it. He explained that, that
| feeling of victory and accomplishment from winning a race wasn't
| just the race, but all the hardships that went into the training.
|
| And just as the audience's enthusiasm wound down, he told a story
| about that woman who was in the crowd for a marathon. She ran out
| into the street to cross the finish line; people were confused
| and kinda applauded here. There was a flash of anger from the
| audience. How dare she cheat? And then Adyashanti put her
| experience in context of how crossing that finish line came
| without all the experience of hardship in the training. The
| feeling of victory, and even being applauded for it was hollow.
| You can feel the audience shifting from anger to pity ...
| bluGill wrote:
| Then there is a preacher friend of mine who is a big runner.
| One Sunday he was traveling in Greece and is route home from
| church happened to cross the Marathon (the original marathon
| route!) around mile 22, so he jumped in the race there ran a
| few blocks while making his way across the street and then
| continued on to wherever he was supposed to be. He can now tell
| people he has run in "the marathon". He didn't run the whole
| thing and since he is a preacher he will never have Sundays
| free (even on vacation he will be at Church somewhere) - but
| since he has put in the training effort he can claim to have
| run in the Marathon and we all feel amusement at his story (and
| maybe pity)
| mmkhd wrote:
| I like your Chinese culture comparison and the Englisch
| language has such a word, too. It's "experience". True, you
| also can have "an experience", but generally it is used in the
| sense of "having experience" which is having accumulated
| mastery over time. In German it is "Erfahrung" which maps 1:1
| to experience. I like, that Chinese, Englisch and German have
| common ground, showing that the "human experience" is something
| quite universal across cultures.
| hosh wrote:
| The way "experience" is used in English and in modern
| American culture has a very different connotation, mindset,
| value, and frame. In its use in the hiring/HR world, and in
| the subcuture of wargaming and RPGs, "experience" is
| understood as a quantity and does not convey the depth of
| meaning as "gongfu". It's why there are some martial arts
| teachers who say, "Americans are no good at gongfu" -- not in
| the sense of not being good at martial arts, but that there's
| a cultural thing that makes "gongfu" easy to be
| misunderstood.
|
| The closest term I have seen to "gongfu' in English is the
| ancient Greek loan word, "arete", which is usually translated
| as "excellance". What's important to note here is that both
| "arete" and "gongfu" are understood as quality, not quantity.
|
| For example, you'll hear "Adam has 20 years of experience",
| or "Barbra has 5 years of experience", but "Adam has 20 years
| of gongfu", and "Barbra has 5 years of arete" doesn't make
| sense.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Anyone have an example of a "good" training montage? One that
| compiles micro-failures and doesn't gloss over the "ugh, raw eggs
| again" / "i don't wanna get out of bed today..." moments?
| jameshart wrote:
| 'Stuck in a time loop' stories are essentially extended
| montages where the point is to watch the protagonist repeatedly
| fail to get it, give up, look for easy ways out, until finally
| they figure out the redemptive path to escape. In fact the
| montage trope within such movies is generally the 'repeated
| failure in increasingly awful ways' montage. _Groundhog Day_
| culminates its darkest chapter in a sequence of suicide
| attempts; _Edge of Tomorrow_ has montages of Tom Cruise doing
| stuff like misremembering whether to go left or right and dying
| messily. Both also feature days where the protagonist just
| doesn't want to do it, and days they try to just sneak away
| from the challenge.
| personjerry wrote:
| See also: No silver bullet https://a16z.com/lead-bullets/
| taeric wrote:
| Agreed with the idea that no transformation is instant. This is
| called "movie time" by Nolan, if I recall. It happens with
| romances in showing people "get to know each other."
|
| That all said... transformations can happen way faster than
| people realize. I remember in my 20s I could turn my fitness
| around stupid fast. Even as an older adult, things can change
| faster than I would anticipate. You have to treat it like a job,
| though.
| swagmoose wrote:
| I often think back to a scene in BoJack Horseman, when he starts
| jogging and collapses at the top of a hill. A veteran runner sees
| him and says:
|
| "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta
| do it every day -- that's the hard part. But it does get easier".
|
| The gym, self-care, flossing.The list goes on, but that scene
| really clicked for me.
| 1-more wrote:
| The counterpoint to this is Greg LeMond's (possibly apocryphal)
| quote about cycling training: "it never gets easier, you just
| go faster." LeMond is the only American to win the Tour de
| France.
|
| Closest I can get to a citation.
| https://books.google.com/books?id=PCtBBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| In regards to flossing, I used to never do it, until a new
| dentist told I oughta or my teeth would fall out in my 20s. I
| was 16 when that happened, and I have flossed every single day
| since. Now I can't brush my teeth without flossing. The process
| just feels incomplete without it.
| the_af wrote:
| I know this is not the point of the article, but my favorite
| movie montage is Netflix's "I Am Mother"'s initial montage
| showing how the AI "Mother" grows and raises a human embryo.
|
| It plays with expectations about how montages work. If you've
| watched this movie, you know what I mean!
| rrherr wrote:
| See also:
|
| _How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World (2010)_
|
| https://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-rui...
|
| "I think The Karate Kid ruined the modern world. Not just that
| movie, but all of the movies like it (you certainly can't let the
| Rocky sequels escape blame). Basically any movie with a training
| montage.
|
| You know what I'm talking about; the main character is very bad
| at something, then there is a sequence in the middle of the film
| set to upbeat music that shows him practicing. When it's done,
| he's an expert. ...
|
| Every adult I know--or at least the ones who are depressed--
| continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is,
| when you go shopping for something for the first time and are
| shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only
| it's with effort. It's Effort Shock.
|
| We have a vague idea in our head of the "price" of certain
| accomplishments, how difficult it _should_ be to get a degree, or
| succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a
| house. And that vague idea is almost always _catastrophically_
| wrong.
|
| Accomplishing worthwhile things isn't just a _little_ harder than
| people think; it 's 10 or 20 times harder."
|
| ---
|
| _Effort Shock and Reward Shock (2014)_
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/07/09/effort-shock-and-rewar...
|
| "The good news is what I've started calling _reward shock._ In
| some (not all) domains, it is more than enough to offset effort
| shock.
|
| When you overcome effort shock for a non-trivial learning project
| and get through it anyway, despite doubts about whether it is
| worth it, you can end up with very unexpected rewards that go far
| beyond what you initially thought you were earning. This is
| because so few people get through effort shock to somewhere
| worthwhile that when you do it, you end up in sparsely populated
| territory where further gains through continued application from
| the earned skill can be very high.
|
| Programming, writing and math are among the skills where there
| you get both significant effort shock and significant reward
| shock."
| Isamu wrote:
| Hey thanks for pointing out this angle. I think it's compatible
| with the idea that mastery of a thing is purchased at the cost
| of a shocking number of invested hours. This seems counter
| intuitive (hence the shock) and so people would rather believe
| in some mysterious innate talent that they can't explain,
| rather than believe in innate motivation that enables one to
| invest the necessary hours.
| buildsjets wrote:
| If the Karate Kid ruined the modern world by learning Karate in
| a training montage, what are your opinions about the scene in
| The Matrix where Neo simply downloads his martial art skills?
| "I know Kung Fu!"
| w10-1 wrote:
| Failure takes persistence, too. Grit is no more the answer than
| wisdom is.
|
| The real fallacy is following emotions (from movies?), which can
| be manipulated by time dilation or compression,
| attention/focusing/distraction, etc. And because there's value in
| what people do, systems evolve to control people, at times
| through emotional manipulation - not least through the enduring
| franchises of business opportunity, political control, religious
| faith, scientific mastery, and tribal belonging.
|
| Existentialists called this the problem of "bad faith", where
| people allow their inner lives to be constructed socially. It's a
| problem because the person can't tell. So just as "God" can't be
| relied upon as an authority, neither can any pristine "self" --
| even when it's reified as a task list or mantras or life
| commitments. An internal holographic universe. The ridiculous but
| inescapable truth of Socrates' private voice.
|
| Yes, you can be productive, by your own measures. But by the
| above-mentioned principle of exploitation, your measures will
| also be exploited, and you'll be polishing a turd. When you
| realize it (as most do when they lose productivity due to age or
| opportunity loss), you'll have a crisis of meaning.
|
| The problem lies in simplistic thinking driving towards
| hierarchical principles and valuation. Any single goal -
| feelings, money, goodness, control - when unchecked leads to
| totalitarianism.
|
| It's just not how nature actually is, as far as we can tell.
|
| A field theory instead incorporates all factors -- all kinds of
| knowledge and values. It's chaotic without some consistency, but
| consistency invariably induces suffering due to the
| incompleteness of understanding. The closest thing to a principle
| in a field theory is an intersection of Nietzsche's "only as
| aesthetic phenomena are things eternally justified" and
| Vonnegut's "and so it goes": you know it when you see it. As you
| decide, your character as the decider presents.
|
| So if you want to get better, the main practice is something like
| Zen+philosophy, observing everything with love, and heartlessly
| pruning bullshit. Practice seeing+deciding+doing.
|
| The great learning, attributed to Confucious, should be read
| ideographically, but the first four lines can be translated as
| something like this:
|
| - the activity of great learning (liberal education, good person)
| consists of
|
| - illustrating illustrious virtue (grass-grass, sharp-sharpening
| self)
|
| - watching the people grow with affection (and pruning them when
| necessary)
|
| - coming to rest in perfect virtue (combining both, there's no
| need to do anything)
|
| Your virtue might not earn you love or success or even happiness.
| But it can make you a good influence in an ocean of exploitation.
| allenu wrote:
| I recently noticed the narrative power of montages and just how
| "movie magic" they are, as opposed to being based in reality,
| when I watched the BlackBerry movie. There's a really great
| montage near the beginning of the film where they're cobbling
| together a prototype device in one night for an important meeting
| the next day. Watching it, I couldn't help but get hyped up and
| excited.
|
| As a dev, I love watching other technical people do the
| impossible and create something great. At the same time, the
| logical part of my brain kept thinking, "This is really cool, but
| obviously this is total fiction. No way anybody, no matter how
| smart they are, can put together a device like that in one
| night." But I went along with it because it was fun and got the
| narrative going. So even with my critical brain, I couldn't help
| but "believe" the fantasy a little bit.
|
| On the whole, it made me reflect on how movies really do present
| a fictional view of reality and that's kind of the power they
| have. And what about all those times where I watched a movie and
| didn't have a background in what they were presenting and just
| ate it up wholesale?
| pavlov wrote:
| There are movies that intentionally break the montage and show
| narratives entirely stripped of its illusory power.
|
| A famous example is "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080
| Bruxelles" by Chantal Akerman:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Dielman,_23_quai_du_Com...
|
| It was recently chosen as the greatest film of all time by the
| legendary Sight and Sound magazine, who conduct this poll among
| critics and other professionals since 1952. ("Citizen Kane" is
| still hanging on to third place after all these years.)
|
| But cinematic fiction without its familiar causal trappings is
| a hard watch for most people, especially as attention spans get
| shorter and shorter in the age of TikTok. I don't suppose
| "Jeanne Dielman" will suddenly be discovered by regular
| viewers.
| tqi wrote:
| I'm tired of this particular brand of Think Piece that seems to
| be en vogue right now, which attempts to attribute all manner of
| ills to external forces. I doubt most people fail at personal
| transformation because movie montages and "marketers" led them to
| believe it would be easy, I think most people fail because it is
| really really hard to achieve. Getting permission to blame it on
| Rocky et al is more appealing than blaming yourself, but I would
| bet that in an alternate universe where training montages didn't
| exist very little would be different..
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