So... the 'crime' is often 'the believable story'.. ! Bill's description of how story's take on a life of their own that simply doesn't check out is excellent, and so often very true. There's so much to making a story 'believable' other than the facts, like fulfilling a mass prejudice, or being entertaining, or settling scores, etc. etc. There's also the variety of 'convincing but false' story that comes from our inability to understand why we just don't understand the real conspiracies of nature. Just take a look at the fabulously contradictory 'story worlds' of religion and politics if you doubt the obvious. Is there anyway to get a story straight?? I just assume every contradiction holds a true secret, but I can't find much of anyone who likes that at all.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Eldridge Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 2:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail The link I sent with this notes that of the 38 people who saw Kitty "get clobbered" only a couple would have seen an actual knife or had an idea that she was in real danger or seen anything (and many of the tenants were old and would have had a tough time figuring out what was happening when they'd just been waken at 3am, the streetlight was dim, etc.) Most just heard a noise in front of a usually noisy bar (this night it closed early after a fight), some saw a woman get up off the ground and walk away (if slowly), perhaps a few actually saw the man by her before he ran away and she got up and walked away. She apparently yelled something one time, didn't keep screaming. (Of course if she was in bad shape she quite likely couldn't have kept screaming but she did walk away). One who realized she was in danger said she called the police, but in those pre-911 days lots of calls were lost and callers were regularly abused for annoying the police with non-serious matters (you had to identify yourself to report a crime back then). One observer called the police but got scared to speak and hung up. Another was very very drunk and didn't want to deal with the police. For those that didn't realize it was a knife stabbing, they would have reported an assault, which would have brought out the police in about an hour, too late to help Kitty. When the murderer did come back and find Kitty, it was behind the building next door, not the same apartment building. The link also notes that a lot of the "witnesses" were old people who wouldn't have seen or heard well, and would have been in no position for heroics, only to call the police. But for most, the incident ended when they were woken up by a yell, they looked to the window, they saw a woman get up and walk away. In short, a typical non-event in noisy tumultous New York. Of course the NY Times presented this very differently, and thus the hyper-example of citizen apathy. But I also think of cases like these in the middle of civilization and heavy news coverage, and can only imagine how distorted our reporting of events in the Middle East, Asia or Africa is. [Not long ago I read someone's evaluation of the Third Wave anecdote from the Whole Earth Catalog. In this case it turns out that it wasn't nearly the big to-do that the teacher made it out to be, but the teacher basically made a career out of repeating this "informative lesson" of how Nazism could have started, even sucking in Stewart Brand. The more important lesson there being, "How could this bogus version of events stick around for so long without anyone questioning it as obvious bullshit?" Which possibly relates back to the original thread - in my school we didn't study the holocaust even though I read "Rise & Fall..." for summer reading - perhaps the schools actually thought there were lots of other topics they could teach well, rather than simply caving to possible concerns about Moslem students as the paper asserts.] Nicholas Thompson wrote: Bill, I still think the two are related. The people who watched kitty genovese get clobbered assumed a social fabric in which women dont get beaten to death under their windows and didnt think it their particular responsibility to try to save her life. The milgrim subjects assumed that the world was not the sort of place where experimenters allow participants to actually torture one another. And, in fact, they were right. Well, in that particular instance. My former colleague, James Laird, who does research about this sort of stuff, thinks I am a real bonehead about it, so you neednt take my views too seriously. Nick ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Eldridge <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee <mailto:[email protected]> Group Cc: Carl Tollander <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 5/24/2007 8:48:16 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail Nicholas Thompson wrote: Carl, I am trying to get my Psych 101 in order: Was the kitty genovese incident the one that led to that horrendous series of experiments that demonstrate that if you give people a shock console (or what they THINK is a shock console) and ask them politely to do so, they will cheerfully use shocks that they think are lethal, just so long as they are told to? Unfortunately not - it's about how neighbors ignore horrible things going on in their insular world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese What it really might represent is how facts are distorted to make events look worse than they are, especially when a newspaper's involved: http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html I use to live across from a bar, and one night I saw two guys squaring off on a sidewalk and a third come from behind and break a bottle over one's head. I was on the phone to 911 in a flash, and by the time I'd quickly described the scene unfolding to the dispatcher, the 3 of them were giving each other hugs and going arm-in-arm back into the bar to drink some more. In a similarly bad neighborhood where I flipped my bike and broke my collarbone, I was staggering around in a great deal of pain, but got a car to stop (cautiously) late at night in just a few minutes, and they were a great help in getting me to a hospital. Good Samaritans still exist. I'm intrigued by one line in the article, "But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques." It makes it sound like there's a good balanced way of explaining the Crusades as anything but a good deal of Euro-thuggery intent on dealing a good come-uppance to the well-entrenched local population some thousands of miles away. Would make for good entertainment to hear this rationale at least. Personally, I think most grade school teachers are better off trying to teach simpler, less contentious topics well (even if ignoring whether Columbus was actual ly Catalonian and other possibly interesting side issues) instead of being too focused on fuzzy goals of teaching tolerance and sensitivity, as if there were much of that in history. Regarding humor and genocide, I think of the Nazis as a pretty humorless, mystical bunch. Somehow it didn't seem to deter them from genocide. reminds me of the stoners that jg showed us at arrowhead, who would run out from the crowd, throw a stone, and then sink back into the anonymity of the crowd. Thought experiment: if all humor were forbidden, would genocide be possible??? In the Pleistocene context, with many small groups in desperate conflict for unpredictable resources, what was humor FOR? N [Original Message] From: Carl Tollander <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 5/24/2007 2:52:28 PM Subject: Re: [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims|the Daily Mail Nick asks: >Do we need a science of Comparative Genocideology? Closest I've seen that starts to address this is Chapter 15 from Philip Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles" titled "The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia". I'll bring it by FRIAM. C. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org _____ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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