Re: virus: Re: Punishment and reward

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Fri, 20 Jun 1997 12:44:19 -0700 (PDT)


On Thu, 20 Jun 1996, you wrote:

> > Hollywood tends to churn out bad but high-grossing movies rather
> > than good movies because they realized that people prefer not to
> > think.

This is wrong. People avoid challenging movies not just out of a desire
"not to think", but from a fear of feeling stupid, of not "getting it".
An understandable fear if you walk into the theater without enough
background knowledge to decode the imagery.

This is an insignificant distinction, I know. But whenever anyone uses
the <"They" do X because "they" don't like to think> meme format I can't
help reading it as, "people who do X are stupid. I don't do X. Therefore
I'm not stupid."

Flawed logic at best.

-Prof. Tim