The Future Of Testing

Craig, I think that Fed-Ex comment in the article is the most likely to portend the grim future for comedy writers if this technology becomes widespread:

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER I don’t care if they laughed, I don’t care if they said it was funny, the brain scan says it was frightening, so we’re cutting that joke.

“I can’t wait for some scientist to explain to me that while my movie gets a good verbal response from the audience, their amygdalas indicate that they find the whole thing pedestrian and a bit episodic.”

The higher cortex is radically different from the amygdalae (disclaimer - this whole view assumes you think the Earth’s age is greater than 10,000 yrs). The higher cortex can communicate through the human artifact of language; the amygdale - one of our oldest evolutionary brain inheritances - processes threats and stimulates hormonal response independent of language. Thus, the difference.

Perhaps this is why the THREE STOOGES is still so funny to so many.

You know, it occurred to me while watching the Fed Ex commercial that the dinosaur foot was kind of tacked on. I mean you can’t let a caveman get away with kicking a defenseless dinosaur.

The dangerous thing I see is that the scientists seem to be claiming to know what we like and dislike regardless of what words we use to express our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with something.

I guess I don’t know enough about the study to understand the “whys” of their conclusions. I really enjoyed the magic fridge commercial, and if some machine tells me I didn’t? Well, I guess I’m just going to have to start watching movies the brain scientists reccommend. I wonder if everyone loved Star Trek: Insurrection, but didn’t know it.

Bah. Scientists. All data and logic and no common sense. When you’re surprised by something, your brain finds it threatening. No big surprise there. But people LIKE being scared when there’s no real danger. If it’s something as ridiculous as someone getting stepped on by a dinosaur, even better because after the shock, it’s pretty funny. So you like it and you say it’s funny; that isn’t at all contraindicated by your amygdala perceiving it as a threat. If these guys did the same scan with someone who was reading The Shining or watching The Ring, they’d really see an amygdala light up. Would they try to say it indicated that despite what they say, that person didn’t actually like the book or movie?

I can’t read past “right posterior inferior frontal gyrus” without laughing. Sounds like “one testicle is smaller than the other” to me and no, I am not blonde, just neurologically challenged.

Isn’t it amasing how people only discuss issues where their opinions are already entrenched?

As for the scientists, they are not all logic. They are all boosterism and no logic, because they are overextrapolating their data in order to get interest and funding from the ad people.

yeah, it sucks when the dorsal prefrontal region poops out… mocha reload….

The most primitive, pre-sentient part of our brain is scared of dinosaurs? Color me shocked.

I’d like to see an amygdala test with two bits of footage. The first one would be, say, Ju-On, the scariest damn movie I’ve ever seen. The second one would be a saber-toothed tiger charging straight at the camera.

Our rational mind would almost certainly find Ju-On scarier, but I bet if you check the caveman brain, it would have a strong opinion re: saber-toothed tigers.

In the future, there will be no audience cards… just brain maps.

• Bill

Frankly this kind of “research” impresses me as being akin to using talismans and incantations to determine the nature of the “steam spirits” driving a locomotive, or measuring the bumps on people’s heads to figure out whether or not they’re prone to criminal behavior.

It’s a little better than talking about “Ids”, “Super egos”, and “repressed behaviors”, (which frankly I don’t think is any more constructive at all than talking about “Mars being in ascendance” or someone being “born in the year of the dog”) but not by much.

The plain fact of the matter is that “psychology” and “psychiatry”, at least at the moment, are no more “sciences” than Alchemy and Astrology were in their time.

Just as Alchemy led to Chemistry, and Astrology led to Celestial Mechanics, they MIGHT become sciences some day. But for now, they are at best, “proto-sciences”, and at worst they’re nothing at all more than the accepted superstitions of our time.

Mark my words. It’s not going to be all that long before doing things like “analyzing dreams” and talking about “subconscious motivations” or “at risk behavior” is going to sound every bit as ridiculous as consulting chicken entrails, talking about “possession by evil spirits”, or blaming a fever on “bad blood” and trying to cure it by using leeches.

So part of your brain lights up. So what? What does that part of the brain do (and please spare me psychobabble bullshit)? How, - specifically - does that part of the brain accomplish the particular data processing job it does? Where are the determinant equations that govern that behavior? What kind of unified system of measurements are being used to quantify those properties?

At least those kinds of questions are starting to be asked.

But lets not have any allusions as to where our “modern” understanding of how the human neocortex works stands at the moment. It could be decades to centuries before a Kepler, Hooke, or Boyle, discover anything that could remotely be called “science” when it comes to how something as complex as the human mind works, that has any chance at all of leading us out of the Dark Ages of Freudian superstitions and our reliance on the “expertise” of the “High Priests of the Mysteries of the Mind” of our times to whom we currently grant degrees out of very little more than shear desperation.

For now I’ll stick to handing out cards to an audience.

Actually, psychology and psychiatry are sciences, from which I and members of my family have personally benefited, I might add. Screenwriting is almost as akin to alchemy as the motion picture industry in general, and I’m sure if you poked around, you’d even find a few producers with headless chickens in their back yards, next to the altar. And if you want to see cavemen, just check out the mob in the theatre on Saturday night.

Awwwww… I kinda liked the secret fridge ad. But perhaps that just proves that I’m mentally challenged.

I’m feelin’ strong because I didn’t like the Fed-Ex, Burger King, or Magic Fridge ad. Finally! Scientific evidence that I’m right! :-)

Another group of scientists has proven categorically that people who didn’t like the Magic Fridge ad will be culled from the gene pool in short order. Something about a defective “fun” gene.

A more recent study showed that people who didn’t like the Magic Fridge ad have an unusually overdeveloped area of the brain, which is referred to as the “fun” lobe. These individuals require more stimulation than the average person, who are now referred to as being “fundamentally” challenged. :-)

You can’t argue with studies.

Thomas, a study proved just that.