Peter Fenzel hosts with Matthew Belinkie, Mark Lee, Joshua McNeil, John Perich, David Shechner, and Matthew Wrather to overthink the third (leather) anniversary of the weekly Overthinking It Podcast and how being an overthinker has changed us all.
Also, there’s this.
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Awesome show. I felt like we were inside a little drama with Wrather’s stalking exploits. Maybe that could be turned into a Red Eye suspense film where Matt Wrather stalks the other Overthinkers across the country while giving commentary on it to the audience.
I’m thinking maybe it could be filmed in an Office/Modern Family style, but with the occasional muuuurder.
An alternate could be, “Wrather Dramatic”, a sitcom where Matt Wrather plays Matt Wrather, a hyper-accentuated version of himself, I’m thinking a young(ish) Frasier if he was replacing the Ricky Gervais character in Extras.
Maybe we could get all of the Overthinkers in a show together, in the style of Power Rangers or Captain Planet.
How do you think they get Otis? By our analysis combined!
Congrats on three years! Interesting change in format, but people typically do something untypical to celebrate anniversaries, like stalk people at airports. OTI definitely changed my interaction with and enjoyment of pop culture for the better by broadening my view of it says, so thanks for that team Overthinking It.
To incorporate the sorely needed car chases with your meta discourse you can make a car chase game where the cars are powered by the podcasters word count and usage, like every time someone references The Wire they get a speed boost and using “in a way” or “hold on while I wikipedia that” blows out a tire but a “well, actually” fixes the flat, referencing Vin Diesel launches missiles. You could use a high word count but could still lose depending on how many Wire references other people made, and you steer by making good segues so some degree collaboration is needed. Or to avoid the podcast getting dragged into cutthroat competition all the podcasters input is to one car, idk who would be doing the chasing maybe that flying robotic Hitler head from Contra or whatever that game was mentioned last podcast.
I’m selling these fine leather jackets for when I’m on my hog and need to go into a controlled slide.
A small “well acutally”. Gödel showed two separate things with regard to the completeness of mathematical systems, neither of which is quite what was stated in the podcast (and both are more interesting).
The first is that given a sufficiently powerful, consistent mathematical system there are true statements (theorems) that can’t be proven from within the system.
The truth value of the statements is not in doubt, but we can’t show them without resorting to a more powerful system – of course this cascades and we end up with something like “any finitely defined mathematical system (with at least enough strength to do basic arithmetic) cannot be complete”.
The second incompleteness theorem is more like what was mentioned in the podcast, but doesn’t have the air of ambiguity of truth value, it is more a statement of a different limit of a consistent system.
That is, any sufficiently powerful mathematical system which includes a theorem (a provably true statement) stating its own consistency, is inconsistent.
So not only are there things we cannot prove, even though they’re true, we can’t necessarily guarantee that what we have said is true is actually true (without resorting to a more powerful axiom system – but then you get the same problem with that system &c. until you hit a system with an infinite number of axioms).
These theorems were devastating for Hilbert’s program of formalisation of the underpinnings of mathematics, and continue to have resonances throughout all areas of mathematics. However a lot of people who don’t understand the mathematics also seem to try to use the incompleteness theorems to show a lot of things they don’t – they don’t show that nothing is provable, they don’t show that the human mind is not equivalent to some machine, and so on.
I don’t know that I quite agree. Certainly the incompleteness theorem doesn’t prove anything about other kinds of proof in the way that it proves something about mathematics. But shouldn’t it at least make you wonder if all systematic ways of arriving at truth are vulnerable to the same kind of feedback loop?
I’ll give the trite answer first: there are systems that can prove their own consistency.
Philosophically however I agree, those systems that can prove all their theorems are probably not interesting by dint of being either too weak or too powerful. Then of course we are left to wonder whether all useful systems are inherently incomplete (in the formal sense).
The “well actually” part was more about the claim that the truth value was murky, it never is, it just may not be provable (within the system).
This I think also highlights a really really interesting aspect of “truth” and particularly the conduct of mathematics; that we know the Gödel sentence is definitely true, but we can show that no matter what system we come up with (as long as we stay sensible) we can’t prove it – but then what is this notion of “truth” that we’re dealing with? It’s certainly logical in character, but not the logic of the system it’s stated in…
Regarding the way that overthinking has changed the way you view pop culture, I think social media in general has had a similar effect on much of the population. For example, when I lived in Hawaii, I went hiking every weekend and took a lot of pictures, which I then posted to Facebook and Flickr so my mainland friends could vicariously enjoy the tropical vistas and vegetation. During my hikes, I would occasionally choose to photograph things that I didn’t think were interesting, but knew my friends would find interesting. I would also be thinking of captions for my photographs as I was taking them – captioning a series of photographs is just as much an art as taking the photographs these days. In essence, social media morphed me from an avid hiker into a roving photo-journalist.
Although it would be largely unpublishable, I think it would be interesting to read and/or hear an overthinking analysis of the way 4chan uses/abuses the N-word. Is it willful ignorance? A subtle statement about conformity and censorship? A big inside joke? Whatever the answer, it probably won’t improve the site’s relationship with the community at large.
Fun podcast. It was nice to hear some barely parseable mathspeak again. And the airport stalking was hilarious.
Oh, we can get into this sometime, maybe, but the rage it brings out of me probably isn’t well-suited for the podcast. I’ll look for another opportunity somewhere else ;-)
Was it not clear that McNeil and I were actually at the same airport, having spent the weekend at the same wedding, boarding two different flights (mine later)?
I ship Fenzel’s podcast character and Lee’s podcast character. OTPodcastP
Shechner//appearing-on-the-podcast. OTP
What does this strange language mean?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneTruePairing
Yeah, should I argue that Lee, Wrather and Fenzel are the OT3?
I think it’s time to make this particular spreadsheet public https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtyYE8ruBqR7dERib3ZrZnE4RXE5U3pmbnhFMWFWeVE&hl=en_GB
Podcast appearances for your analysis joy.
Timothy, Sir, you are made of so much awesome, I think there should be some sort of safety zone around your place of residence. Win. Just win.
My dearest Gab, such precautions have been in place a while. I showed the team, we didn’t really come up with anything, but I did spend some time typing in the numbers, so maybe another reader can find something interesting.
So when I saw the title in my iTunes, I thought this was about Pan Am, the new ABC show*. Whoops. I do so enjoy listening or observing as others naval-gaze, since it usually leads to some healthy introspection on my own end. Grand job, gentlemen.
That being said, I don’t think it has changed my consumption of pop culture much, this whole OTI-stalker-Gab thing. I suppose I think of it the same, except I do sometimes tack on an, “Oh, that would make an awesome OTI article!” at the end of my thoughts (or in my head as I’m talking with friends). But I used to see stuff like classism, racism, sexism, etc. before, and I’d certainly see what I was reading in school in the pop culture I was taking in, even as a highschooler.
Funny that, we spent a good half-hour trying to decide whether this whole Anonymous thing is a social movement in one of my classes yesterday (poli-sci, graduate level). There was no solid conclusion, of course, as per most academic “debates.” In terms of 4Chan itself, I have deliberately never been to the site- but, from what I can tell, the “norm” on that site is chaos and disorder.
AGH! Belinkie, I was totally thinking of a “Being Matt Wrather” special or something before you said it! Should you someday get that Oscar-bait leading role, Wrather, may I suggest you insist your son’s character be named Otis?
*I just finished the pilot (hah!) episode. Not sure about it’s staying power yet. There was a scene at the end I feel showed how the series is trying really hard to be… something… but it doesn’t know what. I think I need another episode or two to decide whether I like it or not.
I wouldn’t say the norm on 4chan and other sites connected with “4channic discourse” is chaos and disorder. It’s actually very highly ordered – with lots of written and unwritten rules. Posts tend to follow elaborate internal logic and metalogic.
Don’t confuse “order” with “propriety.” Something can be very orderly while being entirely improprietous. A promiscuous person is not necessarily less ordered in behavior than a monogamous person, if the partners are selected algorithmically.
“4channic discourse” is somewhat of the latter, but times a million.
My apologies. Whenever I hear about 4chan, the only thing described with anything resembling order is the subset (or whatever you’d call it) of Anonymous itself. I mean, I hear the word “random” pretty much every time, but I guess random doesn’t equate chaotic.
Loving all of Pete’s callbacks here.
Thanks! I enjoyed my own jokes as well. Excelsior!
Gender balance hurrah but we need a woman on this podcast.
Yeah, yeah, if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.
Availability is a really big issue. We just can’t get them to stick around and be available on Sunday nights.
Nobody can say we haven’t tried, though.
Matt Wrather project: The biopic of Conan O’Brien?
I’d also like to comment on the difference we see in this week’s hosting/Wrather status.
So far, it seems that we’ve hit three main quadrants:
Wrather Hosting, Pete appearing
Wrather Hosting, No-Fenzel
Fenzel Hosting, No-Wrather
and now finally we’ve seen
Fenzel Hosting, Wrather appearing.
It’s interesting how different the dynamic is depending on Wrather’s status, and as good a job as he does, I would be interested in seeing how the podcast would work under other iterations where he appears but another overthinker hosts.
I believe, on at least one occasion, that Mark Lee has hosted as well, and I think Fenzel appeared at least once when Lee has hosted.
Also, for a few brief moments, when you were talking about Eraser, I thought you were talking about Eraserhead.
Yes, we did this once. It turned out not to work very well.
Fun fact: There are three different managerial functions during the Overthinking It podcast – the person who records the podcast, the person who runs the Skype call, and the person hosting the show.
We’ve found from experience we can do two, but not three, of these things at the same time. Mark and Wrather are both experienced IT professionals on top of their other gigs, and they are the only people with the software on their computers to run the recording (they also do the editing for the show).
So, for one show, when Wrather couldn’t make it, Mark tried to host, record and run the Skype call all at the same time. The result was not so good – not that the quality of our conversation was bad, but the show was difficult and awkward to record because we had to stop whenever we ran into minor technical difficulties (like somebody getting dropped from the Skype call) – whereas usually we can keep going while the back-end administrator fixes stuff.
So, it’s unlikely you’ll see Mark host a show when neither Wrather nor I are there unless we crosstrain and crossequip other podcasters with the software and hardware to do our tech stuff.
“The more you know…”
Sorry, that should have been “it’s unlikely you’ll see Mark host a show when _either_ Wrather or I are there…” if neither Wrather nor I showed up, Mark might step up and do it all. You never know. The man is certainly capable.
I’ll add to that that at the time we were broadcasting a screencast of someone’s screen live. It was a little hard to keep up with everything.
I’d almost forgotten our experiment with livestreaming. Yeah, that was awful. I am so glad we don’t do that anymore.
BITE YOUR TONGUE!
I’ve gotten some complaints on my hosting, and that people prefer when I’m a civilian. Would these attempts be for the sake of variety, or do you actually think they’d be better?
Not that we’d do them, necessarily. Wrather likes hosting, and we like him hosting as well ;-)
It’s hard not to be a fenzel fan, but I think you hosting and Wrather as a civilian (your words) is probably the most intriguing thing. Mostly, it’s just that seeing how differently Wrather acts when he’s not the host is kind of cool. When Ryan hosts TFT, (and I don’t know to what extent he’s really hosting it), it seems like Wrather has an easier time overthinking it.
Basically, we love you guys and love your work and would love to see Perich ask you the opening question.
Weirdly, I also thought Perich would be the next natural choice to try out on that.
I’m down with it (but not this week (or next)).
I think the point is that you as host are very different to you as contributor, perhaps more so than Lee and Wrather taking the two roles. There’s more freedom to be off-hand and funny, or go off on a line of thought, when you’re not hosting.
I would like to see another host occasionally just for interest’s sake, of course. Like Conan doing Tonight for however brief period it was before the status quo is restored.
Yeah, I knew I’d been on one that you’d hosted Pete – you have to spend time/energy keeping things flowing, and that’s time/energy you can’t spend on anything else. If the OTI computer game was a resource management one… someone get me Asymmetric Productions on the phone, I’ve had an idea!
Matthew Wrather: Up 961,135 this week on Star Meter
All of the Overthinkers checking the imdb page.
I’ve never SEEN star meter levels that high!!
HE’S OVER 900,000!!!
Regarding my “Limitless” question… it’s gratifying to hear the humor go over, but that’s the third or so movie mashup I thought of while writing the tweet. The others were too easily pushed into troublingly offensive territory.
However, the question was sincere… along the lines of the other listener suggesting that you overthink overthinking, there are a lot of questions around the whole idea of intelligence augmentation. Then that’s multiplied by questions about how media and narrative approach the subject.
Even before getting into the depths, it’s interesting to see the common language of film used to portray the experience of the way a “genius” sees the world. Typically the nice little calculus notations overlay a scene as in everything from Stargate Universe to Lawnmower Man, to Little Man Tate, or the noticed details or memories are isolated and flashed almost with the intensity of a retinal burn as in Psych, Chuck, and A Beautiful Mind. The movie Pi was particularly effective at inducing the trippy sense of imminence of revelation we imagine the genius to experience. Mihaly Chiksentimihaly’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience includes many inspiring descriptions of the mental processes of some remarkable individuals, and even more so brings to mind the common similar flow experiences nearly everyone experiences in some moments.
But beyond that there’s the question of whether we always must turn those stories into Icarus tales. Must geniuses burn out in our cultural imagination, and why? In many fields the burst of insight comes young, but in others it takes years and years of detailed work that doesn’t film so well to make the breakthrough and more so, to render the steps to the process repeatable.
Then there’s the question of whether intelligence augmentation is possible. It’s not a real question, of course… would you bet your life on an intellectual challenge of any type against a transporter-clone of yourself equiped with google, wikipedia, and ritalin?
And on the subject of ritalin, it certainly didn’t take long for that and prozac (and the every improving new compounds) to become completely accepted to the point where our fiction got left behind in insisting that there’s some question about whether pills can measurably improve performance in some mental tasks as well as steroids can boost the increase muscle mass in resistance training.
That’s just a few thoughts in the moment… surely you’ve overthought those and more?
Oh, and STILL without having seen it yet, the trailers for Limitless made me think the writer understood a subtle, but critical point…
Insight is common but wasted in seldom being cultivated into something lasting. I think the real miracle drug would be the one that gives us willpower and self-regulation.
I think there’s a line between genius and eccentricity that sometimes gets blurred, but crossing it from the former into the latter is generally discouraged- since “eccentric” is a rather euphemistic way to say “crazy” nowadays in colloquial settings. But Mill’s ideas on discourse and cultivating one’s mind to grow use “genius” and “eccentric” basically interchangeably, leading to the notion of his “eccentric genius.” In his eyes, society cannot advance or progress positively when ideas are suppressed- even bad ones, since the intellectual exercise people, not just “geniuses,” get out of critiquing bad ideas is objectively good for them. He doesn’t address the age thing, but the underlying similarity is that those eccentric geniuses see things in ways everyone else is unable to see without help, and so we should let them alone in order to enable them to eventually educate us- and, further, we should want them to do both, grow and educate. There are undertones and insinuations that geniuses are deserving of something akin to reverence, and I think it’s something they sometimes get in film; and he’d probably be fine with depictions of evil geniuses, too, for they demonstrate another point he makes: that people can and do often feel and think in extremes, and that this can be a cause for good or evil. But he’d caution that we shouldn’t suppress thought, because even though we may be guaranteeing no evil, we’d also be guaranteeing no good, and deliberately suppressing good is a far greater crime than accidentally allowing evil.
I’ve been sitting here, thinking about how Mill would feel about a drug that enhanced the mind like that. I haven’t seen the movie, either, so I’m only going off of what I know about it from trailers and movie blogs. But even so, I don’t know if Mill would like the idea of a pill augmenting one’s mind- and I guess the more I chew on it, the more convinced he wouldn’t be to keen on it. I think he’d rather have the person develop their mind naturally so that it stayed that way, rather than relying on a pill to be insightful- I actually don’t think he’d call insight from a pill true insight.
Good point on the traditional idea of earning the skills, not just as a comment on intelligence augmentation in the real world, but as a film trope.
And then there’s the “genius excuses being a dick” trope… too many current geniuses skip the first part.
Sort of on the topic of Nolan films and being able to enjoy a piece of pop culture while simulataneously analyzing it, there’s just something about OTI and the podcast in particular that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Beyond the intellectual debate there’s just something that resonates in the writing and humor and analysis. So thank you once again not only for creating this forum but for putting yourselves out there for this unique community to come aggregate around you and your perspectives of our often underscrutinized pop culture. :)
Oh, and because I must…yay Shechner!
I happen to really like Leigh Nash’s “Nervous in the Light of Dawn”.