MovieChat Forums > The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) Discussion > Man, this 'documentary' is crap!

Man, this 'documentary' is crap!

posted 17 years ago by upsidown
28 replies | jump to latest

It's amazing how many people gave high marks to this "documentary". The author obviously knows very little about the subjects he's addressing:

1. He totally misses the point of the Prisoner's Dilemma game: the Nash equilibrium appears in a iterated game and this happens because in the iterated game the players tend to cooperate. This is exactly the opposite of what the film is saying. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma.

2. Presents Hayek as a sort of Cold War guy believing in the fight against the Soviet Union: in reality Hayek didn't believe in the Cold War as he was convinced that socialism was bound to failure on its own. In fact this was one of his major contributions to economics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Calculation_Debate. He wasn't concerned with the threat of the Soviet Union, but with the tendency of the capitalist states to abandon capitalism.

3. Presents Hayek as having a connection to game theory and to mathematics. In fact Hayek, as a member of the Austrian School of economics, was pretty much against the use of mathematics in economics at all! Moreover, the film links Hayek to the robotic, behavioristic vision of the economic man as merly reacting to incentives, when in fact the Austrian school of economics describes economic agents as entrepreneurial.

Hayek: I believe that economics and the sciences of complex phenomena in general, which include biology, psychology, and so on, cannot be modeled after the sciences that deal with essentially simple phenomena like physics. [...]

You can't explain anything of social life with a theory which refers to only two or three variables. The result is that we can never achieve theories which we can use for effective prediction of particular phenomena, because you would have to insert into the blanks of the formula so many particular data that you never know them all. In that sense, our possibility both of explaining and predicting social phenomena is very much more limited than it is in physics.

Now, this dissatisfies the more-ambitious young men. They want to achieve a science which both gives the same exactness of prediction and the same power of control as you achieve in the physical sciences. Even if they know they won't do it, they say, "We must try. We ultimately will discover it." When we embark on this process, we want to achieve a command of social events which is analogous to our command of physical affairs. If they really created a society which was guided by the collective will of the group, that would just stop the process of intellectual progress. Because it would stop this utilization of widely dispersed opinion upon which our society rests and which can only exist in this very complex process which you cannot intellectually master. http://www.reason.com/news/show/33304.html

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Tin_Soldier 16 years ago

Where are you from?

Did you know that in the UK, even the so called "national" services are farmed out to private companies whose only aim is to make a profit...

An example would be Benefits distribution...the hugh amount of money misappropriated by these private firms is appalling...and you would only know about it if you work or know people who work in the industry...

You know that the average government administered welfare program in the USA and the UK spends about 70% of its money on overheads. 70% of it goes to middle class, public sector bureaucrats instead of the people it's actually intended for.

Don't get me wrong, government contracts to private companies are quite evil, and government "services" ought to be provided on a completely voluntary basis through the free market, but at least the private contractors are far more efficient than government.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] nielad 17 years ago

4. Clinton agreed to NAFTA, which reduced all trader barriers between Canada, the US, and Mexico. Its economic effects in Mexico have been a disaster. Why do you think the World Trade Organization in Seattle 1999 was so heavily protested? People were fed up with Clinton's blatant neo-liberal policies. So, yes Clinton was indeed free market, and the point of Adam Curtis' documentaries is that the ideologies elites impose on people usually backfire - Ad hoc being an example.

And he never made misconceptions about the prisoner's dilemma. He even states that the RAND experiments didn't prove game theory in a selfish aspect when tested on secretaries. He just reaffirmed that selfish acts always end in equilibrium, not that cooperative acts can't.

I'm not going to waste any more time with your other points. Your attempt to discredit of the movie fails.

[–] xmyturntowinx 17 years ago

Are you not going to "waste your time" on the other points because you cannot contest then? The point made about Curtis's apparent lack of knowledge about up to date genetic biology seems to be more important than Clinton's attitude towards world trade, in relation to the documentaries overall argument...

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Unicorn-9 15 years ago

I realise I'm responding to a post from a couple of years ago, but since people clearly do wander in here now and again I didn't want to leave such silly claims unchallenged.

"And he never made misconceptions about the prisoner's dilemma"

He clearly doesn't understand game theory at all.

"He even states that the RAND experiments didn't prove game theory in a selfish aspect when tested on secretaries."

All that proves _IS THAT HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND GAME THEORY_.

Because, as the earlier poster pointed out, game theory does not predict that defection is the best strategy in the prisoner's dilemna; quite the opposite, in fact, it predicts that cooperating is generally better unless this is the last time you ever expect to play the game with the same person, or they've defected when playing it with you before. In an iterated prisoner's dilemna, cooperating _IS_ the 'selfish' choice, because it maximises your long-term winnings; it's only when you're not going to interact with the same person again that defecting is the rational choice.

Even then, the choice depends on the relative costs and benefits of winning or losing, because the cost of defecting may be greater than the cost of cooperating and losing. Playing games with no costs and no benefits is pointless; if said secretaries were promised a million dollars if they won, you can safely bet that most of them would have defected, but few would be willing to risk their long-term relationships with co-workers to win a silly game that provided no real benefit to them.

When I was visiting my parents in the UK there was a game show on TV where you could win up to a couple of hundred thousand dollars. With one slight problem: the last two contestants had to play a prisoner's dilemna game where they could choose to split the money or to steal it from the other player. _THAT_ is a real test of game theory, because the players stand to win or lose a significant amount of money, they don't know each other, and they don't expect to ever see each other again.

Since game theory is nonsense, obviously they'll all choose to cooperate?

Yeah, right. Despite the large prizes, it's clearly a very cheap show for the production company, because in almost every episode I saw both the contestants chose to steal (aka defect) and thereby they left with precisely nothing.

Odd, isn't it, that gameshow contestants who've probably never heard of game theory in their lives understand it much better than an award-winning documentary maker?

[–] JJ_Katana 15 years ago

"What I found particularly funny was his suggestion that game theory required people to be paranoid about the rest of the human race, when the most paranoid societies in the last century were based on 'progressive' 'positive liberty' politics. Not to mention his complaints about government 'target culture', which is precisely how the Soviet Union tried to run its economy; it was a massive failure there and is a massive failure in the UK, just as Hayek predicted. Heck, the evil game theory itself would predict that in a 'target culture' people would find the least difficult means of meeting those targets rather than doing their real jobs".

No where does Curtis equate game theory with negative liberty; he just examines the concurrent furtherence of both in our modern society and although superficially GT's individualism may seem at odds with Marxist ideals of equality and community they actually commit the _same_ underlying fallacy.

Marxism believed perfectly rational individuals would always seek equality.
GT believes perfectly rational individuals would always seek equilibria.

What they share in common is a narrow idea of human beings, which anticipates there rational desires. In GT's case an essentially self-interested narrow economic model. In Marxism's case an essentially idealistic narrow political model.

"Heck, the evil game theory itself would predict that in a 'target culture' people would find the least difficult means of meeting those targets rather than doing their real jobs".

This is true to an extent, but there are two kinds of cheating, one which is logically consistent and can be anticipated in a GT model, and one which is considerably unpredictable, often irrational and cannot be anticipated by GT.

If that remains unconvincing read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb or take a glance at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy a fallacy empirically evidenced by Taleb in all manner of social sciences but particularly economics and an inescapable problem of GT.

"THAT_ is a real test of game theory, because the players stand to win or lose a significant amount of money, they don't know each other, and they don't expect to ever see each other again.

Since game theory is nonsense, obviously they'll all choose to cooperate?"

Obviously you don't understand Game Theory if you think them all choosing to cooperate would render it nonsense. If they did happen to all choose to cooperate that would be entirely consistent with some GT model or another (which in recent years, has attempted to incorporate, altruism, trust, and even evolutionary motivation into its models)

Many many tests have been done on real people, with real money and what proves GT to be problematic is that different results have always obtained due to factors GT is unable to incorporate into its strictly logical system.
Its been shown that in real human decisions, just how you frame the game results in dramatically different outcomes.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2352759

One thing I will agree with you on, is Curtis is a bit unfair to Hayek, taken from the Black Swan about Hayek:

"He argued against the use of the tools of hard science in the social ones" (GT's mistake)

“owing to the growth of scientific knowledge, we overestimate our ability to understand the subtle changes that constitute the world, and what weight needs to be imparted to each such change. He aptly called this “scientism”.

[–] CoolClones 17 years ago

4. The film states that Clinton or Blair adopted "market" reforms. However it is clear even from the film that what they did was to organize the state bureaucracy using some ad hoc targets. A strategy which obviously back-fired. It is worth noting that the exact same strategy used to be the norm in the ex-communist countries, where each line of production had to meet some ad hoc targets of production. A market reform means only one thing: privatize. They certainly didn't do that! The film even makes the outrageous claim that the market reforms of Clinton and Blair created more laissez-fair than there was in the 19th century!
________________________________________________________________________________

You are very badly wide of the mark on this claim. It's based on too narrow a context to be a valid arguement.

I'll tackle you on "market" reforms shall I?

The market reform in question is when the Labour Government gave the away the power to control interest rates to the Bank of England, which is a privately owned Central Bank. The Bank of England recommended this as a measure to ensure there would never be another "Black Wednesday" because they could better predict and adjust to the market than a Chancellor could.

This removed the only brake that the government had to curb inflation caused by bank lending. Lower interest rates created an overnight boom in the Economy as credit became cheaper than at any time in history. Consumer debt and property speculation immediatly boomed into huge industries. House prices rose 400% in 5 years as Mortgage debt started to itself be traded openly as long term securities.

All this property has been purchased with Bank created inflation using the good old fractional reserve banking system. When the reserves ran low, these debts where then systematically sold as securities to investors and openly traded on the market.

This market is being buoyed by continued low interest rates that are complete fiction and have no relation to the economics of the situation.

When Governments spend money, they issue bonds. These are also openly traded because they multiply by ten when they hit the banking system and are therefore worth a lot more than their face value. This being the case, Governments can not afford to spend because their spending causes a kind of "super" inflation.

The Banks have been able to simply do whatever they have wanted to make money as the market has been allowed to run out of control.

Consider how much money 6% annual inflation of the pound actually is? Trillions?

"The film even makes the outrageous claim that the market reforms of Clinton and Blair created more laissez-fair than there was in the 19th century"

They have. The national minimum wage pays £183.00 per week. In many parts of the country that is all most jobs pay that have been created in the last ten years. In contrast, a modest 2 bedroomed house is costing £125-150,000 on a 25 year Mortgage at £800 a month.

There are no more first time buyers, no growth. The market is not reflecting this the way that it should be. The numbers are being juggled so not to cause a devaluation on the securities levied on the property market.

Why did Blair give this power to the Banks and allow them to expand their business?

Because Central Banks cause recessions. They constrict the supply of money in order to make money by accumilating assets. Freeing them from any restriction guarenteed that they would no longer have to cause recessions which make Governments unpopular. They just removed the mechanism.

Market reform, lol... Are you not old enough to remember a 16% interest rate in the UK? It was only 20 years ago.

"There must be some way outta here" said the Joker to the Thief.

[–] Unicorn-9 16 years ago

"The market reform in question is when the Labour Government gave the away the power to control interest rates to the Bank of England, which is a privately owned Central Bank."

Central Banks are the antithesis of a free market, pretty much by definition; this is why imposing a central bank was one of the ten primary goals of the Communist Manifesto. It's a funny old world when a primary plank of the Communist Manifesto is considered 'free market'.

And, in any case, the idea that the Bank of England has the power to control interest rates is laughable; the government choose most members of the MPC, the government set the inflation rate that the MPC is supposed to adjust interest rates to maintain, and the government provide them with the inflation figures. The government has been underreporting real inflation pretty much since Labour came to power, so the Bank of England have kept interest rates ruinously low in order to keep the fake inflation at the level the government requires.

The only 'market reform' that Brown and Blair could have made would have been to eliminate the communist-inspired central bank completely and let the market choose its own interest rates; then we would have avoided this situation altogether.

[–] hhongo-1 17 years ago

I'm glad someone else is aware of the gross misinterpretations the film relies on.
Any cursory student of game theory, political science, or economics, immediately realizes the gross manipulation of post-war social science at hand.

I hardly had watched the first fifteen minutes until I had to stop, truly shocked at the ignorance with which it handles so many fields of theory. I myself had never heard of Hayek, but it was clear that he was concerned about government regulation's effect on economic success, not individual freedom. They then show a clip of him dismissing altruism, which is obviously regarding an economic model, and a fundamental assumption used in predicting markets at that.

Game theory, which follows immediately, is also suitably butchered. The makers off the film try to connect the RAND Corporation's Cold War theory with changes in thought regarding individuals, disregarding the huge difference between the kinds of actors. In international relations, states already assume that other states are acting out of self-interest and suspicion and game theory in this regard merely illustrates logical actions they will take, in hopes of predicting behavior and proper strategy. Within society (as opposed to the anarchy of competing states), of course, individuals will often act differently, with morality, empathy and altruism, for debatable reasons, but ones that are not dismissed by any mainstream theorist. I'm aware that game theory is also applied to economic choices by individuals, but only on a macro scale, and merely for predicting rather than dictating behavior.

I was interested in this documentary because it seemed to involve much of the social science I have been reading, but I have become alarmingly aware that the science is only here to be abused. The base assertion seems to be that we now live in a world without love due to the influence evil cold war scientists, but this is hardly supported in

A. A lassiez-faire economist suspicious of mixed economies, as these are still used by every industrialized nation and the coldness of his model is inherent to any economic theory since Adam Smith.

B. A mathematician predicting international behavior, as the liberal model of world politics is more mainstream than ever and the coldness of his predictions arise from the realist model dominant since Thomas Hobbes.

not only is the self-interest component in these men's theories a dominant part of their sciences since nearly their inception, but in economics partially planned market governments still prevail and in political science liberal theory has actually increased in acceptance. I can only infer from the opening sequence that the documentary series continues by implying that somehow the bleakness of these theories led to market deregulation and the invasion of Iraq, but the proper level of regulation in markets is truly debatable and despite whatever current trends it is still much higher than before WWII, and the invasion of Iraq to bring democracy actually comes from neo-liberal thought, a model that assumes democratic nations will act altruistically.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with individuals, and all the film is doing is butchering the conclusions and influence of scientists to explain social and political trends that are quite contrary to a cynical robotic view of man. It's truly bizarre that this film is somehow celebrated with so little criticism as "The Trap"'s arguments start from interpretations so disconnected from reality.

[–] Dario_Uruguay 17 years ago

Since it made you wish to debate these issues, the documentary can´t be simply "crap".

And it´s brilliant from a technical point of view. I disagreed with some of the statements too, but as a whole I found it very interesting.

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

[–] InvaderPastulio 16 years ago

Haha, that you have the balls to use wikipedia as a source makes me cry.

[–] crazzard436 16 years ago

hi,i don't know whether i will get any response back but i just had to ask you guys this after reading your comments in the board about 'the trap'.i found them really interesting and it seems insightful really.i just want to ask you all if you supported unfettered capitalism and wanted to ask if you think a group of individuals who have no obligations to the masses directly can influence the politicians to do something for the people rather than themselves?i do believe they are selfish and so are we but can/should we make a 'social contract' with the corporates bypassing the politicians?is it a wise thing to do?

[–] Villemar 16 years ago

Of course they believe in unfettered lf capitalism. These critics in this thread probably work at some right wing economic think tank.

Which is working really awesomely now since this thread was created! See you in the bread lines, jerks!

[–] dickcock 16 years ago

I like Curtis. However, you're pretty right. For the record: I am not right wing, and despise the idea of the free market, but mathematically, this film is awful.