But there's so much unexplained stuff. I don't quite understand the scientific explanation of the placebo effect. What is the core of that? The fact that the placebo effect exists is a fact, but what is it? We have no idea. I love that. I even love that with regard to the home-court advantage in sports. What is that? It's connected to a belief system. Both things, the placebo and the home-court effect, are a belief system that we can turn thought into actual biological function. In and of itself, that's something that science says is not possible. But you can document it.
It's interesting you say that. Most people, if you just stop them on the street, would say that science has always got the answers to things. But if you stop most scientists in their laboratories, they would say the exact opposite: how little they know about the world. Science as an act of humility. And I think you had Elliot say something very similar to that.
Right.
Do you see some of these "acts of nature"—in the film you brought up red tide and colony collapse—as forever beyond our capacity to explain? Or is it something that, with enough thought and enough effort, we can explain?
It'll either get thrown into some tentative, tenuous explanation or it'll be thrown into the pile of the placebo effect: "Okay, it's fact, but we have no idea." There's another one: When the tsunami came, the animals all ran, sensing it happening. What is it that's in their primitive—we'll call it "primitive"—biological makeup, that we've forgotten? It would seem that would be quite an asset for a species to have what they have—knowing something's wrong and we better get out of here. We don't have that, and yet we're supposed to be higher-functioning. So what happened? We don't even understand that. What is it about the intuitiveness of animals? Is it some microscopic shift in the atmosphere that they're sensing? What is it, exactly?
There's so many of those amazing things that tie us to each other, that make us all one system. I think the basic thing about the movie is that we're pretending we're not part of the system.
You said you had drawn inspiration from Einstein's recent biography, the Isaacson biography. What were some of the things you pulled out and tried to instill into what you did?
It's the same type of thing. I get that feeling of what drives you to say that there's an answer: the beauty of simplicity. What is the beauty of simplicity? That is, there's something that binds everything. To keep looking for that, that drive is almost the holy grail. I can totally relate to that on an intuitive level. That's somehow tied to some mystical thing—I don't know if "mystical" is the correct word. It's beyond logic; it's the evidence that all things come from one simple thing.
Fundamental physics, as Einstein practiced, is always at that boundary between physics and metaphysics, or the mystical and the material.
Yeah, what was that whole thing he was struggling with when he said that God doesn't roll the dice? It's random, where a thing is?
Yes, in quantum mechanics you've got that kind of irreducible randomness.
He doesn't like that—and I don't like that, either. At the end of the day, things can't be random.
That was Einstein's point of view. Some people wonder whether that was right or whether there is this randomness that we'll never be able to explain, that's inherent in the world.
That would be counter to, at least, our primitive understanding.
It's interesting what you say about the beauty of simplicity, because I think you had that embodied in the character of the math teacher. Facing an inevitable death as they drive through Princeton, he tries to bring that out in his fellow passengers in the car. Here they are, they're about to die, and to give their death some nobility they went back to a math problem: the beauty of simplicity.
Exactly. Just talking about how amazing that is, what we think of it as a small thing: the principle of doubling, which in a very short order makes an incredible magnitude. I told John when he was doing that scene that he sees beauty in those numbers and that he's always found this kind of awe at it. There's a great satisfaction that comes from understanding that you do this, this and this, and it comes out to that. It's amazing. It's the thing that's driven him and makes him connect with Elliot, who sees that in science. That's why they're so close. And then he's in that room and he just wants one thing: This is my joy, what I see, this is the joy of life for me. Just one more time, just teach one more kid that joy.
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15 Comments
Add Comment"The fact that the placebo effect exists is a fact, but what is it? We have no idea. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUhoh...
Mr. Shyamalan -- for a small fee I would be happy to serve as a 'Basic Science Consultant' for one or more of your film efforts, with the proviso that you at least agree to *listen* to some reasoning before committing the subject to film.
During my first 20 minutes of watching your film 'Signs', I genuinely thought it was a bizarrely-formed black comedy, then I realized the viewer was supposed to believe it to be a serious drama with the protagonist fighting with a lack of belief in his faith and a subsequent supernatural message from the dead about a baseball bat. Basic practical science was thrown out with the bath water, for the most part. But then I learned that, like several contemporary film directors, you require your audience to take a leap-of-faith into the 'Shyamalan Universe' to make your point.
Well, I am sure its great for ticket sales to generate an anything goes environment certainly makes it easier to do or say just about any absurd thing, but it makes for a much more interesting, intriguing and dramatic story line when the story contains some basic reasoning and hence realism.
The synopsis Crop circles are needed as navigational aids for an alien race that has traveled light-years to invade Earth. Just when they have humanity nearly wiped out, a country preachers brother takes one out with a baseball bat&
Perhaps if youd have included a scene that had some yokel with a lawn mower accidently changing the design of a circle so that the aliens end up in Poughkeepsie now THAT would have been hysterical!
Cheers,
Steven
I liked the premise of "The Invasion Of Body Snatchers" a lot better. Whether you believed something like that could happen or not, it still was a gripping story. This movie however seems to rely on too many undefinable concepts to gain much traction with me anyway. "Friday The 13th" and sequels made money, so who knows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImperialism and the bad conscience about that; this is the key to the understanding of that film. Science? The guy is slippery about that notion. Nature? The hippies always have had that experience. The movies, the movies ... Good invention for us spectators, and good too for film makers and their dollars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImperialism and the bad conscience about that; this is the key to the understanding of that film. Science? The guy is slippery about that notion. Nature? The hippies already have had that experience. The movies, the movies ... Good invention for us spectators, and good too for film makers and their dollars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis movie is pretty silly, without the effectiveness of "12 Monkeys". But, it is a big step up from "The Andromeda Strain".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI felt like sighing reading the interview. Oh, well.
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Edited by John_Toradze at 06/16/2008 9:04 AM
Yawn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSame old. Man evil. Nature good. Go hug a tree and utopia shall return.
I was surprised Shyamalama could still get a job after "Lady in the Water," but now it makes sense. Make a movie about how evil humanity is towards the environment, and you're bound to get a green light.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by CraigC762 at 06/16/2008 4:54 PM
I actually really liked the movie; however, I can tell that there are going to be people that don't like it. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I appreciated the underlying theme. I believe the film will remind people of the tenacity of nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately for M. Night Shyamalan and others this movie is wishful thinking; mother nature is not that quick and kind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't understand the placebo effect completely, but the idea expressed in the interview that we don't understand it at all is wrong. I recommend "Snake Oil Science" by R. Barker Basall for a good discussion of our current understanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased upon his comments for this article, I find Mr. Shyamalan surprisingly narrow and naive in his views, statements and perspectives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlmost any science fiction reader of the past 50 years can tell you that the question about the future of humanity on earth is almost solely an issue as to whether evolving technology can completely replace our past dependency upon "the natural world"--- for food and shelter, etc. In most humans' judgement, all non-human species are but inconveniences to be liquidated, intentially or unintentially, if "humankind" can to benefit as the net result. There is absolutely no value or respect to be attributed to non-human species, who basically just "get in the way".
Consequently, the film is almost moronic in its focus upon "nature striking back" against the human foe.
I am sure SciAm can do better than provide a platform to the sort of statement inherent in this interview and film.
MNS does not go far enough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnano-tech isn't the only think set to wipe out our populations! We are eating mad cows, radiated grains, and new germ epidemics daily that we don't hear about, and hearing LEMP. Oh what are they bringing back from space really? Hope we don't have to Kiss our a_s's good bye yet!
I listened to the podcast and I was really hoping the interviewer would nail M. Knight -- but he remained polite. Shayamalan doesn't really deserve science coverage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of things could be explained if enough money is spent on research.I wonder,has anybody studied the placebo effect on any other species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like Shyamalan's movies: as pure entertainment. There is NO Science in anything he'd done, however.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Shyamalan is one great example of how people can talk about something without actually having any knowledge of it.
To say the placebo effect isn't understood or "answered" - it ridiculous.
Picking apart his movie, "Signs," is quite easy even for informed laymen. What others here evidently forgot is that the actual "defeat" of the aliens was due to their (very improbable) vulnerability to water. How could an advanced race that specialized in taking over inhabited planets have MISSED the fact that the Earth is cloud-covered and has a total landmass of only 30% of it's surface??!! Hilarious!
It would be interesting to see a good story on intuition or precognitive dreams.