J & I have been thinking up reality shows.
"Celebrity Fog Factor" is mine, based on the notion that written documents have a "fog index." On successive shows, contestants from sheltered lives attempt to apply for driver's licenses, unemployment benefits, welfare benefits, building permits, disability bus passes, and so on. Points are deducted for tempers lost, colds contracted in stuffy offices, security called due to asking for a supervisor, etc.
J., being more lighthearted in general, suggests "Celebrity FUD Factor," FUD meaning mainly the "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" allegedly instilled by some large companies in the minds of customers regarding smaller competitors' products. (It also recalls the "Far Side" cartoon in which the family dog has scrawled "Cat Fud --->" on the door of the spin dryer & is praying for the family cat to step inside. But I, as usual, digress.) "Celebrity FUD" could test the players' bullhockey detectors: which one of six outlandish science tales isn't fake? Would you buy stock in some company called "International Business Machines"? How scared should you be of dihydrogen monoxide?... and so on.
So, OK, you guys got a better idea?
Posted by Martha Bridegam at June 18, 2004 06:05 PMThe Vale of Ignorance - each week a contestant is dumped in a remote tropic location in the 'Survivor' manner, but only after s/he has predetermined the socio-cultural-economic conditions under which s/he will be randomly assigned. S/he gets to live there for a year along with the cameramen. Then the whole exercise is repeated from scratch with the same person. For the rest of their life.
Posted by: Alan Allport at June 19, 2004 06:23 AMNo "gambling" forms of reasoning allowed to the parties when choosing, right? How would they enforce that?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 19, 2004 10:57 AMNo "gambling" forms of reasoning allowed to the parties when choosing, right?
Why not?
Posted by: Alan Allport at June 19, 2004 11:38 AMIt was the thing I could never wrap my head around in the Rawls discussion sections: you're put in the position of designing a world in which you'd be willing to live without knowing which station in that world you're going to occupy. So the natural thing is to design an Omelas -- a society in which everybody is happy except for just one who suffers -- and bet that you're not going to be the unlucky one. In order to keep this from being the result of his thought-experiment, Rawls has a "no gambling" rule: you have to come up with a society of which you are actually willing to be *any* member -- not just a society in which you'd be willing to bet you won't end up as the scapegoat. He has a bunch of other rules too to make the thought-experiment come out the way he wants. After a while it begins to sound a lot like cheating, or anyway like Ptolemaic epicycles. Basically it comes up with a picture of what John Rawls wants the ideal society to be, but it doesn't establish how to persuade actual human beings to want it.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 19, 2004 12:22 PMReality Show Idol. I think the name says it all.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at June 19, 2004 01:23 PMIn which people lip-synch the famous lines of popular "Big Brother" contestants?
BTW, creepy about this "Big Brother" contestant being put "in solitary" after a fight. Makes ya wonder if these reality shows were all about the subject of incarceration all along. We do after all have lots of people in prison (yes, more in the U.S. than the U.K.), but our current culture disparages sympathy for prisoners, so we've found a way to explore the problems of being a prisoner empathetically without actually talking about convicts who are locked up for crimes?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at June 19, 2004 02:22 PM