I just watched The Dark Knight, and although I found myself asking many questions of those seated around me, one scene seemed to make perfect sense because of AP English.
Harvey Dent [who later becomes "Two-Face"] says:
Two-Face: You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. [holds up his coin]
Two-Face: Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.
Is this true? Can chance truly be the one thing that is unbiased, unprejudiced, and fair? Since a human can't technically alter fate or chance, is it free of partiality? The ironic part is that Two-Face uses a coin with heads on both sides. He therefore played with the chance of his victims. A contradiction? I think so.
(Sam Maliha)
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11 comments:
I do believe that chance/probability is the only "fair" way of judging things. Human beings are biased by nature, and therefore never completely objective, as stated by Hayakawa.
In the movie, Harvey Dent (Two-Face) used a coin to determine whether his victims would live or die. They had an equal chance of either outcome, and he had no way of controlling which side the coin would land on. Therefore, despite how much he would have wanted certain people to die, he did not let his personal biases get in the way of his decision.
However, Harvey is hypocritical toward the end of the movie during his search for revenge. He specifically singles out the officer's (sorry, I don't remember his name) son to kill because he is "the person that he loves most in the world." This clearly is a matter of opinion, and not biased at all, and yet Harvey still classifies this reciprocal killing as "fair."
In reference to the coin itself, although the coin did have a head on both sides, Harvey only begins to use it for determining the fate of his victims when one side had been blackened by a certain event that directly leads to his insanity. Therefore, it is just as good as if it had been a head and a tail, as far as probability is concerned.
I tried not to give away too much information about the story for people who haven't seen the movie yet. However, I don't think I succeeded. I apologize.
(Paige Schlesinger)
In the third paragraph I accidentally wrote "not biased at all" when I actually meant "completely biased."
(Paige Schlesinger)
Math, pure logic, and chance may all be unbiased, but the way humans use them still is. Unfortunately, nothing is unbiased. Note that Two-Face himself chose the victim he would initiate the coin flip on: the coin flip itself might have been fair, but it was already biased because Dent chose specific people to target.
Math and statistics are no different. I'm sure we know Twain's quote about lies and statistics, but frankly the statistics themselves are not biased. It's just that the way we use them is biased.
(Eric Wei)
Eric's point then raises the fact: what are statistics? Would statistics exist if we did not create them? No, so statistics are a human creation. So the question is how then can an inherently biased thing (humanity) create something pure and unbiased? Because these statistics are merely the result of our observations. Therefore I think I can conclude that nothing, even statistics, logic, is at it's core pure and unbiased, because these things are all a result of our perceptions.
(Steve Szumski)
I agree with Steve that even though we may say it's unbiased, ie statistics and probability, nothing really is. I learned in my stat class not long ago, that the statistics we get come from a sample of a population. Therefore, it's dangerous to make conclusions outside of that sample.
Also, our stat teacher actually showed me something interesting. He basically handed out a sheet, face down, with all these different number squares on it. We were supposed to turn it over and randomly pick some blocks. The purpose of this was to show that we can't be random. Our eyes were drawn to the bigger blocks, even if we didn't realize it.
Also, I just wanted to add how I think it's interesting how Harvey turned into someone who thought he could make his own fate into someone who left others's fates to 'chance.'
In response to Steve, statistics actually does employ several methods to eliminate human bias, such as repetition, randomization, and controls. However, you're right that the statistics you come up with are only as good as the person who designed the experiment to obtain those statistics.
Did anyone else immediately think back to our debate on religion after reading Steve's comment? I remember someone mentioning that human devices can only be as perfect as humans - not at all! Sure, there are things that we look to in order to decrease bias, but it is forever present. The thing that amazes me the most is that we've been raised to identify a negative connotation with the word "bias"..but really, it's only inherently human. We do it subconsciously, without thinking. It's as if bias has taken on a life of its own.
Even asking something of someone you find to be a trustworthy source does not eliminate bias. Isn't that a scary thought?
I understand how random practices by humans (such as picking the squares on the paper in Mary's stat class) can be biased, but is this also true of computers? I guess you could say that technology is a creature of the people, yet isn't a computer beyond human feelings/emotions that could possibly affect its "random" actions?
(Sam Maliha)
I agree that nothing is unbiased. Two Face demonstrates that even chance can be biased. He is obviously not playing the morality game which he believes it to be the only fair thing.
I also think that human behavior can affect chance. Like Two Face flipped a coin with heads on both sides, human actions can influece chance. Time and place affect chance greatly also.
(Jennifer Park)
After reading Sam's comment, I thought about biases in using computers.
I think Sam needs to clarify what she meant by computer. There are a lot of interpretations of the word computer. Do you mean searching on computer for specific information? In this case, there is an undeniable bias present.
If the word computer is meant to represent the calculatons or operations it performs, I think there are some, but not apparent, biases hidden behind those processes. If you put 2+3 in the calculator tool on your computer, it's going to say that the answer is 5. However, what if someone doesn't think 2+3=5? Also, why is there a system that calculates only arabic numbers? Isn't it that the producers of this software is assuming that the user will know how to use arabic numbers?
It is true that computers do not have emotions that can possibly influence its actions. However, the way its set up(by the producers) can cause some biases.
(Jennifer Park)
To me, chance seems more like a fate related topic. If you believe that everyone and everything has a destiny, then chance is just something that delivers events the way they were supposed to happen. If you're not totally keen on that, then I suppose the coin flip itself is random and totally by chance. If you flip a coin 10 times, the amount of heads will be very near the amount of tails. I personally don't know anyone who can flip all heads just because they like Abe's face or because they had a bad experience at the Lincoln Memorial. It just happens around 50/50. Mathematically.
However, if chance is just life as it was intended to be,(whether or not you get hacked up by Two-Face), is it nothing but our fate? Then would you have to question fate's bias and prejudice? Is that possible?
^^(Megan)^^
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