Single Couple

Cultural Tansmission and Martial Arts

As I tried to think of anything else except the searing pain in my quads at my last Kung Fu class, I started wondering about how martial arts are taught. The master gradually imparts a very stratified sequence of movements, called the form, to a student who then repeats them over and over. Importantly, the master tries to minimise the idiocyncracies in the student's form - a slightly arched back, irregular timing, poor balance etc. Because of this, I was wondering how much variation there is between different schools paracticing the same forms. Do different masters have different 'accents'?

The approach of most martial arts is specifically set up in order to minimise this. Eugen Herrigel, a german proffesor of philosophy living in Japan, describes his attempt to master the art of Archery. He claimed that, although the initial repetition of movements isolated from application was frustrating, he eventually experienced a 'direct transference of the spirit' from his master (from Singleton, 1998). How about that for anyone doubting the fidelity of memetic transfer?

The theory of evolution states that, in order for a system to improve, there must be variation and competition. In martial arts there is literal competition between sparring partners and in organised events. The best sequences will be selected. However, the system of teaching is set up so only the highest ranking teachers can alter and add to the form. This seems sensible, since changes are likely to improve the form, but it sacrificies improvements that could be found by chance.

Can we learn anything about the cultural transmission of language by studying the way form is transferred from master to student? Moscato (1989) in one of the first articles on memetic algorithms argues that Martial Arts is indeed a good candidate for the study of complex adaptive systems:

The form, like a chromosome, is not an indivisible entity. It is composed of a sequence of defensive and aggressive sub-units which can also be divided, a pattern that resembles the structure of chromosomes, genes and alleles. But within the form there are some movements which can be understood as an indivisible unit, and these are the ones that are really important. The whole is a support to let the brain transform them as reflexes that can be automatically triggered in real combat. The individuals can compute their fitness function by the evaluation of their performance in the execution of the movements of the forms and with some tournaments where they compete.

Moscato points out that most primates, including unskilled humans, tend to fight in an unorganised way while a martial art teaches one to use simple, efficient movements. This might be compared to the chimpanzee Nim's ramblings 'give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you' compared to a human's utterance ('give me the orange'). The martial art from may have a 'syntax' in the sense that the order of moves is very important.

However, there are several problems with using martial arts to study language. First, an estimation of the amount of variation in martial arts forms would be necessary. In lieu of excellent historical records, the best estimation would be reached by a comparative approach. This would involve the codification of forms then comparisons to find underlying structures. In other words, the whole problem of linguistics in the first place, and not obviously easier than for languages.

Secondly, it's not clear that martial arts has a semantics. In fact, the moves are not signals used for communication, but coercive actions.

Ah well, back to the searing leg pain.

Pun of the day #5

E. - He didn't get my reference.
Me - To what?
E. - The Great Gatsby
Me - And now you have West Egg on your face?

Book Trailers

I recently read Neal Stephenson's Anathem. Amazing, just like his Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon and Snowcrash. Although I'd love to see a movie adaptation, I realise that they are probably too complicated and too niche to ever get to Hollywood. Then, I found a trailer for Anathem online. But it wasn't for a movie, it was for the book:



I'd never heard of book trailers before. Seeing it after reading it was weird - some characters were different than I had imagined, but the re-construction of the fight scene is done word-for-word. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It had fairly high production values, and it was quite cool to see how other people visualised the scences. However, there's always the danger of being dissapointed by another person's idea of the book. For example, although I loved Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, I didn't much like the look and feel of the film.

However, at least with a film converstion, you have a chance to read the book first. Could book trailers start limiting our imaginaitons? Am I sounding a bit like an old person? Maybe. I started looking for other book trailers.

After hearing about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I was thrilled to see a well-polished trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters:



Although I couldn't find any other high-quality productions, I quite enjoyed the trailer for the children's book How to Save Your Tail, a re-telling of the 1001 Arabian Nights. It actually made me want to read the book. Brad Meltzer's trailer was also good fun, and looked like it was just made for fun too.

However, most of them were just text, pictures and a voice over (lamented by Phyllis Miller). Some have the tell-tale Windows Moviemaker blue background, others are a bit more snazzy, but ultimately are no more informative than a back-cover blurb. I found this one particularly annoying.

It turns out that book trailers are not a new thing. Here's an article from 2006 which discusses the difficulty of presenting images without influencing the way people percieve their characters. In a more recent post, Jonathan Fields argues that book trailers don't work because marketing advisors don't understand that a straight-up commercial approach won't get a trailer to go viral.

Actually, I quite like the idea, and hope it catches on. I'll be keeping an eye out for book trailers in the future.