Unlearning 101

An Unlearning Lesson From Yoda

Unlearning "Ten"

Check out the logo of the Big Ten Conference to the left. Do you notice anything? Do you see the number "11" embedded on both sides of the "T"? I never did and I live in Minnesota and am a big fan of the Big Ten conference (as evidenced by this recent post on Ohio State.) The logo was cleverly modified when Penn State joined the conference in 1990. In other words, it has taken me 19 years to "see" the "11."

As I said the other day, if you want to unlearn it helps to "see what isn't there." And, as this old clip from the cult classic movie, This is Spinal Tap, proves: 11 is like 10 -- only better.

Unlearning Hollywood

In today's Wall Street Journal there is an article entitled "Hollywood Hits the Books." The second paragraph of the article begins with this sentence, " Hollywood is racing to adopt novels, comics, and children's stories, as the ability of movie stars to draw audiences wanes."

I have added an emphasis on the final part of the sentence because it is conventional wisdom that movie stars are what "makes" a film. As is often the case with conventional wisdom, this "wisdom" is not  nearly persuasive as one might think. In other words, the ability of movie stars to draw audiences has never been as powerful as many people would like to believe.

In his outstanding 2007 book, "Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by the Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart," Ian Ayres profiles Epagogix, a company which uses a neural network to predict a movie's receipts based primarily on the characteristics of the script.

Amazingly, the system can more accurately predict the future success of movies better than veteran Hollywood executives. One of Epagogix's findings is that the influence of Hollywood stars "turns out to be a surprisingly small factor in terms of its overall weighting in the box office results."

Do you know what matters the most? The answer is: where the movie is set! (This matters because it can either drive the cost of producing a movie up or down.)

Alas, as Ayres writes, "Old habits, like the star system, die hard." He is absolutely right. But for those Hollywood executives and producers who can unlearn the "star system," the future might be considerably brighter.

(P.S. For an Unlearning 101 extra credit assignment look at the list of the 200 all-time best-grossing movies and review how many of the actors were stars at the time those films were released. Hint: Harrison Ford was not a star before the first Star Wars movie.)

Related Posts

Unlearning from Charly

Unlearn Your Position

Unlearning the Past

Unlearning from Charly

This past weekend I finished reading "Flowers for Algernon" -- which was made into the 1968 movie "Charly" with Cliff Robertson. The basic premise of the book is that a retarded man undergoes an experiment and it provides him with superior intelligence -- albeit only for a short period of time.

At one point near the height of his intelligence Charly writes: "Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything--all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it."

The passage is a wonderful reminder that at the heart of wisdom resides the acknowledgement of one's ignorance.

Unlearn Your Position

This past weekend I had the opportunity to watch an American film classic "12 Angry Men" with Henry Fonda. For anyone interested in unlearning, it is a great and entertaining tutorial.

My favorite scene, however, occurred when one juror (Juror #11) decided to switch his vote from guilty to not guilty.

Here's his reponse to Juror #3 when he was angrily asked this question: "Look, you voted guilty. What side are you on?"

"I don't believe I have to be loyal to one side or the other. I'm simply asking questions."

The moral of the story? Don't let loyalities get in the way of asking new -- and sometimes difficult and uncomfortable -- questions.

Unlearning the Past

Sometimes it is hard to forget how much change we have experienced in the recent past. To better help illustrate the point, I’d like to show you two photos. The top photo is from the 1991 hit movie, Pretty Woman. To demonstrate that Richard Gere’s character was a super successful businessman they showed him using a then state-of-the-art technology which was beyond the realm of the average person: the cellphone.

Fast forward to 2008. On the cover of this past Friday’s Wall Street Journal was a photo of an unemployment line in Spain. What was fascinating was that three of the people standing in line were using their cellphones. (Note: The photo to the right is not the photo that was published in the paper.)

My point is this: Technological progress has a way of taking yesterday’s elitist and expensive technology and converting it into a commodity-like necessity for the next generation.

In the next ten years what expensive technologies do you think will become inexpensive? Some of my predictions include: flexible solar cells; rapid prototype manufacturing machines, “Kindle"-like electronic books, and medical diagnostic technology.

Unlearn Short Attention Spans

It is easy to fall prey to the belief that Americans -- especially younger kids -- have short attention spans. Yet if this is true why did millions of kids flock to the Harry Potter books? (For the record, the last three books were 870,652 and 759 pages, respectfully.)

In other areas, the same is also true. The biggest grossing movie of all-time was Titanic -- which ran over 3 hours. And, in the TV genre, the hit show requires viewers to follow the series for the entire season.

If you want to unlearn, a good place to start is by questioning conventional wisdom. Often, you'll find it is dead wrong.