The Kitty Wittgenstein Blog

Welcome

2010-08-05T11:40:00.003+10:00

Welcome to KittyWittgenstein.com, the home of all things Kitty Wittgenstein.

What you need to know:

I'm Kitty Wittgenstein. I'm a fictional supermodel philosopher created by Dan Liebke (here's the slightly longer version of why I became a philosopher and here's where I explain why I'm not ashamed to be fictional (and why you shouldn't be either))
My first novel, Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves is available on Amazon

The Not Particularly Secret Origin of Kitty Wittgenstein

2010-01-22T16:02:00.027+11:00

(excerpt from Chapter Six of Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves)

One of the qualities I like best about myself is my ability to learn. That’s no accident. It seemed clear to me from a young age that a big problem was the sheer amount of things to discover. There was so much knowledge out there that it could take a lifetime to explore it all. Or even longer. That’s why the first thing I devoted myself to studying were memory skills and learning techniques. If I could double or perhaps even triple my rate of learning then I effectively multiplied my knowledge-seeking life span by the same amount.

By the age of fourteen, I’d spent five years reading and understanding as many learning and memory aids as possible. I fused the soundest principles into a single technique. This technique increased my learning capacity tenfold. I spent several months writing my first book about this technique and then studied marketing to become a minor celebrity in Australia. ‘The 15-year-old girl genius who makes learning a snap’ was what they called me. My famous surname didn’t hurt the marketing either

And nor, for that matter, did my rapidly developing body.

By the time I was sixteen, I’d made a number of magazine covers. A modelling agency had signed me and I agreed to some calendar and fashion shoots. Posing and emoting for the cameras was easy to grasp. And it gave me time to study and ponder more substantial matters. With my Enhanced Learning techniques, I could cram three years of learning into three or four months. By the time I was twenty-one I had the equivalent of twenty degrees’ worth of learning. The learning covered a wide variety of disciplines. To go with this, I had my successful modelling career. And by now, I also had an enthusiastic marketing team, headed by Liesel, who transformed my achievements into money.

After my twenty-first birthday, I became more specialised. Philosophy seemed the most fulfilling field for me. It was a field that contained the toughest, and most important, questions. That was enough for me. I was happy to dabble in other disciplines over the next seven years. But philosophy was from that day forward my true calling.

Of course, I followed this little potted biography up with a headbutt to some clown's testicles. But, hey, that's another story... (or, to be more precise, it's the next paragraph in the same story).

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves at Amazon.com

2010-01-22T16:01:00.002+11:00

Now available: Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves available on Amazon.com for the Kindle™.

It costs less than a handful of your precious US dollars And we guarantee you won't read a finer ebook featuring a celebrity lycanthropy-battling supermodel philosopher this year. (Although, if you do, or, heck, even if you just don't like the story, all you have to do is email Dan with proof of purchase and he'll happily refund your money. Well, perhaps not happily. But he'll do it. You can't lose)

Don't have a Kindle? We can rectify that, too... Or you can just download the Kindle Reader for your PC

Why Superhero Comic Books Matter

2010-01-22T13:06:00.026+11:00

Superhero comic books are a maligned and misunderstood art form. This is wrong. Superhero comic books matter. Here's why:

Superhero comic books seem to be a unique example of genre-medium lock-in.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the vast majority of superhero stories (ie the superhero genre) are to be found in the medium of comic books. And, equally, the vast majority of comic books feature superheroes.

No other genre is so dependent on one medium. No other medium is so dominated by one genre.

To be sure, there are exceptions. There are superhero movies and television shows and novels. There are comic books about things other than superheroes. But the tendency for the two to be related is so strong that the discussion of one aspect (eg superheroes) immediately brings to mind the other (ie comic books). And vice versa.

Why should this be? There is nothing inherent in the medium of comic books that requires the dominant genre to be superheroes. And there is nothing inherent about superhero stories that require comic books to be the medium of vastly preferred choice.

In his book Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud tries to explain how this historical relationship came to be. He offers a reasonably compelling argument about the near-inevitability of the lock-in of genre to medium.

He even speculates that if history were to be rerun, then it may be a different genre that came to dominate the comic book medium. In other words, he doesn't consider the genre to be a relevant factor in this phenomenon. But that doesn't answer the question as to why the medium is a relevant factor. His argument can apply equally to books, magazines, movies, computer games and television. And none of these other media exhibit anything like this lock-in.

Television isn't dominated by vampire shows to the near-exclusion of everything else.

Movies aren't dominated by dystopic science-fiction to the near-exclusion of everything else.

Music isn't all ragtime. Books aren't all romance fiction. Magazines aren't all nudie mags.

So why are nearly all comic books about superheroes?

Does it matter? Isn't it just a historical oddity?

To answer the first question first. It does matter. All media have strengths and weaknesses, as do all genres. From a purely creative perspective, all media need to have their limits stretched. And, again, so do all genres. That is how great art is created. But the genre-medium lock-in of comic books and superheroes does both a disservice.

If television was dominated by vampire stories to the near-exclusion of everything else, then the medium of television would have been long abandoned by everybody but vampire fans. This wouldn't make Buffy any less of a triumph, but the only people who would be aware of it would be pre-existing fans of the genre. The genre couldn't grow its fanbase. And nor could the medium.

There are many fans of Buffy who would not have described themselves as vampire fans before the show. And who, indeed, might still not count themselves among that number. But in a world where television only showed vampire fiction and vampire fiction was only ever seen on television, then it would have been all-too-easy for potential fans to have been oblivious to its existence. Great works of art have the potential to exist in all genres, but genre-medium lock-in makes it too easy for a particular genre to be wholly dismissed and ignored.

And, equally, developments in the use of the locked-in medium are also likely to be missed by all but fans of the genre.

This is where comic book creators find themselves today. Great works of art are too easily ignored and sidelined. Overcoming a genre-medium lock-in is crucial to the future survival of both the genre and the medium.

Onto the second question: Is the comic book-superhero lock-in simply a historical oddity?

Almost certainly, yes. But what if it's not? What would that imply?

If McCloud's theory that economic constraints eventually force genre-medium lock-in is true, and given that it seems to be an argument not specific to comic books, how do we explain the vast number of different genres across the other media?

The only sane explanation would be that we've been too generous with our definition of genre. Maybe sitcoms, cop dramas, game shows and so forth don't deserve to be classified as television show genres unto themselves. Maybe they are all simple variations on one genre, a genre whose existence we don't even recognise, because it is the only genre on television.

Perhaps if artists were given freer reign to explore the medium of television, they could come up with 'shows' we can barely even contemplate today. "It's television, Jim, but not as we know it."

And, of course, the same is potentially true of the other media.

This is why superhero comic books matter. The overt nature of their genre-medium lock-in is an implicit challenge to artists everywhere to explore new frontiers, challenge fundamental assumptions and create innovative and great works of art across all media.

And, heck, why stop there? Because it's not just art that benefits from ongoing, regular re-examinations of its boundaries and its fundamental assumptions. Most of the great scientific breakthroughs have come from a similar challenge to the fundamentals that previous generations held to be self-evident, obvious, not worth even thinking about. This is, of course, the infamous 'paradigm shift'.

So an ongoing reminder to not make unfounded assumptions, and to stretch the boundaries of what has been done before and what is already known, is critical to the development of both art and science. Hence, such a reminder is critical to our development both as individuals and as a species as a whole. And, as we've seen, superhero comic books with their genre-medium lock-in are the best reminder we currently have available.

That's why superhero comic books matter.

Huh. And you just thought Batman was a badass.

On Being Fictional

2010-01-22T10:49:00.052+11:00

For those of you unsure who, exactly, I am and what, precisely, all this 'fictional character' nonsense is all about, let's clarify:

My name is Kitty Wittgenstein. I'm a supermodel philosopher. And I'm fictional. My author's name is Dan Liebke. He's written two novels about me (The first, Kitty Wittgenstein and the Academy Award-Winning Werewolves, is already available on Amazon. The other, Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws, is allegedly Coming Soon™). He's also cobbled together a few short stories.

I've known of my fictional status since the adventure chronicled in the short story Kitty Wittgenstein and the Irredeemable Heroine Addicts (also Coming Soon™). It's not easy to come to terms with the idea that one's entire life is nothing more than a series of invented fantasies of a disturbed mind. But come to terms with it I have. The question is: Have you?

I'll let that question dangle provocatively for a moment and explain why I'm fully at ease with being fictional. Then we can return to why you should be too.

Reality is much, much bigger than most people think. Which is impressive, because most people think of reality as being infinite (it isn't, of course, but that's a discussion for another day). Reality is larger than most people suppose, because reality isn't just the one piddling universe in which you happen to live. Reality is a multiverse. An incomprehensible number of parallel universes, with every possible variation on reality imaginable and, I dare say, trillions of variations unimaginable.

The existence of parallel universes is not a mere hypothesis. It's a fact as grounded as any scientific fact can be. David Deutsch gives the best explanation of the evidence for parallel universes in his book The Fabric of Reality, for those of you who are interested in delving further.

But I didn't use the word 'incomprehensible' lightly a couple of paragraphs above. The number of parallel universes is enormous. A variation of one subatomic particle in the entire universe gives an entirely new parallel universe. When you consider the possible combinations of the possible variations of all the subatomic particles in the universe, the number of alternative universes becomes truly incomprehensible. While it's not infinite, the number of universes in the multiverse is so large it probably gives a better idea of infinity than infinity itself.

And, of course, nestled in this multiverse are universes where I am very much real. After all, there are universes to fit any history you can imagine. Which means, of course, there are other universes where you are fictional. And of course there are plenty of universes where both of us are fictional. Or neither of us.

So, y'know, don't go dismissing me just because I'm fictional. We're all fictional to some extent. In fact, you're far more likely to be fictional than 'real'.

Here's why: when you appear in one of these other universes as a work of fiction, your author in that particular universe doesn't detail every waking moment of your life (perhaps there are some universes where such overwhelming detail is considered the height of literature, but for the most part, authors tend to leave out irrelevant details). He may, for example, skip what you had for breakfast and jump straight to the post-breakfast car chase in which you are embroiled. And that's fine.

But here's the thing: by skipping the part where you had scrambled eggs for breakfast, that means the author is not just telling your story, he's also telling the story of a version of you that had toast and Vegemite™ for breakfast.

But, and here's the other thing, you will never be able to distinguish which one of you he's writing about.

So, there are a vast number of stories out there that are written about a version of you from a slightly different universe. But you can never know which ones. Because they've left out critical (but trivial) distinguishing details, these stories of the you-from-the-slightly-different-universe can be perfectly matched to you-from-this-universe.

In other words, the works of fiction in which you appear are not just the works of fiction in which you directly appear, but also the works of fiction where slight variations of you appear, but where those slight variations aren't recorded.

Ergo, there are far more works of fiction about you in the multiverse than there are versions of you.

Ergo, from a multiversal perspective, somebody is far more likely to know about you as a fictional character than as a real person.

Ergo, you're far more likely to be fictional than real. Sorry about that.

Philosophers and Supermodels Presents... Marisa Miller and Socrates

2010-01-22T10:05:00.020+11:00

On each episode of my popular ABC television show Philosophers and Supermodels, I discussed a great philosopher with a leading supermodel. Here's an excerpt from the very first episode, which featured Socrates, The Founder of Moral Philosophy (~470BC to 399BC) and Marisa Miller, Sports Illustrated model (34D-23-35).

KW: Marisa, you've been studying the life and philosophy of Socrates. What are your impressions?

MM: Firstly, Socrates had, like, heaps of pressure on him.

KW: In what way?

MM: Well, there were all these other philosophers before him called the pre-Socratic philosophers. Y'know?

KW: Sure. Heroclitus, Pythagoras. A Zeno or two.

MM: Yeah. It was, like, they knew Socrates was coming and he was going to be this awesome philosopher and stuff. So when Socrates showed up, everybody must have been 'Okay, Socrates. Show us your philosophising.' That's a lot of pressure to put on a little kid. Especially from somebody like Pythagoras, who was probably not that good at philosophy but was just totally over everybody's head with his geometry and stuff.

KW: Um, yeah. That's actually not quite right. In fact, the pre-Socratic philosophers were only defined as such by modern day historians. At the time, they were all just philosophers. It was only the greatness of Socrates that, in retrospect, resulted in those before him being dubbed 'pre-Socratic'.

MM: Oh. (pause) Then I totally don't get it. Because Socrates isn't all that great. He's actually kinda lame. I thought he must have cracked under all the pressure

"I think it's pretty obvious
who is beautiful and who,
like, is unfortunate."

KW: What makes you think Socrates is lame?

MM: Because he totally didn't know anything. All he ever did was ask questions. "What is friendship?" "What is courage?" Stupid stuff like that.

KW: But that was precisely what was so great about Socrates. He questioned everything. He introduced into philosophy the notion that everything must be open to question.

MM: Yeah. But duh. I could have done that and been hailed as the founder of modern philosophy.

KW: If only he hadn't beaten you to it by two and a half thousand years.

MM: But you don't have to, like, come up with anything yourself. Just keep asking questions and make everyone else do all the hard thinking stuff.

KW: Isn't there a certain intellectual challenge to knowing which questions to ask?

MM: I dunno. "What is beauty?" That was one of his big ones. I think it's pretty obvious who is beautiful and who, like, is unfortunate.

KW: He was working in an era before supermodels.

MM: He must have been. But I still think he'd have, like, totally driven me mental with all the questions.

KW: Very likely, yes.

MM: That's probably why they killed him in the end. Every time somebody went to him to get some wisdom, he'd just come back with "What is wisdom?" or something equally dumb. "What is dumb?" "What is equality?" "What is driving someone completely bonkers to the point they have to sentence you to death?" He was like some out-of-control Ancient Greek Jeopardy contestant.

KW: He was actually executed for allegedly corrupting the minds of the young.

MM: "What is corruption?" "What is youth?" "What are minds?"

KW: Okay.

MM: "What is okay?" This is so easy.

KW: I think we get your point, Marisa.

MM: "What is the point?" "What is Marisa?"

KW: Marisa Miller. Thank you for the empty parroting.

MM: "What is empty parroting?"

KW: Precisely.

MM: No, seriously. What is it? Is it a toucan of some kind?