The climax to The Dark Knight seemed nonsensical to me. Can anyone, explain the following things?

1) The people on the civilian boat were given the choice of either having a boat of convicted felons blow up, or having a boat of convicted felons blow up AND the boat they're on whose passengers include families with young children. Wouldn't the logical and moral choice for the civilian boat be to blow up the prisoner's ship?

2) If given what the Joker tells them, blowing up the other boat was the ethical thing to do, does the fact that they didn't blow up the other boat mean that they did not believe what the Joker told them about blowing up the boats himself if no one did anything? If that's the case, why does Batman and the Joker seem to think that the outcome has any bearing on their debate about whether the people on the boat are good or evil?

3) If the people on the boats did not believe the Joker, or if they did but still didn't intend to blow up the other boat before the deadline, then why didn't they just jump off the boat?

4) Even if the whole setup had made sense, and the choices of the people on the ferry could reflect badly on their morality, what would it prove if the boat of criminals had made the immoral choice? A group of criminals making an immoral choice hardly reveals something new about humanity.

http://www.nolanfans.com/forums/viewtop ... es#p208408

some of posts there should answer some if not all of your complains

Mr. Caine wrote:http://www.nolanfans.com/forums/viewtop ... es#p208408

some of posts there should answer some if not all of your complains

That thread doesn't address any of the questions. Also, they all need to be addressed for the scene to make sense.

That thread addresses how the social context influenced people's decisions. They take for granted that not blowing up the other boat was the morally correct choice. My questions would apply even if there was only one person on each boat.

There's nothing to suggest that the passengers on either boat doubted Joker's threat.

The point is that the most logical decision is not always the easiest decision to make emotionally.

1) The people on the civilian boat were given the choice of either having a boat of convicted felons blow up, or having a boat of convicted felons blow up AND the boat they're on whose passengers include families with young children. Wouldn't the logical and moral choice for the civilian boat be to blow up the prisoner's ship?

That's a stupid question and no, there is no other moral choice here other than not blowing the other boat.

2) If given what the Joker tells them, blowing up the other boat was the ethical thing to do, does the fact that they didn't blow up the other boat mean that they did not believe what the Joker told them about blowing up the boats himself if no one did anything? If that's the case, why does Batman and the Joker seem to think that the outcome has any bearing on their debate about whether the people on the boat are good or evil?

What you say here makes no sense... I don't even think you get the point of including this dilemma at all... you keep questioning it with irrelevant 'Ifs" that don't have a place here at all, not to mention how stupid they are. Isn't the point of this scene for them to prove the joker wrong? So why would they listen to him about "blowing the other ship being the ethical thing to do" when in the real world it isn't? On the last question, they do think it has bearing on their debate because Joker thought that at first, right before he decided to set the ferry thing up. Once the joker thought it would prove his theory it was up to the people and batman to prove him wrong and sabotage the complete execution of Joker's plan. That said, 'proving anything' is only a side-part of joker's activities (although that side-part builds up to his biggest trick and goal) and those activities are to just break order and cause chaos. He was gonna blow up both ferries even if they didn't blow each other up which means he either wouldn't accept he's wrong or he just believes he's right and wouldn't think that this test proves everything anyway (especially since he did still have Harvey up his sleeve).

3) If the people on the boats did not believe the Joker, or if they did but still didn't intend to blow up the other boat before the deadline, then why didn't they just jump off the boat?

Some were probably not alone and if you're with a family over there it takes one to not know how to swim then you're gonna have to stay there. Some just didn't know how to swim. Some probably feared that if someone jumps then that might set off the bombs. The desired feeling of the scene and what was going on was to be like what a person would be like if he was sitting on a mine. He can't move. He can't do anything. Most importantly the sceen just wouldn't work so some 'logical reactions' that we can imagine for people in a similar situation have to be discarded because you can't put everything in there and expect it to work with all the desired effects.

4) Even if the whole setup had made sense, and the choices of the people on the ferry could reflect badly on their morality, what would it prove if the boat of criminals had made the immoral choice? A group of criminals making an immoral choice hardly reveals something new about humanity.

The whole point of the ferry scene AND the prisoner's dilemma is that both elements (prisoners and citizens in ferry scene or both prisoners in prisoner's dilemma) are equals in this. In the result, as it was in the movie, the prisoners were presented as less cowardly in fact, probably even more moral within the dilemma. As social status though and human beings all of em were supposed to be equal so one failing would fail all, regardless of who it was. You have read the prisoner's dilemma thing right?

The situation with the two ferries is a classic example from game theory, also known as the prisoner's dilemma. In the prisoner's dilemma, two suspects are arrested by the police. The police visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution-that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperatively. The same goes for the people on the two ferries. If one group decides to blow up the other, they go free (cooperation, so to speak, with the Joker) and vice versa. Otherwise, they'll run the risk of being blown up themselves. If neither group does anything, they'll both be blown up. The fact that neither group decides to blow up the other would be, according to game theory an irrational decision given the stated terms. The only reason it ends well is that the Joker doesn't succeed in detonating the device to blow up both ferries.

A lot of dilemmas or paradoxes call out for mathematical solution to the problem so I'm not sure what people have done to try and solve it but with the use of analogies and examples like this one one suggests that the solution is that in this case the best option would be no one to do anything because that's the only way one could lead to the optimal result.

Similarly in the ferry scene if the prisoners blew up the citizen boat it wouldn't matter that the PRISONERS did it, it would matter that someone did it AT ALL because that someone compromises the whole thing regardless if he's a prisoner or not. All one should know about this scene is that both ferries were full of citizens or that both of them were full of prisoners. One being with prisoners could serve only as a distraction to the solution of the dilemma and eventually the understanding of the scene.

To the above poster, I would not completely rule out the fact that one boat has prisoners on it as an irrelevant factor.

It gave the non-prisoner ferry a greater incentive to CONSIDER blowing up the other boat. They did at least vote on it, even if they didn't detonate it.

If the other boat were full of innocent people instead of prisoners, there would be no, or at least much less of a, climax.

1. There is more believability that criminals have less of a moral framework, and would therefore be likely to resort to detonation earlier.

2. There was an introduced dialogue from the innocent people's ferry on whether being a criminal, in this situation, makes you less worthy to live in a train dilemma situation.

i didn't say it was irrelevant in every way, i said it's irrelevant to the inner workings of the dilemma because on the surface it's there to distract and and confuse and the way it's used it's also there as a critique towards the citizens

however it doesn't in any way debalance the mechanism of the dilemma since in it you're supposed to forget about social status

prince0gotham wrote:

1) The people on the civilian boat were given the choice of either having a boat of convicted felons blow up, or having a boat of convicted felons blow up AND the boat they're on whose passengers include families with young children. Wouldn't the logical and moral choice for the civilian boat be to blow up the prisoner's ship?

That's a stupid question and no, there is no other moral choice here other than not blowing the other boat.

Explain your answer. One plan of action would result in a boat blowing up that otherwise wouldn't. Why would the choice to let that boat blow up be moral? Pretending the question is too stupid to answer is just conceding defeat.

2) If given what the Joker tells them, blowing up the other boat was the ethical thing to do, does the fact that they didn't blow up the other boat mean that they did not believe what the Joker told them about blowing up the boats himself if no one did anything? If that's the case, why does Batman and the Joker seem to think that the outcome has any bearing on their debate about whether the people on the boat are good or evil?

What you say here makes no sense... I don't even think you get the point of including this dilemma at all... you keep questioning it with irrelevant 'Ifs" that don't have a place here at all, not to mention how stupid they are. Isn't the point of this scene for them to prove the joker wrong? So why would they listen to him about "blowing the other ship being the ethical thing to do" when in the real world it isn't? On the last question, they do think it has bearing on their debate because Joker thought that at first, right before he decided to set the ferry thing up. Once the joker thought it would prove his theory it was up to the people and batman to prove him wrong and sabotage the complete execution of Joker's plan. That said, 'proving anything' is only a side-part of joker's activities (although that side-part builds up to his biggest trick and goal) and those activities are to just break order and cause chaos. He was gonna blow up both ferries even if they didn't blow each other up which means he either wouldn't accept he's wrong or he just believes he's right and wouldn't think that this test proves everything anyway (especially since he did still have Harvey up his sleeve).

I think I should have put a comma after the first word, "If". Maybe that alone is why you completely missed my meaning. The "ifs" are not inappropriate. I'm making clear what assumptions I'm starting out from. This is how it should read.
2) If, given what the Joker tells them, blowing up the other boat was the ethical thing to do, does the fact that they didn't blow up the other boat mean that they did not believe what the Joker told them about blowing up the boats himself if no one did anything? If that's the case, why does Batman and the Joker seem to think that the outcome has any bearing on their debate about whether the people on the boat are good or evil?

3) If the people on the boats did not believe the Joker, or if they did but still didn't intend to blow up the other boat before the deadline, then why didn't they just jump off the boat?

Some were probably not alone and if you're with a family over there it takes one to not know how to swim then you're gonna have to stay there. Some just didn't know how to swim. Some probably feared that if someone jumps then that might set off the bombs. The desired feeling of the scene and what was going on was to be like what a person would be like if he was sitting on a mine. He can't move. He can't do anything. Most importantly the sceen just wouldn't work so some 'logical reactions' that we can imagine for people in a similar situation have to be discarded because you can't put everything in there and expect it to work with all the desired effects.

4) Even if the whole setup had made sense, and the choices of the people on the ferry could reflect badly on their morality, what would it prove if the boat of criminals had made the immoral choice? A group of criminals making an immoral choice hardly reveals something new about humanity.

The whole point of the ferry scene AND the prisoner's dilemma is that both elements (prisoners and citizens in ferry scene or both prisoners in prisoner's dilemma) are equals in this. In the result, as it was in the movie, the prisoners were presented as less cowardly in fact, probably even more moral within the dilemma. As social status though and human beings all of em were supposed to be equal so one failing would fail all, regardless of who it was. You have read the prisoner's dilemma thing right?

The situation with the two ferries is a classic example from game theory, also known as the prisoner's dilemma. In the prisoner's dilemma, two suspects are arrested by the police. The police visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution-that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperatively. The same goes for the people on the two ferries. If one group decides to blow up the other, they go free (cooperation, so to speak, with the Joker) and vice versa. Otherwise, they'll run the risk of being blown up themselves. If neither group does anything, they'll both be blown up. The fact that neither group decides to blow up the other would be, according to game theory an irrational decision given the stated terms. The only reason it ends well is that the Joker doesn't succeed in detonating the device to blow up both ferries.

A lot of dilemmas or paradoxes call out for mathematical solution to the problem so I'm not sure what people have done to try and solve it but with the use of analogies and examples like this one one suggests that the solution is that in this case the best option would be no one to do anything because that's the only way one could lead to the optimal result.

Similarly in the ferry scene if the prisoners blew up the citizen boat it wouldn't matter that the PRISONERS did it, it would matter that someone did it AT ALL because that someone compromises the whole thing regardless if he's a prisoner or not. All one should know about this scene is that both ferries were full of citizens or that both of them were full of prisoners. One being with prisoners could serve only as a distraction to the solution of the dilemma and eventually the understanding of the scene.

The ferry scene is not analogous to the prisoner's dilemma, and I always wondered if that was what Nolan was trying for but got mixed up. The central feature of the prisoner's dilemma is that the outcome for both prisoners is better if they both cooperate than if they both decide not to cooperate. There is nothing in the ferry scene that is like that. For it to be a prisoner's dillemma the Joker would have had to add something like, "if both boats press their button, then both boats blow up, but if no one presses a button, I will only kill half of the people on each boat". Whoever you are quoting didn't understand the prisoner's dilemma. Don't be fooled by people just because they throw around terms like "Pareto-suboptimal solution". Strangely, given that he thinks the ferry scene is a prisoner's dilemma, the person who you quoted agrees with my first point, that the people on the boats did not make the optimal choice, and were only lucky that both boats didn't blow up. When you say "the best option would be no one to do anything because that's the only way one could lead to the optimal result" you are wrong because the options have to be weighed based on what the deciders know, and as far as they knew, not doing anything would get both boats blown up. Unless they did not believe both boats would blow up at the end, which, as I tried to point out in my original second point, means that the Joker's experiment is invalid, because of course the people aren't going to blow up one of the boats if they think there is an option to have no boats blow up.

5) Batman says that the people on the boats' decision not to blow up the other boat shows that they were not as "ugly" as the Joker. Even if not blowing up the other people's boat was the right thing to do, that isn't what they decided. Only one person, Zeus, on the prisoner's boat decided not to blow up the civilian boat, and he then took the choice away from everyone else. The guard who gave Zeus the detonator clearly meant for Zeus to blow up the civilian boat. Many, if not all, of the other prisoners were yelling that they wanted to blow up the other boat. On the civilian boat they actually took a vote which came out 396 to 140 in favor of blowing up the prisoners' boat. Though no one had the nerve to personally take responsibility for pushing the button, that is just cowardice to act on their beliefs, which is not certainly not what Batman was crediting them for. So basically the Joker won.

I think I should have put a comma after the first word, "If". Maybe that alone is why you completely missed my meaning. The "ifs" are not inappropriate. I'm making clear what assumptions I'm starting out from. This is how it should read.

i got you the first time and i answered

The ferry scene is not analogous to the prisoner's dilemma

ofc they're not analogous... the idea wasn't for it to be analogous, it was to get it to work in this context without everything having to be analogous


the "person" who I quoted was IMDB trivia

At the end of the quote it says the only reason it ends well is that the Joker doesn't succeed in detonating the device to blow up both ferries. The 'hole' in the logic here that's confusing you is the difference between the sequence in the movie and the dilemma, ofc the difference being that in the movie's case Joker isn't the LAW, neither is Batman. They are not judged, they're participating in something like one of Joker's tryouts. Win the tryout and you'll let the Joker win and become a mercenary in a world you'd automatically (by winning the tryout) agree to be his own. So you don't really need for it to function identically as the PD would. The movie points to enough of critique against the concept of 'law' as it is and Batman and Joker are above it one way or the other anyway so you can't really expect the sequence's logic to be analogous. Ofc both ferries are warned that they will inevitably be blown up if they don't push the button, unlike the prisoners (in the PD) which can assume that chances are that they'll just spend 6 months time and gtfo. There's no Batman in that equasion though, therefore no room for 'hope' as a factor. There is such in TDK so you can pretty much credit whatever happened with the detonators to Batman's image and pressence as an ideal.

Ofc you mension shame and cowardice as factors and yes, most votes go for detonating the opposite ship, however the movie does that only to 'not be naive' because that's just what the realistic outcome of a 'poll' like that would look like and -> exactly because it's an impersonal anonymous vote and because someone else would be the one who'd do the dirty job. Ofc that in those circumstances people would do that. People are generally like that. The opposite would be as I said, too naive and too perfect and would substract from the suspence. It's part of the brilliance of the movie and the character how terriffyingly right the Joker can be when "he puts certain things in a certain way" and in the end that's still all he does and statistics isn't what matter at the end. What matters is that despite all odds and statistics there was someone on each ship that would stand up and refuse to blow up the other ship, just like Batman's against all odds when he stands up and refuses to, for example, kill the joker when he had the chance. Besides, he said ''they're ready to believe in good'' (aren't they?) and ''not everyone's as ugly as you'' (are they?... and is he saying that they're angels?) which I don't see to be hard to believe at all, so I don't see why any of that would tell you that Joker won.

It's also important to mention that the Joker as a character is built upon the understandings of one's gambler mentality, which ultimately explains how almost every single plan of his (even though he says he's not someone with a plan) is executed with nearly optimal accuracy. In truth every act of his, including each of his plans, are acts of gambling (hence the 'escalation' like in poker - larger bids and eventually larger bets). He's not even sure how his cards will play out but with almost every action of his he bets his whole life on that hand (the gun to the head, the 'hit me' thing). The supernatural aspect of that (or what one would call his talent) is his incredible sense of timing AND spontaneity in the same time. He knows not only the environments and the surroundings but the opponents perfectly and therefore - he knows how to play and pressure them perfectly, all of which eventually coincides (as I said, almost supernaturally) into success for him.

Following that logic the ferry thing is just a part of the game. Assuming that the concept of the game has already introduced the sense of 'chance' as a governing factor (that has so far been on his side) it's only natural to accept the refusal to blow up the opposite ship as the citisens'/prisoners' way of going "all in" (since folding(blowing) would be letting Joker win). It just becomes inevitable for chance to be the thing that shakes the original dilemma and you think that it's also what compromises the intactness of its logic but I already explained why they didn't let the Joker win.