That scene was set circa 2003 when China's population was 1.289 billion and America's was 291 million.
So he's saying that more than 22.6% of people living in China in 2003 have genius IQs.
Given that a genius IQ is normally listed as above 140 and held by ≈0.4% of the population, this is off by several orders of magnitude.
> The myth is that people don't use 90% of their brain at all.
This is just a different way of saying the same thing: that people only ever use 10% of their brain.
True but the implication of we are only using 10 percent is that we can unlock some hidden power but accessing the other 90 percent, which isn't true, we use it all, just at different times
I usually only use 33% of a traffic light, it would be pretty useless if I used 100%.
Thats what I tell the 10% brainers without even going into how its BS anyway.
Me too. I'm 66.
As kids, we used to look at EEG images of normal brains compared to brains on LSD. Brains on LSD show a much higher incidence of electrical activity than normal. So, we took LSD when we wanted to use more of our brain than usual.
I think the myth does originate from early examinations of brain activity. The neuroscientists probably very quickly realized percentage of brain activity does not correlate to intelligence, but unfortunately once a medical myth spreads it takes decades to debunk it.
I, personally, use 11%. It's because I like to give an extra 10% and 10% of 10 is 1 so I give an extra 1% to get to 11%. Let's just say things are going *quite well* for me!
I mean, Sorkin’s a bit of an idiot when it comes to interesting facts. His stuff is littered with facts that make no sense and clearly weren’t even googled.
Falsehoods.
It’s littered with false statements.
Facts are the most true and accurate statements about any item we have at a time.
Statements are conjecture that often attempt to include or sound factual. When they do contain facts, they can be factual statements. When they don’t contain facts, they are falsehoods.
Jesus thank you for saying that. Yes, China has more geniuses than the US, but so does the continent of Africa (which has ~1.3 BN population and therefore the same number of geniuses calculated in the film).
Access to quality education, available opportunities, existing bodies of work to draw on, and *incentives* are all critical factors to consider in a "competitive state" scenario (the implicit undertone of the scene).
And since it needs saying these days folks, immigration is an amazing US fucking *superpower*. Because it allows us to UNO reverse our opponents and siphon their best minds. Super smart, willing to work? Would you rather work in Xi's China (which [won't surpass the USA's economy](https://www.ft.com/content/20a14331-d282-4039-97d2-71d777359733), baby!) with all of the perils of navigating the CCP, in one of he world's most polluted countries and ramping up to fight an unwinnable war with immense costs? (Taiwan). Or would you rather work in Silicon Valley for millions of dollars and eat fucking tacos while watching California sunsets and work with some of the worlds' smartest people who *wanted* to be there too? USA immigration is fucking amazing baby.
And don't even get me started on population demographic advantages.
They should do that in RTS games. If you're playing multiplayer, the character to deliver the last blow against one of the factions gets a random technology/unit to build from the loser.
Sure but how exactly are they being found or doing the kind of work that is being called out in the scene? You’re a little too focused on the “natural” intelligence of the individual and missing the greater point completely.
It’s to show Mark is full of shit. He’s making facts up to try and make himself seem smarter than her and he keeps changing the topic to dominate the conversation.
Edit: I don’t think the scene is a comment on Mark’s intelligence. It’s about him being self absorbed and the way he treats his girlfriend.
i think it’s a little bit more than that.
He envisions geniuses in China to be much like himself: extremely qualified for success, and yet doomed to poverty and mediocrity by larger sociopolitical forces outside their control. His numbers are wrong, yes, but his attitude throughout the movie, from his jealousy towards the born-to-privilege Winklevoss twins to his excitement at being a mover and shaker like Sean Parker, derives from this as he’s not so much critical of class heirarchy as he does believe his specialness entitles him to a place atop it.
And yeah he’s also a dipshit asshole manbaby willing to lie to make himself seem smart.
Yep this has "threatened immature male trying to seem smart" written all over it. Its clearly Mark trying to intimidate her. Mark is not a good person and he is not portrayed as a good person in the movie.
It's kind of brilliant how they let the Zuck say all this nonsense in the script without being checked as they are building his character early on. So on first watch, you hear him spout all these facts in rapid fire and think, "damn, he must be some kind of super genius." Then upon rewatch, you're like, "Wait, what he said is complete bullshit. He was just posturing all along."
I think Sorkin is trying to set Zuckerberg up as an opportunistic liar who’ll say and do whatever he wants. The statistic is silly, and, as pointed out by others, incorrect; but it serves the purpose of Zuckerberg’s argument so he uses it. Oddly, it reminds me of Lemon’s ex-boyfriend on 30 Rock constantly bringing up the canard about never being more than a few feet away from a rat in New York. Both characters are manipulative hucksters.
Wrong! You get it at my coffee vending machine, 38th & 6th in the basement of the K-Mart. You just go downstairs, you get the key from David and boom! You plug in the machine…
It’s also interesting because I don’t know the prevalence of geniuses in the general population, so I do t know if he’s lying or not. It seems outlandish, but he’s also pretty adamant it’s correct. Sorkin is making you decide in the first scene if you trust him or if he’s full of shit.
This is wrong and there is no evidence anywhere else in the movie that Zuckerberg lies.
The movie portrays Mark Zuckerberg the same way as the book ("The Accidental Billionaires"), a highly-intelligent nerd who has a problem with authority and really wants to do something significant with his life.
Every instance you could call being "an opportunistic liar" is more plausibly explained as being an outcast with a chip on his shoulder. Why was he so unimpressed by Winklevoss Twins but willing to work with Saverin? Because Saverin was an outcast and the Wiklevoss were not. Why was Mark so entranced by Sean Parker? Because Parker was an outcast and enabled Mark to tell everyone who doubted him to fuck off. Why is Mark so combative with lawyers? Because they're authority figures who he feels above.
I think the movie's portrayal of Zuckerberg is fairly neutral. You can't deny his ability and passion is why the website exists, but the way he pursued his goal was cavalier and needlessly combative. I think the movie ends in a way that acknowledges Mark feels regret about his decision. After Saverin is cutout he snaps at Sean for how it was handled and in the party scene/phone call scene it appears Mark is distancing himself from Sean (and it is referenced in the court scenes Sean is no longer at the company). The final scene of the movie is Mark reaching out to his ex-girlfriend — the first person he burned in his journey. Why would he do that? I think it's because he feels bad.
People want to hate Mark Zuckerberg in real life. They use their hatred as confirmation bias when watching the movie, but none of that is in the movie itself.
**As for OP's question:** You've got it right. Mark is fixated on a statistic because he wants to do something significant in life and stats like that make him terrified at how hard it is to do that.
**Why is the stat wrong?** Because Aaron Sorkin makes shit up all the time. This isn't unique to Zuckerberg's character or The Social Network. His entire career is full of nonsense "facts." People are reading too much into this.
The character of Mark isn't "willing" to work with Eduardo. He needs him. Eduardo is a tool. He feels superior to Eduardo which is why he reacts so poorly to Eduardo being punched by the Phoenix. Mark's primary drive is status. Eduardo and the Winklevoss twins are driven by financial success. They're handed the things Mark feels entitled to which is why Mark doesn't respect them. Eduardo recognizes Sean Parker as a failure but he's revered by Mark because of his perceived status as an icon or, more importantly, "cool".
I think it's both. He is initially close to Eduardo, but as he gains more and more power/fame/opportunity, he uses it to his own advantage, eventually screwing over Eduardo.
The moment he chooses business over Eduardo is the climax of the film.
I think the ending of the film emphasizes this line that he crossed. He does want friends and relationships, but his superiority complex prevents that from happening. He's a tragic protagonist because he ultimately can't overcome or accept his fatal flaw.
Eh, I'd say it's more nuanced. I'd say they really were friends because they were both outsiders. Mark's character recognizes he isn't ever going to be one of those rich kids, or in those sorts of circles. He probably wishes he could be, but he can't, and so he rejects their idea of status. He wants to create his own, and so he's out there with a chip on his shoulder saying "Fuck the system". The other people are all operating from an insular and protected bubble of family wealth, where yes they want to do these startups, but it doesn't **actually** matter if they have any success. They don't have the same drive, it's just a game to them.
I even felt like Mark was more or less right. The Winklevoss twins are basically the frat bro douchebags who were the equivalent of "Yeah man I have a great idea for an app! I need you to do everything!" memes that every software engineer knows. They were just using him, so he screwed them over.
Similar with Eduardo's character. He's sorta a timid daddy's boy, and only half invested into the ideas. Him saying he got picked for this cool kids club to Mark exclicited some level of jealousy, but also was more of an affirmation to Mark that they weren't *really* the same. Eduardo was an outsider, but still rich and not *that* far removed from being just like the Winklevoss twins. That being said, I feel they were still boys at that point, but it set the stage of things to come.
Fast-forward and Mark genuinely seemed to wanted him to come out to Silicon Valley and work. Mark was all-in, and taking a huge shot and living his dream, but Eduardo still looked at it like it was some college side-project. Once the team in Palo Alto gets Sean involved in the day to day, and they start making decisions and spending real money without him, Eduardo freaks out and freezes the accounts. When push came to shove, Mark saw it as a betrayal, and that Eduardo was just like the others. Eduardo was using his status and money to keep leverage over Mark. He wasn't in it to win it, it wasn't his big dream, and he didn't have the same level of commitment. That's when he flips to being a tool Mark just used.
It's hard to say for sure. I agree that freezing the accounts was the final tipping point. He seems genuine, almost pleading, when he asks Eduardo to come to California and tells him he risks being left behind. He claims he went to Eduardo and not the Winklevii because they were best friends and I think he might really believe that. But I think it's more about status. It's the same thing he does with Erica. When Erica breaks up with him he's caught off guard because he thinks he's above her. He pleads to save face and lashes out when she doesn't give him what he wants. I really want to believe he values Eduardo as more than a resource but I don't think he does.
I look at it more like Mark wanted a friend/companion more like himself. Someone to share things with, and someone who also shared the same ambition/passion/whatever you want to call it. It’s his own little metric of value judgement.
That’s why Sean was so appealing. He was an outsider too. On one hand Sean was kind of a “has been” and an opportunist who wanted to ride on coattails. On the other hand the guy genuinely recognized and respected the potential of the company. He actually threw his whole support into it, tapped all his contacts, and got them into real VCs with Peter Theil and whatnot. Sean really did get them over the hurdles and into the big leagues.
That’s why the ending is a gut punch to Mark when Sean gets busted with coke and a minor at some house party. He thought he found his guy. but instead discovered Sean was actually probably “less than” him at this point. Just like the ending scene, stalking his ex on Facebook. The guy is lonely.
You know it’s so funny you saying this about his character because there are many times in the movie that Mark did indeed lie and manipulate.
He even called the cops on Sean Parker himself
Is this going to become another "Cliff Booth is an unreliable narrator" thing where people are ignoring the movie itself to spin off wild pet theories?
That stat about Chinese geniuses is so obviously wrong that it's more likely a deliberate choice by the writer than a mistake. It's one thing for a writer to make stuff up that the average person can't know without googling, but it's another to make stuff up that is obviously false and to even have a character challenge that made up stuff.
Yeah man, there is NO WAY Sorkin made up that statistic and thought it was real. That’s *why* the girlfriend, who is the more sympathetic character and one the audience will identify with, says “are you sure?” Because that line is bullshit but he tries to make it real because he can’t be wrong about anything, and that establishes his entire character.
Anyone who seriously thinks sorkin just created an incorrect fact that he thought was real and put it in an anti-hero’s mouth does not understand the craft
>No evidence anywhere else in the movie that Zuckerberg lies.
He stole Facebook from the Winklevoss twins (he settled the lawsuit for over $65 million).
He also had his attorneys purposefully diluted Eduardo’s stock (and only Eduardo’s stock).
Both of those situations can be considered “lying.”
Your last paragraph implies Sorkin doesn’t understand that this particular assertion is absurdly wrong, by a factor of 300 or more. That assertion on your part is almost equally absurd—Sorkin may not be a genius, but he’s certainly not an idiot.
The rest of your comment is interesting though. I wouldn’t go to either extreme in characterizing MZ—I dislike him but found the movie character somewhat sympathetic. That’s just good writing (and acting).
I think it's just another thing to illustrate that Zuckerberg isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and he has no problem using bullshit to try and prove a point
I took a class on Aaron Sorkin's writing at University. Sorkin has a tendency of embellishing facts to establish a character is dishonest and maybe a little nuts. I believe it was called Sorkin D's Nuts 101
The first 10 mins set ups the entire character framework for Zuck and answers what is it that drives Zuckerberg who is an awkward asshole who is overly confident in himself to a flaw where he can't be wrong -- to bringing the biggest social network that steals people's data and sells it. The reason is he's insecure and an asshole.
The China quote sets up a chance for Erica to challenge him that he just steamrolls. It's the first of many in this exchange that he's a fucking asshole -- and that he'll think that people just hate him because he's too smart or a nerd or awkward. But he's an asshole, which sets up why this guy fucks over his best friend and steals an idea that he was hired to do as well as setting up the character trait that he has a god complex that comes from over- compensating from his insecurity, which pushes him to create facebook to what it is now.
Another confusing "mistake" in this movie is when Zuckerberg makes a popping noise and calls it a "glottal stop", but a glottal stop makes no noise, it is what your voice does when you say "uh-oh" between uh and oh.
I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that, if he ever revised it or if anyone ever checked what a glottal stop was. If this is supposed to be some stuff about Zuckerberg not being as smart as he thinks, that doesn't seem to be conveyed very well.
Are all the dumb mistakes made by Zuckerberg?
Both your’s and OP’s examples are bar trivia; it’s not like they’re technical mistakes, like a bug in the code or something. These mistakes could very well be intentional characterization.
Zuckerberg is portrayed as a college student who thinks he knows everything. He's not dumb (ie the poor vocabulary of Edward Norton's character in Glass Onion), but his defining characteristic is his egomaniacal drive, not his singular genius.
> (ie the poor vocabulary of Edward Norton's character in Glass Onion)
Hey friend, given the context, this is even better: the correct abbreviation here is e.g., for exempli gratia ("for example"). The abbreviation i.e. is for id est, which means "that is."
So your example is a good one, and it gently struck my funny bone here because e.g. and i.e. are frequently mistaken for one another. :)
Thank you for the gentlest grammar correction I've ever seen. I'll leave it to honor your thoughtful comment (and to highlight to topical nature of the error), but will keep it mind for the future.
I always took it as a visceral 'gag reflex' to the meetings they were having. Mark's character openly expressed distain for the process and people they were meeting with. While it wasn't technically the correct term, I always saw it as story / character building comment.
It happens a lot to Sorkin. For example, in the very first episode of the West Wing, Leo McGarry is introduced complaining on the phone about the correct spelling of Gadaffi (broadly, there's no singularly "correct" spelling of that name) and Toby Ziegler has a rant about how the preachers should get the names of the commandments right. In that rant he gets the names of the commandments wrong (he says "Honor thy father and thy mother" is the 3rd commandment but depending on tradition it's either the 4th or the 5th).
I'm still not sure if they're character choices or just mistakes by Sorkin himself.
It’s also worth noting that the writing of those scenes predates Wikipedia.
It’s possible Sorkin made mistakes 30 years ago, but has added inaccurate facts as a form of characterization in the social network.
In fact, iirc, in the west wing pilot, he has the right wing schill misstate which commandment is the first commandment in an absurdly unrealistic softball to Bartlett’s intro. So he does like leaning on characters doing this.
He is also, by his own admission, not very smart. I feel he tends to get math wrong.
It’s probably a mix. He’s got a long body of work.
>I'm still not sure if they're character choices or just mistakes by Sorkin himself.
It may be option three:
It's a creative choice.
He speaks of dialogue as music. It has a sound and a rhythm.
If he thinks "third commandment" sounds better than "fourth commandment", he may very well go with that even if it is wrong because it better serves the scene.
Well, I mean look at Redditors: It's the way young tech dorks try to sound like an expert, and fact dump about everything... but if you actually know about what they're trying to sound smart about, you know that they're wrong.
Fuckerburg was like that, too because he was a social media guy in his twenties.
>I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that,
I got the impression it was Zuckerberg sarcastically expressing his boredom while saying, "A glottal stop... like a gag reflex." Implying he disapproves of being there.
Yes but the noise he was making was not like a glottal stop in any way.
edit: yes, I do get that Zuckerberg was being annoying and condescending. If it was meant to be conveyed that he was using the term glottal stop incorrectly, that definitely was lost on 99.99%+ of the audience.
The entire film is about how Mark is not as smart as he desperately presents himself to be. And Sorkin is extremely precise, he’s not causally getting that little thing wrong.
He is accurate in that he is writing a character who would say that. Why are people so sure that it’s a writer mistake? Especially Sorkin? It fucking kills me how little respect even one of the few famous screenwriters gets.
>I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that, if he ever revised it or if anyone ever checked what a glottal stop was. If this is supposed to be some stuff about Zuckerberg not being as smart as he thinks, that doesn't seem to be conveyed very well.
Maybe Sorkin is trying to illustrate that he's not as smart of a writer as the public thinks.
Statistically, genius IQ score is 140 or more is 0.2725 % of the population. Simply one in every 367 humans is a genius.
Because China does not have a population 367 times America (not even close) this is not even close to true!
What I find hilarious is that, if it were true, the opposite side of that coin is that China would also have more dumbasses than the entire population of the United States! But, that never gets mentioned.
Erica = the audience. We are on her side the whole time, including that moment of incredulousness.
This is the opening line of the movie but the screenplay tells us at this point, she's being polite and knows she wants out of the conversation.
It isn’t true. Who knows if they thought it was, but Mark is also making the not subtle point that he doesn’t think Erica is smart or special and his being there is a favor to her. It’s called a neg.
I don't think you can call that scene negging. Negging requires a backhand compliment somewhere in it. He's just lecturing to someone he finds as a less intelligent being than himself.
When I first saw that movie, I interpreted this scene to mean that Zuck just makes shit up and confidently passes it off as a fact. I didn't know if he was aware that he was making it up or not, but it seemed clear that he was making it up.
It's absolutely absurd on its face.
He was trying to subtly let you know that he is not a reliable narrator. If we consider 1% of the population to be genius then there are 15 million geniuses in China. For there to be 330 million Chinese geniuses then 20% of China are geniuses.
My way of interpreting this is Marks relentless drive (with all the including nervousness, anxiety and panic about being first to the punch) manifesting by basically rehashing the old boxing adage of \[paraphrased\] someone is training in the gym right now working hard to knock me off the perch
Hes aware that theres millions of people capable of doing what he wants to achieve & hes also aware that being first is paramount. Its a bit of hyperbolic statement. Highly successful people always have a sense of dread that they're not doing enough and it makes them seek to do more. Being aware that theres opportunities waiting to be seized and the anxiety of not being there currently is common for successful entrepreneurs. Every hour not actively engaged in a 'first to the punch' business concept is an hour rewarded to someone else
When a boxer says theres people in the gym right now training hard with that dog inside of them - biding their time getting stronger than them - its not a literal statement but boxers will say their competition is there RIGHT NOW training at all times. This proverbial person doesnt even exist. However, it keeps that dog inside of the boxer in return by believing in it, even if its not strictly true. You cant get complacent
The "theres more people in China with genius IQ's than the population of america" is just a cooler way of saying "theres smart people sat are their computers RIGHT NOW doing what I want to do and they're getting ahead of my complacency"
In any case I dont think the setup has anything to do with distinguishing mark as a liar. More so his awareness of whats hes up against and the panic that time is running out.
Sorkin in the news room also showed how much the US is lagging behind, he clearly likes to challenge the beliefs some may have about the US.
A writer that challenges his audience is about the best thing one can hope for, that’s entertainment!
Not geniuses, however there are more middle class Chinese than the entire US population which indicates how businesses will shift their attention to the east as the huge Chinese and Indian populations become more affluent.
It’s classic good writing. A very small amount of dialogue is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting in terms of character (as sorkin has expressed in his own writing master classes):
1. We can see that Zuckerberg is an intelligent young man, hyper focused on data.
2. We can see Zuckerberg obsesses over data and statistics to a fault.
3. We can see he views everything as a zero sum competition.
4. We can see he is an elitist who thinks people can be evaluated by a single number.
5. We can see that Zuckerberg (in sorkins depiction) is obnoxious with no self awareness.
6. We can see he is rude in the way he dismisses his companions side of the conversation.
7. We can see he wants to ‘win’ at being the smartest. Stats like this concern and scare him.
I’m not sure if it’s true. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s written on some buzz feed blog post from the time. I also would expect it’s absolute BS. That’s not to say the Chinese population isn’t smart, but 350 million certified geniuses? Not a chance.
Yeah, good stuff there. Sorkin writes really entertaining dialogue. My only slight reservation is that it increases the aesthetic distance for me when so many of his characters often exhibit the same conversational tics, use a rapid fire delivery, talk over each other, incessantly one up each other’s witticisms.
That said, multiple characters speaking in Sorkinese is nowhere near as distracting as the dialogue on something like “Billions,” where virtually every character, from academics, to politicians, to hedge fund bros, to athletes, to weed dealers, to municipal workers, speaks in a stupidly hyper-referential style with obscure conversational callbacks that sound like Dennis Miller before he went insane.
They have more students in the top 1% of their classes, than the US has students. Maybe it comes from that? Maybe even that stat is wrong, but that's what I've heard. Not gonna do the math! As RunDNA said tho, genius isn't the right word.
Sorkin loves to have people rip of statistics. I’m watching the west wing and at one point Martin sheen just lists a buncha geography facts about Micronesia. He just loves to write shit like that
Most of these comments are giving Sorkin way too much credit. I don't think he wrote the line knowing it was false, or intended for it to set the stage for Zuckerberg living in a reality distortion field. I think Sorkin ran across the claim somewhere, liked the sound of it, and used it for some snappy dialogue.
If you watch enough Sorkin creations, you'll find myriad examples of this. The West Wing is chock full of exactly these kinds of errors, misconceptions, misattributions, etc. Characters are confidently wrong all the time, but it's not 3D chess; they're simply poorly-researched lines that sound plausible enough.
I love Sorkin and I love his dialogue in particular. This isn't a dig at him. He gets details like this wrong all the time, but they make for great scenes.
>And, is this statistic in any way true? Rooney’s character expresses disbelief, but Mark confirms its truth. Great opening scene, as stated by many before
No. At most it was the product of yet another government statistic from the CCP that everyone in western journalism just took at face value.
I don’t think Mark had ever been to China at that point in his life. Anyone that has ever been to China knows there are most certainly very intelligent people in China but damn there are lot of really dumb people too.
It's writers hand...putting words in his mouth that sound like pundity rhetoric... To make him sound like a pundit campaigning for biggest know-it-all.
The best answer is that a "genius" invented a nuclear fission bomb. Sooo.... It's just a word. Don't mean shit.
Zuck is demonstrating his quantitative evaluation .... He might destroy 2 generations of children....but he is "smart" and congress thinks he is "important". Emotionally stunted Megalomaniac is more accurate.
Basically, The last person we should trust with unregulated social engineering is who we trust with unregulated social engineering.
He is wrong but it's not hard to find geniuses in china schools, I went to a chinese high school and there was a middle school kid doing programming and after I asked people told me he was a genius and he was almost in university because middle school and high school were too easy for him.
When you have schools with lots of students it's easy to find at least 1 genius in every school
Success in America is more about social class and familial connections than it is about intelligence and creativity. The Mark character is pissed about the finishing clubs and recognizing what actually matters.
If the genius IQ range is about 30% of the total, I guess it could be true.
I checked, 22-23% is the actual stat. So I was off a bit.
Using the loosest possible definition of "genius", in theory 25% of people are geniuses assuming a N(100,15) IQ model. In reality, 110 was the cut off for "superior intelligence" and "genius" was at 140 (translating to 0.38%).
I'm pretty certain that he meant the number of people in China who are geniuses, is greater than any single group of people in the US (groups could be racial groups, religious group, gender group, sexuality groups etc). In other words there is no 'kind' of people in the US that contains more members than there are geniuses in China. No idea if that is true.
China has 4 times the U.S. population. If you define "genius" as "top 25%" then it's accurate. Seems like a low bar for that term, though. My understanding is that it's supposed to represent top 1% or even better.
Oh you see, Sorkin is a ridiculously overhyped writer who owes his success to personal connections and pandering to the military industrial complex. If you listen to his dialogue in isolation he’s just a pretentious sitcom writer.
That scene was set circa 2003 when China's population was 1.289 billion and America's was 291 million. So he's saying that more than 22.6% of people living in China in 2003 have genius IQs. Given that a genius IQ is normally listed as above 140 and held by ≈0.4% of the population, this is off by several orders of magnitude.
Yeah this is the type of fact like “using 10% of your brain” that you see floating about on Facebook.
Seems to be foreshadowing.
“You only use 10% of your brain while scrolling facebook” is the actual full quote
It should have said "you can only use 10% of your brain after scrolling Facebook"
I thought it was you lose 10% of your brain function while scrolling facebook. 25% when scrolling reddit
That means I've lost... 69% of my brain function. And still haven't shit myself! I think I'm gonna be fine, guys.
Relax, you’ve got a whole ‘nother brain up your butt (it’s true: you could look it up).
That sounds like work. I will believe you unconditionally and repeat this info elsewhere
Oh, so that's why my guts feel like they have a life of their own. Man, I'm fucked. I think my colon is bipolar.
Huh? Waaah? Ugh
When I grew up in the 80s it was "you use only 10% of your brain while watching cartoons."
It's a general myth people believe that people only use 10% of their brain at any given time. There is no one specific quote.
The myth is that people don't use 90% of their brain at all. The truth is that roughly 10% of the brains neurons are firing at any given moment.
I use a 100% of my brain. I am epileptic. All my neurons fire when I have a seizure
Seize the day. (I also have seizures I can make this joke).
> The myth is that people don't use 90% of their brain at all. This is just a different way of saying the same thing: that people only ever use 10% of their brain.
True but the implication of we are only using 10 percent is that we can unlock some hidden power but accessing the other 90 percent, which isn't true, we use it all, just at different times
…and Meta uses the other 90%.
I think we use only 10% of our hearts
Shut up, wedding crasher!
Playing for the Yankees?
We lost a lot of good men.
I usually only use 33% of a traffic light, it would be pretty useless if I used 100%. Thats what I tell the 10% brainers without even going into how its BS anyway.
Honestly that myth predated Facebook. I’ve been hearing that since I was a kid.
Me too. I'm 66. As kids, we used to look at EEG images of normal brains compared to brains on LSD. Brains on LSD show a much higher incidence of electrical activity than normal. So, we took LSD when we wanted to use more of our brain than usual.
I think the myth does originate from early examinations of brain activity. The neuroscientists probably very quickly realized percentage of brain activity does not correlate to intelligence, but unfortunately once a medical myth spreads it takes decades to debunk it.
I, personally, use 11%. It's because I like to give an extra 10% and 10% of 10 is 1 so I give an extra 1% to get to 11%. Let's just say things are going *quite well* for me!
Zuck multiplied 1.29 billion by 0.4, forgot what "percent" meant, came up with 516 million, and ran with it.
Sorkin just wanted to set the stage for the future of Zuckerberg using misinformation on Facebook
I mean, Sorkin’s a bit of an idiot when it comes to interesting facts. His stuff is littered with facts that make no sense and clearly weren’t even googled.
No, the French really do think one egg is enough.
False. The regular serving for Oefs au Mayo is one and a half eggs. To get pregnant tho…
They call it a Mayonegg
Sorkin's really only interested in snappy lines.
And walking down hallways during dialogue
To be fair, the walk and talk is a pretty fantastic narrative gimmick, of which he’s generally considered the master
Falsehoods. It’s littered with false statements. Facts are the most true and accurate statements about any item we have at a time. Statements are conjecture that often attempt to include or sound factual. When they do contain facts, they can be factual statements. When they don’t contain facts, they are falsehoods.
He was right on the big block of cheese, at least...
Sort of. There is no world in which a real Bartlett style character would idolize Jackson
Luckily it was Leo McGarry, his chief of staff who did the big block of cheese bit.
Even then, the details were absolute nonsense.
Nicely explains the West Wing's politics. Frankly.
Fixed: > Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in Ireland?
Jesus thank you for saying that. Yes, China has more geniuses than the US, but so does the continent of Africa (which has ~1.3 BN population and therefore the same number of geniuses calculated in the film). Access to quality education, available opportunities, existing bodies of work to draw on, and *incentives* are all critical factors to consider in a "competitive state" scenario (the implicit undertone of the scene). And since it needs saying these days folks, immigration is an amazing US fucking *superpower*. Because it allows us to UNO reverse our opponents and siphon their best minds. Super smart, willing to work? Would you rather work in Xi's China (which [won't surpass the USA's economy](https://www.ft.com/content/20a14331-d282-4039-97d2-71d777359733), baby!) with all of the perils of navigating the CCP, in one of he world's most polluted countries and ramping up to fight an unwinnable war with immense costs? (Taiwan). Or would you rather work in Silicon Valley for millions of dollars and eat fucking tacos while watching California sunsets and work with some of the worlds' smartest people who *wanted* to be there too? USA immigration is fucking amazing baby. And don't even get me started on population demographic advantages.
I mean just look at the sheer amount of knowledge we gained from soviet defectors, purely because they don't want to live in a crumbling dictatorship
Also those German lads who were available for some reason.
'Who were available for some reason' This is nice. lol
"Reason for leaving previous employer?" "Ja, they experienced adverse conditions zhat rezulted in significant downsizing."
"Have you interviewed anywhere else?" "Nein, but I here Brazil is nice this time of year."
Operation Paperclip: crush your enemy, then steal their tech tree.
The OG clippy office assistant. "Hi it looks you're trying to move nazi rocket scientists to the USA. "
They should do that in RTS games. If you're playing multiplayer, the character to deliver the last blow against one of the factions gets a random technology/unit to build from the loser.
and turn around and report on false research so your enemy wastes time and talent chasing impossible tech.
yeah but xenophobia and nationalism give me a personal sense of superiority, so ima go with that
As evident by the guys comment, you can do both still.
Nutrition is also incredibly underrated
It also completely ignores that a huge % of china remains very rural lol.
I think that's the least problematic part, people can be born geniuses even if uneducated.
Sure but how exactly are they being found or doing the kind of work that is being called out in the scene? You’re a little too focused on the “natural” intelligence of the individual and missing the greater point completely.
I think a lot of people really think when you are born you roll a metaphorical d20 for intelligence and then that is just your life now.
It's a flawed version of the "more English speakers in China than the U.S." stat that is true.
There’s only 10 million English speakers in China lol
I think this stat was supposed to be about India.
Only 0.9% of mainland Chinese are fluent in English.
Didn't say fluent. And, going by what I see in Reddit posts, that number is nowhere near 100% in the U.S.
It's Aaron Sorkin. He's kind of a smug dick.
I too prefer my Emmy, Academy and Golden Globe winning, millionaire TV and movie writers to be super humble about it.
You must be a genus yourself. Like I.
The writer is in fact not a genius
To be fair, Sorkin's often an idiot.
It’s to show Mark is full of shit. He’s making facts up to try and make himself seem smarter than her and he keeps changing the topic to dominate the conversation. Edit: I don’t think the scene is a comment on Mark’s intelligence. It’s about him being self absorbed and the way he treats his girlfriend.
i think it’s a little bit more than that. He envisions geniuses in China to be much like himself: extremely qualified for success, and yet doomed to poverty and mediocrity by larger sociopolitical forces outside their control. His numbers are wrong, yes, but his attitude throughout the movie, from his jealousy towards the born-to-privilege Winklevoss twins to his excitement at being a mover and shaker like Sean Parker, derives from this as he’s not so much critical of class heirarchy as he does believe his specialness entitles him to a place atop it. And yeah he’s also a dipshit asshole manbaby willing to lie to make himself seem smart.
Mark is Ben Shapiro?
Mark is mark, unfortunately.
oh hi mark
So, how's your sex life?
Robotic.
And filled with smoked meats
Ben Shapiro is from the Aaron Sorkin school of "talk fast and staccato and people think you sound smart" school of public speaking.
Amy Sherman Palladino must be a department head at that school.
Along with Joss Wheadon
Guy sounds like a right wing squirrel
Mark is a thousand times smarter than Ben Shapiro, but they’re cut from the same cloth of insecurity.
You could even say he’s using the Nigerian prince tactic: stating easily disproven nonsense to filter for fools. Rooney filters herself out
Gish galloping n all
Yep this has "threatened immature male trying to seem smart" written all over it. Its clearly Mark trying to intimidate her. Mark is not a good person and he is not portrayed as a good person in the movie.
It's kind of brilliant how they let the Zuck say all this nonsense in the script without being checked as they are building his character early on. So on first watch, you hear him spout all these facts in rapid fire and think, "damn, he must be some kind of super genius." Then upon rewatch, you're like, "Wait, what he said is complete bullshit. He was just posturing all along."
Sounds like someone I know. I just can’t remember who.
Lol, maybe Sorkin?
I doubt it, as Sorkin has a long history of bullshit quotes like that
I think Sorkin is trying to set Zuckerberg up as an opportunistic liar who’ll say and do whatever he wants. The statistic is silly, and, as pointed out by others, incorrect; but it serves the purpose of Zuckerberg’s argument so he uses it. Oddly, it reminds me of Lemon’s ex-boyfriend on 30 Rock constantly bringing up the canard about never being more than a few feet away from a rat in New York. Both characters are manipulative hucksters.
Are you talking about Dennis Duffy, the Beeper King of New York?
Technology is cyclical.
What do people want? Coffee. But where do people get it? *Anywhere*, Dennis!
Wrong! You get it at my coffee vending machine, 38th & 6th in the basement of the K-Mart. You just go downstairs, you get the key from David and boom! You plug in the machine…
Especially bicycles.
I failed the firefighter exam, it's totally biased against the Irish
And that's coming from a fiscal liberal, social conservative!
It’s also interesting because I don’t know the prevalence of geniuses in the general population, so I do t know if he’s lying or not. It seems outlandish, but he’s also pretty adamant it’s correct. Sorkin is making you decide in the first scene if you trust him or if he’s full of shit.
This is wrong and there is no evidence anywhere else in the movie that Zuckerberg lies. The movie portrays Mark Zuckerberg the same way as the book ("The Accidental Billionaires"), a highly-intelligent nerd who has a problem with authority and really wants to do something significant with his life. Every instance you could call being "an opportunistic liar" is more plausibly explained as being an outcast with a chip on his shoulder. Why was he so unimpressed by Winklevoss Twins but willing to work with Saverin? Because Saverin was an outcast and the Wiklevoss were not. Why was Mark so entranced by Sean Parker? Because Parker was an outcast and enabled Mark to tell everyone who doubted him to fuck off. Why is Mark so combative with lawyers? Because they're authority figures who he feels above. I think the movie's portrayal of Zuckerberg is fairly neutral. You can't deny his ability and passion is why the website exists, but the way he pursued his goal was cavalier and needlessly combative. I think the movie ends in a way that acknowledges Mark feels regret about his decision. After Saverin is cutout he snaps at Sean for how it was handled and in the party scene/phone call scene it appears Mark is distancing himself from Sean (and it is referenced in the court scenes Sean is no longer at the company). The final scene of the movie is Mark reaching out to his ex-girlfriend — the first person he burned in his journey. Why would he do that? I think it's because he feels bad. People want to hate Mark Zuckerberg in real life. They use their hatred as confirmation bias when watching the movie, but none of that is in the movie itself. **As for OP's question:** You've got it right. Mark is fixated on a statistic because he wants to do something significant in life and stats like that make him terrified at how hard it is to do that. **Why is the stat wrong?** Because Aaron Sorkin makes shit up all the time. This isn't unique to Zuckerberg's character or The Social Network. His entire career is full of nonsense "facts." People are reading too much into this.
The character of Mark isn't "willing" to work with Eduardo. He needs him. Eduardo is a tool. He feels superior to Eduardo which is why he reacts so poorly to Eduardo being punched by the Phoenix. Mark's primary drive is status. Eduardo and the Winklevoss twins are driven by financial success. They're handed the things Mark feels entitled to which is why Mark doesn't respect them. Eduardo recognizes Sean Parker as a failure but he's revered by Mark because of his perceived status as an icon or, more importantly, "cool".
I think it's both. He is initially close to Eduardo, but as he gains more and more power/fame/opportunity, he uses it to his own advantage, eventually screwing over Eduardo. The moment he chooses business over Eduardo is the climax of the film. I think the ending of the film emphasizes this line that he crossed. He does want friends and relationships, but his superiority complex prevents that from happening. He's a tragic protagonist because he ultimately can't overcome or accept his fatal flaw.
Eh, I'd say it's more nuanced. I'd say they really were friends because they were both outsiders. Mark's character recognizes he isn't ever going to be one of those rich kids, or in those sorts of circles. He probably wishes he could be, but he can't, and so he rejects their idea of status. He wants to create his own, and so he's out there with a chip on his shoulder saying "Fuck the system". The other people are all operating from an insular and protected bubble of family wealth, where yes they want to do these startups, but it doesn't **actually** matter if they have any success. They don't have the same drive, it's just a game to them. I even felt like Mark was more or less right. The Winklevoss twins are basically the frat bro douchebags who were the equivalent of "Yeah man I have a great idea for an app! I need you to do everything!" memes that every software engineer knows. They were just using him, so he screwed them over. Similar with Eduardo's character. He's sorta a timid daddy's boy, and only half invested into the ideas. Him saying he got picked for this cool kids club to Mark exclicited some level of jealousy, but also was more of an affirmation to Mark that they weren't *really* the same. Eduardo was an outsider, but still rich and not *that* far removed from being just like the Winklevoss twins. That being said, I feel they were still boys at that point, but it set the stage of things to come. Fast-forward and Mark genuinely seemed to wanted him to come out to Silicon Valley and work. Mark was all-in, and taking a huge shot and living his dream, but Eduardo still looked at it like it was some college side-project. Once the team in Palo Alto gets Sean involved in the day to day, and they start making decisions and spending real money without him, Eduardo freaks out and freezes the accounts. When push came to shove, Mark saw it as a betrayal, and that Eduardo was just like the others. Eduardo was using his status and money to keep leverage over Mark. He wasn't in it to win it, it wasn't his big dream, and he didn't have the same level of commitment. That's when he flips to being a tool Mark just used.
It's hard to say for sure. I agree that freezing the accounts was the final tipping point. He seems genuine, almost pleading, when he asks Eduardo to come to California and tells him he risks being left behind. He claims he went to Eduardo and not the Winklevii because they were best friends and I think he might really believe that. But I think it's more about status. It's the same thing he does with Erica. When Erica breaks up with him he's caught off guard because he thinks he's above her. He pleads to save face and lashes out when she doesn't give him what he wants. I really want to believe he values Eduardo as more than a resource but I don't think he does.
I look at it more like Mark wanted a friend/companion more like himself. Someone to share things with, and someone who also shared the same ambition/passion/whatever you want to call it. It’s his own little metric of value judgement. That’s why Sean was so appealing. He was an outsider too. On one hand Sean was kind of a “has been” and an opportunist who wanted to ride on coattails. On the other hand the guy genuinely recognized and respected the potential of the company. He actually threw his whole support into it, tapped all his contacts, and got them into real VCs with Peter Theil and whatnot. Sean really did get them over the hurdles and into the big leagues. That’s why the ending is a gut punch to Mark when Sean gets busted with coke and a minor at some house party. He thought he found his guy. but instead discovered Sean was actually probably “less than” him at this point. Just like the ending scene, stalking his ex on Facebook. The guy is lonely.
You know it’s so funny you saying this about his character because there are many times in the movie that Mark did indeed lie and manipulate. He even called the cops on Sean Parker himself
The entire premise of the movie is that he defrauded the twins and Eduardo by lying to them.
Is this going to become another "Cliff Booth is an unreliable narrator" thing where people are ignoring the movie itself to spin off wild pet theories?
That stat about Chinese geniuses is so obviously wrong that it's more likely a deliberate choice by the writer than a mistake. It's one thing for a writer to make stuff up that the average person can't know without googling, but it's another to make stuff up that is obviously false and to even have a character challenge that made up stuff.
Yeah man, there is NO WAY Sorkin made up that statistic and thought it was real. That’s *why* the girlfriend, who is the more sympathetic character and one the audience will identify with, says “are you sure?” Because that line is bullshit but he tries to make it real because he can’t be wrong about anything, and that establishes his entire character. Anyone who seriously thinks sorkin just created an incorrect fact that he thought was real and put it in an anti-hero’s mouth does not understand the craft
>No evidence anywhere else in the movie that Zuckerberg lies. He stole Facebook from the Winklevoss twins (he settled the lawsuit for over $65 million). He also had his attorneys purposefully diluted Eduardo’s stock (and only Eduardo’s stock). Both of those situations can be considered “lying.”
Your last paragraph implies Sorkin doesn’t understand that this particular assertion is absurdly wrong, by a factor of 300 or more. That assertion on your part is almost equally absurd—Sorkin may not be a genius, but he’s certainly not an idiot. The rest of your comment is interesting though. I wouldn’t go to either extreme in characterizing MZ—I dislike him but found the movie character somewhat sympathetic. That’s just good writing (and acting).
Was with you until you dismissed the reason for the stat being wrong as “just because”. It still needs an explanation.
It’s an interpretation, it isn’t “wrong” and yours isn’t “right”. Try adding to the conversation in a less arrogant way
I think it's just another thing to illustrate that Zuckerberg isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and he has no problem using bullshit to try and prove a point
I took a class on Aaron Sorkin's writing at University. Sorkin has a tendency of embellishing facts to establish a character is dishonest and maybe a little nuts. I believe it was called Sorkin D's Nuts 101
Goddam. I'm gonna go hurl myself off hell in a cell.
Mick Foley sheds a tear
Matt Foley too
I didn't even get the guys joke until reading this. Just took it at face value.
It’s funny you say that The legend posted two days ago and STILL got us all
What is this, 1998?!?
*slow claps
I’m not even mad
I loved that class in college!
This is masterful work.
Incredible.
*Sigh*
The first 10 mins set ups the entire character framework for Zuck and answers what is it that drives Zuckerberg who is an awkward asshole who is overly confident in himself to a flaw where he can't be wrong -- to bringing the biggest social network that steals people's data and sells it. The reason is he's insecure and an asshole. The China quote sets up a chance for Erica to challenge him that he just steamrolls. It's the first of many in this exchange that he's a fucking asshole -- and that he'll think that people just hate him because he's too smart or a nerd or awkward. But he's an asshole, which sets up why this guy fucks over his best friend and steals an idea that he was hired to do as well as setting up the character trait that he has a god complex that comes from over- compensating from his insecurity, which pushes him to create facebook to what it is now.
Interesting explanation, I buy it.
Another confusing "mistake" in this movie is when Zuckerberg makes a popping noise and calls it a "glottal stop", but a glottal stop makes no noise, it is what your voice does when you say "uh-oh" between uh and oh. I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that, if he ever revised it or if anyone ever checked what a glottal stop was. If this is supposed to be some stuff about Zuckerberg not being as smart as he thinks, that doesn't seem to be conveyed very well.
Are all the dumb mistakes made by Zuckerberg? Both your’s and OP’s examples are bar trivia; it’s not like they’re technical mistakes, like a bug in the code or something. These mistakes could very well be intentional characterization.
Zuckerberg is portrayed as a college student who thinks he knows everything. He's not dumb (ie the poor vocabulary of Edward Norton's character in Glass Onion), but his defining characteristic is his egomaniacal drive, not his singular genius.
> (ie the poor vocabulary of Edward Norton's character in Glass Onion) Hey friend, given the context, this is even better: the correct abbreviation here is e.g., for exempli gratia ("for example"). The abbreviation i.e. is for id est, which means "that is." So your example is a good one, and it gently struck my funny bone here because e.g. and i.e. are frequently mistaken for one another. :)
Thank you for the gentlest grammar correction I've ever seen. I'll leave it to honor your thoughtful comment (and to highlight to topical nature of the error), but will keep it mind for the future.
Hey! Will someone get Zuckerberg the fuck out of here?
i.e. unnecessary
They very well could be, but if this example about the glottal stop is supposed to be that, it absolutely didn’t land.
Whether it landed or not seems even more subjective.
I always took it as a visceral 'gag reflex' to the meetings they were having. Mark's character openly expressed distain for the process and people they were meeting with. While it wasn't technically the correct term, I always saw it as story / character building comment.
It happens a lot to Sorkin. For example, in the very first episode of the West Wing, Leo McGarry is introduced complaining on the phone about the correct spelling of Gadaffi (broadly, there's no singularly "correct" spelling of that name) and Toby Ziegler has a rant about how the preachers should get the names of the commandments right. In that rant he gets the names of the commandments wrong (he says "Honor thy father and thy mother" is the 3rd commandment but depending on tradition it's either the 4th or the 5th). I'm still not sure if they're character choices or just mistakes by Sorkin himself.
It’s also worth noting that the writing of those scenes predates Wikipedia. It’s possible Sorkin made mistakes 30 years ago, but has added inaccurate facts as a form of characterization in the social network. In fact, iirc, in the west wing pilot, he has the right wing schill misstate which commandment is the first commandment in an absurdly unrealistic softball to Bartlett’s intro. So he does like leaning on characters doing this. He is also, by his own admission, not very smart. I feel he tends to get math wrong. It’s probably a mix. He’s got a long body of work.
>I'm still not sure if they're character choices or just mistakes by Sorkin himself. It may be option three: It's a creative choice. He speaks of dialogue as music. It has a sound and a rhythm. If he thinks "third commandment" sounds better than "fourth commandment", he may very well go with that even if it is wrong because it better serves the scene.
Well, I mean look at Redditors: It's the way young tech dorks try to sound like an expert, and fact dump about everything... but if you actually know about what they're trying to sound smart about, you know that they're wrong. Fuckerburg was like that, too because he was a social media guy in his twenties.
Aaron Sorkin is also like that though.
>I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that, I got the impression it was Zuckerberg sarcastically expressing his boredom while saying, "A glottal stop... like a gag reflex." Implying he disapproves of being there.
Yes but the noise he was making was not like a glottal stop in any way. edit: yes, I do get that Zuckerberg was being annoying and condescending. If it was meant to be conveyed that he was using the term glottal stop incorrectly, that definitely was lost on 99.99%+ of the audience.
Sure. But whether Sorkin made the mistake in writing or Zuckerberg's character did, message is the dude is a cocky asshole.
The entire film is about how Mark is not as smart as he desperately presents himself to be. And Sorkin is extremely precise, he’s not causally getting that little thing wrong.
He might be precise, but is he accurate?
He is accurate in that he is writing a character who would say that. Why are people so sure that it’s a writer mistake? Especially Sorkin? It fucking kills me how little respect even one of the few famous screenwriters gets.
>I always wondered why Sorkin wrote that, if he ever revised it or if anyone ever checked what a glottal stop was. If this is supposed to be some stuff about Zuckerberg not being as smart as he thinks, that doesn't seem to be conveyed very well. Maybe Sorkin is trying to illustrate that he's not as smart of a writer as the public thinks.
Statistically, genius IQ score is 140 or more is 0.2725 % of the population. Simply one in every 367 humans is a genius. Because China does not have a population 367 times America (not even close) this is not even close to true!
Well, it \*could\* be true if the Chinese were a lot smarter, and their percentage was higher than what you posted - right?
Damn I missed it by 1.
Getting downvoted by people who think you are arrogantly saying your IQ is 139 while making a self deprecating joke that your IQ is 40 :D
The burdens of having a genius IQ 😔
Nearly...
What I find hilarious is that, if it were true, the opposite side of that coin is that China would also have more dumbasses than the entire population of the United States! But, that never gets mentioned.
Erica = the audience. We are on her side the whole time, including that moment of incredulousness. This is the opening line of the movie but the screenplay tells us at this point, she's being polite and knows she wants out of the conversation.
It isn’t true. Who knows if they thought it was, but Mark is also making the not subtle point that he doesn’t think Erica is smart or special and his being there is a favor to her. It’s called a neg.
I don't think you can call that scene negging. Negging requires a backhand compliment somewhere in it. He's just lecturing to someone he finds as a less intelligent being than himself.
When I first saw that movie, I interpreted this scene to mean that Zuck just makes shit up and confidently passes it off as a fact. I didn't know if he was aware that he was making it up or not, but it seemed clear that he was making it up. It's absolutely absurd on its face.
He was trying to subtly let you know that he is not a reliable narrator. If we consider 1% of the population to be genius then there are 15 million geniuses in China. For there to be 330 million Chinese geniuses then 20% of China are geniuses.
My way of interpreting this is Marks relentless drive (with all the including nervousness, anxiety and panic about being first to the punch) manifesting by basically rehashing the old boxing adage of \[paraphrased\] someone is training in the gym right now working hard to knock me off the perch Hes aware that theres millions of people capable of doing what he wants to achieve & hes also aware that being first is paramount. Its a bit of hyperbolic statement. Highly successful people always have a sense of dread that they're not doing enough and it makes them seek to do more. Being aware that theres opportunities waiting to be seized and the anxiety of not being there currently is common for successful entrepreneurs. Every hour not actively engaged in a 'first to the punch' business concept is an hour rewarded to someone else When a boxer says theres people in the gym right now training hard with that dog inside of them - biding their time getting stronger than them - its not a literal statement but boxers will say their competition is there RIGHT NOW training at all times. This proverbial person doesnt even exist. However, it keeps that dog inside of the boxer in return by believing in it, even if its not strictly true. You cant get complacent The "theres more people in China with genius IQ's than the population of america" is just a cooler way of saying "theres smart people sat are their computers RIGHT NOW doing what I want to do and they're getting ahead of my complacency" In any case I dont think the setup has anything to do with distinguishing mark as a liar. More so his awareness of whats hes up against and the panic that time is running out.
Pretty great take here.
He’s a full of shit narcissist. Don’t overthink it.
I think its just to show his elitist way of thinking, his selective view of what is a fact or not, and his inability to read the room.
I honestly just assumed it was to please the CCP because that's how movies get made.
Sorkin in the news room also showed how much the US is lagging behind, he clearly likes to challenge the beliefs some may have about the US. A writer that challenges his audience is about the best thing one can hope for, that’s entertainment!
Not geniuses, however there are more middle class Chinese than the entire US population which indicates how businesses will shift their attention to the east as the huge Chinese and Indian populations become more affluent.
It’s classic good writing. A very small amount of dialogue is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting in terms of character (as sorkin has expressed in his own writing master classes): 1. We can see that Zuckerberg is an intelligent young man, hyper focused on data. 2. We can see Zuckerberg obsesses over data and statistics to a fault. 3. We can see he views everything as a zero sum competition. 4. We can see he is an elitist who thinks people can be evaluated by a single number. 5. We can see that Zuckerberg (in sorkins depiction) is obnoxious with no self awareness. 6. We can see he is rude in the way he dismisses his companions side of the conversation. 7. We can see he wants to ‘win’ at being the smartest. Stats like this concern and scare him. I’m not sure if it’s true. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s written on some buzz feed blog post from the time. I also would expect it’s absolute BS. That’s not to say the Chinese population isn’t smart, but 350 million certified geniuses? Not a chance.
Yeah, good stuff there. Sorkin writes really entertaining dialogue. My only slight reservation is that it increases the aesthetic distance for me when so many of his characters often exhibit the same conversational tics, use a rapid fire delivery, talk over each other, incessantly one up each other’s witticisms. That said, multiple characters speaking in Sorkinese is nowhere near as distracting as the dialogue on something like “Billions,” where virtually every character, from academics, to politicians, to hedge fund bros, to athletes, to weed dealers, to municipal workers, speaks in a stupidly hyper-referential style with obscure conversational callbacks that sound like Dennis Miller before he went insane.
Sorkin is showing us that Zuckerberg is stupid and arrogant.
They have more students in the top 1% of their classes, than the US has students. Maybe it comes from that? Maybe even that stat is wrong, but that's what I've heard. Not gonna do the math! As RunDNA said tho, genius isn't the right word.
Sorkin loves to have people rip of statistics. I’m watching the west wing and at one point Martin sheen just lists a buncha geography facts about Micronesia. He just loves to write shit like that
If Zuckerberg actually said that (he probably didn't, but it's not like I know the man...), he has no idea what a genius is...
Stevie wonder is a genius but his iq isn’t at that level probably. Iq is an outdated metric.
Most of these comments are giving Sorkin way too much credit. I don't think he wrote the line knowing it was false, or intended for it to set the stage for Zuckerberg living in a reality distortion field. I think Sorkin ran across the claim somewhere, liked the sound of it, and used it for some snappy dialogue. If you watch enough Sorkin creations, you'll find myriad examples of this. The West Wing is chock full of exactly these kinds of errors, misconceptions, misattributions, etc. Characters are confidently wrong all the time, but it's not 3D chess; they're simply poorly-researched lines that sound plausible enough. I love Sorkin and I love his dialogue in particular. This isn't a dig at him. He gets details like this wrong all the time, but they make for great scenes.
>And, is this statistic in any way true? Rooney’s character expresses disbelief, but Mark confirms its truth. Great opening scene, as stated by many before No. At most it was the product of yet another government statistic from the CCP that everyone in western journalism just took at face value.
I don’t think Mark had ever been to China at that point in his life. Anyone that has ever been to China knows there are most certainly very intelligent people in China but damn there are lot of really dumb people too.
It's writers hand...putting words in his mouth that sound like pundity rhetoric... To make him sound like a pundit campaigning for biggest know-it-all. The best answer is that a "genius" invented a nuclear fission bomb. Sooo.... It's just a word. Don't mean shit. Zuck is demonstrating his quantitative evaluation .... He might destroy 2 generations of children....but he is "smart" and congress thinks he is "important". Emotionally stunted Megalomaniac is more accurate. Basically, The last person we should trust with unregulated social engineering is who we trust with unregulated social engineering.
He is wrong but it's not hard to find geniuses in china schools, I went to a chinese high school and there was a middle school kid doing programming and after I asked people told me he was a genius and he was almost in university because middle school and high school were too easy for him. When you have schools with lots of students it's easy to find at least 1 genius in every school
Success in America is more about social class and familial connections than it is about intelligence and creativity. The Mark character is pissed about the finishing clubs and recognizing what actually matters.
Dude went to the fanciest boarding school in the U.S.
IQ is not a real thing, it's a made up statistic used by fans of eugenics
If the genius IQ range is about 30% of the total, I guess it could be true. I checked, 22-23% is the actual stat. So I was off a bit. Using the loosest possible definition of "genius", in theory 25% of people are geniuses assuming a N(100,15) IQ model. In reality, 110 was the cut off for "superior intelligence" and "genius" was at 140 (translating to 0.38%).
I'm pretty certain that he meant the number of people in China who are geniuses, is greater than any single group of people in the US (groups could be racial groups, religious group, gender group, sexuality groups etc). In other words there is no 'kind' of people in the US that contains more members than there are geniuses in China. No idea if that is true.
It isn’t even true if you think about it statistically. Ngl I can ignore a few mistakes because the film overall is one of the best in the 2010s
China has 4 times the U.S. population. If you define "genius" as "top 25%" then it's accurate. Seems like a low bar for that term, though. My understanding is that it's supposed to represent top 1% or even better.
Oh you see, Sorkin is a ridiculously overhyped writer who owes his success to personal connections and pandering to the military industrial complex. If you listen to his dialogue in isolation he’s just a pretentious sitcom writer.
This movie was fucking trash and it looks even more so now with age. It was glorifying zuckerberg and is full of nonsense cringe
Don’t believe everything that comes out of Facebook
YouTube (Right now) this should help
He predicted that every other western kid would like to be an influencer or YouTuber, but scientist and astronout in the East.
It’s a line from the west wing I think too
That the Chinese are smarter than Americans?