Specific movies would probably be too narrow to be useful, although tropes and plot structure probably have more to do with this than genre. Some genres are worse than others, of course.
I've got a variety of issues with the way heroism tends to be constructed in escapist fiction, but I reserve a particular loathing for stories that're built around a message of "you should accept being special", when "special" is defined in terms of a unique role or destiny and realizing its potential doesn't take any onscreen effort on the protagonist's part. Epistemic irrationality is easy to find in stories, but that sort of plot's actively corrosive to instrumental rationality, especially for people that're more than a couple of sigmas out on some relevant real-life metric: the implication is that no matter how much you slack off, you're fine as long as you recognize your Gandalf or Hagrid when he shows up. Worse, you're expected to feel a sort of faint ennui while you're waiting, which neatly explains any natural feelings of boredom or dissatisfaction. Doing your own thing might even constitute a refusal of the call.
There's an especially pernicious version of this where any suffering the protagonist runs into before embarking on their adventure is counted as a noble sacrifice, one that'll be doubly rewarded -- morally, if not temporally -- once the dragon's slain. I'll leave spotting that in recent media as an exercise to the reader.
Hi,
what good movies can you suggest that give ideas or inspirations on how to be more rational?
I just watched [Memento](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_%28film%29) last night and I was very impressed.
(No spoilers in this post)
The main character is a guy who suffers from amnesia, he forgets everything after a couple minutes so he has developed a system to cope with it. He takes pictures and writes notes. E.g. when staying at a hotel he takes a picture of it and put it in his pocket. So later when he doesnt know where he is staying he searches his pockets, finds the picture of the hotel and then he knows.
What I learned
I identified with the character in the movie because in spite of not having amnesia my memory as everyone elses isn't perfect either and I have all the quirks(biases) of a normal human brain. I cant exactly remember what I did last Thursday at 3 PM. Do I actually know why I am doing what Im doing or why I believe what I believe? I may have good rationalizations for both, of course, but that doesnt mean they are the real reasons.
I like to read LW but I havent developed much of a system to actually be more rational. If anyone has, I would be eager to read about it.
Practical Advice
What system could I develop to be more rational? One thing that a lot of management experts(e.g. Peter Drucker) have already pointed out is to write down how we actually spend our time because often how we spend it is not how we think we spend it and we end up spending much more time on unproductive activities than we are aware of. How much time went into random internet browsing last week?
I will start an activity log during work: how much time Im spending on what. This will be a first step.