Brillyant said "Hollywood is responsible for some huge chunk of the sum total of all relationship problems."
To my way of thinking, that seems to pretty clearly be asserting a causal relation.
Hollywood's role here is promoting and popularizing a set of existing relationship tropes, not necessarily coming up with those tropes in the first place, and it isn't the sole champion of these tropes. If an unspoken or explicit agreement took over the majority of Hollywood studios, script writers, and so forth, then we could get a healthier, more realistic set of relationship tropes promoted and popularized, competing with the unhealthy relationship tropes.
What would happen? People's expectations would be more in line with reality, since the media they consume that shapes their expectations is more in line with reality. They would be more inclined to communicate with each other because they are inundated with examples of people communicating with each other freely to resolve isues. Average relationship health would increase.
The unhealthy tropes would still exist. They're popular now for some reason, and that reason probably wouldn't simply disappear, plus they've got a lot of inertia, in terms of both existing media and existing mindshare. And if the magical collusion for healthy relationship tropes were merely between Hollywood organizations, then advertising agencies and novellists and songwriters and other media producers would still be able to promote the unhealthy tropes. But removing a major source of reinforcement of the problematic ideas and replacing them with a source of reinforcement of less problematic ideas would result in fewer problems overall.
Again, this is expounding on Brillyant's point, not offering evidence. I want you to have a clear idea of one of the better forms of that position, but I don't have the data myself. It should be relatively easy to find evidence for similar issues, specifically eating disorders, but also violence and violence-accepting attitudes toward women.
Thank you. And yes, I agree with this, with the understanding that we're not saying anything here about the plausibility of that magical collusion.
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.