stripey7 comments on Good movies for rationalists? - Less Wrong

0 Post author: roland 09 November 2013 08:00AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (66)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: stripey7 14 November 2013 04:01:45AM 1 point [-]

One movie that certainly portrays a rationalist favorably is Contact. An almost-perfect humanist movie is UFOria, which weaves the two leads' developing connection with each other and with reality together in a very organic way. Unfortunately, in the last few seconds it seems to wimp out in favor of ontological ambiguity.

Comment author: 4hodmt 25 November 2013 02:31:32PM 4 points [-]

Contact is about as anti-rationalist as a movie can get. The main character was right in that she really did violate the known laws of physics, but her reasoning was completely wrong. The government's public arguments were correct because they correctly valued the prior probability that the known laws of physics are correct. The fact that the main character's conclusion turned out to be correct anyway is then used to promote religious faith. I very much dislike this movie.