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.
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.
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.