May 2012 Media Thread

RobertLumley

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. I find that reading the sequences makes me less likely to enjoy some entertainment media that is otherwise quite popular, and finding media recommended by LWers is a good way to mitigate this. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres, which I was apparently too dumb to do.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres, which I was apparently too dumb to do.

Movies and Television Thread

The Dark Knight - the 2008 Batman film - is actually an enthralling film about decision theory. In every scene there is some dynamic that is fruitful to analyse: there's a Greedy Pirates game, a neat variation on Prisoner's Dilemma, a classic trolley problem ("endure") as well as several trolley-like problems, at least two games of Chicken, oodles of interesting precommitment and Schelling-style strength through irrationality moments, and more.

5Alejandro114y

I watched Bridge on the River Kwai for first time yesterday. Aside from being an excellent movie with a gripping final act, I found it exhibited a couple of themes analyzable from a LW prism. A duel of minds near the beginning of the movie between a prisoner and his captor ends with the first one winning (and quite literally getting out of the box!) because he has less to lose by not yielding, a Schelling-like lesson. And the main plotline of the film is a nice exhibition of Lost Purposes.

3RobertLumley14y

I've been rewatching Burn Notice recently. It's about a spy who gets burned (fired/cut-off) and his attempt to find out who did it and get his life back. It's always been one of my favorite shows, but watching it after reading the sequences gives me a bit of a new perspective on it. It's not necessarily rationalist, per se, but it touches on some great ethical issues, and the protagonist is often solving seemingly impossible problems by very creative thinking. The characters in it are some of the best developed ones I've seen.