Note 1: I'm not very serious about the second part of the title, I just thought it sounds more catchy. I'm a long time lurker writing here for the first time, and it's not my intention to alienate anyone. Also, hi, nice to meet you. Please leave a comment to achieve a result of making me happy about you having left a comment. But let's get to the point.

I think you might be familiar with TED Talks. Recall the last time you watched one, and how you felt while doing it.

[BZRT BZRT sound of imagination working]

In my case, I often got the feeling like if I was learning something valuable while watching most TED Talks. The speakers are (mostly) obviously passionate and intelligent people, speaking about important matters they care about a lot. (Granted, I probably haven't watched more than a dozen TED Talks in all my life, so my sample is quite small, but I think it isn't very unrepresentative.)

But at some point, I started asking myself afterwards:

So, what have I actually learned?

Which translates in my internal dialect to:

For each major point, give a one-sentence summary and at least one example of how I could apply it.

(Note 2: don't treat this "one sentence summary" thing too strictly - of course it's only a reflex/shorthand that is useful in many situations, but not all. I like it because it's simple enough that it's installable as a subconscious trigger-action.)

And I could not state afterwards anything actually useful that I have learned from those "fascinating" videos (with at most one or two small exceptions).

This is exactly what I mean by "Education as Entertainment".

It's getting the enjoyable *feeling* of learning without any real progress.

[DUM DUM DUM sound of increasing dramatism]

And now, what if you use this concept to look at rationality materials?

For me, reading the core Eliezer's braindump (basically the content of "From AI to Zombies"), as well as braindumps (in the form of blogs) of several other people from the LW community, had definite learning value.

I take notes when I read those, and I have an accountability system in place that enables me to make sure I follow up on all the advice I give to myself, test the new ideas, and improve/drop/replace/implement as needed.

However, when I read (a significant part of) the content produced by the "modern" community-powered-LessWrong, I classify its actual learning value at around the same level as TED Talks.

Or YouTube videos with cats, only those don't give me the *impression* that I'm learning something.

THE END

Please let me know what you think.

Final Note: Please take my remarks with a grain of salt. What I write is meant to inspire thoughts in you, not to represent my best factual knowledge about the LW community.

There isn't much in the way of explicitly atheist cinema* -- that is, movies that contain the explicit or implicit message that religion is nothing but superstition, and where this point itself is a central part of the story. The only popular films that jump to mind here are The Invention of Lying, and to a lesser extent The Man from Earth (overall a phenomenal movie, but far less well known). Sure, there are lots of popular movies that make fun of organized religion, or what some people might call religious "fanaticism" (e.g., Dogma, Saved, The Life of Brian, Jesus Camp). But pretty much all of these come away with the message that it's fine to be "spiritual" or whatever, so long as you don't hurt other people, and don't get too crazy about what you believe. As much as some "conservative" pundits love to accuse Hollywood "liberals" of being godless, there sure aren't many movies where godlessness is really taken seriously.

And that's unfortunate, in my view, as movies are probably the most prevalent and influential art form for the general public, and because many people will form their views on abstract concepts based on the percepts that movies provide (related to the issue of generalizing from fictional evidence). One need only glance over the examples on the tvtropes page "Hollywood Atheist" to see that movies and television aren't exactly putting the best foot forward for our kind.

But perhaps there's a bit more hope in the way of non-theist cinema, as opposed to overt atheist cinema. Of course, any story without gods is a non-theist story, and there are plenty of movies that don't touch on gods or religion at all. But what I'm talking about are movies where one would normally expect to find religion, but where no religion is to be found -- in other words, movies that seem to be depicting the alternate world where humanity never fell prey to this particular superstition, and where the concepts of god and religion simply don't exist.

The movie that inspired this particular thought was 50/50, the recent comedy-drama where Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a man dealing with potentially fatal cancer. It's a great movie, but what struck me afterwards is how completely absent any mention of god, religion, the afterlife, etc. was in a movie about a man, along with his friends and family, potentially facing his own death. There are lots of characters, lots of conflicts, lots of different perspectives on what he's going through, but nothing at all from anyone amounting to a "spiritual" response to the situation (at least that I recall).

And it got me thinking, what other sorts of issues are there where we would normally expect religion to pop up, such that a story without it would be decidedly non-theist, as opposed to incidentally non-theist? And are there other major movies that you think tell such a story? I ask both because I'm always eager to hear about new movies I might enjoy (or old movies I might appreciate more), but also because I think this sort of non-theist cinema might be a good bridge to people who would instinctively rebel against anything openly atheist. In other words, show people that a "godless" world really isn't all that crazy, that people get by just fine and find ways to face conflicts, etc. Anyway, just thought I'd poll the membership and see what people thought about this idea. Looking forward to seeing the responses!

*I'm well aware that there's quite a bit of atheist and non-theist art in other mediums -- sf literature most prominently. But I'm focusing on movies (and perhaps to a lesser extent, television) because those are the main forms of "public art" in our culture, and the mediums most likely to influence how the public at large views these concepts.

By "the industry" in this post, I refer to that part of the entertainment industry which:

1. Produces movies, TV and video games (as opposed to books, comics etc.)

2. Is motivated by profit (as opposed to fun, politics etc.)

3. Consists of companies (as opposed to lone developers, student teams etc.)

It seems to me that the industry has two characteristics:

Formulaic

Most products follow some formula which is known to be workable.

Under what circumstances is this rational? (I'm not commenting on whether it's artistically good or bad; again, I'm only discussing entertainment as a commercial enterprise motivated by profit.) It seems to me following a proven formula is rational if your priority is to not lose, to go for the sure thing, i.e. the chance of a big hit is not worth the risk of a complete flop.

Hit driven

It's the accepted wisdom that entertainment is a hit driven industry: almost all the profits are generated by a handful of the most successful products, with the rest losing money or barely covering costs.

Now my question: isn't there a contradiction here? If you're selling insurance, following a proven formula may well be the rational thing to do. If you're the owner of one of the handful of franchises that is pulling in big profits, of course you shouldn't mess with a winner. But if you're one of the many also-rans, how is it rational to stick with an almost sure loser? In a hit driven industry, wouldn't it be more rational to concentrate on maximizing your chance of winning big, instead of trying to minimize the risk of a flop?

But I've never worked in the entertainment industry; perhaps my layman's impression of it is inaccurate. Is there something I'm missing, or is a substantial amount of expected profit really being left on the table?