You might like The Advantage.

Education is legally mandatory

Not quite true.

"Your third arrest, you go to jail for life." "Why the third?" "Because in a game a guy gets three times to swing a stick at a ball."

Hunter Felt

A funny example of seeing with fresh eyes, I guess?

WAYS TO KILL 2 BIRDS W/ 1 STONE
1 Ricochet
2 Retrieve, rethrow
3 Line up birds precisely
4 Huge boulder
5 Use lovebirds, 2nd dies of grief

Ken Jennings

Your career as an auditor that people pay to evaluate themselves

As-yet-uninvented rationalist career niche?

I'm guessing those people mostly preferred to watch crime shows. I'd be surprised to see the same results from someone who only watched Yo Gabba Gabba and Antiques Roadshow.

Above, you said:

I continue to be puzzled by the idea that plays should specify problems and work towards answers (or tell us things we didn't know, or make arguments beginning with facts); objecting to a play on the grounds that it doesn't do this strikes me as about as sensible as objecting to a scientific paper on the grounds that it doesn't rhyme.

What are sufficient grounds for objecting to a play?

I know almost nothing about plays, movies are more my thing. What do we have for worthwhile "think piece" film? Mindwalk? Waking Life? What the Bleep Do We Know? A sad state of affairs.

I'm not so much suggesting/lamenting that plays/movies/books should all gain rigor. I'm staring into a massive unoccupied niche where strikingly rigorous works could exist. Ok, maybe not massive.

Primer proved difficult material can gain a following. Now we need a few more Shane Carruths with somewhat different goals.

Having not seen the play, my guess is that PhilGoetz is mainly frustrated by the tendency of "philosophical" works to end up in a foggy cul-de-sac, rather than to specify problems and work toward answers.