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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 7034872" data-source="post: 8572261">As a rule of thumb, that carries weight, but I note it is no law. From the fact that some person S is capable of becoming aware of his or her confirmation bias, it follows that at least some part of S is capable of overcoming such bias: to see it as bias already is (at an instinctive level) to understand it as ultimately dishonest. Even more, there are some of us who make it our special business in life to spend extraordinary time and effort considering ideas and arguments with which we do not already agree. Some of us even get tenure while doing this (which is nice).I think Bedrockgames and AnotherGuy have it right: the tribalism of the political and moral positions today (on nearly all sides) is what really poisons them, not which positions they are, and the substitution of a well-told story with some totemically waved moral and political pieties is one of several things killing current movie-making. I also think payn is right that the tribalism isn't coming from movies and TV; it's being picked up by them and exploited because it's already so much in the cultural air. That's one of the main points on which I disagree with the Critical Drinker's analysis: the movies aren't teaching us moral narcissism: they're picking up on it and pandering to it because (1) it's easy, and (2) at least for the moment, it sells.As a professional philosopher, I've changed my mind more than I've held to it over the past thirty-odd years, and I learned long ago never to trust the judgments and advice of people who refuse seriously to consider ideas with which they do not already agree. Because they will not step outside of themselves and take contrary positions seriously, I cannot take them seriously. It isn't what they hold that makes me stop listening to them, mind you: it's the manner in which they hold it.Yes. Habitually, I make myself watch carefully for that.One thing that probably is involved, though, is a shift in the sample pool. As you note below, indie stuff is having a much easier time getting into mainstream culture than it did in the 80s and 90s. That's certainly true.I am. (Maybe not "most," but certainly "lotsa.")That's true. The problem I continue to see, though, is that writing and storytelling skills have gone downhill hard. My cynical take on this has been and is that it's hard to find good writers in a culture that no longer reads books (and of those that do, they'll only occasionally manage to read good books).</blockquote>

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